This was the question (paraphrased):
What assessment will you use to help you choose materials for your class?
When I heard it, I wondered how I would answer it. I also wondered what the question implied.
I think the intention of the question was to get a new teacher candidate to think about how to assess varying reading levels of students in order to choose appropriate materials, but I’m not quite sure.
I have heard the word assessment in a variety of contexts in our district a lot in the last couple of years. I used to think it was a new, less emotionally crippling word than “test,” which can, by its very utterance, push anxiety ridden students to the edge. But now I think the word assessment means much more. I’m just not sure what it always means.
The question was compelling for a couple of reasons, but the first thing it made me think of was that there may actually be a test that could be administered to let a teacher know what materials to select for a class, and that, somehow, disturbs me.
The question was the seed for a wild notion in my overactive imagination. I imagined a government/corporate conspiracy where teachers are just embodied voices, symbols really, channeling pre-designed curriculum, using pre-made assessments, handing out provided materials, all of course chosen for some larger purpose. That of course is ridiculous, right?
I have, over the last ten years or so, worried that the role of the imaginative, creative, thinking teacher has been diminished nearly to the point of irrelevance. And the implication of a test to tell me what to teach only amplified that fear. How do I choose materials for my class, after all? How do I assess the situation?
I want to think that the relationships I develop with my students help me know what is right for them. I want to think that my knowledge, expertise, and experience help me know what will work and won’t work for my students.
And yet I recognize that all of that takes time. It takes time to get to know my students, especially my freshmen, who are all new to our school. I takes time for me as a teacher to become experienced. What about new teachers? It takes time for us to all learn how to learn together. Maybe some students cannot afford all this time.
Our student population is less and less homogeneous all the time, in terms of their ability to learn. We have students entering ninth grade who read at a 12th grade level or beyond and some who struggle to read at a 4th grade level. How do I manage that?
The truth is, even if there were a test to tell me which book is best for a particular student, I would still need to make daily choices about how to connect with him or her. When I recognize frustration, disappointment, and struggle, I must decide how to manage it. I must decide the next step, the best way to make things better. And all of this takes time.
But that is the art of teaching, the art of assessing the situation. And that human interaction, that human connection is why teachers can never be irrelevant and why no test can tell me as much as I need to know about my students.
Dawn,
You have captured a lot of my thinking in this post. I have seen scripted programs come in. They are called “Teacher Proof.” Am I the only one who finds that offensive? I have spent a long time trying to become better at my job.
I think we need to revamp how teachers are prepared for classroom teaching. An apprentice program similar to what doctors go through. Paid, of course. As doctors are. It would give them more time to work their way into teaching students rather than the toss-’em-in-the-deep-end-to-sink-or-swim method we use today.
But that would be expensive. And, as we are so often told, money won’t fix education.
I agree that a year long internship, paid, is better than a semester, unpaid of student teaching. But, it’s not going to happen, is it?
The question has some underlying assumptions that are unrealistic. It seems to assume that teachers have infinite materials available. (Even with web-based materials, someone has to locate them — time is a factor even if cost isn’t. )
Here is my assessment process to select materials:
1. What am I teaching?
2. What do I have available to teach with? What do students have available to learn with?
3. Of those materials available, which will prepare the student well?
4. Of those materials that will prepare the student well, which can s/he handle?
5. If more than one option remains at this point, which will best fit the game plan?
Boom, decision made. Next?
As you say “someone has to locate them.” This matter of locating, is not, as some people think, an easy matter. How do I find what I don’t even know I am looking for? Take “text sets,” for example. Maybe a suggested set (listed in a book that I would first have to buy) is not exactly right for my students or my school community. Or maybe it’s perfect as is, but we can’t afford to buy all of the texts. Then what? I like the idea of text sets, but if I have to assemble them myself, I do not know all the texts in the world. One reason teachers tend to use the same materials again and again is that they are familiar with those texts. If I am thinking of abandoning To Kill a Mockingbird as a whole class text and going with a wide variety of texts (varied reading levels) on the same themes: racism, the Great Depression, etc., how the heck do I find those, and if I find them, how am I to gather them (presumably with no increase in my department’s budget)? The theory and the reality for the new paradigm of differentiated materials do not mesh. Teachers are not mystics, even literature teachers, who tend to know a lot of books.