work for real-life learning. It is for educators who have tried preassessments and formative assessments and experienced some discomfort or frustration at the way they affected students and the time they seemed to take away from learning. This book is for teachers who have tried many research-based practices but feel some challenge to align them with the reality in their classrooms. It is for teachers with experience in the world of assessment.
Educators know that teaching involves much more than simply spending time with students. To make classrooms run smoothly and productively, teachers must research, plan, instruct, assess, and respond to student needs. At times, even the most careful planning does not anticipate in-the-moment needs of learners or interruptions to the schedule of the day (assemblies, announcements). The skills required to meet the needs of diverse learners within a school environment are astoundingly complex. It is challenging to be a teacher.
A common experience for many educators involves spending most of their time out of the classroom planning units, preparing upcoming lessons, and assessing completed student work. Understandably, it is difficult to also find time to engage in a growing body of literature that attempts to capture and define good teaching. Staying on top of research is challenging, and sorting through a myriad of suggestions, tips, techniques, and studies can be a daunting task for time-pressed teachers. Teachers may explore this research under hurried circumstances, with little time for thinking deeply about the implications of the information or experimenting with the most effective ways to apply the ideas in a classroom setting.
As a result, teachers work through processes that administrative directives require and approaches they have been introduced to in conferences, workshops, or other professional learning sessions, perhaps without fully understanding the reasons for doing so. Classrooms can become a patchwork of techniques and strategies, with little opportunity to reflect, refine, and redo. Understandably, teachers may feel disengaged with initiatives and disenfranchised by mandates. Everything can feel isolated and separate, conveying a sense of things piling up as opposed to fitting together.
Even for experienced educators, the challenge remains that our classrooms are filled with an infinite number of variables. This is the nature of human work. Labeling an approach as the approach just doesn’t suffice. Each approach may be helpful, depending on the circumstances and needs of the people involved. Perhaps the most important thing to do, for both ourselves and our students, is to sort out what we believe about learning and the purpose of school. This book takes the position that any decision we make inside our classrooms has to emerge from our values, beliefs, and needs. It has to honor who our learners are as whole people, and who we are as their teachers.
The Teacher Voice
It is important to acknowledge that throughout this process of exploring our craft within the classroom context, our identities as teachers will shift when we step outside comfortable practices and try new things. This changing perception of who we are within our work impacts the choices we make every day. Like our students, we bring our own previous experiences, prior knowledge, and life circumstances to our role. We have the same need for empathy and compassion. We need opportunity and time for reflection. Our whole person must be nurtured and our voices must be heard. Ken Robinson (2015) explains, “There is no system of education in the world that is reliably better than its teachers” (p. 264). When the education system ignores teacher voice, it becomes increasingly challenging to feel like we have a voice at all. We may begin to question the need for risk taking and research, for reflection and discussion. However, when we minimize our own thoughts and ideas, we minimize our voice, which ultimately deprofessionalizes the work of educators as a whole.
D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly (2000) describe a classroom as a shared space. It is a place where stories are lived in a shared, but private environment. Alongside that notion is the idea that teachers and students are continually building a classroom culture that is very personal to those within that room. Relationships serve as the foundation, and practices become comfortable and predictable; everyone learns the rules of engagement, including the teachers.
The primary challenge with this model of education is that as teachers, we are not often afforded the chance to reflect on our practices with others. Clandinin and Connelly (1995) explain, “What is missing in the classroom is a place for teachers to tell and retell their stories of teaching” (p. 13). Without this opportunity to reflect and collaborate with others, we are left to manage the effect our work has on our sense of who we are as educators. Making time each day to meet with colleagues and share struggles and celebrations can often be enough to move us into our next round of risk taking and reflection. Documenting, together, the results of new practices and approaches can invite an increasingly sophisticated understanding of our assessment practices.
Teaching is incredibly complex, and educators are relentlessly asked to change practices, to shift beliefs, and often to do it alone. Our voices are not always heard and certainly not considered when many decisions are being made by district, state, or national leaders. Regardless of the intention of their decisions (to improve learning, to increase accountability, to enhance available resources, to reduce spending), these decisions impact us and our students. Carol Ann Tomlinson, Kay Brimijoin, and Lane Narvaez (2008) identify the unexpected degree of emotional response to change:
We are unaware of or unprepared to deal with the implications of change in classroom practice. We tend to deal with the change on a superficial level, tend to neglect fidelity to the change, and are often unprepared to deal with the fear, tension, loss, and conflict that inevitably accompany change. (p.11)
The absence of opportunity to reflect on our experiences and tell our stories means our ability to change and still retain a strong teaching identity is challenged. If we are left to manage on our own in the shared spaces we create with our students, we do not have the opportunity to hear the voices of others. In circumstances where isolation is the norm, we could then ask which voices have the most volume. Do we most strongly hear the voices of administrators and the initiatives they deliver? Is it the voice of the students and their needs we attend to most, or is it the voice of our own experiences and identity heard most clearly? In the midst of change and shifting practices, being given the opportunity to listen to multiple voices gives us much-needed support for exploring who we are.
Softening the edges requires finding the time to reflect on our own processes within our school context and refine them in alignment with our personal philosophies about teaching and learning. Advocating for the need to do this may be difficult, but it is an essential aspect of change and growth. Richard DuFour (2015) says, “We have yet to establish a cultural norm in which working and learning are interwoven, ensuring educators are continuing to grow and learn as part of their routine work practice” (p. 79). Supporting ourselves and each other on our own learning journeys is vital for equipping us to do the same for the learners in our classrooms. We have to make time to slow things down and explore classroom moments a little—clean off the dirt of stories, egos, and daily stimuli, and see what is underneath. We need time to contemplate the significance of our classroom experiences to better understand ourselves as teachers.
Giving educators the opportunity to develop assessment practices that serve our need to learn who our students are and respond with confidence, accuracy, and integrity is another way of softening the edges. It honors the important relationship between teachers and students and respects the teachers’ responsibility to apply professional judgment to learning contexts—in essence, reprofessionalizing teaching. This requires trust in students’ learning potential and our own ability to capture that potential. If we are going to change the story of assessment in our schools, we are going to have to shift our processes. A new story cannot replace an old story without time to reflect and alter things bit by bit.
To work toward softening the edges, teachers must be invited to work together to come to collective understanding and shared purpose. Creating common collaborative assessments and working together to analyze student work and determine the next steps on the learning journey is a highly empowering practice
