Differentiated assessment...

flickr image via Stuck in Customs

Great strides have been made to adjust our instruction to meet individual student needs, but often we don't adjust the way we assess this individualized learning. Differentiated instruction must at some point lead to differentiated assessment, otherwise we're fooling ourselves.

Students are all on their own timeline and we're finally starting to realize that we need to figure out what that timeline is in order to apply an optimized and purposeful learning experience. We need to meet them where they're at and help them learn forward. This is the differentiation process. It accounts for a student's particular learning styles, interests, strengths and weaknesses and adjusts for them to optimize learning. However, once we've done such a good job creating an appropriate and fair learning context for individual kids, we often ruin the process by not making a reciprocal effort to create an appropriate and fair assessment context for individual kids.

There are countless ways to assess learning; some really good and some really bad. I'm not going to get into the debate over which are which here. I'm just going to say that teachers should be making as much  effort to find the right way to assess each student as they do to find the right way to teach each student based on the learning styles, interests, strengths and weaknesses of each one.

How best to do this is up to each teacher and how much is known about each of their students' learning stories. Time should be provided for teachers to investigate the background of each student. A major element of this process should include asking students how best they learn and providing learning opportunities that match what they tell us. We should be engaging them as early as kindergarten to do this.

The thirteen-year learning story starts in kindergarten, and there are many ways kids show us what works for them and what doesn't. Observing and noting their reactions to particular learning tasks, watching them play and discover provides us the chance to get a glimpse into their unique perspectives. Keeping one eye on the prescribed curriculum outcomes, and the other on creative ways to achieve them in consideration of each child's learning preferences seems to me a great strategy to begin walking a good learning path alongside each of them.

However, assessing a whole class the same way after successfully and creatively designing a learning environment that accommodates the unique and individual learning variables of each student doesn't appear to make too much sense to me.

Reflective Leadership...

flickr image via flickrPrince

The principal is an accomplished teacher who practices quality leadership in the provision of opportunities for optimum learning and development of all students in the school.

My teaching career has led me in many unanticipated and diverse directions. The experiences I have had, and the lessons I have learned along this journey are the platform of my skill-set and knowledge as a professional teacher and educational leader. I believe that more often than not, the path chooses us.

I have taught at least one subject to kids from grades one through ten. I taught a first and second grade split class during my first year teaching at Tall Cree Indian Reserve in northern Alberta. From that jump-off point I continued my growth and development as a teacher for five years in grades three to six within two other Aboriginal communities. I moved to Red Deer and joined the Alternative School Programs in my seventh year of teaching. I worked with grades six to ten over the next eight years within two different segregated programs addressing severe student behavior. I completed my Masters Degree in Leadership (focus on school counseling,) during this period. I then took a position as a counselor for what turned out to be one year at the middle school level. At this point my direction shifted once again, and I was fortunate to become a school administrator at Mattie McCullough Elementary School.

With every teaching and administrative position I have held, I have assumed different formal and informal leadership roles designed to optimize learning and development opportunities for all students. Additionally, I have assumed leadership roles throughout my career putting me in a position to support the ongoing and purposeful professional development of my teaching colleagues and beyond as a conference speaker, workshop writer, blogger and author.

This reflection summarizes my teaching experiences, my personal professional growth and my perspective as a learner and teacher relative to the leadership dimensions contained within Alberta Education’s Principal Quality Practise Guideline. These are the elements that form the foundation of my practise as an educational leader. Over the course of my career I have formulated a set of personal beliefs that guide my practise. Many, if not all of these beliefs, permeate my life away from school in ubiquitous ways also. I will reference these as “I believe” statements where appropriate throughout this reflection.

If You're Having Fun...

flickr image via katerha

A couple of years ago my students and I came up with what we thought to be a really good description of the way learning should be.

Like most classrooms, we had every type of student... those really focused on their letter grade achievement; those really focused on the process of learning and not so concerned about their letter grade achievement and those who seemingly weren't that concerned about either. In self reflection, the kids noticed that those who were stressed about the test weren't having all that much fun in school. They also noticed that those who evidently weren't concerned about the process or their grade were having a lot of  fun, but perhaps not the right kind. When we spoke about those kids who seemed to really just enjoy the process of learning, the students noticed that these kids were striking a balance between school work as they called it, and having fun... knowing when to keep things light, but also when to get down to business.

In the process of our reflection we came up with this definition of purposeful and engaged learning in school.

If you're having fun and not learning, that's bad. If you're learning and not having fun, that would bad too, but if your having fun and learning, that's good.

Pretty simple I think.

If this was the only reason to blog...

flickr image via tibchris

I'd still do it. Let me explain the reason.

I noticed a recent trackback on Connected Principals, another blog I contribute to occasionally. The post it pointed to was called "Norm!" The blog's author is Anthony Purcell, a first year teacher who evidently uses reflection as a tool to inform his practice and help him become a better teacher.

At his blog, Educationally Minded, Anthony made reference to a piece I wrote called We need schools where everybody knows your name. I read his post and was humbled that my thoughts had impacted him enough that he decided to share his reflective response. I have never met Anthony, and he has never met me, but we had a virtual meeting of the minds; a philosophical rendezvous in cyber space. We shared thoughts as teacher colleagues that transcended our professional perspective and entered into our personal feelings about things. We need to do more of this as professionals; get to know each other on personal levels... learn more about what we represent as human beings who care for others.

Blogging has provided me an opportunity to connect with those I perhaps never would have known at all. I've shared with them; they've shared with me. We have encouraged each other to think and question. We have created circles around our thoughts and invited each other inside.

If this was the only reason to blog, I'd still do it.

Edu-conomy of scale... Learning Circle University

flickr CC image via nicolasnova

I'm beginning to understand crowd-sourcing in a new context. As the concept of learning circles evolves, I'm seeing the definition of crowd in crowd-source evolve alongside it. Learning circles are the crowds we encounter and choose to place ourselves within for the purpose of learning. 

To me, crowd-sourcing in the traditional sense generally taps really broad sources... social media being a most obvious contemporary example. Learning circles are derivatives of crowd-sourcing that focus more intently on a specific purpose, or set of purposes related to learning. The people that find themselves connected within learning circles are often strangely attracted to each other through the necessary process of chaos in authentic learning, but once found by each other, their relationship takes on a nemetic dynamic.