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.