A Teacher's Ruminations

Over the next few days,  I am going to try to respond to some of the questions I posed in yesterday's post about assessment. You can read that post  here . I don't pretend to have all the answers to these questions but ruminating about them allows me to consider some possible solutions or points of view. I invite readers of this blog to engage in this conversation with me.  I also want to acknowledge my  PLN -  #sblchat - for bold discussions on standards based grading and learning that are enriching my thinking about assessment. Whose responsibility is it to make sure students learn?  Is it the responsibility of parents?  Teachers? Students? Or, perhaps a combination of two or more of the above? The short answer to this question is: everyone who touches the life of a child is responsible for his or her learning. This includes the child, of course.  However, when it comes to learning in schools there is no doubt in my mind that the primary...

Teachers have always worked in collaborative groups. Sometimes the makeup of these groups is self-selected and at other times it is not. Disclaimer #1:  I always learn something  when I work with other teachers. Disclaimer #2:  I don't always need to work with other teachers. I have the right to time and space to reflect on what is happening in the classroom. I have the right to make (informed) decisions about teaching and learning because, next to my students' parents, I am the only one that knows them well enough to be able to do that.  And, the information I use to do this comes primarily from observations, conversations, and the work that children produce on a day-to-day basis . I have the right to have a say in my profesional learning . But, the times they are a'changing. It is no secret that teachers are no longer trusted to do our work. Instead, someone decided that a carrot here and there, but mostly sticks, will coerce us into doing our job...

      Disclaimer :  The tentative conclusions found herein are not what I initially intended, hence tentative.  As I wrote, my ruminations took me in an unexpected direction.  I hope readers will add sense to what may be nonsense, after all.          Whatever happened to the word "responsibility", a respectable and honorable word IMHO?  How did it get lost and morph into "accountability", the word du jour of Rhee-formers and their ilk?      At a recent meeting of teachers and teacher educators, I decided to embark on a personal campaign to revive this word because I haven't heard many people use it lately, including myself.  And, when I first started using it again I felt like I was swearing.  Don't ask me how or why but it's one of those subtle things we learn as a member of society - some words are OK to use in public and some are not.  Kids learn this early on and sometimes confuse inappropr...