SBG / SBL Post 1 Mail out flyer on assessment

After a few #sbgchats and #sblchats, some folks have asked whether I'd share materials we use here at Ashern Central School. 

We're certainly more than willing to share, so rather than just doing so person by person by email, I'm posting PDF versions of some documents that we've used.

This first post is a flyer that was mailed out to parents prior to implmentation. It contains "the basics" of what we were planning.

Sunshine Blog - Musings

Happy New Year, Bonne annee tout le monde!

When Lori (@LoriEmilson) nominated me to do this today, I read her own sunshine blog post, and can totally agree about how easy it would be to procrastinate in responding.  Of course, the solution is to just get to it, so here goes:

The protocol for a sunshine post:

• Acknowledge the blogger who nominated you.
• Share 11 facts about myself.
• Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger created for me.
• Nominate 11 bloggers to respond to your questions.
• Post 11 questions for them.  

And now, 11 facts about myself (in no particular order):

• I do enjoy golf.  It was fun when I was bad and getting started.  It was fun when I got to be reasonably good at it some years ago.  And it's fun now, when I get fewer chances to play and am definitely seeing scores going in the wrong direction.  A golf course is a wonderful playground.
• I've been blessed with some opportunities to travel.  Six continents visited, and one to go (Antarctica).  Less of it in the past few years, with the principal's position sucking up so much time and energy, but it's all good, as they say.
• I tweeted a couple of days ago that I'm the luckiest guy in the world.  It's true, you know.  That's a decision, a frame of mind, an "attitude of gratitude", and I'm so lucky to have learned that from the people nearest and dearest to me.
• We have four budgies.  You wouldn't think anyone could so love a few little (relatively unresponsive) birds as my wife does, but how wonderful.
• I have "adopted" family in a lot of places: an adopted little sister in Japan; an adopted big sister in Cameroon; an adopted daughter (in the picture above) in France, and so on.  Barb and I couldn't have our own kids, but I've adopted all of the kids in my classes and now the whole school every year, even if they don't know it.
• I'd have bet big, big money I'd never have a Twitter account or a blog.  Glad I didn't bet that money!
• I'd also have bet that I'd never switch to Apple technology.  I'm still not convinced that it's all that in terms of usability, but the retina display on my too expensive MacBook - gosh, I love that!
• Like Lori E., I drink too much coffee.  Unlike Lori, I've no plans or desire to cut down on my "heavenly nectar of the gods".
• At the age of 40, I decided to learn to speak French.  After two stints of French immersion (in Quebec and in France), courses at l'Alliance Francaise and grade 11 French with our own school's French teacher (during my prep time that year), and endless hours on my own, I'd never have believed anything could be so hard.  And totally worth it.
• As an introvert, I'm so grateful for having found a profession that calls me out of myself and brings me into daily contact with wonderful people.  I treasure the quiet, re-energizing time that I have, but am very glad that it's not all of the time.
• Life's priorities should be simple: faith, family, work/vocation and then everything else, and in that order.  I've never heard a convincing reason why it should be otherwise.  But oh dear, I've got some work to do in getting that right!

My replies to the 11 questions that Lori posed.  Please forgive me if I've prattled on!:

1. It's cliche I know, but Christmas would be my favourite holiday.  There's so much that's wonderful about those two weeks (for students and teachers) - family gatherings, time to relax, the music, the food, the improved moods (of most, anyway).  It's just a happy time.  Mostly, of course, it commemorates the Incarnation of God, and that becomes more and more mind-blowing to me as I get older.  I heard a beautiful rendition of the song, "Mary, did you know" on Christmas eve.  Imagine, giving birth to God Himself!  
2. The professional book I'd recommend most right now, though there are so many good ones, is "Mindset" by Carol Dweck.  It's a relatively easy read, and could be shortened by not reading chapters not directly connected to education.  The ideas, and the research behind them re: growth and fixed mindset are simultaneously good common sense and really quite uncommon.  I've reflected a lot especially on the damage that undiluted "fixed mindset" praise can do to both children and adults.  Focusing on a growth mindset, and the tie-ins to a host of the other research such as that related to good descriptive feedback is so important to the work we do in schools.
3. My first teaching job was as a grades 7 - 12 science teacher in Lundar School 31 years ago.  It wasn't easy, but it was nice to have company as one of six first year teachers in that smallish school.  We all made a lot of mistakes, and we always had others around who were scrambling alongside one another to get ready for the next day and just survive that first year grind.
4. I won't say it's my favourite website, but I do like checking in on the comic strip Dilbert every day.  For a number of years we had a succession of weak leaders in the school, and I'd take consolation in laughing at the pointy-haired boss's all too familiar foibles.  It's even funnier now that I am the pointy-haired boss!
5. Not a fan of New Year's resolutions, but I am constantly striving to simply lead a better, more giving life.  A few years ago we had a young gal from France living with us.  That's her in the sunset photo of the frazil ice at Steep Rock.  As an exercise, I asked her to describe members of her family and ours with a single English word.  I was pleased when she used "wiseness" (wisdom) for me, but admit that I'd have preferred how she described my mom - "love".  That's what I aspire to; the actions that make up giving love to others.
6. Best teaching quality?  Jeepers, that might bespeak a lack of humility.  Nevertheless, I'd say that it's related to the concept of servant leadership.  I know that my job, especially now as principal, is to serve and support everyone else in the school, in big ways and small.  They are expressly not there to serve me or to follow me, except insofar as that following is earned.
7. I had a great lesson from students about 7 years ago on the subject of faith.  I was the teacher advisor for our school's social justice group, and we were putting on a Sunday evening concert called "Imagine" in the spring.  As of that Thursday morning, we'd sold something like 24 tickets, and I was ready to call it off; pushed for that, in fact.  Kailey Knapp, a student who was the group's real leader, insisted that it would all work out, that tickets would sell at the last minute, and that I just had to accept that.  All 200 tickets sold in the end, and the evening was a great, inspiring success.  I like to say, "Kailey's faith kicked my faith's butt", and it did.  I try to be more faithful now, even when it seems irrational.
8. Best trend in education?  I'd say it's the recognition that we need to put everything we're currently doing up for consideration.  There are, or at least should not be any sacred cows.
9. It's not a past trend that's disappeared yet, but I'm glad that we're coming to recognize that grades are the furthest thing from a motivator for our kids to learn, in the deep ways that matter.  Our grading practices need a lot of reform, and I'm so proud of our school community for the changes we've made, teachers and students, in leading the way here in Manitoba.
10. Movie or book?  Book, 19 times out of 20.  It's rare that any movie can do justice to a book that it's based on.  That doesn't make the movie a poor effort; they're simply fundamentally different and have different primary purposes.  I'd wager that people do a lot more thinking and reflecting after reading than from seeing a movie, but I'll grant that a good movie can be great entertainment.
11. The (first) retirement dream is an easy one.  I want to, feel a need to go and live in Cameroon for a year or two.  I've been there three times, have adopted family there, and feel a part of those communities.  Now to convince my wife that this isn't crazy!

Now, 11 questions for those I'm nominating:

1. If you could only leave your home province/state for one more trip, ever, where would you go?
2. If you had to pick up and leave your home province/state and go live somewhere else, where would that be?
3. When did you feel most proud of the work you do, and what made you feel that way?
4. When you were in school, what was your favourite subject, and why did it resonate with you?
5. What sport/activity do you think you're really pretty good at, and don't mind saying so?
6. What sport/activity do you wish you were much better at?
7. Favourite food to cook/bake/prepare (and if it's KD or something similar, be honest!).
8. Sunrise or sunset, and why?
9. Someone has come in and handed you $100 000 to invest in your school, or other place of work. How would you use it?
10. If you could speak one additional language fluently, it would be...
11. If you could play one, or one more musical instrument, it would be...

And those I'm nominating are:

Joanne Coote  @izzie65  

Krista Byers  @ms_kbyers

January Bain  @JanuaryBain

Shelly Wright  @wrightsroom

Phil Taylor  @ptaylorsjr

Erin Klein  @KleinErin

Angela Maiers  @AngelaMaiers

Miles MacFarlane  @milesmac

Derek Oldfield  @Mr_Oldfield

Joe Bower  @joe_bower

Jim Hoddinott  @HoddinottJames

To those I've nominated, please forgive me for doing so.  There really is no compulsion to respond, of course.

This was interesting, taking a little peak inside my own head, with a little help from my 9 year old nephew.   :)

Thanks Lori, and Dana Corr (@dcorr1).  

Tough decisions (and Nelson Mandela)

I've read a number of accounts of how many decisions a teacher makes in a day - hundreds? thousands?  No question, it's a lot.  You can't get them all right, and if you care, you lose some sleep when you get them wrong.

Now as a principal, it strikes me that the decisions are perhaps fewer (okay, I'm pretty sure they're fewer, simply by virtue of interacting with fewer people over shorter periods of time).  But they're tougher, and sometimes really tough.

Just in the last week or so:

• intervene with a long term staff member to address concerns?  This is someone for whom I have a great deal of respect, and I daresay I care about a lot.  Nevertheless, it's not doing the job if you give free passes.  So far it's not gone where I'd hoped, but it was still the right (and hard) thing to do.
• does a camping trip go ahead, after a staffer in the park where the trip is to take place let us know that moose hunting is going on in the park?  This trip has been planned for a long time, is important to the course goals and is in many ways a celebration of the learning to date.  Still... talk about a risk/reward scenario that will scare the heck out of you.  (The trip went ahead, and was a great success in the bitter cold.)
• press ahead with a whole school personnel development initiative that will cost up to $100 000, and which brings no guarantees of success?  No one else in the province is doing it, and we'll need to fundraise for the vast majority of the money.  Nonetheless, there is no realistic downside to the initiative; reservations are tied entirely to the cost, and so if it's good for us and our kids, we'll go ahead in faith.
• every day, knowing that single decisions on how to react to student misbehaviour can potentially end their school careers, with all that implies.  Further, it's not as simple as erring on the side of being less "strict".  Some students need that firm hand, and some need a hug (real or metaphorical), and they don't carry a sign to tell us which it is.  

And this is where I've been thinking about Nelson Mandela.  I read his autobiography a couple of years ago, and he was quick to acknowledge his failings, and the difficulty he had in making hard decisions.  And how about that decision to come out of prison preaching reconciliation rather than retaliation?  Not  an awful lot of precedents for that, huh?  He changed the world, this man described by both his widow and himself as profoundly ordinary.  There's hope for all of us, and we need to accept that we all change the world, for better or worse, with every decision we make.

Marks don't matter

What follows is the "message from the principal" in our upcoming newsletter.  We need to work hard at trying to help our students and parents (and staff, if you're not "there" yet) to stop thinking of marks as a meaningful definition of student learning.

Here at Ashern Central, we've come a long way as staff in understanding that percentage grades are a silly construct.  We only report that way because of the provincial report cards, and then only four times a year.  Aside from that, we do use a 4 point scale for measuring student progress in learning outcomes; even there, though, we try to frame the discussion around the learning, and not the numbers attached to the summative assessments.

Marks don’t matter.

A strange sentiment to accompany the year’s first report cards, for sure.  Really though, marks don’t matter, not much anyway.  Learning matters, a lot, but marks are a terribly blunt instrument for measuring that learning.

So much of what students learn in a day, a week or a semester goes unmeasured by marks.  The most important things: personal responsibility; caring (for themselves and for others); determination and “grit”; self-confidence; leadership; and many others.  If you’re a student, aren’t these the things that you want for yourself?  If you’re a parent, isn’t this what you want for your child?  These are the things that matter, the things that last, that stay with us for a lifetime.

Yes, we have a responsibility to teach the academics, and yes, they matter too.  Perhaps not as much as we used to think they did, and certainly not if it’s just the learning of facts, in a world that offers us all the facts known to humankind in just a few key clicks.  Even then, though, a single percentage grade to represent that learning?  Really?

As a teacher, I watched students chase marks, and even the very best of them often didn’t care about what they learned.  “What do I have to do to get a 90?”  Not what can I learn, how can I grow, what will make me a better, more complete, more effective and happy human being.  We want our children to become life-long learners, but if grades motivate them now, where will the motivation come from when they aren’t receiving marks?

Our students need and deserve useful, descriptive feedback about their learning.  We know from research that verbal feedback is most effective, and that the relationship between teacher and student is key  to fostering student learning.  This is what we are working on, this is what matters.  Students and parents, when you speak with one another about how school is going, let’s focus on the learning, not on the marks. 

Marks don’t matter—people do.

It starts with the "3"

I received a request from a colleague about how to interpret the meaning of a "4" on Manitoba's 4 point scale for middle years report cards.  One of her teachers had suggested that it meant "above grade level".

What follows is the email I sent in response.  The bottom line is that in our school, we call "3" meeting the outcome (and we assess by outcome, not units or tasks).  The teacher and students need a strong understanding of those outcomes, and they need to know what "meeting" looks like.  With any luck, there are multiple possibilities for demonstrating it, but still...

More to follow about our journey toward outcome-based assessment (standards based grading) soon.
___________

What follows is the report card descriptors.  No mention of "grade-level" at all.

Academic Achievement of Provincial Expectations

4  Very good to excellent understanding and application of concepts and skills
3  Good understanding and application of concepts and skills
2  Basic understanding and application of concepts and skills
1  Limited understanding and application of concepts and skills; see teacher comments
ND  Does Not yet Demonstrate the required understanding and application of concepts and skills; see teacher comments

Like grade level, these descriptors are, in themselves, meaningless.  The conversation needs to change, and teachers need to accept that their interpretations of "good" and "basic" etc. are about as objective as grade level suppositions.  There simply is no objective standard.  That requires definition of the assessment, exemplars and so on, and curriculum documents (thankfully) don't contain those.

That's where it becomes incumbent upon teachers to have a solid understanding of the outcomes they're expecting from students, and what it "looks like" when students meet them.  At Ashern Central, we start from that point, and define meeting the outcome as a 3.  Further, never mind the percentage ranges on the report card, 3.0 = 80% when we convert subject grades to a percentage, which we only do for report cards.  No percentages at any other time, and a shame we have to do it for the report cards.

If 3 = meeting the outcome, does that mean that 4 = exceeding the outcome?  Simply, yes.  The form that takes will vary from course to course, outcome to outcome.  And, it's up to teacher and student to define what that looks/sounds like.

Some examples:

in gr. 7 Math:  The outcome is to determine mean, median, mode and range. 
3 = the student successfully calculates these values from a set of numbers (perfectly?, or 9 times out of 10? - there's the subjectivity of the teacher's definition of "meeting")
4 = the student completes an independent project to collect and collate meaningful data, and then calculate these values, or...
the student goes on to learn about standard deviation, and show a basic understanding of its meaning, or...
the student successfully tutors a peer, finding ways to explain these concepts meaningfully by deconstructing the steps in new ways, or with new examples.

in gr. 5 Social Studies:  The outcome is to describe daily life in early French and British settlements in Atlantic Canada
3 = the student provides descriptions that provide a level of detail prescribed by the teacher (in whatever way, not just tests)
4 = a comparison and contrast of these descriptions, or...
the creation of a performance, artwork, ??? that represents these lives, or...
an analysis (appropriate for gr. 5, of course) of why these lives were different.  Simply, working higher up Bloom's taxonomy in answering the question.

And so on.  Lots and lots of possibilities.

What is a 2?  Again, we try to keep it simple.  It's when the student "gets it", but isn't quite there in meeting the expectation(s) for a 3.

a 1?  It's when a student is really barely there.  Again, as always, a subjective professional judgment.  1 is the threshold, where the teacher believes that the student has a cursory understanding or demonstration of the skill, but only that, no more.

So, it all starts with defining the "3".  4 is an extension of that in some fashion; 2 and 1 lower levels of demonstrating the learning expected for a 3.  We kid ourselves if we thing teachers are ever going to have extensive rubrics for all of the outcomes, exemplars and so on.  It's much more reasonable to ask just for the definition of 3, and work from there.

Hope that helps.  We need to push teachers, and ourselves, to embrace the complexity and professional thinking that goes into assessing grades.  At the same time, we need to keep all of this in its place, and to remember that it's about pushing a learning agenda, not a grade-grubbing agenda, and that's about formative and not summative assessment.