Small Changes; BIG RETURNS

My next course at Wilkes – Assessment – is about to begin,  and I have to admit that I’ve been sneaking a peak at the course moodle. The first glance convinced me that I’ll have to better plant my weeks in order to keep all the responsibilities I’m juggling up in the air.

Cartoon source: Jim Unger in Juggling Cartoons (adapted)

Interestingly, Angela Maiers’ session in Classroom 2.0 Live on Saturday was about how we can better manage our time when it comes to keeping up with reading and social networking. Ironically, I tuned into the session about half way through. After 2 weeks with several sleepless nights preparing for 3 presentations, struggling with how to make a project rubric in the last course, and trying to get back into giving my own school projects more time, I had decided to give myself permission to step away from the computer for a while and overslept the start time.

Somehow I don’t think Angela would ever have let that happen (sigh). She has a plan for just about everything: for her days, for her blog, for her Twittering, for her company ... and she approaches each of these with the goal of not only getting through all the networking tasks but with the deliberate intention of becoming even more connected.

I’m going to listen to the full archive of Angela’s session again and work on clarifying my own goals for the next months. I’ve reached a ‘hub moment’ in my life when some important decisions have to be made. Will I go back to my desk in the fall or will I retire? If I do retire, with breast cancer in my past, can I take the long view? How can I not? What do I really want to be doing this time next year? How can I best make that happen?

One of the first Discussions in the Assessment course asks us to write about our expectations. I’m not really sure I have any – hopes perhaps, but not expectations. My quick preview revealed that much of the focus will be about the testing requirements US schools now live under. This is going to touch deep nerves in many of my co-students whose schools are being transformed into test prep machines in an endeavour to get their reading and math scores up and whose colleagues are being laid off in huge numbers as a result of the difficult economic time in their states. The week 3 assignment asks us to review a journal or newspaper article about NCLB and comment on how it touches our own lives. This one by Jordan Sonnonblick in the School Library Journal (5/1/2008) I think will strike a deep chord with many of them: Killing Me Softly: No Child Left Behind.

Cartoon source: David Horsey in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (2004) reprinted in Fred Klonsky’s blog (31 August 2007)

What I’ll be looking for personally is whether this course will model a richer approach to assessment. My e-teaching colleagues are struggling with how to ‘see’ multidimensional growth in their online students. They want their assessments to take into account more than content acquisition, skills development, and intellectual capability. They want ways to assess deeper learning and affect, but have few models for this.

Cartoon source: Kevin Siers in The Charlotte Observer (2001) reprinted in Midwest Regional Peace & Justice Caucus Blog (14 June 2007)

During the last course -- ‘Project-Based Learning’ – many of the students experienced some trepidation about doing the group project. When it became apparent that we could not choose our own partners, many fears and frustrations associated with past group projects bubbled to the surface: how were the partners going to be chosen? how would we ever find a time when we could all meet? what if one person in the group didn’t finish his/her part of the project? what if we couldn’t agree on what to do? what if I did all the work and everyone got a good mark because of it?

I was able to make a personal peace with all of this by finally learning how to work toplease myself. If others benefit from my work, that in no way hurts me. If we can so easily accept the idea of ‘collateral damage’ (other people being unintentionally hurt by our actions or decisions) why is the opposite so hard to swallow (others unintentionally benefiting)? I was fortunate because my 2 partners were equally involved in the group project, but if they had not been, I’d have still done the work because I’m taking this program to force myself to learn new skills and approaches by doing. That’s what is making me happy right now.

That being said, what monsters seem to be lurking in the closet of this new course? First there are a lot of tests!! Well – they’re called ‘quizzes’, but if it looks like a test and is marked like a test – in my life that makes it a test. I’m wondering if we’ll be left all alone trying to figure out the answers or if there will be some direct instruction to complement the readings and make the main points clear.

Cartoon source: Ralph Hagen in CartoonStock (search ID: rhan897)

Finally, I’m going to have to really reach to make the deliberate concentration on ‘issues American’ meaningful in my little Canadian corner of the universe. When chatting with my US counterparts on ‘Wilkes Tuesdays’ I always feel a deep sense of relief that my work is not encumbered by provincial accountability measures, high stakes standardised testing, and branding of educational initiatives. It spurs me to work even harder to ensure that the parents of my students are not given reason to turn to shallow, and ill-planned initiatives like NCLB because don’t trust the quality of my teaching.  

The good news is that although I didn’t think I had anything to learn from the constructivist approach when I started my PBL course, it’s actually had a profound effect on my approach to course planning.  I’m optimistic that the same thing will have happened by the time I reach the end of Assessment.