“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” – Marianne Williamson I just recently got hired in Westwinds School Division No. 74 (yayyyy!), and when they hired me, they gave me a pretty great welcome package: I suppose that for some, on their summer, that is probably not the most exciting thing. But for me, it absolutely is. I mentioned in a couple of posts about how my first year as an international teacher at Green Hills caused me to have some doubts about my ability to be an effective teacher (and if I wasn’t an effective teacher, could I really morally and ethically stand by a decision to stay on as a teacher?). When I got back to Canada, after the jet lag wore off, and after I’d finished visiting with all the people I had loved and missed during my time away, I got down to work and research for my own peace of mind. I started with assessment. I read a huge chunk of what Anne Davies has to offer. Let me tell you, that lady has some of the simplest and most effective suggestions in the most efficiently packed books I’ve seen to date. I re-read all the assessment books and notes I’d collected during uni (my hoarding paid off! Yay! I’ll have to write to mom about the benefits of hoarding). And today, I just finished what is now, hands down, my FAVOURITE book on assessment. Here you go: In a nutshell, I love this book because it has a lot of research for when I ask “why?” and “how?”; it’s attentive to a variety of cultural, social and linguistic backgrounds; it doesn’t forget the reality of teaching in a modern-day classroom, and all the demands and responsibilities and frustrations that entails; and finally, because it develops a case for teaching growth mindset (in the minds of students and practicing teachers) and developing grit. I really love this book, and I’m gonna tell you all about it, in case you don’t go out and buy it yourself (YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD!). Buckle down and get some popcorn. So here’s the premise: Schools need to teach a general education, and especially how to learn and continuing learning, because otherwise, students will not be equipped for the society they graduate into after 12+ years of education. This isn’t new. In fact, as Wiliam notes, it was this tendency to not try and predict the future, but to equip students for a range of possibilities, that made students successful when this idea was promoted through 1910-1940. There’s that saying about educational cycles floating around… The research-y bitsAnyway, Wiliam went on to say that this sort of thing kind of stopped happening, so students were ill-prepared for the world they graduated into. He disbarred the argument that a change in curriculum would fix the problem – essentially, it takes too long, is met with too much scepticism and too few opportunities for professional development, and teachers are not given a lot of flexibility to become proficient in the new curriculum while juggling state/provincial standards and a million other things. Sound familiar? Yes? Yes. In any case, he pointed out that even if you moved beyond new implementation, “a bad curriculum well taught is invariably a better experience for students than a good curriculum badly taught.” Basically, he argues, it’s on teacher quality and capability. But, whoa?! How do we fix teacher quality? He outlines a few scenarios:
Before I go into the strategies, I want to share this reminder that Wiliam writes of, because I think it can cause a bit of insecurity in a lot of teachers: Many teachers have had the experience of creating an effective group discussion task in which the students engage completely in a really tricky challenge that they must resolve. The only problem is there is nothing for the teacher to do. He feels a little bored and a tad guilty that he is not doing anything, so he disrupts a group’s work. This is one version of what I call the teaching-learning trap: I’m not doing anything; therefore, the students can’t be learning anything. The other version of the trap was discussed earlier: I am working hard, so the students must be learning something. The strategiesBecause I learned so much, and because this blog post is already a little bit crazy, I've put each of the five strategies into it's own blog post. Read them, and then at the end of this blog post, I have a few final words. Here's the links:
Conclusions and last wordsJust to be clear, none of this is my own, but I really wanted to share some important stuff Dylan Wiliam has written about assessment. THIS WORK IS DYLAN WILIAM’S!!! He leaves teachers with one final reminder: When teachers try to change more than two or three things about their teaching at the same time, the typical result is that their teaching deteriorates and they go back to doing what they were doing before. My advice is that each teacher chooses one or two of the techniques in this book and tries them out in the classroom. If they appear to be effective, then the goal should be to practice them until they become second nature. If they are not effective, then they can be modified or the teacher can try another technique.
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Meagan Fullerton-LeeMeagan is an aspiring teacher, voracious reader, tentative motorcyclist, and passionate gardener. In all things she sees education. Here she shares her passions. Archives
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