“Connect with people and your practice will change forever.”

If I had to describe it in one statement, this is what CAfLN meant to me. Now if I could only remember who said it! 

This May, I met a group of passionate people who are on the ground and getting dirty with assessment. This is grassroots change operation!  I had such an energizing conference- from leading the school tours, to immersing in a full day of workshops, to wrapping it up at the Symposium.
In the moment, CAfLN was a bit of a blur. An awesome blur, and one of my favourite growing and learning experiences in a long time. It was inspiring to know people are out there with the same passions, striving to improve their practice- not only for themselves, but wanting to change how assessment is done. 

A brief summary...

As part of the planning committee, I volunteered for the school tours to proudly show off some great things Delta is doing around AFL. These things are, in fact, the reason I left my previous district after 20 years to join Delta!  I was honoured (they seriously let me have the tour bus microphone!) to lead 60+ educators through 3 different elementary schools.

It wouldn’t have been right to lead them without giving them their own learning targets and reflection! 

Each school was quite different in their demographics, but had a similar focus and purpose. 

We finished off the night with our Farm Roots Mini school tour, BBQ and ignites. Here’s the link if you want to hear my thoughts on the challenges and successes with going gradeless, in Dr. Seuss rhyme, of course. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRLIpPRS5Ac&feature=youtu.be

The next day, the conference itself, was a day filled with rich assessment knowledge. I loved the variety of research, practical experience and everything in between. And the final day, the Symposium for members, was another time for sharing, connecting and tying it all together in reflection.  Ok, this is a really brief summary. I’m still processing all of that and finding ways to weave all the learning into my teaching. 

What I really wanted to talk about, though, is what happens after the conference. 

When you work out, the muscle growth and strengthening doesn’t happen in the gym during your exercise. It happens later, when your body is at rest. The growth occurs because the strain has created small tears in your muscle fibers. It is only in the resting stage that your body begins to repair the fibers and make them stronger.

I did a mud obstacle run two days ago. It was exhausting and I pushed myself to my physical limits. And that’s not when I was building muscle! But now, two days later, my body is very sore. I can rejoice in the fact that as I rest, my muscles are repairing and strengthening. 

This is how I feel about my time at the CAfLN conference. And about learning, in general. The richness comes in the reflection. It’s going to take time for me to process the learning that took place over those few days. 

Reflecting with Students

Experimenting with portfolios in Fresh Grade has taught me the real power of self-assessment and reflection. Students noticing their strengths, thinking about things that challenged them, and taking time post-activity for reflection has been a powerful exercise. 

When I was a younger teacher, I did (and still do) a lot of hands-on science activities. The lessons were engaging and had deep learning connections. I often wondered, though, how much the students were actually learning and taking away from the experience. I was missing a step, and that step was taking time after the action to debrief, to self-assess, to let the learning settle down into the cracks and solidify. 

So how do I let this knowledge change my practice? 

Slow. Down. Strive for depth, not breadth. Revisit lessons and student responses. Don’t be so quick to move on. Value the time it takes to let them think, process and reflect.

One of the most powerful formative assessment practices I used this year was spending 2 weeks on the same piece of journal writing. It felt painfully slow at the time, but looking back, I’m so glad I took the time to give feedback, let them revise, set goals, highlight growth, self-assess from exemplars, and then have them share the process with their parents. 

I believe it was the back-and-forth, one step at a time, deliberate and purposeful building blocks where the real learning took place. 

I’ve tried to build in reflection as a consistent and frequent thinking routine in our classroom.

From art… (how else could you assess art?)

to science…

I used this with my 6/7’s and they were all able to do this with growing insight and depth.

These tools allow students to start taking an active part in their assessment… and the results have been amazing!  

So ask questions!

What is the most important information/ skill/ lesson you learned?

Why is this learning important?

What are you finding challenging?

Where are you thriving?

What do you want to improve on?

What steps can you take to move forward?

These are the most important questions we can ask our students, and it all really comes down to this: 

A New Hope

Kudos to those of you  who caught the Star Wars reference in my title.  My husband would be proud.

I was very encouraged the other day while working with a student teacher. I am mentoring her through the incredibly difficult year of learning basically everything there is to know about teaching. Of course we learn and grow so much over our careers, but besides your first year, student teaching is one of the most intense times of growth. At least it was for me. And the worst part is, not only are you learning how to do it, you are being constantly monitored and judged at the same time.

This brings me to a thought someone planted in my head a long time ago, and I've never forgotten:
It is very difficult to be a mentor and an evaluator at the same time.

Think about it.

This is the flaw of the student teaching program, being highly dependent on the teacher you are placed with. Some are mentors, some are evaluators, and very few are both.

The first thing I told Emily (aforementioned student teacher) is that your student teaching year is one where you are supposed to LEARN. You don't have to be perfect at everything at the start (or ever after that!)  She compared herself to her classmates, many of whom taught overseas or as an EA in a classroom for many years. So many of us hold the expectation that we have to enter our student teaching year already knowing everything. You don't. But you do have to be able to take chances, reflect on your practice and be constantly learning and evolving.

So this brings me to my blog post title- and why I was encouraged with the new generation of teachers coming up through the system.
Emily and I were looking at differentiated instruction in math. We talked about how it is important to assess your students before you teach them, to see where the students are. For a lot of (ahem) older teachers like myself, even this is a novel concept. It is not just giving them a pre-test worksheet and then doing things the same- it is a whole paradigm shift of how we teach.
For Emily, it seemed this was common practice in her university studies. (1 point for UBC!)

After assessing students, there are many different ways to address their needs. We talked about guided math, small group instruction, games for fluency practice, and more. Then after lessons and, of course, units, there is more assessment of their learning.

Ok, now I'm getting to the exciting part.

She asked a very simple, but profound question. It separates the older generation from the newer generation of teachers (which has nothing to do with age or years teaching, but philosophy).

She asked, "So what do you do with the students who still didn't get the concept?"

For so many years, we have been evaluators. Teachers, yes, but in the end, we are judgers, putting kids into Good, Satisfactory or Needs Improvement. Gets it or doesn't get it.
What if we didn't stop until they did?

I know, we all immediately go to the logistical frustration/ impossibility of this concept. That is, if you are looking at it with the same lens you have always had, and teaching the way we always have.

NO WONDER kids get so behind by the later grades- we've moved on and stamped a "didn't get it" on their report card. I am the teacher who works with the struggling students. The ones who think they are not smart, and yes, the ones who have been left behind. I applaud Surrey District for taking away some of the pressure to label kids through letter grades. What if we were more cheerleader and less of a judge? What about leading them through their learning where they are at?

I believe this is where education is headed- what all those buzz words like differentiation and student-directed learning are trying to say.

Even if you don't agree with how it can work, it's an interesting conversation.