Commentary: What do we assess?
For the final episode of the spring semester host Scott Lee offers a commentary on what schools assess and what this assessment is missing.
Transcript
Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. I am Scott Lee. Today we end the spring semester season of 2022 with a story about what student success looks like. But first a quick reminder that The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast will return this September, I am visiting with a lot of interesting people this summer and this fall will have a great lineup of guests you won’t want to miss. Be sure and follow and keep up with The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast on Twitter, Facebook or our website for updates. I also want to shout out to all the people I talked to recently at the Music City SEL Conference in Nashville, TN, I enjoyed meeting all of you. And even though I am not be able to attend this summer, I want to encourage anyone who can to attend the Reclaiming Youth Seminars in Sioux Falls, South Dakota this July 2022. I have attended several of these annual conferences and I have always found them to be engaging and empowering. Find out more at reclaimingyouthatrisk.org
So back to today’s topic. Since summer usually offers us those rare opportunities for meaningful reflection, I thought now would be a good time to consider something I have been thinking about. Do you think about what success looks like for a student? Or how is it we know if a student has learned the things in school that lead to success?
I know success is a long list, in addition to meeting academic goals, we know that we also have to teach the skills for students to be caring, empathic and civically engaged. And that’s a big task. Over the last few years teachers and schools are being asked to do more than ever, often with no additional resources and in many places with elected officials actively attempting to de-professionalize our work. Despite this, if we are going to move forward professionally, we need to ask ourselves, what does success look like for students?
Many of us say something like “I know it when I see it” and often times we do know what success looks like. But how do I really know? Why do I know student success when I see it? I mean if I can’t explain how or why, I have no idea how to do it again.
Let me tell you a story that got me thinking about student success. I am a board member for a local non-profit performing arts group and one of the things that we do is offer free performances in local city parks. During a recent performance series one the musicians we hired was a high school student and one of the performances was a one-woman Bessie Smith retrospective show. The artist has thoroughly researched the life, music and historical significance of Bessie Smith. But she wanted to add an additional set of jazz and blues standards so that the show did not have to end with the untimely death of Bessie Smith. So she brought sheet music for our high school aged accompanist, but they had never practiced any of the music in this additional set together and some of the songs the pianist had never played. The singer told the audience this and that essentially this set was kind of a “jam session”, and the student had to figure out timing without using a metronome, intros and key changes on the fly. He did an amazing job and several audience members, who know more about the arts than I do, commented on this as well. It got me to thinking about what this tells us about effective teaching and learning.
The first thing this reminds me of is that students often do not have the opportunities to practice what they are learning in school in an out-of-school environment. In this case the student had the opportunity to practice the first two-thirds of the performance to a point where he was prepared. Then at the last minute he was given a new performance task, he had to improvise in the moment. This is the way most of us are assessed in real life, how well do we use our knowledge and experience to operate and improvise in real time. Not only is being able to improvise and think on your feet important in professional situations but this is also an important interpersonal relationship skill as well. So, I had the opportunity to observe a student put his practice and learning to the ultimate test, what to do in a new, unplanned setting.
This event also demonstrates several things that we want all students to be able to do. This student was able to use his knowledge and skills to work within a group and do so effectively. His calm performance enhanced the outcomes for the entire team. This team included not just the other performer, but also the production team. But let’s also think about his own agency. He exercised agency in new territory. Public performance was not new to him, but the content and the situation was. His ability to exercise his personal agency and improvise led to success for the entire team. The other important consideration is personal interaction. I mentioned a calm demeanor, but he also interacted with respect and dignity in a stressful situation. Being able to do this is an important and often less considered part of the general expectations that we attempt to teach students in school. The fact that he was able to handle the stress like this may not be something he only learned in school, but for many students school is the safest place to practice responsibility and resiliency.
If I were using a traditional grading scale, there is no doubt that he earned an A.
What does this mean for schooling in general? Listeners know that I advocate for meaningful structural changes in schooling and this is an example of why. How we measure success in schools should be more like the situation that I witnessed a few weeks ago. We all know that if I had access to this student’s last set of test scores, I would have no clue if he could act with agency in a stressful public performance or situation. Yet, his teachers will receive no credit for the work they have done with him, instead they will be assessed by how well he performed on a bubble test. They will get no credit for mentoring, for building relationships that motivated him and helped develop the confidence for him to perform as he did. What would happen if a state education agency took such demonstrations into account when grading teachers or schools? Hospitals and clinics are regularly assessed not only based on the care a patient receives while under direct care, but also by patient outcomes after discharge.
But until elected officials and policymakers decide to implement different data systems, ones that include the use real, meaningful assessments and markers for success we have little chance of engineering schools that are ready for the 21st century.
The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions-if you would like to learn more about how we help schools and youth organizations imbed social emotional learning within their cultures and implement strength-based, restorative interventions, please visit our website w w w dot oncoursesolutions.net.
This has been episode number 7 of the 2022 season. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about it, either in person or using social media. We also greatly appreciate positive reviews on the podcast app you use. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is hosted and produced by R. Scott Lee who retains copyright and is responsible for content. Transcripts are available at our website thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Underwriting and sponsorship opportunities or other inquiries may also be made on our website thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Please follow The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast on Twitter @drrscottlee and on Facebook at Facebook dot com Thoughtful Teacher Podcast
