lives through the lens of what we have grown to value most. As teachers, we all have our favorite story to share—a memory, a lesson to learn, a legend. Some story lines have remained true, and others have evolved, or we have embellished them to support new and unique circumstances. Retelling these stories honors the knowledge and experience of those who came before us and helps create a strong, sustainable future.
Think back to your schooling experience. What stories do you remember most? We anticipate that you can quickly recall good times with friends, moments of inspiration and empowerment from your favorite teachers, and points of pride and accomplishment. We also imagine that you—with the same crystal clarity—can recall struggles and complications with friends, times of discouragement with teachers, and moments when you tripped and fell along the way. While our experiences shape the stories that we tell our friends and family, they also shape the manner in which we approach our work. What moments from your educational journey do you aspire to replicate with your students and colleagues? What stories can you recall that define exactly what experiences you do not want to create in your classroom?
Now try to remember the stories that your teachers told about you. Do you remember the letters of recommendation they wrote for you, highlighting your gifts, talents, and strengths? Do you remember times in which the adults told stories about you and your potential based on both your academic performance and your social interactions? Did familial patterns of behavior that older siblings displayed predetermine your expectations and possibilities? Did the adults tell stories about you that may or may not have accurately represented who you were not only as a student but also as a person?
As we prepare to let our story of Unstoppable Assessment unfold over the next several chapters, we encourage you to reflect on the kind of story that you are creating for, and about, your students. This collaborative team story is the essence of a professional learning community (PLC). Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Thomas W. Many, and Mike Mattos (2016) state that a PLC is an “ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve” (p. 10). The questions you ask and the subsequent discussions that you hold as you reflect or as you work in teams will often closely align with the four critical questions that drive the work of a PLC (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 36):
1. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level?
2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills?
3. How will we respond when some students do not learn?
4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?
The team stories we offer throughout this book are real stories based on real teams and educators we know or have worked with. To maintain confidentiality, however, we choose not to identify individual educators’ names or the schools or districts in which they work. Know that the examples we provide come from real practitioners approaching the work of collaborative teams together. To achieve maximum benefit, we highly recommend that as you use this resource and tools it contains, you do so within the context of a PLC or other collaborative team structure.
Educators in the 21st century have the power of the pen more than ever. We can take more responsibility for crafting a script, from beginning to end, that outlines the passion, hope, inspiration, and mobilization of effort we employ to focus on developing each student’s academic readiness and disposition of character. Educators must be key authors in the language they use, the sequence of events they execute, and the climatic moments they aspire to in their critical work for students and for each other. One of the best ways to successfully accomplish this is through systems thinking.
Systems Thinking and Unstoppable Assessment
Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (2015), authors of Unstoppable Learning: Seven Essential Elements to Unleash Student Potential, outline systems thinking as the manner in which we, as teachers, approach the business of student learning. Systems thinking is the process of understanding how systems influence one another within a complete entity or larger system. Fisher and Frey (2015) drive home the importance of planning, launching, consolidating, assessing, adapting, managing, and leading learning in our classrooms in a systemic way. The authors assert, “Piecemeal approaches to improving teaching and learning are less than effective and often exhausting” (Fisher & Frey, 2015, p. 1). We’ll take that advice to heart as we examine the assessment element of Unstoppable Learning (which we refer to as Unstoppable Assessment) in this book and offer a practical framework to deepen your assessment literacy and fluency.
Educators often find themselves in systems that are not as effective and efficient as they could be—systems that have yet to determine how all elements of the learning organization can work in harmony, systems where teachers and principals independently take care of business as they face situations in which they must ask, “If not me, then who?” We should leave very little about our work to a single individual to address, resolve, or create when such a significant matter—the achievement, growth, and development of our students—is at stake.
All too often, educators have the best-laid plans, and then the students show up! Something goes awry, and all of a sudden, it exposes a vulnerability in the system. It’s often difficult to remedy that vulnerability in the moment. Systems thinking provides an avenue to proactively deal with vulnerability by understanding the interconnectedness among all the factors in the teaching and learning equation. The connections among all the stuff teachers need to do in preparation for students become more evident when we consider the patterns of thought and behavior that effective systems thinkers display, and their engagement with the four principles that are the basis for systems thinking.
Four Principles of Systems Thinking
Systems thinking requires educators to consider so much more than the task to complete or the steps in the process. Fisher and Frey (2015) define four harmonious principles for educators to consider as they strengthen learning systems for their students: (1) relationships, (2) communication, (3) responsiveness, and (4) sustainability. We suggest that the component of trust marries all four of these systems design principles together. Each of these principles will be threaded throughout the book’s content and the conversations it elicits. Through our work across the globe, we have found many educators who employ these very principles yet continue to feel stifled and defeated in their efforts to design learning systems that support each student’s growth and development. They feel either isolated as individuals or isolated as a team within their school, in their systems design work. These educators are forward thinkers in a system that isn’t designed to support them. We know that if we want to change our results, we have to change how we operate. For many schools, this means aligning in unity around a single focus of learning instead of perpetuating the cycles of organizational chaos that cause forward thinkers to become overwhelmed and debilitated in their work.
We believe the path to achieving this in assessment is by pairing the principles of systems thinking with the four elements of the Unstoppable Assessment framework: (1) seeking, (2) gathering, (3) discussing, and (4) responding to evidence. Table I.1 illustrates the four principles of systems thinking and their connections to our Unstoppable Assessment framework. It should be noted that the systems thinking principles aren’t exclusive to individual elements of the Unstoppable Assessment framework. One specific principle does not align to one specific element. Rather, they work hand in hand to support assessment.
Table I.1: Principles of Systems Thinking for Unstoppable Assessment
| Relationships |
When students
|
