One part of chapter four that I wholeheartedly agreed with was the section labeled “Effective Assessment Involves Students”. Though I would consider myself more along the lines of traditional when it comes to assessing student work (i.e., as the book puts it, thinking of assessment as something that a teacher “does to a student”), I can’t stress enough how much students themselves hold the most stock in their own education. Even not-so-great teachers like I currently am can still present the information to the students adequately enough for them to be able to understand it... that is, if they even care to understand it. To use an apt cliche´, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Now, the book calls the student-teacher relationship an “equal partnership” as far as assessment is concerned, which I completely disagree with. How could working to create creative and engaging lesson plans (with formal and informal assessments inserted of course) for a customarily boring subject to be presented to apathetic, ungrateful, disrespectful teenagers ever possibly be construed as equal in any sense of the word? If it were equal, then I’d feel safe in assuming we would be doing equal amounts of work. So let’s see... hmm... I work all day at school and they begrudgingly do some of their own work. I win this round, and by win, I mean I lose this round. Though, it hasn’t really gotten out of hand yet. After school, I come home to assess their work, call parents, and lesson plan, while they... what do they do? Some of them go home and do work and that’s great. Individually, maybe there are some students who have an equal partnership with me, but I consider the student body to be just that, one body; they are one entity with whom this partnership exists. That having been said, the vast majority go home, and don’t do, or study, or attempt to retain anything thereby making this an extremely unequal partnership.
The book says that students have a number of ways in which to increase the potency of my assessments:
- “Recommend possible assessment activities”
- “Assist in the creation of rubrics and checklists”
- “Apply rubrics and checklists to their own work”
- “Participate in self-reflection and evaluation activities that encourage them to relate their performances to the strategies they have used”
To make an addendum, I’ll put a fifth parameter:
- Derrr, go home and do some frickin studying on your own and take this crap seriously
Honestly the only one of these that I would even consider at my school and especially at this point in my teaching capabilites is number one, other than that, this book is spitting out ideals at me that I just don’t care to hear right now.
I find myself agreeing with much of what you are saying. The book provides numerous suggestions, and obviously one can't be expected to try out everything. But for the sake of experimentation and better oneself as a teacher, it would probably be in our best interest to try a thing or two, regardless of how valid we feel the advice is. The chapter was a bit hard to get through, but I imagine there has to be something readily applicable in there. At the very least we now know the importance of assessment.
ReplyDeleteKevan, I agree with you on the part about our "equal partnership." It's not that I'm bitter about my amount of work vs. theirs. I just don't ever expect it to be equal. It's my JOB to educate them. I get paid. I signed up for this. They are forced to be at school and they're largely unaware of the affects their work will one day have on them. I, on the other hand, am very aware. So with such a disparity in knowledge, how could someone possibly justify an argument for an equal partnership? Nice try, chapter 4.
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