In my teacher education at TWU, I have developed as a future educator whose practice is rooted in a philosophy focused on the well-being and intrinsic value of each student. With background research, I used critical and creative thinking to unpack theories and explore questions, issues, and proposed best practices. I believe that it is the responsibility of the teacher to serve their communities with humility, joy, and commitment to their students, acting in students’ best interests for success in learning and development as individuals. Within the classroom, the teacher’s responsibility is to maintain an attitude of openness as a life-long learner, designing learning experiences that are differentiated and give all students equal opportunities to succeed. As a future teacher, I reflect on my own philosophy and practice to continually develop more effective planning, instruction, assessment, and reporting practices that are compassionate to the communities I inhabit and the students under my care. I value open communication with students and guardians to inform next steps and ensure the youth entrusted to my care receive the help they need to take ownership of their own learning journey and gain a stronger sense of self-efficacy as developing individuals.
Outcome Reflective Statement
Throughout this course, I have developed a compassionate philosophy of assessment that is grounded in highlighting and strengthening the good in my students, giving them a voice to self-reflect and explore how they can make steps to take their learning further. Formative and summative assessment strategies should be inextricably linked and point at concrete, attainable learning standards based on BC Curricular Competencies. I believe that assessment is our way of communicating student achievement at a given point in time. The teacher, student, and parents should be consistently communicating about learning targets and how the student can get there. Assessment, like teaching, is a dynamic practice grounded in relationship and focused around the individual student’s needs. As an educator seeking out the best interest of my students, I believe in the power of assessment to create, develop, and strengthen vital skills in my students in a way that honours their voice, effort, and achievements.
Artifact #1: Wisdom Project
This artifact reflects my increasingly compassionate and student-empowering theory of assessment as a result of this course. I am inspired by Katie White’s “soft-edged” philosophy of assessment, which honors the dignity of students by giving them a safe space to make mistakes. I view my students as holistic beings who are adequateand constantly evolving. For my Wisdom Project, I went beyond the course material to find additional wisdom that is meaningful to me. I chose a video from my Twitter feed that moved me deeply when I first saw it, of a young girl attempting again and again to jump onto a stool with both feet, with some encouragement and support from her father.
The metaphor exemplifies our students’ learning journey towards achieving a learning standard, which comes about through repeated practice, hard work, and ownership of the process. Assessment should be empowering – it promotes a growth mindset, builds resilience, and instills a sense of agency that encourages students to keep trying despite repeated “failure” in a certain task. The video exemplifies the sense of victory I want my students to feel when they view their own learning journeys through assessment – instead of feeling discouraged, I want my students to be proud of what they are achieving because they are active participantsin defining next steps and keep trying.
Artifact #2: Deconstructing Learning Standards
Learning Continuum for Unit E: Digestive System
Learning Continuum for Unit F: Circulatory System
I developed my skill of deconstructing learning standards into bite-sized pieces for my lessons in practicum. I created a learning continuum for the whole unit based on one learning standard. The “pebbles” of the learning standard allowed me to teach a content-oriented lesson that set students up for higher levels of thinking and learning later on in their unit. Deconstructing learning standards is crucial in assessment because learning is a journey and setting clear and manageable targets is important to gaining knowledge of student growth and development. The continuum also allows students to begin where they areand build on that as they move through the school year. The continuum shows why summative assessments should only take place aftersignificant time has passed and students have progressed through the learning continuum with adequate opportunity of achieving “Proficiency.”
Artifact #3: Assessment Strategies
Assessment strategies are never meant to be uniform. To implement truly effectiveplanning, instruction, and assessment practices based accuratelyon a learning target, the type of target must first be matched to the type of assessment ideal to that target. In my practicum class, I taught mostly knowledge targets with some reasoning skills. According to the literature (textbook), knowledge and reasoning targets are most effectively assessed via Personal Communication or Written Response methods. For this reason, I used these two methods to assess the learning targets. This artifact is an example of how I have applied my learning about effective formative assessment strategies to the practical classroom setting. This exercise showed me how beneficial the target-method matching practice is to develop the bestways for students to show evidence of learning. I will carry forward my learning of best method practices based on learning standards into my future teaching.
Artifact #4: Assessment Policy Analysis
This artifact demonstrates my growing ability to think creatively and critically about various assessment practices by gathering research evidence. In my policy analysis, I critically analyze what I see to be more “conservative” practices in assessment – ones I do not necessarily agree with to a full extent. This artifact shows my personal and ethical considerations of various assessment policies, demonstrate how I came up with alternative solutions that better match my “soft-edged” philosophy, and made commitments to my future assessment practice. As a whole, my reflections value open communication with students and parents and make a commitment to giving students a voice in assessment policies. Open communication plays into the relational aspect of assessment, which requires teachers to know their students personally in order to accurately and compassionately assess their achievement of learning standards.
Artifact #5: Learning About Performance Assessment
This artifact shows my specific learning on the performance assessment (PA) method. I drew a mind-map summarizing my chapter readings on PA and Rubrics. The notes show my learning on important keys to planning high-quality, relevant PA tasks. The mind-map also shows the important characteristics of good rubrics. Based on this learning, we critiqued various PA task examples in class (also in the artifact). I was able to critique a performance task(and the corresponding rubric) my own sponsor teacher designed for her Anatomy & Physiology class. The artifact shows critical thinking and application of course content. Performance Assessment is a method I will be utilizing often in my future classroom to assess reasoning, problem-solving, and performance proficiencies, and I demonstrate a thorough understanding of how it is used effectively and accurately.
Artifact #6: Collated Resources on Assessment
This artifact was not a formal part of the coursework; instead, it comes from my personal life outside the course and from my work as a professor’s TA this semester. In the course, I was introduced to the shortcomings of percentages and letter grades, and I found myself challenging how I have been assessed for most of my life. I realized that as a future high school teacher, I am entering a field where report cards are only just being supplemented by the proficiency scale. I want to grow in my learning to best prepare me as an educator to bring this more compassionate approach of assessment and reporting into the high school setting. I chose this artifact because it shows how I am already going beyond the course learning and making commitments to my future practice by building my resource bank and networking with other professionals to gain further insight in the world of assessment. I am committed to continue growing and learning about how assessment can be done in a way that is sustainable for teachers and empowering for students. I collected these resources from the community of teachers on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms to feed my curiosity and excitement about “going gradeless” and revolutionizing the way assessment and reporting is done at the high school level.
Continued Learning
I would like my future assessment practices to be described as the following: Ongoing. Empowering. Formative. Useful. Empathetic.I have seen significant growth in myself throughout this course in relation to the TWU SOE learning outcomes and BCTRB standards, yet I know that my learning as a teacher will be lifelong. I still have many areas to explore to deepen my understanding of assessment and evaluation. As shown in my last artifact, I am already expanding my learning through interactions with the community of educators on social media, who are engaging in the dynamic conversation around assessment and reporting practice. I hope to continue to network this way and eventually participate in Twitter chats to share my own voice, commitments, and practices.
As I move into my professional year, I have three learning targets for myself related to assessment and evaluation. Firstly, I would like to carefully select formative and summative assessment strategies that accurately match learning standards. This requires me to use the target-method matching exercise when I am planning lessons to determine which assessment method is best suited to the learning target in question. I will make clear what each assignment is aiming to show (learning standards and competencies) so students have a clear and attainable chance at success. My formative assessment strategies will guide next steps in learning throughout the unit and provide opportunities for feedback. Students need to be aware of the quality of what they are producing duringthe act of production.
Secondly, I would like to try a standards-based method of reporting. If my school advisor in PYP is not already using standards-based assessment and evaluation methods, this will be a big step to take for my professional year, so a manageable goal is to try standards-based reporting with one of my classes for one unit during my long practicum. As I do this, I want to have conversations with my students and with the teacher to talk about whyI am using this method and ask them howthey could best give me evidence of their learning. I will use Google sheets for each student with corresponding assessment methods (FOR/AS/OF) that have shown evidence of progression and achievement. Instead of using percentages, I will use the proficiency scale with each standard to evaluate students summatively.
Finally, I would like to engage students in the assessment process. As I already mentioned in my second goal, I need to have conversations with my students about the “why” behind standards-based assessment to show them the value behind it and my intentions in giving them a voice and sense of ownership in their own learning journey. Furthermore, to engage students in the assessment process, I would like to implement regular self and peer assessment strategies. I want students to learn to self-evaluate and look out for their own evidence of learning. I also want to have conversations in class (or have a survey) to give my students a voice on how they think they can be best assessed in class. What methods do they think allow them to best show their learning? What is working for them? What new strategies might work? These conversations will keep students in the loop about the whybehind assessment and hopefully remove any sense of fear or judgement they feel behind the assessment process.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash