Life as I see it: #Teaching Tip #10. Miscellaneous Musings

This is the tenth of a series of 10 posts.

All 10 posts ran on consecutive weeks.

As of Labor Day, 2018, all ten of these #Teaching Tip posts are searchable on my blog.

If you're not a teacher and you're reading this,
let a teacher know they are available.

I've been in enough in-service/professional-development sessions to guarantee that the information in this series is better than most of the information you’ll get while sitting through all your teacher workshops this coming school year.

You might be asking yourself,

What gives this guy the nerve to offer ideas about teaching AND commentary on professional development to anyone?

That's a legitimate question.

I invite you to follow this link and check my credentials.

https://www.crdowning.com/engage-in-thinking

This is the final post on grading.

That’s not to imply, infer, or any other “i-word” that this is the final word on grading.

The post is, however, all I have to say about the subject at this moment in time.

There are districts and school sites that have implemented grading school-wide protocols. I can’t imagine the number of those decreasing to any great extent over the next few years. The local autonomy I lived during my early years at Monte Vista High was replaced by district-level control with the implementation of academic content standards.

Common Core and associated movements like Next Generation Science Standards—NGSS—are nation-wide “reforms.” School boards will not forget dollars invested in such programs. In my crystal ball, the foreseeable future is one of an increase in top-down ideas and decreased spontaneity by teachers in content, process, and grading.

While I’m glad that I retired before this switch was complete, I know that there are teachers who will implement strategies that they know is the best for their students. While such strategies might not originate in the current reform box, in my experience, good teaching by good teachers will continue, in spite of the reformation de jour.

I’m closing this series by presenting portfolios as a way for students to take ownership for their grades. The example is from an integrated science program in the mid-1990s. Some of us used the idea for two years at Great Oak High School a decade later. Focus on the ideas, not the specific verbiage.

While at Monte Vista, the Science Department used portfolios to help students track their progress in specific skills and content. A team of Monte Vista teachers designed program. I wrote most of a four-volume series, one per semester, of texts. The Grossmont Union High School District published the series. I know schools in Los Angeles, Denver, and Houston purchased some of them.

Here’s the mailer the district sent out nationwide.

For a brief period of time, I got to teach material I helped select using methods I helped implement supported by textbooks of which I was the primary author.

I told you that things were different for teachers during the first half of my career!

These are the directions for each "Portfolio Day." We had one per grading period. The entire class period was devoted to portfolio-associated work.

As the semester went along, there were more items from which to choose for each category. Replacing an entry with a better one was encouraged.

Below is the two-sided cover sheet stapled to each student portfolio item.

The categories were for our science classes at Monte Vista. We did laboratory reports instead of drawings at Great Oak. The Independent Student Choice is any assignment the student wanted to showcase.

You should have categories that are common to many units in your curriculum.

Here are the Teacher Notes for the process.

If you'd like a PDF of complete pages shown above, email me at the address below.

Over the course of the year, it was inspiring to hear students while looking at work they identified as the "best" months earlier say such thing as

"I can't believe I thought this was good!"
"I've improved so much at <topic>."
"I'm glad we can switch these old ones with newer, better ones."

The first portfolio entry for each category was graded after one of the Portfolio Days. The completed portfolio was graded as well. Only new items were scored. The grade for each graded item was included as part of the final portfolio score.

One goal of every teacher must be to teach students the value of improving over time. The best way I've used is the student portfolio.

This is the last post in this series. I hope you