A Big Blog About Both Readings

I have a ton of thoughts about the two readings for today. I decided to try to write one big blog instead of two shorter ones.

First though...some news from Oscarville.

The river has officially been deemed frozen enough for travel and we received mail yesterday. It was the first time in almost a month.

My mom sent four packages and inside one was this...which I put on Macy as soon as possible. Here she is in all her misery.


After the thrill of dressing my dog up wore off I decided it was time to complete my homework for the day.

I began with the Solon-Flores article.

Sigh.

There are so many issues with testing of English Language Learners. Just within the "who" section I realized how deep that idea of "who" goes. We are so accustomed to throwing and group students in neat little categories that we overlook all those things that differentiate our learners. The idea that ELLs are overrepresented in Special Education programs and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs really hit me hard. I get so frustrated with the teachers who constantly bag on their students in terms of what they "can't do" and totally ignore their areas of strength. I think educators really need to support and encourage each other not to look at what ELLs "can't do" but how they "can do it" and differentiate their programs to fit their learner's strengths.

According to Solano-Flores ELLs don't fit nicely into a one size fits all category. There are many different cultural nuances and specifics that are gravely overlooked in tests. Solano-Flores continues to say that language carries many social connotations in it and that the tests we give many ELLs don't address the social aspects or cultural aspects of language.

Also of concern are the accommodations we give ELLs. Again it is dangerous to lump ELLs into the same category and to just say that they all have the same needs. What test givers often don't realize is that not all our students benefit from the same accommodations. It also infuriates me that many ELLs are simply given SpEd accommodations.

So, I felt a little...well, I don't know...pessimistic about the whole idea of testing and kept thinking of my students and having to watch them take those horrible tests. I think of the kids who fulfill graduation requirements but don't receive a diploma because they cannot pass a high-stakes tests and I get emotional when I think of that. What kind of life are we leaving our students with if at the age of 18 or 19 they already have "failed". What kind of message is that sending this generation of youth?

Then I read the next article and got a little more pumped up. Yeah! I was so happy to see that research had been done in this area in rural Alaska! Finally something that hits home and makes me feel like the students up here aren't being ignored and that this population is being taken in to consideration.

It seems that the there are so many hypocrisies in regards to education. When I first began teaching here I was given advice on how to make my lessons more culturally based and how to integrate culture more into the classroom. Then we give our students high stakes tests that totally disregard culture and the students cultural beliefs and backgrounds. Sometimes I feel teachers are torn between culturally appropriate lessons and lessons that will help them to achieve on the tests and meet AYP. As stated in the article, what usually happens is that culturally appropriate curriculum gets abandoned in favor of test prep. This seems to start a downward cycle of students more and more separated from their culture and given a curriculum they feel more and more unsuccessful with.

Another thing that I connected with in this article was the idea of silence. When I first arrived in my village I was stunned by how quiet my students were. It took me a long time to be able to change my way of thinking and to be okay with walking into a classroom that wasn't overflowing with loud noises and conversations. Also, I've learned to listen more in other ways...that sometimes responses don't have to be verbal to be accurate.

The picture of elders coming into the classroom and working with students is something that I believe should be happening in all cultures but especially with our students.

Testing the Test

Every time I design a test or project I have this underlying sense of dread. What if everyone fails? What if I haven’t prepared students correctly? What if everyone bombs it and I have to make a new test?

I really hate the reading curriculum in our school district. The tests at the end of each unit are constructed mainly of fixed response format items in the form of multiple-choice items, fill in the blank, matching, true/false, short answer and essay. It takes me almost as long to prepare my students for the tests as it does for them to read one or two of the stories in the book and to go through the entire comprehension process. There are many times I hand student a test and I still get incorrect answers to questions I went over in class only a day before and I feel frustrated. As a lover of reading I felt that some of my most wonderful reading moments in school happened when I was allowed to draw my own conclusions and create projects and assignments that showed the rest of the class how I felt about the book and how I related to it. I hated the reading tests that I would get in high school and college where I was supposed to match definitions and talk about the literary elements. Sure, students need to know that stuff, but I think there is a lot to be said in giving them the tools for discovering those things and then allowing them room to discover them. Students are supposed to know about theme and literary elements but I feel that what we are doing is forcing them to regurgitate information instead of discovering it for themselves in a meaningful way.

Another beef I have with our district are the proficiency tests that we give our students. The problem that I have seen so far with tests and giving tests is that most of the time the examiners vary in terms of how they judge the test. Quite often, the way the teacher grades or determines if a student is proficient may not be how the next teacher sees it. This causes a lot of frustration in our district.

One thing I reacted strongly to in this chapter was the idea that tests are validated enough to satisfy the politicians and other stake holders. After watching two students struggle through the HSGQE this past week I can’t help but feel angry that the people who decide if the test is good aren’t the ones sitting in a room for 5 or more hours trying to pass it so they can get a high school diploma. Yet, these students don’t have a say. They aren’t being asked how they felt about the test or given alternative opportunities to show that they are proficient in a content area. I also reacted to the fact that many tests aren’t validated because validation is hard and technical and expensive. I’m glad that all those people were able to get high school diplomas before this silly idea of high stakes testing came into play. Do you think they would still feel it too much of a burden if they had to begin more high stakes tests in their lives. Perhaps every time they wanted a raise or were up for a promotion they had to sit in a little room taking a test that they may or may not be prepared for and have that feeling in the pit of their stomach that they are running out of opportunities to pass the test. Perhaps if they sat in a student’s chair sweating it out they would think differently about the expense of making sure the test is valid.

Multiplicity

Here is a picture of me and Macy reading this article. If you can notice, she's lost a little bit of weight. She loves carrots. She also really loves the concept of "multiplism".

As we were reading this Macy and I were discussing some of the assessments I use in my classes. One class I really would love to develop stronger assessment methods for is my writing class. I often feel that I need to constantly edit and help the students revise everything they write. I often forget that every once in awhile I need to give them an assessment to see what they can do on-demand without my help. There is just as much value in allowing them to make mistakes and not talking about them as are there are in discussing key issues in their papers.

Again, the ideas of portfolios came up and again, lol, if anyone has some advice or websites I can visit to get some help in starting the implemetation of portfolios in my own clasroom I would greatly appreciate it.

One thing that I seem to tend to forget as a teacher sometimes is that we are constantly assessing the language use of our students. Today I had studnets define "apartheid" and they all looked in their books and copied down the definition the book gave. I then had them create a concept map on the board of all their different definitions. The final step was to have them partner up and pretend that I was a 10 year old and they had to explain the "book" definition in simpler terms. Many of my students struggled the activity and it really made me understand that this concept of apartheid was still new and unfamiliar to them. Although it was a quick and relatively unintrusive assessment I still was assessing where my students were in terms of understanding and defining this concept.

Top Design

In the past few years LKSD has attempted to include more authentic assessment in our curriculum. The theory and ideal behind the phase system was to create more authentic assessments for students that aligned with the state and district standards. However, the implementation of the phase system has had quite a few...hiccups (I'm being nice) .

However, I applaud the LKSD's District Office staff for one very valuable experience that I really wish they would continue. Every fall, the DO would ask students to participate in a district wide writing assessment. The students would respond, on demand to a writing prompt at their phase level. We would then send the writing samples in to the DO to be assessed at the Writing Assessment Training.

I was unable to attend the writing assessment training for two years due to the fact that the river was freezing up and we were stuck in Oscarville. Last year I was fortunate to hitchhike a helicopter ride to the assessment and found it one of the most valuable trainings I have participated in since coming to work in LKSD.

For three days teachers from all over the district joined together to grade all assessments. We were trained how to assess the papers using the same analytical scoring guide we used in our classrooms. For three days we debated, argued and reasoned with each other about how to score and why we chose to score the way we did. When I was reading this chapter I kept seeing myself at the training and although I did feel that the training was valuable while I was there I now see the value of it even more so and really wish that it was something that the district chose to keep going.

I'm kind of saddened that LKSD chose to not participate in this type of training any longer because it cost too much to fly in and house teachers for the three days. However, a few teachers from neighboring villages to Oscarville have expressed interest in doing our own little writing assessment and continuing the tradition on a much smaller scale.

One idea from this reading that I thought was so important was the idea that we need to take the assessments ourselves and score our own papers. It seems like such a no brainer that we put ourselves in our students' positions to try to understand what it is we are asking them to do.

One more idea that struck home with me is the idea that not all problems with assessments are going to be solved simply by switching to authentic assessments. I find that many of the assessments created with the phase system are much harder than some of the multiple choice tests at the end of a chapter. One example is that many of the reading assessments are very highly-language dependent. I spend much of my time showing students how to construct answers to certain questions just so they know how to answer them on the test and have a model of how to answer those questions. Although I do feel that it is necessary to show students how to answer questions on a test I feel that I spend more time showing them how to answer the test questions sometimes than I do on talking about the literature or having them create a project or participate in other meaningful activities.

Grades...I feel pretty strongly about grades. I often get frustrated at the fact that I have to sit down and do so many grade calculation for each of the classes I teach but the students seem to care very little about their grades. Grades really do not motivate me as a learner and in high school and even college grades meant very little to me. I don't get motivated by seeing A's on a report card. When I was in college I often felt like I did some mediocre work that received good grades and some pretty good work that got some hard criticism from my professors.

As a teacher I find that many of my students are not really all that motivated by grades. Most of them don't come in with their parents to conferences and when I do sit down and talk to them they nod their head and tell me what I want to hear and then walk away to do something else but their homework. It's frustrating. I want students to care about their grades but more importantly I want them to be motivated to do homework and to set goals for themselves.

What I would really like to be a part of in my school and district is to design more authentic assessments for our learners. I really wish that the district would lead unserviced in how we can guide and coach students to set their own goals and to become motivated learners and how we can create better authentic assessments.

Also, after reading this article I really, really, really, want to use portfolios and have the students present their portfolios to the community at the end of the year. If anyone uses electronic portfolios I would love to pick your brain!