An Apology to My Former Students or What I've Learned About Assessment

Everyone experiences growth through their chosen profession. As teachers, we are constantly exposed to learning, both of our students and our own. I have been very fortunate to have given an enormous amount of professional learning opportunities in my career, especially over the past five years in my out-of-classroom positions. When I return to the classroom, whenever that may be, there will certainly be many changes in what I do, in all areas, including instruction and assessment. When I think back on some of my former practices, I realize that what I was doing was not the best for students. It was not done out of malice, simply just out of a lack of understanding. What I offer here is an apology to those students with whom I could have done a better job of assessment.

• I'm sorry for thinking that if I let you know what the outcome of the lesson was, it would 'ruin the surprise'. I now know that students can better learn if they know what they are learning about.
• I'm sorry for giving too many summative assesements each term - I now realize that I do not require so many marks, just to make 'the program' calculate the mark correctly.
• I'm sorry that I never really understood how my gradebook program calculated your marks. With a good understanding, rather than having it set up by task type, it would have much more to do with objectives.
• I'm sorry that I gave out punitive grades - zeros, deductions for handing assignments in late, not allowing rewrites or extra time on tests. Rather than using assessment to measure how much you understood (so that I could help you understand the parts that you didn't), I was focused on getting a mark on how prepared you were or for your behaviour.
• I'm sorry that I gave out bonus marks - it's not a true measurement of learning, when I ask you a random question as a bonus mark on an exam (even if we had fun with it).
• I'm sorry that my assessment practices made it difficult for you to improve your mark, if you had a few poor marks at the beginning of the year or semester. Your final mark should have been more indicative of what you actually knew and learned by the end of the year.
• I'm sorry that I ever had you fill in a bubble sheet multiple choice exam, even though I tried to write higher-level questions.
• I'm sorry that sometimes your behaviour was linked to your academic mark. What was a 'citizenship' mark and what did it have to do with your understanding of the program of studies and outcomes. How is 'effort' on assignments measured - what was I thinking?
• I'm sorry that in my efforts to maintain 'fair' grading processes, I was actually doing quite the opposite.

Please accept my apology and for those of you who are now teachers yourself, please learn from my mistakes.

Book of Awesome - Back to School

I've been a big fan of Neil Pasricha's 1000 Awesome Things and the accompanying Book of Awesome books for quite some time. Here in Canada, we are just getting back into the swing of things and the new school year is starting. While driving home from holidays, my wife (who is also a teacher) and I were discussing back to school and the excitement of it. Now that I have been out of the classroom for a few years, I really miss being a classroom teacher on the first day of school. However, I do get to experience this from a different angle, as a parent of children going into grades 2 & 5.

So, we developed this list of what is awesome about getting back to school:

• New Stuff - For many students, back to school means all kinds of new things - new clothes, new shoes, new backpack and new school supplies. For me, I remember very clearly being excited about getting to pick out my new lunch kit for the year. Some of my most memorable ones include Wayne Gretzky, NHL, Smurfs and PacMan. For those who like organizing, it's a great time, labeling those new supplies, finding homes for all of your new stuff, setting up your locker / desk (or classroom for those who become teachers).
• Catching Up With Friends - Summer is a busy time and despite having more time off, it can be difficult to catch up with friends (this is true for both students and teachers). That first day back may be the first time you have seen your classmates for close to two months. For myself, I grew up on a farm and my nearest friend lived about 10 miles away, which meant it was rare to get together in the summer.
• Classrooms - As a teacher, it is a lot of work, but once you have your room set up for that first day, you can step back, look at the bulletin boards, the configuration of desks / tables, the reading corner, etc. and be proud. When the students enter in the morning, take a look at their faces. It's worth the work - they think that it is awesome.
• Shiny School Floors - Walking into the school and seeing the glare of lights off of the newly waxed floors, one realizes the amount of work that custodians have put in over the summer and that once school starts, the floors will not look like that until the next summer. Just maybe, you might catch one of us teachers running and sliding down the hallway before the start of school.
• Smiles - Despite the nervousness and the fact that they are back in school, nothing beats the big smiles that greet you when students walk into your classroom for the first time.
• Stories - Every kid has a story to tell you about the summer. Some are good, some are bad and some are just plain strange, but regardless, they can't wait to tell their story. Kids have the most awesome stories.
• The End of Day 1 - Once the room empties out at the end of the first day of school, as you collapse into your chair from exhaustion, you are grinning from ear to ear, thinking about how awesome the first day is.

What makes the first day of school awesome for you?