Where to begin?

Six months ago feeling really low amidst the ongoing pandemic and aching to shift from surviving to thriving? Three months ago trying to articulate a vision? Three weeks ago really digging into the development of this project? Or last Friday after its first incarnation. A first step towards something, dare I say, exciting? Or maybe with a reflection on likely the moment that will stick with me most in our first encounter?

After a school year in masks, and 10 weeks of a second school-year, two colleagues who teach age groups furthest apart at our school happened to be working together in our professional learning workshop on assessment.

We had assembled for our first in-service of the year with a plan to engage in a professional inquiry on assessment, the first of 3 workshops planned for the year. Teachers started by asking questions about assessment. We noted our questions on a wall. Meanwhile several colleagues sorted our questions into Why, How and What. Why do we assess? How do we assess? and What do we assess? We used the why questions as additional guiding questions to drive our inquiry for the day. This was to help teachers find their own entry into the inquiry. Here’s a small sample of some of the Why? questions.

• What is getting measured with our assessments?
• Does assessment always necessitate specific data gathering?
• Formative & summative – when is the best timing of each evaluation?

These may not seem like Why? questions at first glance, but I think the best way to answer them is to go back to asking Why do we assess? What do you think? There were many great questions that I hope to explore further, but this category had the fewest questions. The largest number of questions were actually How? questions, and the second largest were What? questions. Great fodder for our future workshops.

From the start, teachers were placed in groups designed to have an even distribution of faculty from the different divisions of the school. Each group had an early childhood teacher, a lower school teacher, and two middle school teachers. There was also a mix of learning support teachers, division heads, and our head of school. This would prove fruitful in at least one particular instance.

After documenting and sharing thoughts on their current practice, teachers then engaged with a number of resources, including research articles, founding documents (mission and core values, teacher evaluation rubrics, etc. ), and professional publications. I chose resources that address the question directly, Why do we assess? What is the purpose of assessment? from Rick Stiggins, Dylan William, the Center For Transformative Teaching and Learning, and many others. From these readings I wanted teachers to come to their own conclusions. I didn’t want to create any specific expectations. The main ideas I considered most important were 1) using assessment to guide the next steps in learning, and 2) balanced assessment based on Stiggins. But again, I hoped teachers would drive their own learning and identify their own take-aways.

Each person in the cross divisional groups read a different article. They had a few minutes to discuss the article with other colleagues that read the same one. This gave them a chance to co-construct their understanding of it. They then jig sawed the resources by sharing main points with their original cross divisional group. Finally, they tried to identify themes and connections and used those to write a response to the question Why do we assess learning? I asked teachers to write their response in single ideas or sentences and to post them to a digital sticky board. Next, I asked them to review the posts and upvote the most important replies to “Why we assess?” Finally, I asked them to use those top responses to formulate their own individual professional assessment philosophy. I told them that in our next engagement we would use their individual philosophies to write an assessment philosophy for each division. This assessment philosophy would serve as a guiding document for teachers when developing their own assessments and prompt administrators to make time for collaboration between teachers. My hope was that by giving everyone a voice in defining the philosophy, they would all feel ownership of it. They would see it as an aspirational vision for what assessment should look like, and that they would hold themselves, and each other accountable to that vision.

That day we also gave teachers a special gift. We had a small faux-leather bound journal made with the school logo embossed on the front cover and a John Dewey quote on reflection on the inside cover. We wanted to invite teachers to reflect on their practice, either in their journal, or in some other method. We also asked division heads to make time for reflection at division meetings. The hope was that teachers would reflect on their practice throughout the learning process. I chose this digital format to write my reflection and I invited teachers to use any method they wanted. The journal was just a gesture, a token, an invitation to reflect.

The Feedback

After the workshop, I received mostly positive feedback. I could see during the workshop, and the feedback confirmed, that teachers were generally engaged in all of the activities and resources. They enjoyed the opportunity to share with the colleagues, and to dive into the research on best practice.

Critical feedback was specific, which I find useful. Teachers thought that the resources I provided were too long for the time we had to engage with them. I anticipated this might be the case, but chose to not narrow down the scope as I didn’t want to provide a “list of answers” to the question, Why do we assess? I wanted teachers to bring their years of experience and expertise to the reading and to share their interpretations and take-aways. Still, I think it’s valuable feedback and worth responding to. For the next workshop, we’ll highlight key ideas in long texts and invite teachers to start with the highlighted points, but to dive in later if they wanted to. Do you have any other thoughts on how to address this? I’d love to hear about them in the comments if you do.

There was also another interesting piece of feedback I heard. The faculty was wondering why the Director of Technology was facilitating a conversation on assessment. It’s a fair question as the person that filled this role at my school before I arrived was focused strictly on the infrastructure side of technology. When I was hired, my charge was broader. I would manage a team to handle the infrastructure, and I would also lead from a pedagogical perspective, serving on our academic leadership team along with the Heads of School. My role was to help understand and determine what role technology would play in teaching and learning at our school, as well as to influence and help lead the broader academic program. I brought experience in inquiry and project based teaching/learning practices, experience in teacher evaluation, data based decision making, and the training and experience to lead change in a school. Because of the pandemic there have been few opportunities for teachers to see me in that role, drowned by the role I needed to play in getting our school ready for virtual attendance. Though there were many pedagogical questions raised by the pandemic, we just could not engage with them as we shifted. Teachers needed to feel confident in managing the tech. They needed to be in survival mode. That’s how they’ve come to know me. It’s a fair question that I hope to address in the coming weeks with the help of the rest of the admin team and through this continued work.

I’ll also try answer the question more directly here. Why is the Director of Technology leading a conversation on assessment? Because my work is not about technology. Not exactly. My works is about the people using the technology. My work is about the urgent learning that technology has prompted. This professional learning process is important for two reasons. First, because our school has not engaged in these professional conversations in a while. Second, because I hope to follow a similar process to engage teachers in professional learning on New Literacies and develop a systematic approach to teaching them in the coming school years. If we can figure out how to get this process right, we’ll be able to use it for almost any professional learning. For my work to be impactful, I need us to have these foundational conversations, and for our faculty to be accustomed to having them.

The Next Steps

Looking forward to our next workshop, and the time until then, I plan to implement a few changes and new engagements. First, though I had hoped to plan the workshop in a collaborative effort with a group of teachers that had participated in the Jim Knight instructional coaching workshops over the summer, finding time in our schedules proved difficult. I narrowed the group to just two colleagues, but it was still hard to find time together. Their participation became one of sounding board, providing feedback on my plans on how they might adjust them. I also think that at least in part, I had failed to adequately articulate my vision for the workshops, so maybe people were a bit reluctant to participate in something they were uncertain about. Now with the first workshop out of the way, I hope that faculty will see this as valuable and will want to contribute more readily. Also, our Head of School suggested a way to deal with the scheduling challenge of the regular school day by offering to stipend participants for their work on a couple of Saturday mornings. This would give teachers a leadership opportunity, and a small monetary reward. Most of them have accepted the invitation and are able to participate. I’m looking forward to this change as it is much more like the workflow a successful team I lead in a previous school followed. While I’m proud of my work and feel I have much to contribute, I am confident that through this collaboration our work could only be better

My aim for these work times will be to review the data from the first workshop together, and to come to some conclusions about the specific topics to address. The idea was to make the next workshop about How we assess, giving us plenty of opportunity to talk about specific practices. However, it might make more sense to stick with the Why a bit more. Maybe not. But I’ll discuss that with the team and we’ll find the right path forward for our faculty.

I also want to come back to some of the questions posted by faculty before our next workshop scheduled for January. In my previous school we had short professional learning engagements lead by faculty members. We called it Sips, a name Dan Kerr shared from his experience at another school. I’ve also heard a similar concept called Teachers Teaching Teachers. Maybe by offering up the inquiry questions and inviting teachers to attempt to address them in a short workshop/presentation could be an interesting way for teachers to share their expertise? Maybe a Sip trio on a particular question could be a way to get three different perspectives on the same thing? Or maybe they can work together on a single presentation? I don’t want this to get complicated. Ideally teachers are simply sharing their work so that they don’t have to spend lots of time preparing. Any ideas you’d like to share?

Learning is Social

It was after we had returned from reading the workshop resources and we were about to share key points from those resources in small groups when that tiny moment happened. It went by quickly, and not too awkwardly. A teacher from the early childhood division stopped the conversation and introduced herself to the teacher in the middle school division who had only joined our school last year, mid-pandemic. “I’m sorry, my name is… I don’t know your name.” They both smiled, and laughed a little, shook hands and continued with the discussion. It was a surprising and delightful moment as I knew that my colleagues were experiencing something new, and something largely positive. Learning is social, and here were two colleagues making a connection after twenty or so months of 6 feet of distance, masks, virtual classrooms, Zoom happy hours, repeated COVID testing, and the anxiety of calamity all around us. It was this moment that I will probably remember most because it felt like something small but important. It felt hopeful. I’ll take all the hope I can get.