I was listening to a story on NPR recently about the collection of saliva samples from 100,000 patients and what they were able to learn from it by looking at these individuals' medical histories. They were interviewing a medical researcher, a Nobelist, talking about disease. She said, "Disease is not an event; it's a process." Upon hearing this, I immediately thought of assessment and the way so many teachers and schools and states assess students with one-off, high-stakes tests that are events, not processes. True assessment, meaningful assessment that tells us where a student is and what they have come to understand, is a process. The school I am at now assesses teachers with three 15-minute "walk throughs." Contrast that with a school I taught at several years ago where a supervisor sat in on four of my classes - three in a row of one and one of a different class. She got a very clear idea of how I teach and whether learning was taking place. (I am happy to report that she concluded that it was.) Sad to say, this is the only school I have been at that took the observation and assessment of teachers so seriously, making it a process and not an event.
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AuthorAfter teaching for 10 years and using lots of technology, I have decided to move into the technology side of education. Archives
December 2015
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