Each of them has provided us with thought-provoking questions about our classroom demeanors and personas as teachers. Kudos to them!
So, I just felt as though it was my turn to toss out a doozy or two of a question. I have been grading more and more lately and I must say, the scores are VERY UNDERWHELMING. I happen to respect my co-op greatly and I think he does a fine job. In fact, I really can't say anything bad about him. Furthermore, I can't really think of anything that I would change about his approach. It's not that he is perfect.. it's just that I don't know how I would alter one thing without throwing a kink in his entire process. So anyway, we just had a quiz last week about a story that the kids either really liked, or really hated (which I love cuz either way, it's an actual opinion). But they performance on the quizzes were scary. It was a 20pt quiz and I'm not going to lie, at least 50% of each class scored below a 10/20.
I told him how much it depressed me to see it. He said that it's just something you get used to. To be honest, I hate that feeling... the feeling of numbness. After 8yrs in TV news, I saw more dead bodies than I can count. The feeling that it left me with after 8yrs was.... numbness. I also realize that I will go mad if I fully invest myself in the success of each student. Don't get me wrong, I totally get that we must let some students fail to succeed if that is what they are determined to do. But I don't ever want to be numb to student failures on quiz scores. Yet, I am perfectly aware that after awhile, numbness is an inevitability, partially because that is just the way the human psyche works.
Has anyone had similar experiences and/or similar mental battles?
I can completely relate. I was grading vocab tests a few weeks ago and a good number of students were getting really really bad scores. It was disappointing to see students who have these amazing personalities fall short of the expectations. I began to think that perhaps changing up assessments might help the students who struggle with the idea of using vocab in context rather than just knowing the definition. Many of the students use flash cards to study vocab but that technique doesn't help them use the word in a sentence. I can relate to feeling numb because by the end of the stack of quizzes I was feeling brain dead.
ReplyDeleteHowever, to combat this feeling I decided to suggest a different format for the vocab tests. Our typical tests consist of matching, fill in the blank, and a short original paragraph that has to contain 5 of the vocab words. I suggested that we get rid of the matching and fill in the blank and instead just have students compose a story that has to contain 15-20 vocab words. I think if we tell the students ahead of time what the format is going to look like and emphasize the importance of context in understanding the words then they will be more likely to succeed. We have't tried this yet but I think the students will do better with this format since a lot of them complained that they understood the words but had trouble showing their knowledge.
I give this example because I think it's important to be willing to change your assessment. Try something new and see if it works. If it produces the same results then perhaps the students need better study strategies, but if it works then it was worth the risk.
Hope this helps.
I should probably post this next week after the students have their first test on the novel I am leading, but this is a great discussion topic.
ReplyDeleteMy students haven't had many tests because our assessments are more closely aligned with the PSSAs (multiple choice and essays based on a reading). What we have done is test them the way they are tested on the PSSA, which means it is open book. I was a little hesitant about this approach at first because I wondered how much they were really learning on an open book test, but after doing closed book oral assessments, the students actually knew more than I gave them credit for!
I don't know if you have access to this, but check out their progress in terms of score reports. I know at Reynolds you can look in the system and see where students are struggling, and then assess them accordingly. That's one resource I'm doing for DI in the unit plan because it really is awesome to see the exact question students struggle with.
Sidebar: Steve, which station did you work for? My part-time gig is at WGAL and I'm with you in the sense that I've become numb to pretty much everything.
I saw this frequently in my soph. block placement. My co-op was not fazed by the abundance of low grades because he had the "there's nothing you can do about it" attitude. I didn't buy into that, but at the same time, I had no idea how to fix it. I can understand your frustration, but maybe implementing DI into your classroom will touch upon the students that have already checked out.
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