During my pre-internship, my partner Brooke Alexander and I, co-taught and co-created a large unit on residential schools for our grade fours. During that unit, we engaged in Project of Heart, a nation-wide project that commemorates the lives of those who passed away while attending residential schools, with our students. Check out the website to see our students creations, and learn more about this amazing project!
Here is my final reflection video for my ECMP 355 class. I hope you enjoy watching it
I recently came across an article by Alfie Kohn, on standardized tests. I was introduced to Kohn’s work in a course at the U of R, and ever since have been intrigued by his compelling discussions on educational issues. If you have never heard any of his discussions, I strongly suggest you do – I have linked to his website above. You can also follow him on twitter!
What first attracted me to this article was its title, “Whoever Said There’s No Such Thing As a Stupid Question, Never Looked Carefully at a Standardized Test.” However, standardized tests is a topic that I will never get sick of discussing, I love to hear all of the varying opinions – they help me create what my own may be. In the article, Kohn questions the type of questions that we use to on tests for our students. He gave an example of math questions that essentially only assessing whether or not the student can follow a rule, not whether or not they are capable of doing math. Commonly, questions such as these – in all subjects, influence the students’ own perceptions as well as the teachers’ perceptions of how well the student understands the concept. However, more often than not this is a misleading perception.
After reading this article I began questioning my own beliefs. As I have previously discussed, I do not agree with standardized tests – for many reasons. However, I am now beginning to think that it is not the concept of standardized tests that I disagree with, but rather the tests that are created themselves. For, maybe it is not the tests as a whole that are the problem, but rather the questions. I find myself wondering if there will ever be a time where teachers and students can free themselves of standardized tests from the government. Therefore, the question then becomes, how can we adapt these tests into positive learning experiences for the students? What kinds of questions could we use that would be beneficial for the students? Moreover what questions could we use that would benefit the teachers, seeing as though standardized tests are really created to benefit the teachers as well as education administrators. If we have to engage in standardized tests, we mine as well create ones that will actually demonstrate student knowledge.
Today I am feeling very poetic as I am beginning to embrace the idea that spring courses are coming to an end and within a week I will have finished all required courses, excluding internship, for my education degree. I am going to share a poem that I was introduced to in my EHE 310 course in the fall. I found this poem to be very intriguing when I first read it. For every reader it may hold relevance in varying areas or contexts however, the strong message concerning whether to fix or prevent has interesting relevance in many areas of education.
The Ambulance in The Valley
Joseph Mulins
Twas a dangerous cliff, as they freely confessed,
Though to walk near its crest was so pleasant;
But over its terrible edge there had slipped
A duke and full many a peasant.
So the people said something would have to be done,
But their projects did not at all tally;
Some said, “Put a fence ’round the edge of the cliff,”
Some, “An ambulance down in the valley.”
But the cry for the ambulance carried the day,
For it spread through the neighboring city;
A fence may be useful or not, it is true,
But each heart became full of pity
For those who slipped over the dangerous cliff;
And the dwellers in highway and alley
Gave pounds and gave pence, not to put up a fence,
But an ambulance down in the valley.
“For the cliff is all right, if you’re careful,” they said,
“And, if folks even slip and are dropping,
It isn’t the slipping that hurts them so much
As the shock down below when they’re stopping.”
So day after day, as these mishaps occurred,
Quick forth would those rescuers sally
To pick up the victims who fell off the cliff,
With their ambulance down in the valley.
Then an old sage remarked: “It’s a marvel to me
That people give far more attention
To repairing results than to stopping the cause,
When they’d much better aim at prevention.
Let us stop at its source all this mischief,” cried he,
“Come, neighbors and friends, let us rally;
If the cliff we will fence, we might almost dispense
With the ambulance down in the valley.”
“Oh he’s a fanatic,” the others rejoined,
“Dispense with the ambulance? Never!
He’d dispense with all charities, too, if he could;
No! No! We’ll support them forever.
Aren’t we picking up folks just as fast as they fall?
And shall this man dictate to us? Shall he?
Why should people of sense stop to put up a fence,
While the ambulance works in the valley?”
But the sensible few, who are practical too,
Will not bear with such nonsense much longer;
They believe that prevention is better than cure,
And their party will soon be the stronger.
Encourage them then, with your purse, voice, and pen,
And while other philanthropists dally,
They will scorn all pretense, and put up a stout fence
On the cliff that hangs over the valley.
Better guide well the young than reclaim them when old,
For the voice of true wisdom is calling.
“To rescue the fallen is good, but ’tis best
To prevent other people from falling.”
Better close up the source of temptation and crime
Than deliver from dungeon or galley;
Better put a strong fence ’round the top of the cliff
Than an ambulance down in the valley.
Yesterday I found this letter on a blog post from one of my favourite blogs that I have subscribed to, Cooperative Catalyst. This letter was written by a 16 year old just before she dropped out of school. There are so many important messages that her piece is telling us. Her words are crying out, informing us of the problem with some school experiences students are having. I wonder what signs she gave to her teachers before it got to be too much and she felt that the best decision for herself was to leave? Did her teachers notice these signs? Did they ignore these signs? What are many of the students who are so often labeled as ‘drop outs’ or ‘lazy’ telling us? What are their signs? How can we take this upon us, as future educators, and make sure that none of our students feel that school is simply a form of life support… one they very much want off of?
“School is constantly causing us to forget who we are in the first place. I’m not dropping out, I’m choosing to leave. I’m choosing to not follow their plan. Yes, it works for a lot of people, but most of them are only in school because they’ve all become too oblivious to themselves and too scared to decide what they want to do with their lives. Then again, you can’t blame them because they’ve been held up by the school system – being led from one thing to the next – their whole lives.
By staying in school, I feel like I’m just taking the easy way out. I don’t need a structure to live on, I feel like I’ve got an IV hooked up to me, and the worst part is people think we live on it. We don’t. I tell them I’m leaving and they look at me with such disappointment…”You could do so much” “You have so much potential.”
Going to school should not define your life. I don’t want to look at living as a math equation, having to solve it and keep following these rules. What’s the point of being on this life support when we all end up dying anyway? We all end up the same.”
– Paris Kouns, 16 years old
Today I spent my lunch hour at a volunteer appreciation lunch at a school where I, along with 54 others, have been volunteering over the past year. This was mainly a student run luncheon. The students created a presentation, made speeches, said grace, made lunch, prepared gifts, wrote cards, served food & drinks, greeted & seated guests, and decorated. These students are amazing, to say the least.
As I was sipping on my coffee and enjoying the presentation, I considered what an amazing cross curricular, experiential learning experience this is for the students to engage in. Essentially when speaking in terms of curriculum subjects and outcomes and indicators, the students would have covered areas of math(setting up chairs for appropriate amounts of people, preparing enough food for all guests, setting up the schedule for the lunch), ELA (writing and presenting speeches, writing in the cards, sending out emails), social studies (community involvement, understanding of well-being), science (the life cycle of plants, growing and taking care of plants which were then gifted to the guests) health(giving back to the community, and essentially every aspects of health) and I am sure much more that I am missing. Looking at this experience in those terms, this was a teachers dream come true all wrapped up into a conclusion of an hour and a half.
This then made me think about when the real learning will occur for my future students? What kind of experiences will I be able to create for them that they will truly benefit from in the long run? How can I make learning meaningful to their lives? What kind of learning will help my students become ‘life long learners?’ I am continuously finding more reasons as to why the classroom as we think of it, in its standard form, needs to change. What we consider to be a ‘normal’ classroom needs to change, we are well overdue. Many teachers may consider an experience like this and cringe at the amount of time and preparation it would take. However, these teachers embraced it and went ahead full force. I wonder how much these students will benefit from this experience over sitting in the classroom?
Through the use of twitter, I came across a video of youth speaking out about diabetes via Shelley Barthel, an education professor at the U of R. Shelley taught my section the EHE and EPE 310 courses. Throughout both of the courses Shelley continuously challenged us, pushing us to dig deeper into our thoughts. Well, here she is again, pushing me to critically analyze my philosophies. In our class in EHE 310, we had many meaningful and interesting discussions regarding the value of health education in schools. How do schools value health? How much time do they spent on health in the classroom? How much should schools value health education? Should health be above math and ELA? All of these questions are ones that as future educators, we should be thinking about.
When I was watching this video and started to consider what this video meant to me, it reminded me of a google survey that one of my peers, Lindsay Fuchs did. Her survey was on which subject is most important in the classroom. Interestingly enough, her survey found that 0% of us who did her survey, all future educators, put health at the top of the list. While watching this video it also reminded me of the Social Determinants of Health and their influence on daily life for all individuals. This is an interesting topic and I would love to hear your thoughts. How much should schools value health education in the classroom?
Recently, some students and their schools have been taking a stand against standardized testing in the schools. They have been protesting outside of Pearson Headquarters, the publishers of many of the textbooks you would be familiar with. Even though this is an event which is occurring in the United States and not Canada, I still believe that the implications are relevant. I believe that it is important that the students and the teachers are the ones who stand up for themselves. Too many decisions regarding what goes on in schools are made by individuals who rarely step foot in schools. The only way to get support from the larger public is to make them aware of the consequences of standardized testing, so they too can understand that we need to be focusing on learning experiences that benefit the students – which is clearly not standardized testing. Important decisions regarding the government who will influence the decisions in our own province regarding testing and our students future are made during the election time. If those who are not a part of the school system are not aware of the consequences of testing on our students, how will they know not to vote for those who support it? We need to stand up for the students and make the public aware, just as these individuals are here!
Schools Boycott Latest Round Of Standardized Testing – YouTube.
For Tech Task 5b, we were asked to complete two different assignments from the DS 106 Assignment Bank . The first assignment that I chose was in the ‘audio assignments.’ For this assignment we were asked to read one of our favourite children’s books. I read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. Kevin Henkes was and is still one of my favourite children’s literature authors. I had fun using garage band to alter my voice after I had recorded the reading. I think that students could have a lot of fun creating their own stories on an audio program like this – it could be a very meaningful ELA project for students of varying ages. Check out the link to hear my reading of Chrysanthemum!
For the second assignment, I chose to do one from the ‘writing assignments’ section. For this assignment we were asked to choose a movie and create a tweet that described the movie. I chose this one thinking it would be a fun task, which actually turned out to be a lot more difficult that I had imagined. Through the process of creating my tweet, I couldn’t think but how this could be a meaningful assignment for students to learn how to summarize and find the themes of books. In the end, I chose to do the Disney Classic, Aladdin.
My tweet is as follows: “One step ahead of Jafar, thanks to my #magiccarpetride”
For the introductory segment of our tech task 5A, we were asked to read an article discussing the contradictory view points on drinking coffee, and essentially whether or not it will result in a longer or shorter life span. As I was reading this article, it became very apparent how one cannot believe everything they read. In addition, many times you will find that people are surprised when they hear an opposing point to a study that has been done. My question is, why are people so surprised that there is an opposing side? There will always be an opposing side. I would question that there has ever been a study/story/belief where there has been one side that EVERYONE agrees on. While I must add that without opposing sides we would not grow as a society and that there are many positive factors to having opposing sides… one being that it means we are all not robots… yet. Lastly, it apparent that it is always extremely important to learn who the source of the information is, and how credible this source may be.
For the next segment of this tech task, we were asked to dig deep into a blog post and decide and comment of what view we side with on the topic. I chose to dig deep into a post entitled, School isn’t Like a Job.
When reading this post, I found that the author made some very interesting points. Others must have also found his post to be of interest for, there were numerous comments resulting in where the conversation took off and got very interesting. This post stems from the scandal in Alberta where the teacher was suspended for giving out students’ zeros, and most importantly the reaction of the general public to this issue.
A quote that I loved from the post, which I must bring light to was, “The reward for going to school is not the grade. It’s the learning.” I love this. It would make a great “philosophy of education” quote. The problem however is, grades are an active and required element in our schools systems. If only we could have the power to eliminate the specific grades that we give to students and truly focus on the learning – what a powerful classroom that would be. However, currently that is not the case, so we must do the best with what we are given and figure out a way to use the grades in the best possible way that is meaningful for the students. A comment that another blogger left on this post also intrigued me. The individual wrote, “What does the grade communicate?” I think that this is such a powerful question. How can we use grades simply as a form of communication between the teacher and the student? How can we do this in a positive manner that will benefit the students learning experience? An example that I will use is this class ECMP 355. The grade that I will receive in this course is one that I will self-produce. What will that grade communicate to me as a student over a grade that I was given based off of three multiple choice tests? In my future I am definitely going to keep this question in the front of my mind. Whenever I am doing an assessment of any kind I will first question, what is the purpose of this assessment. By doing so that I can be sure that I am “assigning” the grade to what I was in fact assessing. Secondly, I will ask myself “what is this grade communicating to the student?” Is it doing its job?
Overall, this topic of assessment is a touchy subject with both educators and non educators. As I said previously, I also do not think it is going to be something that everyone will ever agree on. That is okay too. In fact, the disagreement, as long as it is done so in a respectful manner, will also most likely help give educators a push to continue to improve their methods of assessment. Personally, I do think that we are in need of change of grading and assessing our students in the typical way we do using one single letter to represent a wealth of work that the student has done for us. However, I also realize that this is not something that is going to change overnight. In society the way that assessment and grading is done and thought of is so very superglued into peoples’ minds, there will be a great deal of resistance. With that being said, I think that we may be closer to a change than it may seem. The fact that there re so many meaningful conversations between passionate educators regarding this topic is a huge sign that we are taking steps in the right direction.
pedagogical pondering 