Fear the Turtle

Last week, the Fighting Tigers got exactly what they needed from a Homecoming date with the Chippewas of Central Michigan. An easy rout. The team clicked on virtually all cylinders. The intensity was present. Mistakes were cut down.

Yes, I know it was Central Michigan. But the way this season has unfolded, it truly would not have been a surprise to see the Chippies hang close with the heavyweights. Quite a few people predicted a close game. A couple daring souls even dared enough to mark down a win for CM. Thankfully, that didn't pan out.

So here we sit at 5-2, 2-2 in the ACC. And we've got a matchup in College Park today with the Maryland Terrapins.

The Terps aren't too difficult to remember. Last year, our shot at the ACC title got kicked away by a last-minute drive that shoved our wearied defense around like dust mops. That 13-12 debacle in Death Valley was a bizarre game in more ways than one. I don't know where the players' heads were that day, but they didn't look motivated in the knowledge that the outcome would determine their conference destiny. Even worse, the normally rowdy Tiger fans were strangely subdued for most of the game. Sure, the low scoring affair probably contributed, but it was one of the few games in which I could hear myself talk. That should never happen at a Clemson game in Death Valley.

The Fighting Tigers have struggled in recent years against Ralph Friedgen's squads. Even when all the stats say we should win, and in some cases win handily, we seem to get out of rhythm and make more mistakes against them than we should. Certainly they are soundly coached, play sound, disciplined football, and have a solid grasp of the fundamentals. Which is exactly what we need to improve. Especially on special teams.

As always, this game has huge conference stakes. If the Tigers win, they still hold their destiny in their hands (which only means the Duke game next week automatically becomes the biggest game. Yes, you heard me right. Duke). If we blow it, that pretty much blows our chances. James Davis has already gone on record saying that we will win this game. Cockiness? Unmerited provocation of the opposing team? Not the way I see it. It's about time someone lit a fire under this team and stepped up to give us some vocal support. Davis put himself and his teammates on notice to bring their A game and play full force for the entire 60 minutes. Which is what I hope will happen.

I don't know. This game is scary. We have the talent, the experience, and the power to blow this team out. But we had it last year as well and could hardly even sniff the endzone. Again, we struggle against the Fridge. Plus, it's in the always hostile confines of College Park (and The Weather Channel is predicting rain). What's going to happen? Will we shake our turtle phobia?

FINAL SCORE: ...

...

...

*sigh* Make a believer out of me, James.

Maryland 21, Clemson 18.

Fill in the Blank

I could be grading personal narratives right now. Or pre-planning for next week, short one that it is. But I don't feel particularly up to it right now.

I've already spent most of today grading half of 1st period's narratives, making out a vocabulary test for 4th, (I create my own tests rather than cheat with ExamViewer. I'm either unorthodox or just plain wacky. Maybe both), fixing my cart, dropping off papers in my respective rooms, and oh yeah, teaching. Thought I'd left something out in there.

Teachers know what I mean when I say I'm at the end of my rope. A thirty-year veteran last week chilled me with the admonition that in all her time, she still hasn't gotten past the struggles with academics and classroom management. She still has weeks when the bad days vastly outnumber the good.

I wasn't entirely sure how to feel about that. I'd wager she said that to help me feel better, to reassure me that I wasn't alone in what I had been feeling. Instead, it led to the opposite end. Thirty years. A third of a century into your profession, and you can still feel like a greenhorn in your classroom? Oy vey.

I don't know. Maybe I'm getting pessimistic in my old age. Heh. A college friend told me recently that my new glasses (I have thicker, darker, more pronounced frames now) gave me the stereotypical look of a cynical, world-weary college professor. It's been a long time since anybody mistook me for an 18-year old freshman, that's for sure. I've never been one to agree that clothes make the man, that your appearance defines the kind of person you are. Still, freshman vs. professor is a world of difference.

Or maybe it's not how old you look, but how old you feel. The past few days, I have been bothered by a nagging pain under my left armpit. I feel it whenever I raise my arm to grab something or touch it with my palm. I suspect it's a swollen lymph node. May need to get that checked out if it doesn't go away. I've also experienced minor pain in my lower back. Not constant or anything, but all it takes is for me to turn or arch my back a certain way, and it catches. Some bedrest this weekend should help that. Or maybe I should reconsider bending over to grab my tote bucket of textbooks.

I talk like this, and it seems ridiculous. I'm 23 years old, still very much in the prime of life. These pains are quibbles compared to another dear friend and fellow teacher I know who missed last week due to a serious problem with her nervous system. My 7th grade English teacher (who prophesied my future) worked her way through a bout with lupus that eventually claimed her life, but she didn't let it stop her. Oh, she had several sick days, for sure, but she kept coming back for as long as she could.

I suppose I'm just trying to follow my own advice. I tell it to my students as often as I can. Write to express yourselves. Even if you're drawing a creative blank, just start writing. You never know what might spill out of that pencil, pen, or keyboard that could spark you back on track again. Even if it's pure garbage, it's better than sitting there doing nothing. At least you can say you're trying to work through it.

Maybe I'm hopeful that this blog will spark a bout of creativity. Or at least give me the motivation I need to finish reading my students' papers. Then again, you'd think report cards on the horizon would be all the motivation I need. There we go with that whole assessment thing again.

So I'm drawing a blank. And I'm writing. What, I don't know. How, I have no idea. But it's something to do. A way to fill in the blank.

The Liability of Assessment

During my second week of teaching, I administered a quiz on the qualities of writing and improvement strategies in my Language Arts classes. My students had yet to submit their own, original pieces of writing or construct any form of written work to show how firm a grasp they had on the concepts. Yet there I was, passing out those short-answer quizzes in silent hope that they would remember at least a handful of the concepts that we discussed.

Was I expecting too much? Is it fair to students to assess them on writing qualities that to them are useless until harnessed, mere notes to sit crammed inside their three-ring binder or the bottom of their backpack until needed for that first major composition? Maybe so.

I suppose part of the blame can be laid at the district’s feet. In our first faculty meeting, I received the “lowdown” about grade weightings, percentages assigned to different pieces of assessment. Now I didn’t balk at the 50/50 share between minor (homework, quizzes, and in-class assignments) and major (tests & projects) assessments; as a fellow Language Arts teacher explained to me, it’s really not much different than how we spread them out in the old system to begin with. The subcategories are still ours to manipulate as we like.

However, I blinked at the idea that my school was requiring me to assign a minimum of six major assessments in the span of a nine-week period. That translates to six test grades or six major projects or any combination of the two. Roughly one every week-and-a-half. Six. In a single quarter. Minimum. And this wasn’t a suggestion. It was a requirement.

Have instruction and the learning process become too highly standardized? I think so. As a nation, we are so bound and determined to “promote” our students, to push them to that next level that we take shortcuts disguised as benchmarks. In doing so we reduce teachers to data machines that crank out facts a mile a minute for students to soak up like sponges. Authentic instruction suffers because teachers face the pressures of “teaching to the test;” perish forbid that students learn something life-changing in class that doesn’t show up on the test!

And tests aren’t even “tests” so much as they are vestiges of Social Darwinism, elevating only a select number of students and leaving the rest to wallow in the mosh pit. The classroom environment becomes a shark-infested, high-risk zone. It’s sink-or-swim: either get it right the first time or don’t try at all: the school is swimming on without you.

Being a first-year teacher, I am in no position to seriously affect district-mandated policy. I’m often advised that it’s not my job to reinvent the wheel. But that doesn’t mean I can’t improve the wheel. Look at companies like Cooper, Goodyear, and Michelin. They don’t roll out any startling new inventions in their tires, but simply improve on what’s already there. Therefore, my question becomes this: how can I make authentic instruction work with assessment? How can I creatively merge the two so that the students get something worthwhile out of the class and the district is appeased?

An article I read written by Norbert Elliot, “The Direct Assessment of Writing: Notes for Teachers,” offers hope that compromises are possible, if not the same for every situation. Elliot proposes teachers adopt methods such as holistic scoring and portfolio assessment to effectively instruct students while complementing the expectations of assessments.

In holistic scoring, students submit their responses to meaningful, whole compositions while being assigned grades based upon a consistent scoring rubric. Elliot is adamant that when writing is evaluated holistically, it preserves the process-driven approach to writing while providing students with clear information about content quality and evaluative technique. This way, students do not feel so intimidated by grades that their writing loses the chance to develop and they gain a greater understanding of the big picture, which they need more than just the pieces of the picture.

In portfolio assessment, students keep a record of their written work, taken at various points in the year under varying circumstances. This gives the teacher a broader view of the student’s ability and development, given multiple pieces to work with, and preserves the writing process by encouraging students to draft often for the benefit of readers: the teacher and fellow students, who offer constructive feedback.

While both methods Elliot offers have their advantages, the drawbacks do stand out. The one thing that I tell my students to pay closest attention to regarding their compositions is written feedback. I relish the idea of jotting down little comments in the side margins and between the lines of their work. I want them to read those more than I want them focused on what grade they receive. Otherwise, what are they writing for? To get a good grade in a middle school class?

I want them to write for themselves, and their personal progress as young writers. I want them to use comments submitted by me and their peers to improve on their weaknesses and identify their strong points. A number grade won’t say anything (which is why I give checks for rough drafts rather than numerical grades; obviously I’ll score the final copies, but at this point, they have only written down a bunch of ideas on paper. It’s not yet ready to be scored. What would be the point of assessing numerically?)

Holistic scoring, as Elliot describes it, is quite rapid, meant to ease the burden of grading papers on teachers. However, in doing so, it takes away the ability of teachers to provide diagnostic information relating to specific writing proficiencies and deficiencies. Students lose the chance to be evaluated with a critical lens and there is a tendency to rush through their work, which can inadvertently foster poor writing habits.

Holistic scoring also often considers one piece of writing, for example, personal narrative, to the exclusion of others such as expository, descriptive, or persuasive essays. This can prove potentially harmful for students who are perhaps stronger with one mode or need additional help on another. Of course, portfolio assessment, by its nature, can surmount this obstacle, as it allows for an assortment of student writing samples to be submitted, thus enriching the curriculum.

Being a floater, I am somewhat at a disadvantage when it comes to implementing what I consider to be authentic instruction. I don’t mean to make apologies or excuses, but even so, I face the same requirements under the umbrella of standardized assessment. I’ve had to, on occasion, use a little holistic evaluation in checking my students’ journals once per week. They know that the purpose of the journal is to give them a whole notebook filled with ideas for their compositions. That is why I encourage them to use it not only for the in-class assignments, but for their own daily lives; I want them to “journal” at any time of the day in which they feel the need, not merely when they are obligated or pressed into it by the teacher. Their three-ring binders I require for class each day can also serve as their writing portfolio, with final copies and numerous drafts and revisions that preceded them hole-punched into them.

I cannot say if I would arrange this system differently if I had a classroom with filing cabinets, storage bins that can save their work rather than me taking it around in the hall every day, and consistent sets of workbooks, dictionaries, and texts. For now, both the system and my placement are what they are, and I’m still searching for consistently sound methods to balance the weight of assessment with effective pedagogy.

Even so, Elliot’s article, coupled with my initial ventures into the politics of teaching, got me thinking about how the society in which we live mirrors the way that we are expected to teach. My linking of standardized tests to Darwinian vestiges was mostly intended for dramatic effect, but honestly, I don’t think it’s that far off the mark.

Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong-headed about promoting only a certain number of students who’ve “got the right stuff” while the rest get left behind? Should we not instead be trying to fix the cracks in the surface of our educational system so as to keep “the rest” from slipping through, rather than waiting for it to happen so we can say, “oh well, let’s just toss more tax dollars into No Child Left Behind because its existence is surely justified?”

Food for thought, this "assessment" thing.