A Teacher's Ruminations

     Yesterday was the second day of orientation for new teachers.  As usual, there's a lot of information to digest and, although I retained some key ideas, I'm sure I will be relearning a lot of things over the coming months.  And, even though many of us present have done similar kinds of orientation sessions more than once in our careers, it's still important to do this now because as new teachers at this school we need to build our capacity for when the rest of the faculty joins us next week.  Doing this work in a group of new teachers helps us develop common understandings about what this school is all about.  We'll need these understandings in order to continue to participate in future conversations at our new school.      At yesterday's session we spent most of the morning talking about assessment.  First, we were asked to discuss the following three questions:  How does assessment impact student learning?  What...