Transcript
Speaker: Hello, Rafa.
Speaker: Hi, Emily.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: Good, thanks.
Speaker: And you?
Speaker: getting over a cold and getting my back is getting better but i am i'm feeling much more grounded than i was earlier in the week yeah yeah yeah february sneaks up on you it's like there's the optimism of january and you're so excited it's like you know new school year september energy and then for me at least then by february i start to fray on my
Speaker: new intentions and commitments.
Speaker: So first of all, round of applause for us being here.
Speaker: Yay.
Speaker: Small wins, small wins.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a shout out to our teachers that are enduring the early season of testing, which is actually just being rolled out.
Speaker: I teach, I just started my spring semester as an adjunct at a local college where I teach teachers who are
Speaker: currently working.
Speaker: They're in a master's program, learning about TESOL methods.
Speaker: And this time of year, I feel like- TESOL is teaching English as a second or another language?
Speaker: Teaching English to speakers of other languages.
Speaker: Other languages.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's like basically, yeah, it's like, you know, the class I'm teaching is literacy methods for multilingual learners.
Speaker: The subtext is in US schools that are English dominant, you know, but-
Speaker: Anyway, that's a whole other story.
Speaker: But the topic today, why I bring up assessment season, right?
Speaker: There's testing season that kind of notoriously starts in January, at least with the teachers I work with who work with multilingual learners.
Speaker: In January and February, there's large scale testing of
Speaker: Students that are learning English in U.S. schools, they take a big test called the Access Test that levels them for their English language proficiency.
Speaker: And then right after that round of testing that has to happen in January and February, there comes state standardized testing, right?
Speaker: Every state has their own one.
Speaker: I don't know what it's called.
Speaker: New York and Rhode Island is called RICAS.
Speaker: They're the notorious standardized tests that measure students' English and math.
Speaker: And I feel like the second half of the year for a lot of teachers is really marked by
Speaker: time taken out of their classes to test students.
Speaker: And there's a lot of frustration because learning time gets really interrupted by that.
Speaker: And that prompted me to think about a thread that came up in our last conversation about curriculum.
Speaker: where we were talking about fidelity and faith to curriculum and a necessary part of curriculum in the United States public education system is assessment because we need to assess or know what kids are learning and what they're not learning so that we can, you know,
Speaker: chart their learning course basically or adjust our teaching, you know, depending on what kinds of assessments are being administered.
Speaker: And of course, assessments happen not just in standardized form.
Speaker: They don't happen just in January.
Speaker: They don't happen just in March.
Speaker: They happen all the time.
Speaker: And there's all different kinds of assessments.
Speaker: You can design your own assessments to use in class.
Speaker: You have mandated assessments through state standardized testing.
Speaker: You have
Speaker: All sorts of ways to monitor and test, quote unquote, what students know.
Speaker: But as we kind of touched on last week, assessment, like a mandated curriculum, can also be really oppressive, right?
Speaker: If you were to think about assessment in some of your old jobs, what comes to mind for you?
Speaker: Was it ever a useful thing or did it become oppressive like it did in my mind?
Speaker: Well, let me think about it.
Speaker: We did do one job I had every week.
Speaker: We gave something called an FSA, a formative, what did the S stand for?
Speaker: silly i forgot what fsa the s was and we would look at those and see if kids learned what we had taught that week and then we would change based on that for the next week it was pretty much multiple choice questions with second graders and seeing if they answered right or wrong so that was the focus of that so
Speaker: And then it could be helpful in a very narrow sense of like, oh, in this context, in this way that they know this.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But does that really say what they know or is that really helpful to help people deepen their own understanding?
Speaker: I don't think so.
Speaker: And so I think the oppressive part of that was that it really led to a narrowing, a continued narrowing of what was important in terms of learning.
Speaker: But that was in direct response to the bigger standardized tests that were given by the charter school network I worked at.
Speaker: that were in response to the bigger state tests that were eventually given, like you were saying around testing season, which is coming up.
Speaker: So it was often March, April.
Speaker: And so it just really, there wasn't really a lot of room mentally or time-wise to really explore any other form of assessment or way of doing things.
Speaker: So in that specific instance, assessment served, I felt like, to control what teachers did and what children did
Speaker: And this little intro, kind of this initial meditation on assessment is really... Meditation on assessment.
Speaker: Meditation on assessment is a really nice intro to what we wanted to dive into, which was assessment in schools, but also kind of before we get at some of the...
Speaker: really specific examples of what assessments have not worked for us in our past.
Speaker: We want to unpack some of what assessment means in U.S. schools right now and kind of what some of the assumptions are about what assessment must measure and what it is before we dive into more examples for our own teaching of what assessment has meant to us and what we hope it can be like
Speaker: in the future.
Speaker: So when I hear you talking about assessment, one of the things that came to my mind that really resonated with me about my feelings about the way assessment is done in a lot of schools now for, I should say assessment of children's learning, not assessment of
Speaker: school successes or teachers, you know, teaching capabilities.
Speaker: But I think this idea of high stakes is a really important aspect of it.
Speaker: Assessments, as they're often rolled out in schools in the way that a lot of my kids understood them, was that whether it was a midterm or a test that they had at the end of a unit or a final essay, even if you tried to get holistic about it, anytime there was...
Speaker: a thing where they had to demonstrate their learning, where they were assessed by us in a formal way, or even in a formative way, if they knew something was being graded, even just a class assignment, it became about a rush to completion and a rush to, um, there was a frenzy about the product and not about just actually having, you know, good data to look at and, um,
Speaker: So that teachers could look at it and say, okay, well, look at what Rosa's doing here.
Speaker: Like, this is really interesting.
Speaker: It's like so many kids got hung up on wanting to perform the way they thought they needed to, to get a good grade.
Speaker: Even if it was something like a state standardized test where they weren't going to get graded on it, they would get so hung up on the process of whatever it was because it was so high stakes because it was positive.
Speaker: It's so high stakes to them.
Speaker: That, yeah,
Speaker: We didn't get good data from it, right?
Speaker: We didn't get like, just a lot of raw data about what they were learning, like to measure, right?
Speaker: What they were learning.
Speaker: So I think that's like one really key aspect of how assessment is thought of and talked about in schools is that it needs to be a final product, even though
Speaker: In teacher ed programs, we talk about summative and formative assessments.
Speaker: Summative assessments coming at the end of a unit, like a test or an essay.
Speaker: Formative assessments happening ongoing throughout a curriculum to monitor ongoing progress, right?
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: the rushing thing really strikes me because with formative assessment too, that's the assessment that's supposed not to be high stakes.
Speaker: It's supposed to just be in the moment, at least in my experience, like you were encouraged to do a lot of it.
Speaker: So in a way that like, I felt a lot of pressure in a way to do a lot of it and rush and,
Speaker: Kind of reminds me of who was the guest, but Ezra Klein recently had a podcast episode on the Sabbath and the importance of rest, which I found really fascinating.
Speaker: But one thing that the guest said that really struck me was that time quickening narrows cognitive capability.
Speaker: And so I think about all the things that we do that we
Speaker: we end up rushing and how that really compromises what arguably is more of the end goal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At least a part of the end goal, which is a compromise or cognitive ability.
Speaker: I love, you know what I'd love in the practice of embracing slowing down.
Speaker: I would love to repeat that quote because I want to unpack it because it's yes.
Speaker: So what's that quote again?
Speaker: I'd love to ruminate of it further and sit with it for a second.
Speaker: Time quickening narrows cognitive capability.
Speaker: Time quickening.
Speaker: So does that mean like packing in too much to like a period of time?
Speaker: So like, yeah.
Speaker: Time quickening.
Speaker: What was it?
Speaker: Consolidates or?
Speaker: Leads to a narrowing.
Speaker: Leads to a narrowing.
Speaker: Of cognitive ability.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's this idea I think a lot of people are questioning, can we really multitask, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, you know, in a lot of kind of, you know, junk science or talk about, you know, a woman brain versus, or like a mom brain versus a non-mom brain is that moms are really good at multitasking or doing multiple things at once.
Speaker: And it's like, yeah, are we really good?
Speaker: at multitasking or do we just have to do multiple things at once to get done?
Speaker: Out of necessity.
Speaker: Yeah, we're told we need to do.
Speaker: So that's interesting.
Speaker: And how does that relate to assessment?
Speaker: I'd love to connect it back.
Speaker: So I love this idea though, that like pressing too much into trying to pack our schedules and every minute of our day with productivity is...
Speaker: not ultimately going to deliver the results we think.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like I think one way it connects back to assessment is assessment is seen as so crucial in turnaround situations, especially.
Speaker: And so, and we want to do a lot of assessment and we try to cram in as much assessment.
Speaker: And when you're vying for money from the government or from foundations, like they want to see a lot of data and
Speaker: And so there's this constant flurry of assess, assess, assess to know if kids learned what you taught is the whole thinking.
Speaker: But ironically, the more you want to assess, like you said, what you meant, you kind of alluded to with the testing season, the more you're preparing for testing, especially in for assessing, the less time is actually for deeper thinking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I also, I wrote this down while you were talking, because what you said made me think of the next point, the next assumption we want to unpack about what assessment means in U.S. schools.
Speaker: I suppose what it's thought to mean, right, and what it actually is, how it is carried out, is that assessment means
Speaker: is painted as something that needs to be done to measure objectively what students know, to measure students' progress.
Speaker: That applies to teacher-made assessments for monitoring learning in a classroom.
Speaker: And it also applies to these things like standardized tests.
Speaker: where kids across classrooms in a school, across schools in a district, across districts in a state, are given the same test to measure how students do against each other in an effort, in a very like, you know, one could say admirable effort to make sure all students are getting the same quality of education, right?
Speaker: Can all students on the standardized objective form of monitoring student learning
Speaker: Do all students perform the same?
Speaker: And if not, where are their differences in performance and why is that happening?
Speaker: Theoretically, that's what should happen with these tests.
Speaker: What happens, as you talked about, is that these assessment results are certainly part of a political project, right?
Speaker: They're not effective.
Speaker: Aside from how these assessments are designed to spotlight Eurocentric, English-centric ways of knowing, right?
Speaker: that's its own thing.
Speaker: But aside from test design, which you could talk about forever, we could talk about all of this forever.
Speaker: It's like the way assessment results are cared about is not...
Speaker: to get the information about, okay, what are our kids knowing?
Speaker: What do kids need growth in, right?
Speaker: Which is what we think of assessment is the point of it being, right?
Speaker: To measure what students know and what they need to grow in, right?
Speaker: That's essentially what assessment should be for.
Speaker: It's used as a tool to punish certain schools for not performing as well and to punish teachers and administrators.
Speaker: And it's also used to,
Speaker: on the flip side to get funding for schools of schools doing a good job, they get more money if they're a place that's a charter getting a good, uh, renewed help them keep their charter can help them expand their model.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: If they're taking a corporate approach.
Speaker: So these results aren't just to purely find out how a student is doing.
Speaker: A lot of these specifically standardized tests are used to, uh,
Speaker: move money around and to advocate for certain models of teaching, right?
Speaker: Yeah, models of teaching, like a very simplistic model, a very one-dimensional model of education.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, I mean, yeah, like my issue with assessment in general is that I really value how we can hold complexity.
Speaker: So I try to find and want to work on finding different ways to actually still monitor for what children are knowing and doing in a much more complex way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the way it's come up recently, if we think about concrete examples of how assessments and approach to assessing have been present in our lives and also troubling, because what we want to bring to this podcast are things that have troubled us and upset us about current states of education and
Speaker: what we're wanting to do or advocating for instead.
Speaker: Um, if we think about the aspect of assessment as it's done in a lot of schools that trouble us, um, I think what is emerging to us, at least in this conversation and in recent conversations, just how much, um, time is taken up with doing these assessments and how much,
Speaker: time it takes away from student-led learning, right?
Speaker: When we put a lot of emphasis on assessments that are even teacher-designed assessments that aren't just standardized assessments, but assessments that don't come from learners or aren't informed in some aspect by conversations with them, we're not allowing a lot of space
Speaker: for students to show us the full breadth of things they know.
Speaker: And we're not allowing our own knowledge as teachers or administrators to be impacted by the brilliance of our students.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we're just missing so much of what our students know and what makes them excited and what gives them fire.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We're missing that by focusing so much on preparing them for these high stakes programs.
Speaker: tests, whether it be college essays, whether it be finals, whether it be these standardized tests, right?
Speaker: So much of what we're doing is pushing towards an end product and not respecting individual students' learning journeys.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like you and I very much value the process more so than the product from an emphasis point of view.
Speaker: And I think the question for listeners and the question for people considering systems is what do they value, right?
Speaker: Because if someone values the product, then I want them to say that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think we need to dig more into what that means before we pose our alternative.
Speaker: Ooh, there's an alternative?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Rafa has a beautiful alternative I'm really excited to dive into.
Speaker: But recently in my class I'm teaching with my in-service teachers, we talked about what assessments they use to monitor students' literacy, what they bring to school in terms of what they know about
Speaker: reading the word and the world and also writing.
Speaker: And I had them do a gallery walk, you know, type of discussion where there's
Speaker: It was digital, but we had a slideshow and they had some prompts and they put up sticky notes with their thoughts on it.
Speaker: And one slide was about how do you measure what students know, like the literacy knowledge students have, right?
Speaker: Another slide had, how do you measure their English language proficiency?
Speaker: And how do you measure their proficiency of other languages, right?
Speaker: And the slide that had the most sticky notes on it, where there was a million sticky notes on the literacy slide.
Speaker: And all of the ways that people had to measure their students' literacy knowledge
Speaker: the assessments they use that they said were all standardized tests that were created not by them, but were national tests that you could, your school could purchase to access, or you could, I suppose some of them you probably could access for free online, but they were things like, um, the Fontys and Pinnell leveling system.
Speaker: Um, the, uh,
Speaker: star reading test, which is a really popular reading test.
Speaker: Dolch sight word list reading.
Speaker: It was all, there was a million different, you know, tests that they had written up.
Speaker: And I posed a question to them after.
Speaker: And I said,
Speaker: what are we not getting from these?
Speaker: And what information, like, are these tests useful?
Speaker: We just had a frank discussion because we don't get that to teachers in school because we're so pressed to give these assessments and then show growth by the end of the year, according to these assessments, because like the curriculum where there's tons of people who are very happy to sell products to schools, you know, there are tons of these standardized tests that are used not only once a year, like for a state standardized test, but they're used,
Speaker: as the format of learning assessment in a classroom, um, in an effort to provide a standardized way to measure what students know.
Speaker: Um, a lot of them were like, I know my students can do more than what they're showing on the test.
Speaker: And because of anxiety, because, um,
Speaker: Maybe they come in on a day where they're having stuff going on outside of school that's affecting their performance in school.
Speaker: Like there's certain time parameters that just don't allow for kids to show the breadth of what they know.
Speaker: The questions that they're asked don't let them show what they know.
Speaker: The...
Speaker: the method of giving the test multiple choice, like you alluded to giving those to young children or any children boxes in what they can know.
Speaker: And if they have an interpretation, if we're thinking about a literacy test and we're asking them to do show what they know only through multiple choice test, if they're not given base to write an answer and explain themselves or verbally explain themselves and what they're comprehending about a text, they might have a perfectly logical interpretation of a text that just isn't captured in the
Speaker: a test writer's identification of what, you know?
Speaker: So they all agreed that like, yes, there's some helpful information for some of these things, but a lot of times the questions aren't asked in a way that allow them to show what they know.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: Ultimately, we kind of just spiraled into this conversation about how so many of these standardized tests, which my students, my in-service teachers identified as the way they monitored their students' literacy learning, these assessments weren't useful, right?
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I should say they weren't useful as the only tool to monitor what students know, right?
Speaker: Especially for how much time they took, I imagine.
Speaker: How much time they took.
Speaker: How much emphasis they were given.
Speaker: Yeah, to give you a window for people that haven't taught, it's star reading test.
Speaker: That was a very, that was the way, one of the ways that my middle school that I taught at measured students' literacy knowledge.
Speaker: It's a time.
Speaker: How long did it take?
Speaker: It depended on the student because I think it was an adaptive test, which meant that the questions got harder the more you got right.
Speaker: And obviously it didn't get harder if you...
Speaker: you know, got initials wrong.
Speaker: It reminds me of map testing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm sure people have all experienced similar things.
Speaker: But with star testing, you don't just give one at the beginning of the year and one at the end of the year.
Speaker: Oh, no, no.
Speaker: If you scored in the red, which means that you had a low reading level according to your grade level, according to star, I was supposed to administer that test something like once a month.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Once a month.
Speaker: I mean, maybe I'm misremembering.
Speaker: It was certainly...
Speaker: I could see that though, with the idea that you get out of the red.
Speaker: I imagine that's the logic.
Speaker: And a lot of my students, whether they, because of them just clicking through or not taking the test seriously or being confused by the questions, right?
Speaker: They were testing low, even though I know they could read more than it, this like, you know, test said they.
Speaker: Imagine if you could document those other times, Emily.
Speaker: Yeah, but that wouldn't be objective.
Speaker: Who am I, but just a brain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But what is a, right?
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know you're being sarcastic.
Speaker: But in response to that too, but what is more real than someone actually reading something to you?
Speaker: And for those of us that, again, haven't been in the teaching world, that STAR test was seen as more...
Speaker: valuable even though we knew kids weren't reusing it right they weren't can i can i just mention something here that just reminds me of is no don't be sorry no i love the soapbox just i'm pushing you off right now we can have two soapboxes um
Speaker: It just reminds me of, in the pursuit of objectivity, how decontextualized a lot of these tests are and how lack of context is seen as a strength of a test because arguably it's more objective.
Speaker: But when you see the absurdity of this, you might have heard about the running, I think it was the talking pineapple that appeared in the New York State test one year.
Speaker: Yes, I like that.
Speaker: And the whole idea behind a talking pineapple and the story made no sense.
Speaker: Just to unpack that, the talking pineapple was a story given on the New York State Press.
Speaker: And you had to read the story about a talking pineapple.
Speaker: Doing who knows what.
Speaker: Doing who knows what to answer reading comprehension questions about it.
Speaker: And it made no sense.
Speaker: And the whole initial defense of it was that, well, it equaled the playing field because no one would have prior knowledge about a talking pineapple.
Speaker: Nobody's ever seen one.
Speaker: But that's absurd.
Speaker: That's absurd because it just highlights context is inseparable from knowledge.
Speaker: I also, I, you know, I had, I did an interesting lesson when I, when it, in one of the seasons of state standardized tests, when my kids, mind you, layer, layer onto this, it was COVID the first year in 2020, school year 2020 to 2021, when I was seeing kids A day, B day.
Speaker: And I,
Speaker: people in our community were dying, right?
Speaker: Like trauma on trauma on nonsense of a like way of meeting with kids, right?
Speaker: Like we had state standardized tests.
Speaker: So I was still getting kids pulled to do tests from January to May.
Speaker: Total disruption.
Speaker: And we brought in kids who had opted into home learning for the year back to school to take these motherfucking tests.
Speaker: Anyway, you can tell I was not... Oh, got that ad to E in explicit on this episode.
Speaker: Not for your mom.
Speaker: Just for your mom.
Speaker: I'm a mom so I can say that now.
Speaker: Everything I say is from the mouth of the mother.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: Anyway, I was like, this is absurd.
Speaker: So I did it.
Speaker: I was like, I'm going to give them test taking tools so they don't have total anxiety.
Speaker: I'm going to prepare them.
Speaker: But we're also going to do a lesson where we talk about the absurdity of these things.
Speaker: And I have them read a story.
Speaker: There was like an NPR article I found about the talking pineapple.
Speaker: And we read it, you know, and we're like, I was like, what do you think of this being included on a test?
Speaker: Like, does this make sense?
Speaker: And we had a really interesting conversation about, because I tried to do something, you know, talking about being critical and like, I was like, tried to deconstruct the world of standardized testing for them before they went into it.
Speaker: Because a lot of my students went into these days with anxiety because they thought,
Speaker: it measured their success, right?
Speaker: Even though state standardized tests don't impact their school grades or impact their direction of schooling directly.
Speaker: It impacts more the district and the teachers on it.
Speaker: But anyway, yes.
Speaker: So that's just to say I did bring that into my students and ask them what they thought.
Speaker: This was a fair way to measure their knowledge, right?
Speaker: And they were like, it was interesting to pose that to them and deconstruct.
Speaker: would you do well showing what you knew about reading, reading a story about a talking pineapple?
Speaker: Anyway, so I did the reading for that.
Speaker: And I also did some research on that story and that incident.
Speaker: And I felt so bad for the author.
Speaker: It's like an actual story that someone had published.
Speaker: You know, it wasn't just written for a test.
Speaker: Oh, I don't think I realized that.
Speaker: it takes the craft out of writing too.
Speaker: It's like talking about decontextualizing.
Speaker: I'm sure there were illustrations, maybe not.
Speaker: I don't know, but it was an illustration.
Speaker: I think it was a pineapple walking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that story wasn't meant to be read on a test.
Speaker: It was like a silly story.
Speaker: I actually remember that.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It wasn't meant to be read on it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, it's just a fun story.
Speaker: It's like, I can imagine like finding a story about a talking pineapple, very charming and entertaining, but yeah,
Speaker: When it's on this high stakes format, it's not appropriate, you know?
Speaker: And I mean, nothing is appropriate because high stakes testing is not appropriate.
Speaker: But, you know, I was just like, it's like, it just did everyone wrong.
Speaker: That talking pineapple did everyone wrong.
Speaker: It was just like the author and the kids that had to be subjected to it, you know?
Speaker: And it was just like, yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, sorry, that was a rabbit hole, but that story resonated with me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, that's just like some picture of how assessment has come into our lives and not been useful.
Speaker: And it relates back to that idea of like how we're asked to adhere to
Speaker: post-curricula with fidelity.
Speaker: We're asked to roll out these assessments with the exact right conditions that they mandate so that we can objectively measure what students know without even thinking, what are we actually measuring?
Speaker: What questions are being asked on these tests?
Speaker: What do we want our students to know?
Speaker: What knowledge do we think is important?
Speaker: Those are important questions to ask when developing assessments that teachers ask when they only use standardized assessments.
Speaker: And it depends on your communities.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I just, just all those answers to those questions depend.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Depend, depend, depend.
Speaker: And Rafa has a tool that he uses amongst many that can get us rethinking how can we move if, if we're troubling this standardized approach to curriculum and assessment.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: What might something look like?
Speaker: How do we, because we still, of course, need to monitor our students' knowledge.
Speaker: Like, the growth, learning development, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I think what the tool that I'm going to introduce here is, it's not even like an, it's not meant as an assessment.
Speaker: It's a way of thinking, right?
Speaker: But within which you can play with the assessment.
Speaker: But ultimately, it comes from a much more curious stance about what children and people are unveiling, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So really about supporting children's want to know.
Speaker: They already want to know, so let's help them know, rather than helping teach them to learn something.
Speaker: Like it's a change of emphasis, right?
Speaker: But as you'll see through the tool, there's so many opportunities to subvert this objectivity idea, right?
Speaker: Replace it with a much more complex sense that includes us as educators and as part of this.
Speaker: A much more complex sense of learning, feeling, and being that we're seeing in spaces.
Speaker: So this is a tool that's called the thinking lens for learning together with children.
Speaker: But I will say right now, I don't think it's just with young children.
Speaker: I think this applies to many older people and also just many different circumstances, which...
Speaker: Maybe we'll be the part two of this.
Speaker: But this is based, this was crafted and refined by Ann Pello and Margie Carter.
Speaker: And I've been reading their book from teaching to thinking a pedagogy for re-imagining our work from Redleaf Press.
Speaker: Highly recommend that you read it.
Speaker: I might've mentioned it, I think in our last episode or one of our past episodes.
Speaker: But so I wanted to start just by laying out the steps, if you will, of this...
Speaker: So the first step is to first know yourself.
Speaker: And they say, open your heart to this moment.
Speaker: So for example, what is your immediate response to the children's play and conversation?
Speaker: What feelings stir in you?
Speaker: What touches your heart as you watch and listen?
Speaker: What in your background and values is influencing your response to the situation?
Speaker: What adult perspectives, as in standards, health and safety, time goals are on your mind?
Speaker: What leaves you curious, eager to engage?
Speaker: So it starts with you, the educator, and checking in with yourself and just your reaction to the moment.
Speaker: And then the following step is to consider the child's point of view.
Speaker: So what do you think the children are trying to figure out?
Speaker: What theories are they testing?
Speaker: What questions are they asking with their play?
Speaker: And again, you can replace the words here for different contexts.
Speaker: But what understanding and misunderstandings and experiences are the children drawing on?
Speaker: And there's various other questions.
Speaker: And the next part is examining the environment.
Speaker: So how is the organization and use of the physical space and materials impacting the situation?
Speaker: How are schedules and routines influencing this experience?
Speaker: With the next step being collaborating with others to expand perspective.
Speaker: So
Speaker: How do your colleagues understand the meaning of children's play?
Speaker: What insights do children's families have?
Speaker: How does this play reflect or challenge their beliefs, values, or practices?
Speaker: What child development or early learning theories might you consider?
Speaker: What other arenas of knowledge and insight might you consult?
Speaker: And finally, reflect and take action.
Speaker: So what values and intentions do you want to influence your response?
Speaker: What action might you take to help the children see their own and each other's ideas?
Speaker: What might you do to invite the children to take a different perspective and various other questions?
Speaker: Again, in summary, the first step of this is to focus on opening your heart to the moment, followed by taking the child's point of view, followed by examining the environment and its impact on what's happening, collaborating with others to expand perspectives and to reflect and take action.
Speaker: And then you repeat the process again.
Speaker: And so what I'm hearing too is like an essential part of this.
Speaker: If we think about it in the way I did when you sent it to me, Rafa sent this to me as something we can ruminate on for this episode.
Speaker: I was thinking a lot about how it would be
Speaker: a wonderful tool that that's an alternative to the way we think of assessment right now, because you're right.
Speaker: This isn't necessarily an assessment, but it's replacing, like if we took this on and use this lens and approach to, um,
Speaker: seeing children's play and what they brought to us, even if we don't, our children don't play and maybe they're older, they're not playing as much, but like the things they create, the questions they bring, right?
Speaker: If we saw that as our, if we're thinking about information, we get through assessment as data for what students know.
Speaker: If we looked at everyday things they were doing as data for assessment, right?
Speaker: Or really just,
Speaker: grounds to understand what our students are thinking, what they're wondering about, what they want to know and how we could help their growth, you know, based on what they're expressing as their questions in the moment, right?
Speaker: This looking at your students, like your daily classroom, or really like if you just have children in your life, your daily interaction with your children as the source, you know, for questioning and for, right?
Speaker: If we think about
Speaker: assessment being just being curious about what our students know and what they want to know.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we can just space to talk about more mundane things.
Speaker: Do they know their numbers and things like that?
Speaker: But that's not the emphasis.
Speaker: It's not that those things can't happen.
Speaker: But it's not the emphasis.
Speaker: All of a sudden, possibilities open up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And education can be deeper.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: We could do an example.
Speaker: Yeah, I would love to take it as an example.
Speaker: As an example of how this might work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I sent Emily a seven-second video of two children interacting with a box.
Speaker: And Emily, do you mind first just describing what you see in the video?
Speaker: Yeah, it's a very neat video.
Speaker: Just a couple seconds of two young children.
Speaker: They look like they're like three or four.
Speaker: Um, yeah, three and four.
Speaker: You got it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so it looks like, yeah, there's three and four.
Speaker: They're kind of, um, on their knees looking at a box.
Speaker: That's probably about half their height, a third of their height.
Speaker: So it's a big box relative to their size.
Speaker: And it's flipped over so that the bottom part, that's usually sealed, right?
Speaker: There's like a top that might open four ways and then a bottom that might just have two visible flaps that are taped together.
Speaker: It's like, it looks like, I won't say it, a large goods delivery service box, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a box.
Speaker: It's a cardboard box.
Speaker: A large Amazon box.
Speaker: And they're poking it.
Speaker: Initially, it looks like they're poking it with scissors.
Speaker: First, one child is kind of poking it with both of the scissors closed.
Speaker: It's not like it's open and they're using it to slice.
Speaker: They're just kind of stabbing it.
Speaker: They're using scissors like a little knife in a safe way.
Speaker: They were being very safe.
Speaker: But just kind of gently poking the seam where the tape was.
Speaker: And
Speaker: It started with one child doing it and then the other child came up and started stabbing along the seam as well.
Speaker: And it kind of started to open the box and that's the end of the clip.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Was that a good description?
Speaker: Yeah, thanks.
Speaker: So in terms of how we might think about this in a traditional sense, maybe I'll start there for a second.
Speaker: I might think like, even in more progressive settings, I might think like, oh, what's the small fine motor thing happening here?
Speaker: Like you look at this as in a, you know, check, check, check and
Speaker: You get out your early learning standards and you say, oh, they can manipulate scissors.
Speaker: They can.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: They can collaborate on something, which again, like it's sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Like there's evidence there.
Speaker: And then more constrictive, restrictive ways of thinking, like that's just a waste of time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So clearly I don't believe that.
Speaker: But so when I think about when I open my heart to this moment, what's my immediate response to a children's play and conversation?
Speaker: When I noticed one of the children turning over the box and saying, whoa, a box, I want to open it.
Speaker: I remember saying, what could you use?
Speaker: And he chose to take out the scissors.
Speaker: And it made this noise.
Speaker: And what struck me was how focused he was.
Speaker: And he says, I want to open it.
Speaker: And how the other child was looking during that time and then came over and was like, oh, I want to help you too open.
Speaker: And they both took scissors and went, bum, bum, bum.
Speaker: And so I think what struck me is that how mundane it was in many ways.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: how excited they were with this box and the tape.
Speaker: And I think allowing it to happen, if you will, and seeing it as something worthy of documenting reflected my experience
Speaker: belief that children are already starting to learn and know things and can lead their own learning.
Speaker: And I was curious to know, you know, where it might go and how I might support them.
Speaker: And then the adult perspective of safety, for example, with the scissors did come to mind to me in the moment.
Speaker: The thing is, their child, as child, like their blunt, they were blunt scissors.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also, like, I know both of them very well, like a very strong relationship with both of them.
Speaker: And they were clearly focused on what they wanted to do.
Speaker: And I really I was there in case.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I wasn't anxious or nervous about them poking each other.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and I think because I think that one learns how to responsibly use scissors by using scissors responsibly.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: And so my goal, what goal I had in my mind was to just pay attention to the process and see if anything came up for me.
Speaker: Would you want to mention, if you have anything, Emily, an opening your heart, what was your immediate response when you saw it?
Speaker: Yeah, I think I was struck by my, I was like,
Speaker: watching it through the lines of you presenting this to me as something interesting.
Speaker: And I didn't find it that interesting when I first saw it, you know?
Speaker: And, but when I pressed myself to think, okay, how can I take something that's taken for granted?
Speaker: You know, that I, as a mother, frankly, if I saw my child doing that, I would just be like, oh, they're playing, they're busy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's not, it's a child's concern.
Speaker: It's not mine.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that reflecting, knowing that we're looking at this for a reason,
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Back on me and was like, well, what could we get out of this?
Speaker: Why do I put this aside as something that's not a site of learning or doing anything really important?
Speaker: And why do I think is not that important?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I started to see that.
Speaker: there was intention behind the child using their scissors in a way I wouldn't think to use scissors, right?
Speaker: I had thought of using scissors that way.
Speaker: And I was like, they're using scissors in a way that isn't necessarily modeled by adults, right?
Speaker: Or even most children.
Speaker: And not only is this child using the scissors in that way, that's different from how it's usually modeled.
Speaker: The other child picked up from the
Speaker: the first stabbing child, you know how to stab.
Speaker: Context stabbing, stabbing tape for those who are just turning in, stabbing inanimate object, very gently, but, uh, with precision and intent.
Speaker: Um, yes, the precision struck me as well.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: It just, it would never occur to me to try and open a box that way.
Speaker: But... Can we pause with that?
Speaker: It would never occur.
Speaker: It wouldn't occur to me either.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And because it's really inefficient, I think.
Speaker: Because I think I value efficiency to an extent.
Speaker: And so I put that to the side.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I realized they were learning together how to open.
Speaker: And that was more valuable than being efficient and opening the box.
Speaker: Yeah, totally.
Speaker: And it just reminds me of a lot of instincts we have.
Speaker: So at once through this process, I'm reflecting not only on like what the kids are doing, but what I value and what I think of as learning.
Speaker: And there's, I don't know, was there another part of the step before I do my reflection on the process?
Speaker: Well, there's more questions if you want, but there's another step about taking the child's point of view that we can get into.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where the questions are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like what are they trying to figure out?
Speaker: What theories are they testing?
Speaker: What questions are they asking with their play?
Speaker: What understanding and misunderstanding and experiences are the children drawing on?
Speaker: So I can say that one of them was very explicit that they said they want to open the box.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: They wanted to open the box.
Speaker: They wanted to open the flaps.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One of them, at least.
Speaker: The other one who was younger, the three-year-old, was not as explicit.
Speaker: And I wasn't sure that they had the same goal.
Speaker: I was not quite sure.
Speaker: But it could be that they were much more, that the other child was thinking more in terms of, wow, like,
Speaker: The sound is interesting to me, you know, from a sensory point of view.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I like the feeling of poking something and the pressure, you know, that could have been it too.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what do you think might have been at play?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was going to say the sensory aspect of it struck me.
Speaker: I was like in opening my heart to the moment and hearing how you opened your heart, thinking about the, I hadn't thought of the sound and I hadn't thought of the, um,
Speaker: How satisfying.
Speaker: It's like in the same way bubble wrap is really fun.
Speaker: Kids love playing with it.
Speaker: It's probably really fun to punch holes in something with a tool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, when things have like, they're thinking in anything to explore further, I'm wondering about
Speaker: If they had multiple opportunities to open boxes like that, would they start to find more efficient ways?
Speaker: That's one wondering I have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know if anything comes for you.
Speaker: I just want to ask.
Speaker: I was just curious.
Speaker: I would love to ask why they want to open the box.
Speaker: Do they want to do something with the box?
Speaker: Do they hope there's something in the box?
Speaker: I would just love to know...
Speaker: Did they have a spot for why they wanted to open it?
Speaker: Or is that just you open a box?
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: So before they did that, they were putting themselves inside the box for a while.
Speaker: And they were trying to close themselves inside of it.
Speaker: And one was trying to make a boat out of it by drawing outside of it.
Speaker: And that was for like a good hour.
Speaker: And then it flipped over.
Speaker: And I don't know if I flipped.
Speaker: I forget if I flipped it over.
Speaker: I might have been the one that flipped it over.
Speaker: And that's when one of the children was like, oh, look, like the tape caught their eye.
Speaker: And they just said they wanted to open it.
Speaker: And then once they opened it, they wanted to move on to another box to open that.
Speaker: So I think they kind of just wanted to open the box for the satisfaction of opening the box.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we celebrated that when they got the first one open, we were like, woo, you did it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's my guess.
Speaker: There was not much at the moment, deeper motivation per se.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would be curious to explore that with them, you know, and talk with them about why they want to do that.
Speaker: Like what, you know, that could be, that would be an interesting direction I think to go and just like,
Speaker: talk with them through, like make some of their decisions more explicit to them.
Speaker: It's like, you opened that box.
Speaker: Why did you open that box?
Speaker: You know what's funny?
Speaker: So when the mom, one of the moms came to pick up, I told her what happened.
Speaker: And she said, that's so interesting.
Speaker: So whenever a package gets, gets home, he wants to open it and he gets excited.
Speaker: And, and I wonder if part of the reason he enjoys opening it is because he associates it with novelty.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Even though he knew, I knew he knew there was nothing in the box.
Speaker: He had been inside of it.
Speaker: He had explored it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I wonder if there was just like this thrill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: So when examining the environment, you know, the boxes were put out there at the beginning of our time.
Speaker: I flipped them over at one point.
Speaker: They're very prominent.
Speaker: They're in the middle of the room.
Speaker: I was encouraging them to engage with it and asking them questions about what could this be, you know?
Speaker: And I think that influenced their interest.
Speaker: And then in collaborating with others to expand our perspectives, like we've already been talking a bit, but like, how do you understand the meaning of the children's play?
Speaker: What insights do the children's families have?
Speaker: Which I kind of touched on with one of the moms.
Speaker: How does this play reflect or challenge their beliefs, values, or practices?
Speaker: I think this play reflected an experience that one of them especially enjoyed.
Speaker: One of them really felt like the driver and the other one felt like the curious, like,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Passenger.
Speaker: The younger, curious, like, ooh, you know, which for that child, I wonder, would they by themselves, if they saw that box again without the other child, would they engage with it or not?
Speaker: And then there's a second part.
Speaker: So there's like in this protocol, if we're looking at this thinking lens, we're learning together with children, it says take action.
Speaker: So what would the action as the last step, what would that mean?
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Well, so let's see.
Speaker: The questions are around what values and intentions do you want to influence your response?
Speaker: So I want my intention of, well, a value I hold in their pedagogy is the value of open letter materials.
Speaker: I want to keep using open letter materials like boxes and tape.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: One thing I'm wondering is what if we connected to multiple boxes with tape, almost like a chain?
Speaker: I'm curious what they would do in that instance.
Speaker: Because the tape is not being used to close something, it's being used to connect to things.
Speaker: And I wonder if that would influence how they interact with it.
Speaker: That's one idea.
Speaker: that I might do as a next step for the next day.
Speaker: What might you do to invite the children to take a different perspective?
Speaker: One way is to use different size boxes, maybe different size, maybe poke with different things other than scissors.
Speaker: So you were thinking that too.
Speaker: Tell me more.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I was just thinking of like prompting some of their questioning about like what worked for opening that box in that way.
Speaker: And was there anything undesirable that came out of opening that box in that way?
Speaker: Did the box have holes in it in a way that made it less interesting for you to play with when it was done?
Speaker: Oh, interesting.
Speaker: Did you enjoy the sensory aspect of it or was it...
Speaker: Because whenever I use, when I think of how I would hold scissors that way and poke a hole in a box, I might hurt myself after a lot of time, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, did your hand get sore?
Speaker: You know, like, would you want to?
Speaker: You know, I think there's like lots of questions that I have about how they open the box that I think could be important for you.
Speaker: And there's other questions we can consider, but I think that's like, I have my next step.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then that's my planning.
Speaker: Like, and then I, I would, I would do what I said I would do the next day or the next moment.
Speaker: And what I'm already finding about this approach is that I can do it in very small ways and I can do it in very big ways.
Speaker: Like it's a, it's a structure that I can do very, very deep, very for a while, half an hour, or I could do it in five minutes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I find that really useful.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Very flexible.
Speaker: And then in terms of documentation, I mean, in a way we've documented it to this conversation, but I would want to put it down in my case on like a Padlet or like on paper or something and write out, write down my thoughts, you know, my process.
Speaker: If we're thinking about this.
Speaker: Oh, sorry.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I was going to get a little bit to assessment now too.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: I could also, if I had standards I really needed to address, I could see what are the standards and I could see what were addressed, like we were saying before.
Speaker: Fine motor things, collaboration things, language things, right?
Speaker: There's a lot of things that came out that I could check, check, check, check at the end if I wanted to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's on the side and it's not the emphasis, but it's there.
Speaker: And it would be maybe interesting to see is there a standard I'm not hitting quite often.
Speaker: That'd be an interesting thing too, for whatever reason.
Speaker: But it goes just way beyond like, in a way I'm assessing my own understanding of the child's thinking over time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If anything, it's not that I'm not assessing the child.
Speaker: I'm assessing my understanding.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What were you thinking?
Speaker: I was wondering just like if we think of this as a, an alternative to the way assessments usually done, if we think about just having rich conversations as teachers about our learners and what their curiosities are and how we can support the development of their curiosity.
Speaker: I'm wondering what, how you would, I do think it's helpful to have like kind of
Speaker: you know, a checklist for yourself to make sure that you do this, you know, often enough to, or in a way that's systematic enough so that you have those written, you have like a learning journey and that's prescriptive about it.
Speaker: But like how I'm curious, like what made this stand out for you as a moment and how do you think you could institute some routine around having this conversation often enough in a, a,
Speaker: methodical way so that you have does that make sense so that it like it you have enough data in a sense to track
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That makes sense?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I'm, yeah, I'm figuring it out.
Speaker: I mean, I guess one thing is being really accepting of whatever my documentation is.
Speaker: So not being too precious about that.
Speaker: I put it in, that I put it in Padlet and does it exist in Padlet and like really focusing, like, did I do that right?
Speaker: I'm using Padlet, so I use it a lot.
Speaker: And because I love Padlet, so I'm not trying to say anything about Padlet, but Padlet might be something I sit down and formalize after a couple of moments.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But you were asking about, like internalizing it.
Speaker: I mean, it's just practicing it and doing it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just sharing it openly with colleagues and with families, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, maybe having like, there's something called a descriptive review.
Speaker: Have you done that before?
Speaker: Not formally, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker: How would you describe a descriptive review?
Speaker: It's like doing rounds of like, basically, there's different protocols for each round of like description, but there's, it's a practice I know about because of grad school and my work with Gerald Campano, my advisor.
Speaker: Yeah, Gerald.
Speaker: But he brought it up.
Speaker: It's a practice that teachers in the bread loaf.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Teacher ed group, I guess.
Speaker: They like their, it was a process that I learned about.
Speaker: He cited them basically as doing this really rich description of student work.
Speaker: And I've done it once or twice before.
Speaker: And I like took the script review.
Speaker: Basically take a piece of student work.
Speaker: And you pass it around between teachers and describe, you start with like non-evaluative statements, just about what you see kind of happening in work.
Speaker: And the protocol, I can't remember all of the steps for different rounds of feedback you give, but it's just a really...
Speaker: set of intentional rounds of questioning and observations about student work that is not evaluative, right?
Speaker: To determine what's going on and what the student's doing and next steps for you as a teacher to help them grow.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so in that way, I think it's like related because obviously that's more relevant for students that are writing probably and producing work, quote unquote, in that way.
Speaker: But if we think about young children and the work they're doing is like play, you know, it's like that stuff is,
Speaker: You know, work is very capitalistic and I don't want to impose that on play because it's such a beautiful and important thing, but it is very serious.
Speaker: You know, it's not fun, but it's serious and it's fun and it's essential.
Speaker: You need that fun and that imaginative space.
Speaker: I would say all children do, but you have most, you know, the most grounds for it in early childhood.
Speaker: That's a very widely accepted notion that young children need to learn through play.
Speaker: And so I think that, I don't know why I brought up descriptive review.
Speaker: It just reminds me of it.
Speaker: Well, it's similar.
Speaker: It's a similar spirit and idea.
Speaker: I think you, what you said something about like,
Speaker: Maybe you said you didn't want to be prescriptive or something.
Speaker: Yeah, I did.
Speaker: You did, right?
Speaker: And I'm like, I thought about that.
Speaker: The word protocol has a lot of negative connotations to me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But what I appreciate about this approach is that it's not a protocol for behavior.
Speaker: It's strictly for thinking.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which...
Speaker: And it slows your role because we are pressed to be evaluated as teachers.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It slows your role.
Speaker: It really slows things down consistently.
Speaker: And I think for me personally in my practice and in our collective practice at Mi Casita, I really want to work on what they use in the book.
Speaker: They say something on the lines of the importance of intellectual discipline to an extent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, I think there's a misunderstanding in very progressive ed that's often applied in many, I shouldn't say many schools, but in schools I've been in where like anything goes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's like, you can't really feel the discipline of thinking.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: if that makes sense.
Speaker: And so I want, I think I want to really work on that.
Speaker: And it's kind of my motivation first personally, and then more collectively with my team or in tandem, if you will.
Speaker: Because again, like I want to emphasize to people, like going back to like assessment and this is going to go more into a part two of how this might apply in terms of considering school quality.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But this idea of,
Speaker: If this thinking protocol is happening both formally and informally all the time, it's really hard to have a bad program.
Speaker: yeah people are being disintentional like and even so so focusing on the process as a marker of quality more so than any little thing as an overall marker quality in terms of space educational spaces um this also opens up that possibility right yeah as well yeah i love that um it is i do want to be mindful of of
Speaker: of our time.
Speaker: Um, we're already at close to an hour.
Speaker: Our, our beautiful brains are taking us 20, 30s.
Speaker: But, um, I think that's such a, I hope that was helpful for people because I certainly found that really enlightening and I would love to use that as, uh,
Speaker: proposed alternative for people like to give people because some people just need like we might intuitively engage this process like i'm really grateful to these authors for formalizing it and writing it down um people like doing descriptive review and things like it to having something written down on paper this isn't discount the work that a lot of communities are already doing and having these rich conversations um but
Speaker: I think like starting there and pointing out that there are people who have done this work and have these for a while, right?
Speaker: Like, yeah, these are really valuable ways that and alternatives we have to standardized tests to outsourcing our, uh, our knowledge we can generate and should be generating.
Speaker: our assessments, right?
Speaker: And we don't need a fancy tool.
Speaker: We don't need to spend thousands of dollars on this stuff, right?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: What we need to invest in is our teachers and by proxy, our students, right?
Speaker: By taking their knowledge seriously and investing in people in classrooms to listen to learners closely and collaborate with them in designing their learning journey, if that makes sense.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: And as we always like to emphasize in terms of quality in general, like remembering that, you know, quality is also helped by stable housing and food security.
Speaker: So when people can remember assessment, we can't assess ourselves out of poverty as much as I feel like lots of paradigms have us believe.
Speaker: And high test scores won't guarantee that the children that get them have access to
Speaker: to a high quality of life because of like yeah i mean at best it's a harm reducing thing yeah they'll be safe right it's like yeah we need so there's that wider conversation well we're coming up on an hour so if you held on with us thank you this was kind of a uh what do you call
Speaker: Like a workshop.
Speaker: If you were really into... I feel like I just did a workout, baby.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a little heavy at times.
Speaker: So if you're still with us, thank you.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: We will have a part two, I think.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And where we will discuss this protocol, this way of thinking, but perhaps in a wider sense.
Speaker: And I think the next thing we need to interrogate is... Interrogar.
Speaker: We need to interrogate accountability for teachers.
Speaker: Ooh, the term in general.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then propose an approach similar to this to, right?
Speaker: For how we monitor our... Let's talk about that.
Speaker: I'm excited to...
Speaker: But bookmark for another day.
Speaker: Go have a coffee break.
Speaker: Go do what you need to.
Speaker: Go have a nap.
Speaker: Whatever you're going to do after listening to this episode, we'll have a part two back at you really soon.
Speaker: And remember, you can always email us at pedagogyofthedistressed at gmail.com, which is also in the show notes with any thoughts.
Speaker: So thank you, Emily.
Speaker: Thank you, Rafa.
Speaker: You always make my brain so happy.
Speaker: Oh, likewise.
Speaker: In my heart.
Speaker: In my heart.
Speaker: I was going to say my whole body.
Speaker: My whole body.
Speaker: My whole body.
Speaker: See y'all.
Speaker: Bye.
