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From Assessment to Thinking
16 Plays2 years ago
Sorry there's an F bomb in the middle of this episode 😬
Join Rafa and Emily in talking about the obsession our education system has with assessment, the issues, and an opening of a window to an alternative.
The book we mention, From Teaching to Thinking, by Ann Pelo and Margie Carter can be found here.
As always, please e-mail us at pedagogyofthedistressed@gmail.com with any questions or comments!
Finally, please leave a review - it'll help us get to more listeners.
Abrazos,
Rafa & Emily
Recommended
Transcript
Greetings and Personal Updates
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello, Rafa.
00:00:04
Speaker
Hi, Emily.
00:00:04
Speaker
How are you?
00:00:06
Speaker
Good, thanks.
00:00:06
Speaker
And you?
00:00:10
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
00:00:36
Speaker
new intentions and commitments.
TESOL Teaching and Standardized Testing
00:00:38
Speaker
So first of all, round of applause for us being here.
00:00:41
Speaker
Yay.
00:00:45
Speaker
Small wins, small wins.
00:00:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:48
Speaker
And a shout out to our teachers that are enduring the early season of testing, which is actually just being rolled out.
00:00:56
Speaker
I teach, I just started my spring semester as an adjunct at a local college where I teach teachers who are
00:01:05
Speaker
currently working.
00:01:06
Speaker
They're in a master's program, learning about TESOL methods.
00:01:11
Speaker
And this time of year, I feel like- TESOL is teaching English as a second or another language?
00:01:17
Speaker
Teaching English to speakers of other languages.
00:01:20
Speaker
Other languages.
00:01:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:01:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:22
Speaker
So it's like basically, yeah, it's like, you know, the class I'm teaching is literacy methods for multilingual learners.
00:01:30
Speaker
The subtext is in US schools that are English dominant, you know, but-
00:01:35
Speaker
Anyway, that's a whole other story.
00:01:37
Speaker
But the topic today, why I bring up assessment season, right?
00:01:42
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.
00:01:50
Speaker
In January and February, there's large scale testing of
00:01:55
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.
00:02:02
Speaker
And then right after that round of testing that has to happen in January and February, there comes state standardized testing, right?
00:02:09
Speaker
Every state has their own one.
00:02:11
Speaker
I don't know what it's called.
00:02:11
Speaker
New York and Rhode Island is called RICAS.
00:02:15
Speaker
They're the notorious standardized tests that measure students' English and math.
00:02:18
Speaker
And I feel like the second half of the year for a lot of teachers is really marked by
00:02:23
Speaker
time taken out of their classes to test
Role and Impact of Assessments
00:02:27
Speaker
students.
00:02:27
Speaker
And there's a lot of frustration because learning time gets really interrupted by that.
00:02:32
Speaker
And that prompted me to think about a thread that came up in our last conversation about curriculum.
00:02:40
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,
00:03:00
Speaker
chart their learning course basically or adjust our teaching, you know, depending on what kinds of assessments are being administered.
00:03:07
Speaker
And of course, assessments happen not just in standardized form.
00:03:10
Speaker
They don't happen just in January.
00:03:12
Speaker
They don't happen just in March.
00:03:13
Speaker
They happen all the time.
00:03:15
Speaker
And there's all different kinds of assessments.
00:03:16
Speaker
You can design your own assessments to use in class.
00:03:19
Speaker
You have mandated assessments through state standardized testing.
00:03:23
Speaker
You have
00:03:24
Speaker
All sorts of ways to monitor and test, quote unquote, what students know.
00:03:31
Speaker
But as we kind of touched on last week, assessment, like a mandated curriculum, can also be really oppressive, right?
00:03:44
Speaker
If you were to think about assessment in some of your old jobs, what comes to mind for you?
00:03:49
Speaker
Was it ever a useful thing or did it become oppressive like it did in my mind?
00:03:54
Speaker
Well, let me think about it.
00:03:57
Speaker
We did do one job I had every week.
00:04:00
Speaker
We gave something called an FSA, a formative, what did the S stand for?
00:04:06
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
00:04:31
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.
00:04:39
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:40
Speaker
But does that really say what they know or is that really helpful to help people deepen their own understanding?
00:04:47
Speaker
I don't think so.
00:04:48
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.
00:04:59
Speaker
But that was in direct response to the bigger standardized tests that were given by the charter school network I worked at.
00:05:06
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.
00:05:15
Speaker
So it was often March, April.
00:05:18
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.
00:05:28
Speaker
So in that specific instance, assessment served, I felt like, to control what teachers did and what children did
00:05:39
Speaker
And this little intro, kind of this initial meditation on assessment is really... Meditation on assessment.
00:05:47
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...
00:05:59
Speaker
really specific examples of what assessments have not worked for us in our past.
00:06:04
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
00:06:28
Speaker
in the future.
00:06:31
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
00:06:46
Speaker
school successes or teachers, you know, teaching capabilities.
00:06:52
Speaker
But I think this idea of high stakes is a really important aspect of it.
00:07:01
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...
00:07:19
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,
00:07:48
Speaker
So that teachers could look at it and say, okay, well, look at what Rosa's doing here.
00:07:53
Speaker
Like, this is really interesting.
00:07:54
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.
00:08:00
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.
00:08:10
Speaker
It's so high stakes to them.
00:08:11
Speaker
That, yeah,
00:08:14
Speaker
We didn't get good data from it, right?
00:08:15
Speaker
We didn't get like, just a lot of raw data about what they were learning, like to measure, right?
00:08:23
Speaker
What they
Rethinking Assessments and Education
00:08:24
Speaker
were learning.
00:08:24
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
00:08:34
Speaker
In teacher ed programs, we talk about summative and formative assessments.
00:08:38
Speaker
Summative assessments coming at the end of a unit, like a test or an essay.
00:08:42
Speaker
Formative assessments happening ongoing throughout a curriculum to monitor ongoing progress, right?
00:08:48
Speaker
Got it.
00:08:49
Speaker
the rushing thing really strikes me because with formative assessment too, that's the assessment that's supposed not to be high stakes.
00:08:55
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.
00:09:00
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,
00:09:05
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.
00:09:17
Speaker
But one thing that the guest said that really struck me was that time quickening narrows cognitive capability.
00:09:26
Speaker
And so I think about all the things that we do that we
00:09:31
Speaker
we end up rushing and how that really compromises what arguably is more of the end goal.
00:09:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:39
Speaker
At least a part of the end goal, which is a compromise or cognitive ability.
00:09:43
Speaker
I love, you know what I'd love in the practice of embracing slowing down.
00:09:47
Speaker
I would love to repeat that quote because I want to unpack it because it's yes.
00:09:52
Speaker
So what's that quote again?
00:09:53
Speaker
I'd love to ruminate of it further and sit with it for a second.
00:09:57
Speaker
Time quickening narrows cognitive capability.
00:10:03
Speaker
Time quickening.
00:10:04
Speaker
So does that mean like packing in too much to like a period of time?
00:10:08
Speaker
So like, yeah.
00:10:09
Speaker
Time quickening.
00:10:12
Speaker
What was it?
00:10:13
Speaker
Consolidates or?
00:10:14
Speaker
Leads to a narrowing.
00:10:16
Speaker
Leads to a narrowing.
00:10:17
Speaker
Of cognitive ability.
00:10:18
Speaker
I get it.
00:10:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:20
Speaker
It's this idea I think a lot of people are questioning, can we really multitask, right?
00:10:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:26
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.
00:10:39
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, are we really good?
00:10:42
Speaker
at multitasking or do we just have to do multiple things at once to get done?
00:10:46
Speaker
Out of necessity.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, we're told we need to do.
00:10:49
Speaker
So that's interesting.
00:10:50
Speaker
And how does that relate to assessment?
00:10:52
Speaker
I'd love to connect it back.
00:10:53
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...
00:11:04
Speaker
not ultimately going to deliver the results we think.
00:11:08
Speaker
Right.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:09
Speaker
Like I think one way it connects back to assessment is assessment is seen as so crucial in turnaround situations, especially.
00:11:20
Speaker
And so, and we want to do a lot of assessment and we try to cram in as much assessment.
00:11:24
Speaker
And when you're vying for money from the government or from foundations, like they want to see a lot of data and
00:11:30
Speaker
And so there's this constant flurry of assess, assess, assess to know if kids learned what you taught is the whole thinking.
00:11:40
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.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:55
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.
00:12:09
Speaker
I suppose what it's thought to mean, right, and what it actually is, how it is carried out, is that assessment means
00:12:18
Speaker
is painted as something that needs to be done to measure objectively what students know, to measure students' progress.
00:12:28
Speaker
That applies to teacher-made assessments for monitoring learning in a classroom.
00:12:34
Speaker
And it also applies to these things like standardized tests.
00:12:37
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?
00:12:57
Speaker
Can all students on the standardized objective form of monitoring student learning
00:13:03
Speaker
Do all students perform the same?
00:13:04
Speaker
And if not, where are their differences in performance and why is that happening?
00:13:09
Speaker
Theoretically, that's what should happen with these tests.
00:13:11
Speaker
What happens, as you talked about, is that these assessment results are certainly part of a political project, right?
00:13:20
Speaker
They're not effective.
00:13:23
Speaker
Aside from how these assessments are designed to spotlight Eurocentric, English-centric ways of knowing, right?
00:13:33
Speaker
that's its own thing.
00:13:34
Speaker
But aside from test design, which you could talk about forever, we could talk about all of this forever.
00:13:40
Speaker
It's like the way assessment results are cared about is not...
00:13:47
Speaker
to get the information about, okay, what are our kids knowing?
00:13:51
Speaker
What do kids need growth in, right?
00:13:53
Speaker
Which is what we think of assessment is the point of it being, right?
00:13:56
Speaker
To measure what students know and what they need to grow in, right?
00:14:00
Speaker
That's essentially what assessment should be for.
00:14:03
Speaker
It's used as a tool to punish certain schools for not performing as well and to punish teachers and administrators.
00:14:13
Speaker
And it's also used to,
00:14:15
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.
00:14:29
Speaker
Right.
00:14:29
Speaker
If they're taking a corporate approach.
00:14:32
Speaker
So these results aren't just to purely find out how a student is doing.
00:14:38
Speaker
A lot of these specifically standardized tests are used to, uh,
00:14:44
Speaker
move money around and to advocate for certain models of teaching, right?
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, models of teaching, like a very simplistic model, a very one-dimensional model of education.
00:14:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:56
Speaker
So, I mean, yeah, like my issue with assessment in general is that I really value how we can hold complexity.
00:15:04
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.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:19
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
00:15:43
Speaker
what we're wanting to do or advocating for instead.
00:15:46
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,
00:16:07
Speaker
time it takes away from student-led learning, right?
00:16:11
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
00:16:30
Speaker
for students to show us the full breadth of things they know.
00:16:34
Speaker
And we're not allowing our own knowledge as teachers or administrators to be impacted by the brilliance of our students.
00:16:44
Speaker
Right.
00:16:44
Speaker
And we're just missing so much of what our students know and what makes them excited and what gives them fire.
00:16:53
Speaker
Right.
00:16:54
Speaker
We're missing that by focusing so much on preparing them for these high stakes programs.
00:16:59
Speaker
tests, whether it be college essays, whether it be finals, whether it be these standardized tests, right?
00:17:07
Speaker
So much of what we're doing is pushing towards an end product and not respecting individual students' learning journeys.
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's like you and I very much value the process more so than the product from an emphasis point of view.
00:17:25
Speaker
And I think the question for listeners and the question for people considering systems is what do they value, right?
00:17:34
Speaker
Because if someone values the product, then I want them to say that.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:41
Speaker
And I think we need to dig more into what that means before we pose our
Alternative Assessment Approaches
00:17:46
Speaker
alternative.
00:17:46
Speaker
Ooh, there's an alternative?
00:17:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:49
Speaker
Rafa has a beautiful alternative I'm really excited to dive into.
00:17:53
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
00:18:09
Speaker
reading the word and the world and also writing.
00:18:14
Speaker
And I had them do a gallery walk, you know, type of discussion where there's
00:18:21
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.
00:18:27
Speaker
And one slide was about how do you measure what students know, like the literacy knowledge students have, right?
00:18:35
Speaker
Another slide had, how do you measure their English language proficiency?
00:18:39
Speaker
And how do you measure their proficiency of other languages, right?
00:18:44
Speaker
And the slide that had the most sticky notes on it, where there was a million sticky notes on the literacy slide.
00:18:51
Speaker
And all of the ways that people had to measure their students' literacy knowledge
00:18:57
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.
00:19:18
Speaker
Um, the, uh,
00:19:22
Speaker
star reading test, which is a really popular reading test.
00:19:27
Speaker
Dolch sight word list reading.
00:19:31
Speaker
It was all, there was a million different, you know, tests that they had written up.
00:19:36
Speaker
And I posed a question to them after.
00:19:37
Speaker
And I said,
00:19:39
Speaker
what are we not getting from these?
00:19:41
Speaker
And what information, like, are these tests useful?
00:19:43
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,
00:20:09
Speaker
as the format of learning assessment in a classroom, um, in an effort to provide a standardized way to measure what students know.
00:20:19
Speaker
Um, a lot of them were like, I know my students can do more than what they're showing on the test.
00:20:26
Speaker
And because of anxiety, because, um,
00:20:30
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.
00:20:36
Speaker
Like there's certain time parameters that just don't allow for kids to show the breadth of what they know.
00:20:43
Speaker
The questions that they're asked don't let them show what they know.
00:20:46
Speaker
The...
00:20:48
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.
00:20:55
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
00:21:15
Speaker
a test writer's identification of what, you know?
00:21:20
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.
00:21:28
Speaker
And yeah,
00:21:30
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?
00:21:45
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:21:48
Speaker
I should say they weren't useful as the only tool to monitor what students know, right?
00:21:52
Speaker
Especially for how much time they took, I imagine.
00:21:55
Speaker
How much time they took.
00:21:55
Speaker
How much emphasis they were given.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, to give you a window for people that haven't taught, it's star reading test.
00:22:02
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.
00:22:10
Speaker
It's a time.
00:22:11
Speaker
How long did it take?
00:22:13
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.
00:22:21
Speaker
And obviously it didn't get harder if you...
00:22:23
Speaker
you know, got initials wrong.
00:22:25
Speaker
It reminds me of map testing.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:28
Speaker
I'm sure people have all experienced similar things.
00:22:31
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.
00:22:35
Speaker
Oh, no, no.
00:22:36
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.
00:22:48
Speaker
Wow.
00:22:49
Speaker
Once a month.
00:22:50
Speaker
I mean, maybe I'm misremembering.
00:22:51
Speaker
It was certainly...
00:22:53
Speaker
I could see that though, with the idea that you get out of the red.
00:22:56
Speaker
I imagine that's the logic.
00:22:58
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?
00:23:07
Speaker
They were testing low, even though I know they could read more than it, this like, you know, test said they.
00:23:15
Speaker
Imagine if you could document those other times, Emily.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, but that wouldn't be objective.
00:23:20
Speaker
Who am I, but just a brain.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:22
Speaker
But what is a, right?
00:23:23
Speaker
I know.
00:23:24
Speaker
I know you're being sarcastic.
00:23:26
Speaker
But in response to that too, but what is more real than someone actually reading something to you?
00:23:33
Speaker
And for those of us that, again, haven't been in the teaching world, that STAR test was seen as more...
00:23:40
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
00:24:01
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.
00:24:12
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.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yes, I like that.
00:24:23
Speaker
And the whole idea behind a talking pineapple and the story made no sense.
00:24:28
Speaker
Just to unpack that, the talking pineapple was a story given on the New York State Press.
00:24:33
Speaker
And you had to read the story about a talking pineapple.
00:24:36
Speaker
Doing who knows what.
00:24:38
Speaker
Doing who knows what to answer reading comprehension questions about it.
00:24:42
Speaker
And it made no sense.
00:24:43
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.
00:24:54
Speaker
Nobody's ever seen one.
00:24:58
Speaker
But that's absurd.
00:24:59
Speaker
That's absurd because it just highlights context is inseparable from knowledge.
00:25:04
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.
00:25:20
Speaker
And I,
00:25:26
Speaker
people in our community were dying, right?
00:25:28
Speaker
Like trauma on trauma on nonsense of a like way of meeting with kids, right?
00:25:36
Speaker
Like we had state standardized tests.
00:25:39
Speaker
So I was still getting kids pulled to do tests from January to May.
00:25:44
Speaker
Total disruption.
00:25:46
Speaker
And we brought in kids who had opted into home learning for the year back to school to take these motherfucking tests.
00:25:53
Speaker
Anyway, you can tell I was not... Oh, got that ad to E in explicit on this episode.
00:25:59
Speaker
Not for your mom.
00:26:00
Speaker
Just for your mom.
00:26:02
Speaker
I'm a mom so I can say that now.
00:26:04
Speaker
Everything I say is from the mouth of the mother.
00:26:07
Speaker
But...
00:26:09
Speaker
Anyway, I was like, this is absurd.
00:26:11
Speaker
So I did it.
00:26:12
Speaker
I was like, I'm going to give them test taking tools so they don't have total anxiety.
00:26:17
Speaker
I'm going to prepare them.
00:26:18
Speaker
But we're also going to do a lesson where we talk about the absurdity of these things.
00:26:21
Speaker
And I have them read a story.
00:26:23
Speaker
There was like an NPR article I found about the talking pineapple.
00:26:27
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?
00:26:33
Speaker
Like, does this make sense?
00:26:34
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.
00:26:44
Speaker
Because a lot of my students went into these days with anxiety because they thought,
00:26:47
Speaker
it measured their success, right?
00:26:49
Speaker
Even though state standardized tests don't impact their school grades or impact their direction of schooling directly.
00:26:57
Speaker
It impacts more the district and the teachers on it.
00:27:02
Speaker
But anyway, yes.
00:27:03
Speaker
So that's just to say I did bring that into my students and ask them what they thought.
00:27:07
Speaker
This was a fair way to measure their knowledge, right?
00:27:12
Speaker
And they were like, it was interesting to pose that to them and deconstruct.
00:27:19
Speaker
would you do well showing what you knew about reading, reading a story about a talking pineapple?
00:27:24
Speaker
Anyway, so I did the reading for that.
00:27:26
Speaker
And I also did some research on that story and that incident.
00:27:28
Speaker
And I felt so bad for the author.
00:27:30
Speaker
It's like an actual story that someone had published.
00:27:32
Speaker
You know, it wasn't just written for a test.
00:27:35
Speaker
Oh, I don't think I realized that.
00:27:36
Speaker
it takes the craft out of writing too.
00:27:39
Speaker
It's like talking about decontextualizing.
00:27:41
Speaker
I'm sure there were illustrations, maybe not.
00:27:43
Speaker
I don't know, but it was an illustration.
00:27:45
Speaker
I think it was a pineapple walking.
00:27:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:47
Speaker
And that story wasn't meant to be read on a test.
00:27:50
Speaker
It was like a silly story.
00:27:52
Speaker
I actually remember that.
00:27:54
Speaker
Yes.
00:27:54
Speaker
It wasn't meant to be read on it.
00:27:55
Speaker
Yes.
00:27:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:56
Speaker
It's like, it's just a fun story.
00:27:57
Speaker
It's like, I can imagine like finding a story about a talking pineapple, very charming and entertaining, but yeah,
00:28:03
Speaker
When it's on this high stakes format, it's not appropriate, you know?
00:28:08
Speaker
And I mean, nothing is appropriate because high stakes testing is not appropriate.
00:28:12
Speaker
But, you know, I was just like, it's like, it just did everyone wrong.
00:28:17
Speaker
That talking pineapple did everyone wrong.
00:28:19
Speaker
It was just like the author and the kids that had to be subjected to it, you know?
00:28:24
Speaker
And it was just like, yeah.
00:28:25
Speaker
Anyway, sorry, that was a rabbit hole, but that story resonated with me.
00:28:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
Anyway, that's just like some picture of how assessment has come into our lives and not been useful.
00:28:41
Speaker
And it relates back to that idea of like how we're asked to adhere to
00:28:46
Speaker
post-curricula with fidelity.
00:28:48
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?
00:28:58
Speaker
What questions are being asked on these tests?
00:29:00
Speaker
What do we want our students to know?
00:29:02
Speaker
What knowledge do we think is important?
00:29:04
Speaker
Those are important questions to ask when developing assessments that teachers ask when they only use standardized assessments.
00:29:11
Speaker
And it depends on your communities.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:13
Speaker
I mean, I just, just all those answers to those questions depend.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:17
Speaker
Depend, depend, depend.
00:29:18
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.
00:29:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:29:34
Speaker
What might something look like?
00:29:35
Speaker
How do we, because we still, of course, need to monitor our students' knowledge.
00:29:39
Speaker
Like, the growth, learning development, right?
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:42
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.
00:29:51
Speaker
It's a way of thinking, right?
00:29:52
Speaker
But within which you can play with the assessment.
00:29:55
Speaker
But ultimately, it comes from a much more curious stance about what children and people are unveiling,
The Thinking Lens Tool
00:30:01
Speaker
right?
00:30:01
Speaker
Right.
00:30:02
Speaker
So really about supporting children's want to know.
00:30:08
Speaker
They already want to know, so let's help them know, rather than helping teach them to learn something.
00:30:13
Speaker
Like it's a change of emphasis, right?
00:30:16
Speaker
But as you'll see through the tool, there's so many opportunities to subvert this objectivity idea, right?
00:30:24
Speaker
Replace it with a much more complex sense that includes us as educators and as part of this.
00:30:31
Speaker
A much more complex sense of learning, feeling, and being that we're seeing in spaces.
00:30:37
Speaker
So this is a tool that's called the thinking lens for learning together with children.
00:30:42
Speaker
But I will say right now, I don't think it's just with young children.
00:30:46
Speaker
I think this applies to many older people and also just many different circumstances, which...
00:30:53
Speaker
Maybe we'll be the part two of this.
00:30:57
Speaker
But this is based, this was crafted and refined by Ann Pello and Margie Carter.
00:31:04
Speaker
And I've been reading their book from teaching to thinking a pedagogy for re-imagining our work from Redleaf Press.
00:31:10
Speaker
Highly recommend that you read it.
00:31:12
Speaker
I might've mentioned it, I think in our last episode or one of our past episodes.
00:31:16
Speaker
But so I wanted to start just by laying out the steps, if you will, of this...
00:31:26
Speaker
So the first step is to first know yourself.
00:31:30
Speaker
And they say, open your heart to this moment.
00:31:33
Speaker
So for example, what is your immediate response to the children's play and conversation?
00:31:38
Speaker
What feelings stir in you?
00:31:40
Speaker
What touches your heart as you watch and listen?
00:31:43
Speaker
What in your background and values is influencing your response to the situation?
00:31:47
Speaker
What adult perspectives, as in standards, health and safety, time goals are on your mind?
00:31:52
Speaker
What leaves you curious, eager to engage?
00:31:54
Speaker
So it starts with you, the educator, and checking in with yourself and just your reaction to the moment.
00:32:03
Speaker
And then the following step is to consider the child's point of view.
00:32:07
Speaker
So what do you think the children are trying to figure out?
00:32:10
Speaker
What theories are they testing?
00:32:12
Speaker
What questions are they asking with their play?
00:32:14
Speaker
And again, you can replace the words here for different contexts.
00:32:18
Speaker
But what understanding and misunderstandings and experiences are the children drawing on?
00:32:23
Speaker
And there's various other questions.
00:32:26
Speaker
And the next part is examining the environment.
00:32:28
Speaker
So how is the organization and use of the physical space and materials impacting the situation?
00:32:34
Speaker
How are schedules and routines influencing this experience?
00:32:38
Speaker
With the next step being collaborating with others to expand perspective.
00:32:42
Speaker
So
00:32:42
Speaker
How do your colleagues understand the meaning of children's play?
00:32:45
Speaker
What insights do children's families have?
00:32:47
Speaker
How does this play reflect or challenge their beliefs, values, or practices?
00:32:51
Speaker
What child development or early learning theories might you consider?
00:32:55
Speaker
What other arenas of knowledge and insight might you consult?
00:32:58
Speaker
And finally, reflect and take action.
00:33:01
Speaker
So what values and intentions do you want to influence your response?
00:33:04
Speaker
What action might you take to help the children see their own and each other's ideas?
00:33:08
Speaker
What might you do to invite the children to take a different perspective and various other questions?
00:33:14
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.
00:33:32
Speaker
And then you repeat the process again.
00:33:35
Speaker
And so what I'm hearing too is like an essential part of this.
00:33:40
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.
00:33:47
Speaker
I was thinking a lot about how it would be
00:33:52
Speaker
a wonderful tool that that's an alternative to the way we think of assessment right now, because you're right.
00:33:59
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,
00:34:08
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?
00:34:20
Speaker
If we saw that as our, if we're thinking about information, we get through assessment as data for what students know.
00:34:28
Speaker
If we looked at everyday things they were doing as data for assessment, right?
00:34:34
Speaker
Or really just,
00:34:37
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?
00:34:49
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?
00:35:05
Speaker
If we think about
00:35:08
Speaker
assessment being just being curious about what our students know and what they want to know.
00:35:13
Speaker
Right?
00:35:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:15
Speaker
And we can just space to talk about more mundane things.
00:35:21
Speaker
Do they know their numbers and things like that?
00:35:22
Speaker
But that's not the emphasis.
00:35:24
Speaker
It's not that those things can't happen.
00:35:26
Speaker
But it's not the emphasis.
00:35:27
Speaker
All of a sudden, possibilities open up.
00:35:31
Speaker
Right.
00:35:32
Speaker
And education can be deeper.
00:35:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:35:35
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:35:36
Speaker
We could do an example.
00:35:37
Speaker
Yeah, I would love to take it as an example.
00:35:40
Speaker
As an example of how this might work.
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:43
Speaker
So I sent Emily a seven-second video of two children interacting with a box.
00:35:51
Speaker
And Emily, do you mind first just describing what you see in the video?
00:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very neat video.
00:35:57
Speaker
Just a couple seconds of two young children.
00:36:01
Speaker
They look like they're like three or four.
00:36:04
Speaker
Um, yeah, three and four.
00:36:05
Speaker
You got it.
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:10
Speaker
Um, so it looks like, yeah, there's three and four.
00:36:12
Speaker
They're kind of, um, on their knees looking at a box.
00:36:15
Speaker
That's probably about half their height, a third of their height.
00:36:18
Speaker
So it's a big box relative to their size.
00:36:21
Speaker
And it's flipped over so that the bottom part, that's usually sealed, right?
00:36:26
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.
00:36:32
Speaker
It's like, it looks like, I won't say it, a large goods delivery service box, you know?
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:41
Speaker
It's a box.
00:36:42
Speaker
It's a cardboard box.
00:36:43
Speaker
A large Amazon box.
00:36:46
Speaker
And they're poking it.
00:36:48
Speaker
Initially, it looks like they're poking it with scissors.
00:36:50
Speaker
First, one child is kind of poking it with both of the scissors closed.
00:36:54
Speaker
It's not like it's open and they're using it to slice.
00:36:58
Speaker
They're just kind of stabbing it.
00:36:59
Speaker
They're using scissors like a little knife in a safe way.
00:37:02
Speaker
They were being very safe.
00:37:04
Speaker
But just kind of gently poking the seam where the tape was.
00:37:07
Speaker
And
00:37:08
Speaker
It started with one child doing it and then the other child came up and started stabbing along the seam as well.
00:37:14
Speaker
And it kind of started to open the box and that's the end of the clip.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker
Was that a good description?
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, thanks.
00:37:22
Speaker
So in terms of how we might think about this in a traditional sense, maybe I'll start there for a second.
00:37:29
Speaker
I might think like, even in more progressive settings, I might think like, oh, what's the small fine motor thing happening here?
00:37:37
Speaker
Like you look at this as in a, you know, check, check, check and
00:37:40
Speaker
You get out your early learning standards and you say, oh, they can manipulate scissors.
00:37:44
Speaker
They can.
00:37:44
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:45
Speaker
They can collaborate on something, which again, like it's sure.
00:37:49
Speaker
Sure.
00:37:49
Speaker
Like there's evidence there.
00:37:52
Speaker
And then more constrictive, restrictive ways of thinking, like that's just a waste of time.
00:37:58
Speaker
Right.
00:37:59
Speaker
So clearly I don't believe that.
00:38:02
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?
00:38:09
Speaker
When I noticed one of the children turning over the box and saying, whoa, a box, I want to open it.
00:38:14
Speaker
I remember saying, what could you use?
00:38:16
Speaker
And he chose to take out the scissors.
00:38:19
Speaker
And it made this noise.
00:38:24
Speaker
And what struck me was how focused he was.
00:38:27
Speaker
And he says, I want to open it.
00:38:29
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.
00:38:34
Speaker
And they both took scissors and went, bum, bum, bum.
00:38:39
Speaker
And so I think what struck me is that how mundane it was in many ways.
00:38:43
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:38:45
Speaker
how excited they were with this box and the tape.
00:38:51
Speaker
And I think allowing it to happen, if you will, and seeing it as something worthy of documenting reflected my experience
00:39:00
Speaker
belief that children are already starting to learn and know things and can lead their own learning.
00:39:05
Speaker
And I was curious to know, you know, where it might go and how I might support them.
00:39:13
Speaker
And then the adult perspective of safety, for example, with the scissors did come to mind to me in the moment.
00:39:20
Speaker
The thing is, their child, as child, like their blunt, they were blunt scissors.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:26
Speaker
And also, like, I know both of them very well, like a very strong relationship with both of them.
00:39:31
Speaker
And they were clearly focused on what they wanted to do.
00:39:33
Speaker
And I really I was there in case.
00:39:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:35
Speaker
But I wasn't anxious or nervous about them poking each other.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
And and I think because I think that one learns how to responsibly use scissors by using scissors responsibly.
00:39:45
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:39:50
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.
00:39:59
Speaker
Would you want to mention, if you have anything, Emily, an opening your heart, what was your immediate response when you saw it?
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think I was struck by my, I was like,
00:40:17
Speaker
watching it through the lines of you presenting this to me as something interesting.
00:40:21
Speaker
And I didn't find it that interesting when I first saw it, you know?
00:40:24
Speaker
And, but when I pressed myself to think, okay, how can I take something that's taken for granted?
00:40:31
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.
00:40:36
Speaker
Right.
00:40:37
Speaker
That's not, it's a child's concern.
00:40:39
Speaker
It's not mine.
00:40:40
Speaker
Right.
00:40:42
Speaker
And that reflecting, knowing that we're looking at this for a reason,
00:40:47
Speaker
Sure.
00:40:48
Speaker
Back on me and was like, well, what could we get out of this?
00:40:51
Speaker
Why do I put this aside as something that's not a site of learning or doing anything really important?
00:40:58
Speaker
And why do I think is not that important?
00:41:00
Speaker
Right.
00:41:02
Speaker
And I started to see that.
00:41:06
Speaker
there was intention behind the child using their scissors in a way I wouldn't think to use scissors, right?
00:41:12
Speaker
I had thought of using scissors that way.
00:41:15
Speaker
And I was like, they're using scissors in a way that isn't necessarily modeled by adults, right?
00:41:20
Speaker
Or even most children.
00:41:22
Speaker
And not only is this child using the scissors in that way, that's different from how it's usually modeled.
00:41:27
Speaker
The other child picked up from the
00:41:30
Speaker
the first stabbing child, you know how to stab.
00:41:33
Speaker
Context stabbing, stabbing tape for those who are just turning in, stabbing inanimate object, very gently, but, uh, with precision and intent.
00:41:47
Speaker
Um, yes, the precision struck me as well.
00:41:51
Speaker
And, uh,
00:41:53
Speaker
It just, it would never occur to me to try and open a box that way.
00:41:57
Speaker
But... Can we pause with that?
00:42:00
Speaker
It would never occur.
00:42:00
Speaker
It wouldn't occur to me either.
00:42:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:03
Speaker
And because it's really inefficient, I think.
00:42:05
Speaker
Because I think I value efficiency to an extent.
Children's Exploration and Learning
00:42:08
Speaker
And so I put that to the side.
00:42:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:11
Speaker
Because I realized they were learning together how to open.
00:42:16
Speaker
And that was more valuable than being efficient and opening the box.
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
00:42:21
Speaker
And it just reminds me of a lot of instincts we have.
00:42:25
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.
00:42:34
Speaker
And there's, I don't know, was there another part of the step before I do my reflection on the process?
00:42:43
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.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:49
Speaker
Where the questions are.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:52
Speaker
Like what are they trying to figure out?
00:42:54
Speaker
What theories are they testing?
00:42:55
Speaker
What questions are they asking with their play?
00:42:58
Speaker
What understanding and misunderstanding and experiences are the children drawing on?
00:43:04
Speaker
So I can say that one of them was very explicit that they said they want to open the box.
00:43:08
Speaker
So yeah.
00:43:10
Speaker
They wanted to open the box.
00:43:11
Speaker
They wanted to open the flaps.
00:43:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
One of them, at least.
00:43:15
Speaker
The other one who was younger, the three-year-old, was not as explicit.
00:43:21
Speaker
And I wasn't sure that they had the same goal.
00:43:24
Speaker
I was not quite sure.
00:43:26
Speaker
But it could be that they were much more, that the other child was thinking more in terms of, wow, like,
00:43:32
Speaker
The sound is interesting to me, you know, from a sensory point of view.
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:35
Speaker
And I like the feeling of poking something and the pressure, you know, that could have been it too.
00:43:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:41
Speaker
So what do you think might have been at play?
00:43:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:45
Speaker
I was going to say the sensory aspect of it struck me.
00:43:48
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,
00:43:58
Speaker
How satisfying.
00:43:59
Speaker
It's like in the same way bubble wrap is really fun.
00:44:02
Speaker
Kids love playing with it.
00:44:03
Speaker
It's probably really fun to punch holes in something with a tool.
00:44:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:10
Speaker
So, you know, when things have like, they're thinking in anything to explore further, I'm wondering about
00:44:20
Speaker
If they had multiple opportunities to open boxes like that, would they start to find more efficient ways?
00:44:26
Speaker
That's one wondering I have.
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:30
Speaker
I don't know if anything comes for you.
00:44:32
Speaker
I just want to ask.
00:44:33
Speaker
I was just curious.
00:44:33
Speaker
I would love to ask why they want to open the box.
00:44:36
Speaker
Do they want to do something with the box?
00:44:38
Speaker
Do they hope there's something in the box?
00:44:41
Speaker
I would just love to know...
00:44:45
Speaker
Did they have a spot for why they wanted to open it?
00:44:48
Speaker
Or is that just you open a box?
00:44:50
Speaker
That's interesting.
00:44:51
Speaker
So before they did that, they were putting themselves inside the box for a while.
00:44:59
Speaker
And they were trying to close themselves inside of it.
00:45:02
Speaker
And one was trying to make a boat out of it by drawing outside of it.
00:45:08
Speaker
And that was for like a good hour.
00:45:12
Speaker
And then it flipped over.
00:45:16
Speaker
And I don't know if I flipped.
00:45:17
Speaker
I forget if I flipped it over.
00:45:19
Speaker
I might have been the one that flipped it over.
00:45:22
Speaker
And that's when one of the children was like, oh, look, like the tape caught their eye.
00:45:27
Speaker
And they just said they wanted to open it.
00:45:29
Speaker
And then once they opened it, they wanted to move on to another box to open that.
00:45:34
Speaker
So I think they kind of just wanted to open the box for the satisfaction of opening the box.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:39
Speaker
So we celebrated that when they got the first one open, we were like, woo, you did it.
00:45:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:46
Speaker
So that's my guess.
00:45:47
Speaker
There was not much at the moment, deeper motivation per se.
00:45:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:52
Speaker
I would be curious to explore that with them, you know, and talk with them about why they want to do that.
00:45:56
Speaker
Like what, you know, that could be, that would be an interesting direction I think to go and just like,
00:46:03
Speaker
talk with them through, like make some of their decisions more explicit to them.
00:46:06
Speaker
It's like, you opened that box.
00:46:08
Speaker
Why did you open that box?
00:46:09
Speaker
You know what's funny?
00:46:11
Speaker
So when the mom, one of the moms came to pick up, I told her what happened.
00:46:16
Speaker
And she said, that's so interesting.
00:46:17
Speaker
So whenever a package gets, gets home, he wants to open it and he gets excited.
00:46:22
Speaker
And, and I wonder if part of the reason he enjoys opening it is because he associates it with novelty.
00:46:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:30
Speaker
Even though he knew, I knew he knew there was nothing in the box.
00:46:33
Speaker
He had been inside of it.
00:46:34
Speaker
He had explored it.
00:46:35
Speaker
Right.
00:46:37
Speaker
But I wonder if there was just like this thrill.
00:46:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:44
Speaker
That's interesting.
00:46:46
Speaker
So when examining the environment, you know, the boxes were put out there at the beginning of our time.
00:46:56
Speaker
I flipped them over at one point.
00:46:57
Speaker
They're very prominent.
00:46:58
Speaker
They're in the middle of the room.
00:46:59
Speaker
I was encouraging them to engage with it and asking them questions about what could this be, you know?
00:47:05
Speaker
And I think that influenced their interest.
00:47:09
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?
00:47:17
Speaker
What insights do the children's families have?
00:47:19
Speaker
Which I kind of touched on with one of the moms.
00:47:21
Speaker
How does this play reflect or challenge their beliefs, values, or practices?
00:47:26
Speaker
I think this play reflected an experience that one of them especially enjoyed.
00:47:31
Speaker
One of them really felt like the driver and the other one felt like the curious, like,
00:47:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:39
Speaker
Passenger.
00:47:42
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?
00:47:55
Speaker
And then there's a second part.
00:47:56
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.
00:48:03
Speaker
So what would the action as the last step, what would that mean?
00:48:07
Speaker
Hmm.
00:48:09
Speaker
Well, so let's see.
00:48:10
Speaker
The questions are around what values and intentions do you want to influence your response?
00:48:14
Speaker
So I want my intention of, well, a value I hold in their pedagogy is the value of open letter materials.
00:48:23
Speaker
I want to keep using open letter materials like boxes and tape.
00:48:27
Speaker
Um,
00:48:29
Speaker
One thing I'm wondering is what if we connected to multiple boxes with tape, almost like a chain?
00:48:36
Speaker
I'm curious what they would do in that instance.
00:48:41
Speaker
Because the tape is not being used to close something, it's being used to connect to things.
00:48:46
Speaker
And I wonder if that would influence how they interact with it.
00:48:50
Speaker
That's one idea.
00:48:52
Speaker
that I might do as a next step for the next day.
00:48:55
Speaker
What might you do to invite the children to take a different perspective?
00:49:00
Speaker
One way is to use different size boxes, maybe different size, maybe poke with different things other than scissors.
00:49:07
Speaker
So you were thinking that too.
00:49:08
Speaker
Tell me more.
00:49:10
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.
00:49:21
Speaker
And was there anything undesirable that came out of opening that box in that way?
00:49:27
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?
00:49:32
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
00:49:34
Speaker
Did you enjoy the sensory aspect of it or was it...
00:49:39
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?
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:46
Speaker
It's like, did your hand get sore?
00:49:47
Speaker
You know, like, would you want to?
00:49:49
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.
00:50:01
Speaker
And there's other questions we can consider, but I think that's like, I have my next step.
00:50:05
Speaker
Right.
00:50:05
Speaker
And then that's my planning.
00:50:06
Speaker
Like,
Reflecting on Learning and Documentation
00:50:07
Speaker
and then I, I would, I would do what I said I would do the next day or the next moment.
00:50:14
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.
00:50:20
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.
00:50:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:27
Speaker
And I find that really useful.
00:50:29
Speaker
Right.
00:50:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:30
Speaker
Very flexible.
00:50:31
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.
00:50:45
Speaker
If we're thinking about this.
00:50:46
Speaker
Oh, sorry.
00:50:47
Speaker
Sorry.
00:50:47
Speaker
I was going to get a little bit to assessment now too.
00:50:51
Speaker
Yes.
00:50:51
Speaker
Like,
00:50:53
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.
00:51:00
Speaker
Fine motor things, collaboration things, language things, right?
00:51:05
Speaker
There's a lot of things that came out that I could check, check, check, check at the end if I wanted to.
00:51:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:11
Speaker
But it's on the side and it's not the emphasis, but it's there.
00:51:14
Speaker
And it would be maybe interesting to see is there a standard I'm not hitting quite often.
00:51:18
Speaker
That'd be an interesting thing too, for whatever reason.
00:51:22
Speaker
But it goes just way beyond like, in a way I'm assessing my own understanding of the child's thinking over time.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:28
Speaker
If anything, it's not that I'm not assessing the child.
00:51:30
Speaker
I'm assessing my understanding.
00:51:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:33
Speaker
What were you thinking?
00:51:35
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.
00:51:56
Speaker
I'm wondering what, how you would, I do think it's helpful to have like kind of
00:52:02
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.
00:52:16
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,
00:52:31
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
00:52:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:43
Speaker
That makes sense?
00:52:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:44
Speaker
You know, I'm, yeah, I'm figuring it out.
00:52:46
Speaker
I mean, I guess one thing is being really accepting of whatever my documentation is.
00:52:50
Speaker
So not being too precious about that.
00:52:53
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?
00:52:59
Speaker
I'm using Padlet, so I use it a lot.
00:53:00
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.
00:53:09
Speaker
Right.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:12
Speaker
But you were asking about, like internalizing it.
00:53:15
Speaker
I mean, it's just practicing it and doing it.
00:53:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:20
Speaker
And just sharing it openly with colleagues and with families, I think.
00:53:24
Speaker
Yeah, maybe having like, there's something called a descriptive review.
00:53:28
Speaker
Have you done that before?
00:53:30
Speaker
Not formally, but I know exactly what you're talking about.
00:53:32
Speaker
How would you describe a descriptive review?
00:53:35
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.
00:53:50
Speaker
Yeah, Gerald.
00:53:53
Speaker
But he brought it up.
00:53:55
Speaker
It's a practice that teachers in the bread loaf.
00:53:58
Speaker
Yes.
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:01
Speaker
Teacher ed group, I guess.
00:54:05
Speaker
They like their, it was a process that I learned about.
00:54:08
Speaker
He cited them basically as doing this really rich description of student work.
00:54:13
Speaker
And I've done it once or twice before.
00:54:15
Speaker
And I like took the script review.
00:54:17
Speaker
Basically take a piece of student work.
00:54:20
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.
00:54:29
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...
00:54:38
Speaker
set of intentional rounds of questioning and observations about student work that is not evaluative, right?
00:54:45
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.
00:54:50
Speaker
Right.
00:54:52
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.
00:55:01
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,
00:55:06
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.
00:55:14
Speaker
You know, it's not fun, but it's serious and it's fun and it's essential.
Intellectual Discipline in Education
00:55:18
Speaker
You need that fun and that imaginative space.
00:55:21
Speaker
I would say all children do, but you have most, you know, the most grounds for it in early childhood.
00:55:26
Speaker
That's a very widely accepted notion that young children need to learn through play.
00:55:31
Speaker
And so I think that, I don't know why I brought up descriptive review.
00:55:35
Speaker
It just reminds me of it.
00:55:36
Speaker
Well, it's similar.
00:55:37
Speaker
It's a similar spirit and idea.
00:55:39
Speaker
I think you, what you said something about like,
00:55:42
Speaker
Maybe you said you didn't want to be prescriptive or something.
00:55:45
Speaker
Yeah, I did.
00:55:47
Speaker
You did, right?
00:55:48
Speaker
And I'm like, I thought about that.
00:55:49
Speaker
The word protocol has a lot of negative connotations to me.
00:55:52
Speaker
Right.
00:55:53
Speaker
But what I appreciate about this approach is that it's not a protocol for behavior.
00:55:58
Speaker
It's strictly for thinking.
00:56:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:00
Speaker
Which...
00:56:02
Speaker
And it slows your role because we are pressed to be evaluated as teachers.
00:56:05
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:06
Speaker
Yes.
00:56:06
Speaker
It slows your role.
00:56:08
Speaker
It really slows things down consistently.
00:56:11
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.
00:56:21
Speaker
They say something on the lines of the importance of intellectual discipline to an extent.
00:56:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:26
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.
00:56:35
Speaker
Right.
00:56:35
Speaker
And it's like, you can't really feel the discipline of thinking.
00:56:41
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:56:41
Speaker
if that makes sense.
00:56:42
Speaker
And so I want, I think I want to really work on that.
00:56:46
Speaker
And it's kind of my motivation first personally, and then more collectively with my team or in tandem, if you will.
00:56:53
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.
00:57:03
Speaker
Right.
00:57:05
Speaker
But this idea of,
00:57:07
Speaker
If this thinking protocol is happening both formally and informally all the time, it's really hard to have a bad program.
00:57:16
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
00:57:41
Speaker
of our time.
Investing in Teachers and Students
00:57:42
Speaker
Um, we're already at close to an hour.
00:57:46
Speaker
Our, our beautiful brains are taking us 20, 30s.
00:57:49
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,
00:57:58
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
00:58:23
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?
00:58:30
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.
00:58:45
Speaker
our assessments, right?
00:58:46
Speaker
And we don't need a fancy tool.
00:58:48
Speaker
We don't need to spend thousands of dollars on this stuff, right?
00:58:51
Speaker
No.
00:58:51
Speaker
What we need to invest in is our teachers and by proxy, our students, right?
00:58:56
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.
Broader Societal Factors in Education
00:59:08
Speaker
Totally.
00:59:09
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.
00:59:22
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.
00:59:31
Speaker
And high test scores won't guarantee that the children that get them have access to
00:59:38
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
01:00:02
Speaker
Like a workshop.
Conclusion and Future Discussions
01:00:03
Speaker
If you were really into... I feel like I just did a workout, baby.
01:00:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little heavy at times.
01:00:11
Speaker
So if you're still with us, thank you.
01:00:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:00:15
Speaker
We will have a part two, I think.
01:00:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:19
Speaker
And where we will discuss this protocol, this way of thinking, but perhaps in a wider sense.
01:00:25
Speaker
And I think the next thing we need to interrogate is... Interrogar.
01:00:33
Speaker
We need to interrogate accountability for teachers.
01:00:37
Speaker
Ooh, the term in general.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yes.
01:00:39
Speaker
And then propose an approach similar to this to, right?
01:00:44
Speaker
For how we monitor our... Let's talk about that.
01:00:47
Speaker
I'm excited to...
01:00:49
Speaker
But bookmark for another day.
01:00:51
Speaker
Go have a coffee break.
01:00:53
Speaker
Go do what you need to.
01:00:54
Speaker
Go have a nap.
01:00:56
Speaker
Whatever you're going to do after listening to this episode, we'll have a part two back at you really soon.
01:01:02
Speaker
And remember, you can always email us at pedagogyofthedistressed at gmail.com, which is also in the show notes with any thoughts.
01:01:10
Speaker
So thank you, Emily.
01:01:13
Speaker
Thank you, Rafa.
01:01:14
Speaker
You always make my brain so happy.
01:01:17
Speaker
Oh, likewise.
01:01:18
Speaker
In my heart.
01:01:18
Speaker
In my heart.
01:01:19
Speaker
I was going to say my whole body.
01:01:20
Speaker
My whole body.
01:01:22
Speaker
My whole body.
01:01:23
Speaker
See y'all.
01:01:24
Speaker
Bye.