Tested

Tested to the Limit

If you stopped by the small office conference room last week, you saw we were buried knee-deep in End of Course Assessments.  Students took hundreds of them during the week.  They were marked, labelled, collated, packed, and then shipped off to Minnesota for scoring on Friday.

During a week like that, our minds tend to ponder how much of today’s education revolves around testing.  We give a veritable alphabet soup of assessments: SATs, PSATs, ACTs, ECAs, and APs to name a few.  Add to that Achievement Series Exams, final exams, unit tests, chapter tests, and even daily quizzes, and you begin to wonder if there isn’t more testing than learning going on in schools today.

Alfie Kohn, the ever outspoken, often controversial, and always entertaining educator, once wrote, “Testing has swelled and mutated, like a creature in one of those old horror movies, to the point that it now threatens to swallow our schools whole.”  It’s not hard to sympathize with Alfie, especially after a week like we just completed.

Test Yourself

Obviously, we have a need for assessing how well our students are doing.  We need to know if our teaching is translating into learning.  (Remember the “I taught my dog to whistle” cartoon?)  Interestingly enough, we aren’t as filled with indignation at the thought of “testing” when we are the ones designing and giving the tests.  The reality is that the more local the assessment, the better the chance of being able to make changes to instruction and help students.  This may help explain our split personality when it comes to our own assessments.

On the state and national level, I do see signs of hope on the horizon as well.  Good questions are being asked about assessment in the process of moving to the Common Core State Standards.  For example, those in charge are asking whether we should give only Assessments OF Learning, or whether we should spend much more time on Assessment FOR Learning.  This is the difference between summative and formative assessments.

At the school level, we also should continue to ask ourselves if it is possible to change our views of assessments.  I would advocate adding a third category:  Assessment AND Learning.  The difference is more than changing a preposition to a conjunction.  It is a change of perspective of what assessment is and how it looks.  Assessment and Learning means moving away from traditional tests and moving toward designing assessment tasks.

Interestingly, you already do much of this.  You tend to call these “assignments,” so what I am advocating might be only a slight shift in your thinking.  At the point you need to assess student progress of knowledge and/or skills, you can design a task that measures student growth and engages them in deepening their understanding of the content. In the classroom, it might look something like this:

•  Design the Assessment Task: The task should be important.  It should engage students, and it should be extended.  The Common Core State Standards, both PARCC and Smarter Balance, are talking about 1-3 day tasks.  As much as possible, these tasks should involve higher order thinking.  Students must be required to analyse, synthesize, and apply skills and knowledge that you have been teaching and they have been learning.  Check the Depth of Knowledge chart in TEDS for ideas about tasks and key questions to be answered in the task.
• Include Literacy Skills:  Include at least one extended text and several shorter texts.  (These should be appropriate in complexity and content for the students in your class.)  CCSS guidelines say these texts could and should include a variety of formats: articles, editorials, excerpts, poetry, lyrics, and even film, art, music, or audio clips.  During the assessment, students should read, write, and think—the most important literacy skill!
• Scaffold Students: Many, even most, students won’t be able to complete the tasks successfully at first without support.  Show them exemplars of quality work, model the thinking that needs to take place, have them work collaboratively on some parts of these tasks, and over time transition to more independent work.  The Gradual Release Model (I Do, We Do, You Do) works well in a single lesson and over the course of a school year.
• Assess on Content and Proficiency: The task is an assessment tool.  You need to find ways to assess how well students have mastered the content and/or skills that are important to your class.  Rubrics might be appropriate for much or all of the assessment.  This approach can be used in addition to your traditional assessment.  As time goes on, assessment tasks as advocated in CCSS may replace many of your traditional tests.  These tasks provide a way for students to deepen their understanding of your content and a way for you to assess student learning at the application level.  They are Assessment and Learning.

If I understand correctly, this is the approach both the Common Core State Assessment consortiums will take in assessing our students in the near future.  If we are going to have our students ready for these new standards and assessments, we need to give them many opportunities to practice throughout the school year.

Test Drive

The nice thing is that many, many of you already have assignments similar to these in place.  The challenge is to implement assessment tasks more widely across the curriculum.  The first step is to try them out.  Find the place or places where these anchor assignments fit naturally into your current plans, and then give it a test drive next semester.  Find ways to tweak or expand a current assignment to make it an assessment of student learning as well.  If the assessment works, keep using it.  If it doesn’t, make adjustments.  Over time you will develop a toolbox of highly engaging assessment tasks. 

When you do, “testing” will change from something you “have to do” to something that you and the students look forward to.  Hopefully, students and teachers will come to feel a little less tested by and testy about the assessment process.

Have a great week, Southeastern.

Phil

Tell Me About It

Last week I stole from Lisa, and this week I’m stealing a response to what Lisa wrote, but I want to make a point about the importance of reflection in teaching.  I’ll start with some background, give you a story, and make an argument.

The Background

One of the things we know is that we don't take enough time to reflect on how we are doing.  Our schedules are tight. Our To Do lists grow rather than shrink.  The next class walks through the door, and we struggle to keep our noses above water.  Jim Collins, who wrote the Good to Great books on leadership, tells of the value of spending extended time on reflection: 80% of the time doing our job and 20% of the time figuring out how to get better.  Most of us agree this is a good idea but wonder how that could possibly work in real life.

The upshot is that we hear that we should take time to reflect—and we agree—but the next deadline rushes at us.  So we put off the important for the urgent.  You know the feeling.

The Story:

Below is a response I received to last week’s “From B106” memo.  It comes from Jen Eberly, who teaches English Language Learners, primarily from Mexico, and presents a compelling story about the importance of knowing our students and building strong relationships with them.  From Jen:

What you wrote about comes up each year for me in my EL classes.  Christmas in the States is an incredibly lonely and sad time for many of my students. Being far away from friends, family, and special traditions makes the anticipation of Christmas a rather large let down.  Christmas traditions in Mexico are focused around family and the community.  Most, if not all, towns celebrate with posadas which would be best described as a holiday progressive where families spend the evening moving from house to house to celebrate the holiday.  As families moved here to the States, these traditions were left in Mexico, along with the family members who stayed behind.  Crossing the border at night with only the clothes on your back obviously means that treasured Christmas decorations do not make the list of necessary items.  Most are also in situational poverty which translates to not having extra money to purchase a tree or new Christmas decorations once they have arrived.

As a way of bringing some cheer to the classroom this year, I took my level III students to Eby Pines to experience cutting down a Christmas tree. I had the time of my life watching them carefully scrutinize each and every tree, trying to find one they deemed worthy of representing our class. ....Of course reality set in after some time, and I eventually had to say, "Good Lord, just pick one in the next 60 seconds or I'm going to pick it for you!"    

They finally found one, took turns sawing it down and carried it back to the bus.  Now they fondly enter the room each day and greet the tree which they have named Gordita!  They have even brought their friends by to visit it!  Of course it doesn't make up for their lost memories and traditions, but perhaps it helps to brighten this season just a bit. 

The Argument:

Story-telling is reflection.  In fact, considering our daily demands and schedule, it may be the most realistic form of reflection available to us.  Consider Jen’s story above.  You can talk all you want about building relationships and understanding your students.  You could read books and research on its importance, and you could spend hours writing about it. 

Or you can tell the story of how one teacher is making a difference in the lives of her students. 

You all have these stories to tell.  These are stories of engaged students, of lessons that challenge kids and make them think, and of seeing the light bulb go on.  They also might be stories of lessons that flopped.  You tried something, and it didn’t work.  It happens!  Tell the story, laugh about it, and then tell the story of how you fixed the problem.  When you do, you have spent time reflecting on good teaching practice, and it will pay dividends later on.

You have great stories to tell, important stories.  I encourage you to find time to tell them to yourself and to others.  And I hope you find time to create opportunities for new stories.  Story-telling is part of the reflection process.  It is part of the learning process.  It is how we will continue our journey towards excellence.

I hope your week is a great one, one worth talking about.

Phil

Some sage advice on the importance of reflection:

•   “Follow effective action with quiet reflection.  From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”  –James Levin
•  “I am writer of books in retrospect.  I talk to understand; I teach in order to learn.” –Robert Frost
• “By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is the easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”  –Confucius
• “Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best—and change—from hearing stories that strike a chord within us.”  --John Kotter

All That Glitters....

This week I am stealing from my wife Lisa, who wrote the following memo to the staff at her school, Monument Lighthouse Charter Academy.  Hers is a very different school than HSEHS, but that does not mean the message doesn’t apply to us as well.  The holidays are a time of celebration and enjoyment for many of us, but perhaps not for all of us--and perhaps not for each of our students.  We come into the holiday season with very different religious, cultural, and personal experiences.  It is good to keep these differences in mind, especially in the month of December.

I hope you take time to read her memo.  She makes a good point, and it may give you some insight into the Lederach household as well.

From Lisa to the teachers at MLCA:

As we walk into the holiday season, chances are good that most of us have traditions that make the holidays something to look forward to.  For one of the Lederach children who was in foster care before he came to live with us, the winter holidays didn’t bring him much to anticipate.  He lived in five different homes over Christmastime in his five short years of life.  He came to live with us the summer soon after his fifth birthday.

As Christmas neared, the other children in our family began eagerly anticipating putting up the decorations.  They looked forward to sneaking small gifts and candies into each other’s stockings, claiming little imaginary elves called “The Winkles” were responsible.  They looked forward to their parts in the yearly Christmas story enacted at church.  They knew we would draw names and then they’d have the job of choosing just the right gifts.

The kids would sit down with a catalogue and the Target toy flier to make their lists.  I loved looking at those lists because each reflected the personality of the person writing it.  Did Isaac really want shin guards again?  And certainly my husband couldn’t write socks, pens, and candy one more time.

But for that child who came to us the summer he was five, the first Christmas meant little to nothing.  Moving from home to home for five years meant he had no Christmas traditions.  There was no stocking he had since birth.  There were no decorations on the tree that he made in preschool.  There was no part he played in the annual Christmas play.  He had little excitement.  He didn’t want to make a list.  He often stood back and watched the rest of us as we laughed and smiled while we fondly remembered the cologne Grandpa John gave our oldest son Noah when he was much younger and which still shows up in a stocking each and every year.

It took a bit for us to catch on to what was happening.  “Why isn’t he excited about Christmas?” we would ask.  I had never seen a child of mine who didn’t have some enthusiasm for the two week break, the family time together, the special foods, and the music.

By about Christmas Eve it dawned on us.  If you’ve spent each Christmas with a different family, why would this year be any different?  Who’s to believe that this Christmas won’t be the only one with this family, followed by another one with a new family next year?

It wasn’t until the Christmas that he was six that we began to see some of the excitement you expect to see in a child around Christmastime.  It would have been the first time he had a second Christmas at the same house.

Now he’s 12, and it’s his eighth Christmas with us.  When asked, almost all he remembers of the early holidays is a “giant a-mote control car” he got when he was four.   Each year he puts a remote control car on his list.  They usually don’t last very long, sometimes only a day, but they are something he might get for the ninth time in a row.

I would guess that for many of our students and even some of us, Christmas or the holiday time might be a bit like it has been for my child.  It might be a time of fond memories and traditions.  For others, it might be the a time where things are different and uncomfortable--again.

As you look into your students’ faces, take a moment to imagine what these next weeks might be like for them.  Can we find it in ourselves to take the time to figure out the cause for the behavior?  Can we find it in ourselves to offer grace and comfort when the child doesn’t even know that is what he or she needs?  That is my hope.

As we go into these final days before the holiday break, let’s remember why we have chosen to educate children.  Let’s remember that each and every child is someone’s baby.  My husband likes to tell me that parents don’t keep their best kids at home and send us their second best.  

Let’s remember that as we face these next days.

Thanks, Lisa, for letting me borrow your words.  

HSE, I hope your December, the month often filled with glitter and celebration, is also full of grace, joy, and perhaps most of all, patience.

Have a great week, Southeastern.

Phil