Changing the idea of a parent-teacher conference

One of the most interesting ideas I have read in Making Classroom Assessment Work pertains to the parent-teacher conference. I am sure everyone has experienced one of these styles of conferences in our lives as students. You would go to your school with your parents, and then your teacher would tell you whether or not you are doing well in school. In my experience, parent teacher conferences pretty much ended as soon as I was done with elementary school. When I was in high school the only time my parents would meet with my teacher was if I wasn’t doing well in a class. If I was doing well in a subject it was assumed that there was no reason for my parents to meet with a teacher. This idea is changed in chapter nine of the text.

Anne Davies (2011) says “student-parent conferences are a time for students to share their learning with their parents” (89). In the model Davis is suggesting, students are the ones facilitating the conference and they are the ones choosing what they want to be shown to their parents. As well, in the conference a parent will provide feedback to their child about what was demonstrated to them and they will fill out a prepared response form. Davies (2011) also says “sometimes parents and students will also set goals about future learning” (89).

The conferences Davies is suggesting can also take a variety of forms. The conferences can take many forms depending on ” the purpose …(of the conference)…, the student’s needs, the families’ needs, and the teacher’s comfort level with the process” (89). As for teacher involvement in a conference, the text states “when evaluation is involved it is important to have the person who is responsible for evaluation involved” (90).

In chapter 10, Davies goes through the parent-teacher-student conference. The main role of the teacher in one of these conferences appears to be as a translator to the parents. The teacher is translating their evaluations to the parents. Davies (2011) states the teacher assists “students to communicate their learning to parents, and they make themselves available to discuss how they have evaluated the student’s work, as well as ways that students learning could be better supported” (94). What Davies is suggesting with these conferences continues with the ideas of classroom openness she has had throughout the textbook. Earlier in the text, this openness was mostly between the student and the teacher. We, as teachers, should be open with our students about how they are being assessed, and what is expected of them. This is great, and helps to create the relationships based on trust that the majority of teachers strive for. However, if a teacher only creates an open environment with the student, there is one level of a student’s life that is left out. That level is the student’s parents. The parents are usually the one who are left out the most here. They are a captive audience, usually, to a student’s academic life, but usually they know very little about what is going on. They only get any indication of how they can help with their child’s education is when it is too late, and they are called in for a conference because the student is struggling. With the conferences Davies is suggesting, the avenues of communication are opened up to the parents, and they can find out how they can assist in the education of their child. This would create a more holistic educational environment, that would be better for all involved.

Davies, Anne. (2011). Making Classroom Assessment Work. Courtenay, BC: connect2learning.

Comparing the Assessment Strategies of Today with My Experinces

After reading chapters 7 and 8 of Making Classroom Assessment Work, it has been interesting to read about the strategies that Davies suggests and the ones used back when I was a high school student. Davies speaks about how assessment should be a collaborative process between student and teacher, and that students should have a say in how evidence of learning is collected and what this evidence should be. When I think back to my experiences in high school, it is pretty easy to say that the previously mentioned suggestions were not there.

Chapter 7 deals with “Using Assessment to Guide Instruction” (63). From what I can deal, the chapter speaks to using diagnostic and formative assessment to guide our instructional practices. The chapter provides examples of teachers asking students about what they know about a certain topic, and using that knowledge to see where the instruction should go next. Now that I have become an education student, this model of assessment makes a lot of sense to me. It should be obvious to ask our students what they know about a theme we are teaching at the beginning of a unit, and then using that information to see where we should take our students next. However, when I think back to my own experiences as a student I cannot remember my teachers using this technique often. When I look back on it now,  I think my teachers were just very confident in there unit plans and believed they could work in any group of students they would be teaching. If changes were made to lessons or units, it was never clear. Specifically, I can never remember a teacher asking a class I was in ‘what a good essay looks like’ or ‘what makes a good science lab report.’ If they were to ask this, maybe my classes would have left that we were more involved in the learning process, and we would have had a better learning environment.

As for chapter 8, the idea I like the best was the process portfolio. Especially as a, hopeful, future English teacher, I believe process portfolio would be a great tool. The use of a process portfolio would allow students to show all of the different products that helped in the creation of a final project, and would allow students to show all the steps taken in the creation of a project. This would be very useful in the creation of something like an essay. As those of us in English know, skipping over the drafting process is commonplace among high school students. But, the use of a process portfolio may help in having students go through all the necessary steps to complete a good piece of work. However, I also wonder how far the process portfolio should go? Should it include all the things that have helped a student create a final work? Or, should it only be the explicit steps taken in the production of a final project, like showing all of the drafts of an essay?

Davies, Anne. Making Classroom Assessment Work. 3rd ed. Courtenay, B.C.: Connections Pub., 2011. Print.

Why are we doing this anyway?

Our discussion yesterday in ECS 350 sparked one question in my head: Why do we want to become teachers anyway? I’m pretty sure a lot of us have the same reasons. These reasons include, we want to inspire the youth of the country; to give back to the community that gave so much to us; and to be the one person in a child’s life that is there for them. I’m pretty sure a lot of these reasons are valid. We have all had at least one teacher who has been there for us and inspired us to become better people. Or, maybe there was a coach who took you under their wing and was able to transform you into the person you are today. Though these reasons are valid, are they really why we all wanted to go into education?

Like one of my classmates said in the discussion, the prospect of a job was some of the inspiration for me going into this field. Though many say that teachers don’t make much money, the average teachers salary may be the same as the average journalist earns in a decade. When I got into education, a lot of people I knew from journalism school told me how lucky I was to be going into a field where the money is good. You have to remember, the average journalist in  Saskatchewan makes around $25,000 a year. And that is only if you are able to get a job at one of the major outlets, like the Leader Post or one of the exceedingly rare full time jobs at the CBC. So, to the people I went to J school with, teachers felt millionaires.

But, I went into journalism for the same reason I went into education. I know it sounds cheesy, but I really want to help people. I wanted to become a journalist because I wanted to help people tell their stories to a wider audience. Then during my internship, I was able to see the relationship teachers had with their students and wanted to be a part of this relationship as well. I loved seeing how teaching was a career that gives you the opportunity to do something different every day and to be creative in how you teach your students.

Though I didn’t what to expect when I first went into education, I know that I made the right decision my entering this field. For me, teaching has everything someone could want in a job. It provides a dynamic workplace where you have some control over what you do everyday, and lets you work with an interesting and eclectic group of people. But remember, I am saying this as someone who has never actually been a teacher. Check back with me in a few years to see if I’m still singing the same song.

The Impact of Effective Grading

The other day in my ECS 350 class, we were assigned to read the piece “Leading to Change/Effective Grading Practices” by Douglas B. Reeves. Though the piece may have been for another class, I believe it has a great deal of crossover with what we are talking about here in ECS 410.

The piece focuses on the importance of grading policies in schools, and how they can be the difference between student success and failure. Reeves points to three specific common grading policies that he has labelled as toxic. The first of these policies is giving students a zero for assignments they haven’t handed in. The author states” defenders of the zero claim that students need to have consequences for flouting the teacher’s authority and failing to turn in work on time. They’re right, but the appropriate consequence is not a zero; it’s completing the work” (Ineffective Grading section, para. 3). Reeves suggests having students complete work in study halls or after school to make sure they are completing their assignments. The second policy Reeves looks at is the practice of using the average score of throughout the semester. It is presumed that the use of this practice makes learning at the beginning of the semester as important as learning at the end of a semester (Ineffective Grading section, para. 4). Reeves suggests a method where students are evaluated for learning at the end of a semester instead of throughout. Although evaluation would be at the end of the semester, assessment would be throughout the semester. The final grading practice Reeves believes should be eliminated is the “semester killer” assignment, a large exam or project which is taken in at the end of a term. Reeves state this “puts 18 weeks of work at risk based on a project that might, at most, have consumed four weeks of the semester” (Ineffective Grading section, para. 5).

I can agree with Reeves suggestions as the way they are laid out, but I have some questions about them. The first pertains to the zero policy. When he speaks of “no zeros”, does this mean the score of zero cannot even be used as a place holder? I think that zero can still be used a place holder for a grade, until the missing assignment is completed or the assignment is redone to receive a higher grade. Also, when it comes to not taking the average over a semester, would change something like when report cards are handed out? Would report cards be switched from going out at the end of a semester to being handed out at the end of a unit? But, I do agree with taking out the “semester killer” assignments. Students should not be expected to have a semester worth of work being evaluated at the end of a semester. Students should have evaluations and assessments throughout a semester to track their progress.

Overall, I believe Reeves makes some very good points in his piece, but there are some questions about his suggestions I still have.

Reeves, Dougals. (2008). Leading to Change/Effective Grading Practices. Teaching Students to Think, 65, 85-87.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb08/vol65/num05/Effective-Grading-Practices.aspx.

Are Grades Really Important?

After yesterday’s discussion about grading policies, I decided to look into the idea of the importance of grades in the school system. This interest came from being in the group that, extremely idealistically, suggested that we would have no grades in our school. After hearing the outcry from other students about why grades are important, I wanted to  look for research that could show that grades has a positive impact on student achievement. The interesting thing I found was there is not a lot of research that shows this. However, there is research that shows the importance of grade in other areas.

I will admit, I was not exactly thorough in my research quest. But, most of what I found about the importance of grades was based on the idea that grades help students for after school. If a student has good grades, it will help them to stand out after school when they are applying for university or a job. On such article is “The Surprising Importance of Grades”, an article written by Chris Mims that was based on research from Northwestern University School of Management. The article begins by stating “aside from learning and self-improvement, … the primary reason we go to school is to prove to potential employers that we would be good employees, mostly by getting as much education as possible” (para. 1). The researchers then go into the premise that “in the real world, grades matter, or at least they do to the extent that they accurately measure a student’s ability” (Sending Signals section, para. 3). This accurate measure of student performance provides potential employers with “additional assessment of a candidates value (grades), the high quality students do not have to spend as much time and energy earning graduate degrees or participating in extracurricular activities to distinguish themselves from low-quality students” (Sending Signals section, para. 4).

The study also looked at the idea of grade concealment. What was found was “such behavior reduces student welfare, leads to overall inefficiency, and in general suggests that grades are a good thing because they enhance transparency in a market” (The Upside of Grades section, para. 2). This is a statement I do agree with. If we are using grades in the classroom, I believe students have the right to know where they stand in that class at anytime they wish. It should be a goal for all teachers to have transparency in the classroom and not to conceal information from our students. This concealment of information could make us appear untrustworthy in the eyes of our students, and cause dysfunction in the classroom.

Overall, I feel this article did not make a good argument for why grades are important. I understand that the article was written from an economic point of view, and in that way it makes a strong case. The article talks  about students maximizing their time and effort, not wasting time on outside activities and to only focus on getting a job. While this way be true, is the only reason students participate in extracurricular activities is to put it on a resume? Is every decision that is made in our lives made only in the pursuit of a career? I understand that one goal of teachers should be to prepare their students to enter the job market. But, aren’t there other parts of education that matter? I guess that is what happens when you read articles about education that are written by economists.

Below I will provide a URL to the article if there is anyone interested in reading the article.

http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/the_surprising_importance_of_grades/