One thing that has helped me through these first few weeks of teaching online due to Covid 19 is creating daily reflective videos to take stock of what happened in my online classroom and evaluate it based on my observations, student performance, and level of student engagement and feedback. This process has allowed me to stay flexible with my instruction and adjust quickly- necessary traits in this uncertain and unpredictable global crisis.
Normally I reflect on my teaching using a more formal and measured approach after every unit. In this new abnormal, reflection can seem like a luxury we don’t have time for in our often-panicked state. For instance, many of my colleagues and I started this journey by dumping large amounts of content and lengthy assignments on students. Many also tried live video lectures in a desperate struggle to hold onto familiar and comfortable techniques. In recent days, I have even found myself regressing to ineffective routines learned in my early years as a teacher (30-minute monologue anyone?)
So, where has all this daily reflection led me after four weeks of online teaching and learning? Well, for me the silver lining lies in the opportunity for our teachers and schools to reform the way we assess students. This is not a new topic of discussion for us. I have seen many educhats and PLN discussions about authentic and performance-based assessments and going gradeless, but these approaches gain little traction when the external exam board is king, and the university entrance exam is queen.
This painful and frightening pandemic has forced the issue of assessment to the surface with the canceling of IB, IGCSE and the College Board’s SAT tests and the modification of AP exams. Schools are scrambling to assess student performance in different ways. My school has implemented a formative-assessment-only policy. Nevertheless, this has proved to be a headache for teachers as they chase up students and fill in discipline reports for those who opt out of course work. Who can blame them? These young people have been trained to thrive in a system that measures from the top down. Many don’t see the intrinsic value of learning because we have always ruled over them with an extrinsic reward stick.
We can do better. In her essay Children, Learning, and the ‘Evaluative Gaze’ of School Carol Black, an American film maker and author, discusses the dangers of the evaluative gaze. The teacher takes on a ‘god-like stance which is a big deal even when you think you are a fair and friendly god.’ It tells the student:
‘I am the subject; you are the object. I know what you are, I know what you should be, I know what ‘standards’ you must meet.’
This is a dehumanising and dependent position in which we place students.
So how can this be different for us in the online setting and then beyond? In an ideal world, we would do away with the external assessments altogether. Realistically, this kind of global disruption to education is not likely to happen any time soon and is not in the sphere of influence of most teachers. What can happen, though, is educators can take control of the way they assess within their classrooms.
We can start now. Teachers can provide myriad ways for students to take ownership of their learning and run the show. We can empower young people to view themselves reflectively and with a critical eye.
There are many ways to do this, for example:
- Introduce self-trackers (Ex. 1) to measure progress on standards leading to reflection and goal setting.
- Provide opportunities for peer assessment.
- Allow students to find their own way through repetition of things that interest them.
- Delay giving back grades with single-point rubrics and a focus on intentional, personalised and actionable feedback that encourages refining of a piece of work. (Ex. 2)
- Emphasize process over product.
- Hold conferences where students present their work and defend what they know or can do. (Ex. 3)
- Provide time for After Action Reviews where students discuss challenges or successes of a group activity.
- Increase student agency over how they are measured through surveys. (Ex. 4)
We need to allow students to do and see and hear and make and read and imagine without our constant evaluative gaze. Our online classrooms are the perfect place to test out these ideas, to reveal our vulnerabilities, to face our fears, to show our students that risk taking may end in failure, but it may very well end in success, too. And isn’t that what authentic learning looks like?
[Guest post by Aimée Skidmore, @skidmoreaimee, English teacher at Collège du Léman, Switzerland. Watch her daily reflections of teaching & learning online during Covid19.]
Credits
Single-point rubric adapted from Jennifer Gonzalez‘ work.