Blackwell Blog #3

One of our greatest methods of assessment has been something that is unique to our summer school structure, having multiple instructors in one classroom enabling us to pull a student out of class if they need individualized instruction or extra help. We did this for all of our kids, and no more than once or twice a week for a period of no longer than 5-10 minutes. So they didn’t miss much of what was being covered in class, while we could directly see where they are each at and how far they have each come. Furthermore, having so many of teachers allowed us to get to know each of our students very well, very quickly while still being able to plan and teach effectively.

The official ‘assessment’ came in the form of a pre and post-test that mirrored one another. Our students did better than we anticipated on the pre-test, but still missed a lot of what they should know by eleventh of twelfth grade. There were a few students' that considerably underperformed, on both exams, and I feel that we failed them just as much as they failed, or almost failed, the class themselves.

In addition to these more formal assessments, we were fairly consistent at assigning homework each night – sometimes from multiple instructors. I gave little to no homework during the past year, and hope that I can next year but am not keeping my hopes up. Again, the nature of the beast has changed due to the dynamics we have here at Holly Springs, but nevertheless we have been able to see how much more material can be covered and much deeper the students’ level of cognition runs when they are responsible for work both inside and outside of the classroom. In addition, we are teaching them just that – responsibility; how to be accountable for their own education and make it a priority. What we could have done better would have been to improve our own accountability and resposibility by keeping better track of homework assignments for absent or tardy students.

A failure could be our lack of parent-contact and absence of an official progress report. While we could easily blame this on the short duration of our Holly Springs tenure, it still should have been done. Because of this, we had several students very close to not passing our class in the final days of summer school, all of which claimed to have thought they “were doing fine”, and a few others who did, in fact, fail. This, to me, is almost unacceptable in a summer program such as ours and shows that somewhere along the line, somehow we as teachers didn't give these couple of kids what they needed, and what we had the ability to give.

As for individual students, the first is easy. We had one particular girl who came in the first week of school and did nothing but put her head in her hands and scowl the entire morning. She was not rude at all, but never participated in class voluntarily and rarely provided anything when called upon. We kept on her, involving her in a non-intrusive way, and by the middle of the second week she had started to open up, raise her hand occasionally and participate in class. She told us she is shy, and doesn’t know anyone here, and agreed that her reluctance to take chances on answers or jump into the mix may have contributed to her having ended up in summer school at all. By the end of the month, she was laughing and joking along with us. I think this month helped her out quite a bit, with confidence in the classroom and socially as well. The other individual who made great strides was a young man that we paid special attention to during our out-of-class individualized sessions. I spoke with him more than any other student, and our other instructors all pulled him aside often as well, as he needed the most help. He was eager to learn, and willing to try. However, his basic skills were so low it was difficult for him to keep up with the rest of the class. By pulling him out occasionally, giving him multiple opportunities to get something right or done, and working with him one-on-one, we could directly see the “light go on”, and were ecstatic to see him begin to answer questions correctly on quizzes, in class, and eventually on our post-test. These were objectives that he did not know at all prior to this month, and he at least has a basic understanding of now.

Overall, as was the case last summer, both us and the students got a tremendous amount out of our experience at Holly Springs. The students get instruction more intense (especially for the 1-2 person classes) than they may have ever received in their lives, more attention than they are used to for sure. A lot of material is crammed in, but because of this they are able to experience the entire spectrum of a course in one McSchoolYear. As for us, I enjoy getting to know the kids, and getting to know myself as a teacher better - still fixing some things, changing some others. Because we are around so many other great instructors, I’ve picked up many tips that I will hope to implement come August in my own classroom and was given feedback as to how I can improve what I already am doing. If only every school was run like this school, then students would actually start learning.