It was a chilly, winter evening in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia sitting around a fire on our back patio with my wife, Billie Jo, and our dear friends James and Susan, another teaching couple . Some deep conversations and many problems of the world got solved by the four of us during what we refer to as Porch Chats. You know these chats. When good friends get together around a fire on a porch, on a beach, in your kitchen, or even in a booth at a favorite pub with scribbles on a beverage napkin, these conversations are the best. This one, however, has stuck with me and has now become a philosophy of sorts for me. Why? Because I cannot find the answer to the question. Or at least an answer that is not superficial.
James, my wife and myself were all working in the same high school at the time of the conversation. It was because of this that sometimes the conversations were a little heavy on the high school side. This Porch Chat in particular was one of these times. The three of us were talking pretty deeply about the content of courses, credit counts, preparing for university, or some other extremely important and very interesting things high school teachers talk about. Whatever it was, I honestly do not even remember so that is how important it truly was at the time, it was consuming the three of us...until Susan, an elementary teacher and the voice of reality of this evening, spoke up and said "Since when did high school become harder than college?" It was at this point that Billie Jo, James and I stopped talking and all stared at Susan. The three of us couldn't speak for a moment so we just looked at her. In the most perfect Susan way, she then went on to tell us that she was listening to everything we were saying and that she just couldn't believe that it was high school we were talking about. We all just looked at each other and began to laugh because what Susan was saying was absolutely true.
I continually go back to this conversation, not just because I absolutely love our Porch Chats but because after five years, I still do not have an answer to Susan's question. Why does high school have to be harder than college? What are we doing in schools? Are we pushing so far ahead and becoming that competitive that all of the pressures that were once associated with colleges & universities are now living in the high school world? It used to be that the horror stories we would hear about education involved the incredibly long thesis papers, vastly complicated Calculus problems that spanned three or more chalkboards, interpretations of literary works that went so deep that entire courses were designated to a single author, or sometimes even a single piece of literature. Several thousand word essays were due before each class. Timeless experiments with accompanying, countless page, lab reports were done on a regular basis. Sitting at a desk for 60, 90, 120 or even 180 minutes during a lecture and having to regurgitate everything the professor said for the exam. These portrayals about university academics, the depth and breadth of knowledge that university students were undertaking, was intimidating.
The problem is that the last few sentences of the paragraph above are no longer common place at universities. They are what is going on in high school. Yes, some of these things do still happen at the university level, but now they are far too often what you hear if you ask any high school student to describe their workload. What happened to the fun? What happened to building a passion for learning? What happened to learning where your passions lie so that you can pursue them after you graduate from high school? In short, when did high school become harder than college?
What is the typical scenario in a classroom around this time of year? It is a mad rush to get the curriculum covered before the end of the year. Or, frantically cover the material so the students are at least exposed to it before they sit for their final exams. Teachers pile on projects, assessments, HW, quizzes, etc. in a mind blowing proportion. Then we wonder why students, and teachers, are stressed? Really? Grade 12 teachers say they have to prepare students for university. Grade 11 teachers say they have to prepare students for Grade 12. And on down the assembly line to the point that Grade 5 teachers are stressing their already stressed out students about the intimidating halls of the middle school. Even the kindergarten teachers are in on the game saying they have to prepare their students to enter first grade! Let students find their passions. Focus on fewer topics, but do them well. Is there really a need to teach students in middle school about quadratics if they still have not mastered adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions? Do we still have to use Shakespeare to teach literature? What happened to looking forward to Science because you, the student, were actually doing an experiment?
Stop the madness, people! Look around. Why enter the mad dash when we could just as easily discuss with the next grade level teacher what it was that got covered and what did not get covered? Our students are people, not robots. They are not going to end up at the exact same point at the exact same time, so stop wasting energy trying to make this happen. Bring the fun back into learning.
Tuesday, May 23, 2017
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Why do we test students?
There are many answers and viewpoints to this question. No matter which educator, parent, student, administrator or policy maker you ask, you get a slightly different answer. Most of these answers can be summed up to essentially this..."to see what the students have learned." To an extent, I can agree with this summation. However, is that really what we are doing as teachers? Sometimes.
Other times we are not testing to determine what our students have learned. Sometimes we test our students because the school/district/State requires the assessment. They gather the data from all students that took the test and behind some magical closed door session there comes an algorithm of some sort to rank our students based on the answers they had supplied. (The "They" can be teachers, administrators, standardized assessment companies, school boards, etc. depending upon the test in question.) The rank can come in the form of a letter grade, a number score, a percentile ranking, a placement on a given rubric, a t-score, a z-score, a pass/fail result, or in some cases, no feedback to the test taker at all. These are the cases that are truly where the tail is wagging the dog. It does not make sense and it is far too common that there is little to no benefit for the student.
Many school leaders talk about "doing what is right for our students", "standing behind our students", or "putting students at the forefront", and many other wonderful statements to their stakeholders. I am not against these being said at all. Quite the contrary. I am absolutely behind each of these statements. My concern is that many times the actions of our school leaders do not back up these statements, and testing is certainly one of these actions. Why test students if there is no follow up to the test? Why gather data just to gather data? Why gather data simply to rank our students against one another? What is the point?
Students are assessed on a regular basis in every aspect of their education. Most of these are formative in nature. Meaning, the results and/or feedback they receive (or do not receive) from these assessments informs their learning in some way or another. These formative assessments can be class discussions, quizzes, projects, speeches, skits, games, exit tickets, presentations, or just about any other form you can think of that gives the student an opportunity to show their learning at any given point about any given learning target. As teachers, we take the opportunity to gauge our students' learning against said learning targets and then adjust our teaching accordingly. Then at a later point, hopefully after several other formative assessments and feedback have been taken and given, we give our students a summative assessment. Sadly, this is where many assessment cycles stop...in schools.
However, students are also being formatively assessed by their peers on a regular basis. They are constantly being assessed on how they dress, how they talk, who they sit with at lunch, who their friends are on social media, what they post on social media, what they like or don't like on social media, this list goes on further than we want to admit and in many cases these assessments mean more to the student than anything we do in the classroom. These social assessments guide how each student approaches everything they do in and out of school.
The difference? Immediate application of learning, reflection and feedback. But why does this difference have to exist? Why are we not giving more meaningful (to the student) assessments? Why are we not giving time for students, and teachers, to reflect on learning and feedback to guide future lessons? Why do we as teachers feel we need to be the guardians of the information at all times? Let these things go. Listen to our students. They want our guidance, not our governance. Find ways to spark their curiosity. Find projects that put their learning into action. Assess them in more ways than just paper and pencil. Set the expectations high, give them the support they need, guide them in the right direction, let them use their past experiences and curiosity lead them to learn.
Stop testing students and start assessing learning. We have the power and ability to do this within our classrooms. What is stopping you?
Other times we are not testing to determine what our students have learned. Sometimes we test our students because the school/district/State requires the assessment. They gather the data from all students that took the test and behind some magical closed door session there comes an algorithm of some sort to rank our students based on the answers they had supplied. (The "They" can be teachers, administrators, standardized assessment companies, school boards, etc. depending upon the test in question.) The rank can come in the form of a letter grade, a number score, a percentile ranking, a placement on a given rubric, a t-score, a z-score, a pass/fail result, or in some cases, no feedback to the test taker at all. These are the cases that are truly where the tail is wagging the dog. It does not make sense and it is far too common that there is little to no benefit for the student.
Many school leaders talk about "doing what is right for our students", "standing behind our students", or "putting students at the forefront", and many other wonderful statements to their stakeholders. I am not against these being said at all. Quite the contrary. I am absolutely behind each of these statements. My concern is that many times the actions of our school leaders do not back up these statements, and testing is certainly one of these actions. Why test students if there is no follow up to the test? Why gather data just to gather data? Why gather data simply to rank our students against one another? What is the point?
Students are assessed on a regular basis in every aspect of their education. Most of these are formative in nature. Meaning, the results and/or feedback they receive (or do not receive) from these assessments informs their learning in some way or another. These formative assessments can be class discussions, quizzes, projects, speeches, skits, games, exit tickets, presentations, or just about any other form you can think of that gives the student an opportunity to show their learning at any given point about any given learning target. As teachers, we take the opportunity to gauge our students' learning against said learning targets and then adjust our teaching accordingly. Then at a later point, hopefully after several other formative assessments and feedback have been taken and given, we give our students a summative assessment. Sadly, this is where many assessment cycles stop...in schools.
However, students are also being formatively assessed by their peers on a regular basis. They are constantly being assessed on how they dress, how they talk, who they sit with at lunch, who their friends are on social media, what they post on social media, what they like or don't like on social media, this list goes on further than we want to admit and in many cases these assessments mean more to the student than anything we do in the classroom. These social assessments guide how each student approaches everything they do in and out of school.
The difference? Immediate application of learning, reflection and feedback. But why does this difference have to exist? Why are we not giving more meaningful (to the student) assessments? Why are we not giving time for students, and teachers, to reflect on learning and feedback to guide future lessons? Why do we as teachers feel we need to be the guardians of the information at all times? Let these things go. Listen to our students. They want our guidance, not our governance. Find ways to spark their curiosity. Find projects that put their learning into action. Assess them in more ways than just paper and pencil. Set the expectations high, give them the support they need, guide them in the right direction, let them use their past experiences and curiosity lead them to learn.
Stop testing students and start assessing learning. We have the power and ability to do this within our classrooms. What is stopping you?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)