“We should be daily aware that we are failing. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
With these words, quoting Samuel Beckett, Dylan Williams closed his keynote at a recent Assessment Summit. Williams is not promoting a laissez-faire approach to teaching and learning here, nor is he saying that failure is now an acceptable outcome for schools and individual students. These words sum up a passionate call to use formative assessment in the way it was originally intended – to present students with clear evidence of their performance on content standards and to build the self-efficacy needed for students to launch themselves though the proving ground of failure into enduring success. Resiliency and persistence in individuals is the goal. Deliberate and competent use of assessment, collaborative analysis of data, and high expectations for the learning process can move us toward reaching that goal.
It is difficult to put into words the amount of information and, indeed, professional shift I have experienced after processing the work of those I heard over the course of the past few days. If you are interested, I have taken copious notes over the sessions led by Dylan Williams, Thomas Gusky, Anne Davies, Wayne Hulley, Douglas Reeves, Ken O’Connor, Richard DuFour, Rick Stiggins, and a Panel Discussion including DuFour, Robert Marzano, and Stiggins. From these notes I have put together 3 resources for myself for future reference. This post is a reference point for these resources until I have time to write about each more fully.
First, the topics of the conference included many elements of assessment I had encountered as a graduate student in education, but had incompletely applied once I entered service as a teacher. Notably, the idea of standards-based grading was one that I had never received training on, though some of the underpinnings of such an approach (creating an atmosphere where mistakes are to be seen as integral to learning, co-constructing criteria with students, rubric-based assessment practices) were ingrained in me by master teachers under whom I trained. The idea of a standards-based evaluation of progress brings important context to those strategies, and with it I feel like I have a better view of the work of a classroom.
I also found it encouraging that the efforts of my school district around the topic of professional learning communities (PLCs) were validated by these educational leaders. When I began teaching, one aspect of the workplace environment I cared deeply about was whether the community “talked teaching.” What I gleaned from this conference was that a PLC takes that collegial atmosphere and focuses it, moving from a “steam engine” to a “combustion engine” in the terms of a metaphor given by Robert Marzano. PLCs whose work revolves around consistent use of formative assessment, adapting instruction to meet the needs of students as those needs arise, make a significant difference in the learning of all students. In the words of Douglas Reeves, “The important work is the invisible work, the hard work, the work attached to reflection and continual growth.”
The second resource I’ve put together is an aggregation of many practical assessment strategies given during the course of the conference. I have attempted to arrange these according the the assessment process, as best I presently understand it. Included are topics on …
- designing units to include quality assessment,
- extending the “feedback loop” so students have the most opportunities to learn,
- fostering self-assessment among students (increasing self-efficacy),
- planning for when a student doesn’t perform on a summative assessment, and
- evaluating practice when a PLC isn’t readily available.
Most notable of these strategies is simple to describe but may be difficult to employ: a ‘no opt out’ attitude toward classroom participation. Of all the strategies I heard, holding students to a standard of participation that says, in action rather than word, “I will not allow you to drop out of the important work in this classroom” is as intimidating as it is inspiring. Questioning techniques are key to pulling this off, and many wonderful ones were shared, especially by Williams and Davies. See the link above for more information.
The third resource I have prepared is one on personal shift. To some degree I’ve mentioned items of interest to me earlier in this post, but there are particulars that I need to process a bit more. Feel free to read more in the link. Essentially, attending the summit has corrected a number of misconceptions I didn’t even know I had. In his presentation, Stiggins referred to this as the number one “essential condition” for action at the district and building level:
“Ensure Assessment Literacy”
I know a number of things about entering assignments into a grade book. I conscientiously weighted scores, held consultations with kids when I noticed difficulty, offered additional opportunities to succeed when summative assessment scores were low, and the list goes on. But what I didn’t know was how the very philosophy of numbers, implicit in our grading patterns, impacts kids on a personal and emotional level. It promotes an environment where students must perform, and perform correctly from the beginning, if their work is to be valued and accepted.
Hanging in a classroom somewhere is a quote that Williams shared. If I were back in the classroom today, I might just hang it up even before the I’d put up the map of Pompeii. Here it is:
Stuck?
Good. That’s a great reason to come in today.
That’s the type of classroom, the type of teacher, the type of expectations that I would like my students to anticipate the moment they step through the door.
In Bob Walsh’s book