I stumbled across an old blog post recently, from a teacher leadership project I was involved in a hundred years ago in a former life. A colleague and I were attending a math conference, and I was wrestling with the idea of student focus. 

As an early adopter of social justice in the classroom (in the days before uber-wokeism), I was always looking for effective ways to teach through that lens... but also to consider the impact on academic curricula. 13 years later, it's still a timely topic, given all the discussion about what gets "taught" in the public school classroom.

Here's the original post from 2013, along with photos; apologies in advance for outdated/broken links.

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Social Justice in the Math Classroom

At the beginning of May, Dale (he was my colleague) and I were very fortunate to attend OAME's 2013 conference.  In addition to sharing our own learning vis-a-vis "Smart Bansho" as part of our project goals, we got to attend several sessions of interest.

A key theme of this year’s conference was “Social Justice in the Math Classroom”. 

With Stephen Lewis as the keynote to kick off the conference on the first morning, it was not an easy theme to ignore!

One of the sessions I attended dealt specifically with Social Justice in the Math Classroom.  The session was presented by a team of teachers and resource staff from the Toronto District School Board's  “Model Schools for Inner Cities” program.  As teachers who want to foster critical literacy in students, they challenged us to consider how each of the “isms” might be addressed in a math classroom to challenge social norms. 

We thought about this within the framework of the four quadrants:

• Social Justice as Charity

• Teaching and Learning About Social Justice
• Teaching and Learning For Social Justice
• Teaching and Learning AS Social Justice

As teachers considering how to integrate social justice into our math programs, a question we can ask ourselves is this:  “How can numbers be used to change the world and make it a better place?”

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13 years later, I'm no longer in a school or classroom full time, but I'm still interested in the topic. I'm curious what my teacher friends today think about this.

After a bit of a hiatus from formal teaching life to move part time to another province and take on a job as a post-secondary curriculum and instructional consultant, I find myself preparing to return to the classroom.  It will be my second sojourn into teaching post-secondary, and my first time teaching in the college context.  It’s also my first time teaching primarily online. 

I‘m excited, and have been preparing to practise what I preach in terms of using and sharing clear learning goals and success criteria, triangulating (and diversifying!) assessment, and offering variety and choice in learning activities. My first sessional at Holland College will — I hope — be as engaging and practical for my students as it is for me to prepare for it!

As I work to bring to life my syllabus for Communication and Technology in the Arts, the blended course I’ll be facilitating for first-year college students in the Fundamental Arts program this September, I am struck by an interesting realization:  Once again, I‘ll be teaching the same „grade“ as my own children! 

This will actually mark the third time in my career that I‘ll be working with students who are the same age as Alex and Simon. The first time I played this game was the year I taught a Grade 3 class: At the time, my own babies were in Grade 3, too (albeit at a different school), and I often compared mental notes to see how aligned my classroom was with theirs, developmentally.  The edu-stars aligned again a few years later, when I moved from a Grade 7 & 8 Math and Science gig to Grade 6 Core… the same year Simon and Alex moved into Grade 6! And once again, I followed with interest what their respective teachers were up to and compared it to my own teaching and learning journey that year. (The boys even came to visit my students one day, as their school board and mine had different PD day schedules.)

I was recently asked in a job interview what my philosophy of education was. I am embarrassed to admit that I was caught somewhat off guard; the job was not directly a teaching job, so I had not prepared a polished, well-thought-out response like I had with some other anticipated questions.  It's embarrassing because as a life-long educator, I should have a succinct answer at my fingertips.  So I stumbled around, talking about some of the things I know to be important, but never really pulled it all together.

After the interview, I thought about this question for a long time.  I had written a philosophy of education as part of my B.Ed a hundred years ago, and revisited it about a decade ago, when I completed my principals' qualifications. I remember being pleased that -- while my thoughts had matured somewhat with age and experience -- fundamentally, I was still on the same page I had been as a beginning teacher.

However, both of these assignments were too wordy.  At approximately six pages each in length, neither my new teacher nor my aspiring edu-leader approach could be expected to hold someone's interest for very long.  And so, I set out to re-write my philosophy in a more succinct manner.

Below is the result. As a word doc, it's a single page, and can be expanded on or further synthesized as needed.

Vera's Philosophy of Education, 2022

I believe that – given the right context – all students can and will learn to a high degree.
The “right” context is not the same, necessarily, as “ideal conditions”.  It simply means that students are motivated to learn, and are engaged in the learning.  This can be orchestrated by an educator’s attention to what we know about how the brain works.  

For example, we can engage a student’s limbic system in a positive way by attending to relationships and fostering an emotionally safe and inviting physical learning environment (including the “physical virtual” environment, where relevant).
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Getting to know our learners, and then choosing materials, tools, strategies and content that reflect their lived experiences, affinities and interests, helps to establish and maintain trust over time.  This means that students are more likely to learn, even when occasionally a topic doesn’t appeal, or the manner in which material is presented is misaligned with an individual’s learning style.  Because they have an established and trusting relationship with their teacher. 

Building in predictable structures such as agendas and overviews, regular time to share and discuss learning goals and co-create success criteria, and frequent opportunities to reflect on and consolidate learning at the end of a lesson or unit further establishes and maintains trust. Students will know what to expect, so that they can use their brains for intended learning rather than focusing on the fight or flight mode that can accompany constant uncertainty. (Engagement of frontal lobe, rather than brain stem.) That said, the occasional “fun” activity that provides opportunities purely for mental or physical play allows for novelty, which the brain also seeks and thrives on.
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Considering Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” ensures students are intellectually challenged rather than bored… though not so much that they are overwhelmed and unable to learn.  

Building in choice for assignments and learning activities helps learners develop metacognition so that they can participate in finding “the zone” for themselves. These should include choices about where/how to work and with whom (if anyone).

Being transparent with students about why you as the teacher are doing these things further helps develop trust and motivation for students, so that they can become independent learners.  (Independence in this case means they confidently make learning choices independently, not that they necessarily work on their own all the time.)

If students appear to not be learning, I believe the teacher has a responsibility to self-examine: Rather than blaming the students, their families or the system at large, we must consider what is within our control.  More specifically, what is it about our practice, approach or the way in which we have chosen to set up the learning space that is inhibiting students from achieving excellence? Who can we call on for support as we attempt to do better?

My philosophy of education assumes the teacher as a facilitator of learning rather than an expert on everything. Continuously learning about how the brain works, and using that information to make conscious decisions about what learning to facilitate, and how to facilitate it for the various individuals whose learning we support, will help educators ensure all students can and will learn to a high standard.

I tried to make a Bitmoji classroom this weekend.  I’ve been intrigued by the incredible creativity of many educators in response to the pandemic.  Not only did they step up to try and stay connected with students this past spring, but they did their best to keep learning germane and make their “suddenly virtual” classroom engaging for students, many of whom were themselves struggling with new and difficult realities at home.

I was particularly intrigued by the way in which collective knowledge building happened, as thousands of educators across the province, country and globe jumped online and collaborated with renewed vigour. Social media was abuzz with the sharing and answering of questions day and night, as teachers and other education professionals highlighted how they were solving some of the problems the pandemic had thrust upon them and the students they supported. 

Through this largely grass roots aspect of the pandemic response movement, I began to see more and more Bitmoji classrooms pop into my stream, and I knew that was something I’d jump right into, were I still a classroom teacher.  I easily dismissed the naysayers who soon took to twitter to denounce Bitmoji classrooms (their argument is that teachers should be spending more time on concrete lesson planning, and less time on making “pretty pictures” for their online learning space).

​I know ALL about classroom set up.  This is the season when, for nearly two decades, I annually spent way too much money at Staples, Scholar’s Choice and the Dollar Store, and way too many hours in a hot, sweaty classroom, making sense of the jumble of desks, chairs and other furniture left piled on one side of the room, putting up integer lines, reference posters and bulletin board borders, setting up a cozy and inviting reading corner (hello, IKEA pillows and stuffies!)... Hell, I even got written up for it once, when a full colour photo of me standing on a desk, painting one of my bulletin boards, was published in a teacher mag and a reader got upset about the health and safety ramifications of not using a stepladder. (As an aside, have y’all SEEN the rickety old stepladders at some of these schools?  Give me a good, solid table to stand on any day!!!)

But I digress.

The point is, I understand how for many teachers, a beautiful learning space has always been a critical first step before launching into serious “first week of school” and cross curricular planning.  I remember how the rubber plant really could not wait, and yes, I really did need to have all those colour coded bins before I could even think about planning for an implementing any strategies from the three guided and independent reading books I had read earlier in the summer!!!  Because before I can do my best thinking around culturally responsive pedagogy, integrated instruction, assessment and learning, I need to know that where I spend the vast majority of my day is a visually energizing and well organized space.

I imagine that a virtual teaching and learning environment is no different.  And so, when the Bitmoji classrooms hit the Twittersphere and Instafeed, I was right there, coveting people’s colourful, creative and engaging digital classrooms!

I decided that as an experiment, and in solidarity with the many teachers who were getting ready to “return to school” in a year where the meaning of that statement was not yet entirely clear in all jurisdictions, I would imagine what my Bitmoji classroom might look like, and then build a mock up.

When I left the classroom to work at the ministry of education a few years ago, I had just been getting started with things like virtual classrooms (to supplement my in-person space and support myself and any students with frequent absences).  Collaborative online docs and digital assessment tracking were new to me, and I was frequently a resistant adopter. I was in some ways ahead of my time with the cross-board and international partnerships I forged with other educators while colleagues still dusted off the same binder of laminated lesson plans from a decade ago, but compared to the many who had already been experimenting with this stuff for years, I was (and still am) in many ways a Luddite.

So I had to do a little research.

I found lots of amazing websites explaining what to do and how to do it... if you know what some of the basic vocabulary means, and if you already have an existing Google classroom (due to my non-classroom-teacher status, I don’t).

A few that bedazzled me include:

• Hello Teacher Lady’s blog post on how to put together your Bitmoji classroom
• Glitter Meets Glue’s post with 15 amazing ideas
• Erin Integration’s amazing blog with this post on Bitmoji Classroom Scenes

Alas, I soon found myself knee deep in options and customizations, and completely overloaded with choices and challenges.

After several hours of failed attempts, I am left with no personalized Bitmoji classroom, and heaps more respect for the many educators across Ontario who are feeling the uncertainty and trepidation of heading back to school this September, and who are nevertheless somehow finding within themselves the strength and courage to prepare a warm and inviting welcome for the students they will teach this year.  We are not out of the woods yet with this pandemic and its aftermath, and these teachers on the frontlines are the ones we need to learn from and listen to.

I often reminisce about my classroom days... The neat thing about public education is that there are a tonne of jobs you can do over the span of a career, but there is no role quite so satisfying (yes, also exhausting) as that of classroom teacher. The engagement factor with students, the memories you build together as a special learning community as you co-develop the road map of your group’s learning journey together... even if you teach the same grade or subject two years in a row, every year is different as you refine your craft and respond to the unique learning opportunities of that year’s current events.

With the current health pandemic and resulting school closures, I have frequently fantasized about some of the lessons I would do with my Grade 6s... or 7s... or Grade 3/4 class... or Grade 8s.

Regardless of what I were teaching, I think this time would be one of tremendous bonding for me and my students, were I still a classroom teacher.

Here are three imaginary lessons of the many I have cooked up in my mind over the past 7 weeks. If you’re in a classroom, feel free to try them out, and let me know if I’ve still got it, or if three and a half years have made me lose touch!

1. Media Literacy Lesson Using Memes (Grades 6 and up)

If you and your students are anything like me, you’ve probably spent a good deal of time over the past two months surfing social media, and having a little chuckle of the ubiquitous COVID-related memes making the rounds. Maybe you’ve also noticed some emerging themes.

Why not use this time to draw your students’ attention to how we, as a society, use humour to cope with anxiety-inducing situations? A media literacy lesson on the surface, one could easily incorporate writing, math, oral language, social studies, art, and much more!

Here are some ideas:

• Have students collect and share memes virtually. Use a class Padlet, slide deck, google doc, whatever, and invite students to contribute 2-3 memes each that they have noticed online.
  
• Ask students to choose 10-12 memes from the class collection and sort them into 2-3 groups. What themes emerge? (Some I see most often are hair-related, food or body-image related, toilet-paper and travel)
  
• Compare the themes students notice (could lead a synchronous virtual discussion using a video conferencing platform, or post the question as a discussion thread in your online class platform and invite students to contribute over the course of a few days)
• As a class, sort ALL the memes into the categories students came up with (maybe the teacher demos this via video?)
• Have students graph the the categories in two ways (bar graph and circle graph, for example) - which themes are most common?
• Some thinking questions for students to reflect on in writing, or in a conversation with their peers online or with family at home: Why do you thinks these themes emerge most often? What do these themes tell us about what we value as a society? If we were to invite a class in a different grade or another school to collect 100 memes, do you think they would find similar themes in the memes they collect? Why or why not?
• Using an online meme generator, students could make their own memes about this time. (Brainstorm ideas for what makes a “good” meme... also a great idea to talk about copyright.) Have students collectively post their memes on a class padlet or closed Instagram account - a good laugh for the whole class, and they can share them with their families, too.

2. Mini Math Lesson (Grade 3 and up)

I noticed the following signs recently while walking along the path outside my apartment building, and thought, “if I were a classroom teacher right now, I would SOOOOOO share this with the students and get them thinking about “COVID Math” they notice while out and about for a walk in the community, or online.

According to this sign, how many feet long is a single goose? If you were going to measure the length of a grocery store line with 14 people in geese, how many geese long would that line be? (Assuming everyone is practising proper physical distancing.) In Florida, they are saying the appropriate distance is one alligator’s length. Why do you think they use alligator and Toronto uses geese? What do you think they might use (and how many of them) to visualize distance in New Zealand? Nigeria? Brazil? Why? What can you find in your home that you could use one of to measure the appropriate distance you should keep from others during this time? Two of? 5? 10?

And so on....

3. Jane’s Walk

Speaking of walks, this past weekend cities around the world celebrated Jane Jacobs’ vision of walkable urban living. Usually this consists of engaging in neighbourhood walks with a guide and a group, and discussing things like accessibility, architecture, nature and so on.

This year, Jane’s Walk organizers have had to get creative with how they encourage people to celebrate.

Here are some things I might encourage my students to do, were I still in a classroom:

• Go for a neighbourhood walk with your family. What are some interesting buildings you notice? (Pay attention to rooflines, doorways, signs, building materials and colours, etc.)
  
• Design a neighbourhood walk for a classmate to complete. Choose a theme (nature/trees, architecture, or something else you think your peer would like). Take 3-5 photos and post them, along with a description of the route, for your friend to complete.
• Imagine a family member were coming from out of town. What would you want to show them? Choose 3-5 highlights, and plan an imaginary tour, stopping at each highlight to tell a little bit about the community history of that stop, or why it’s significant to you.
• How accessible is your neighbourhood for different “walkers”? Imagine a family with a stroller, an elderly neighbour or family member, someone in a wheelchair, etc.
• What highlights would you choose to include on a neighbourhood walk that is 1 km long? 3 km? 5 km? Map your route using google maps, and post it for classmates to complete (as a class, you could notice whether people chose similar highlights for their walks of different lengths)

Teacher Reader Homework:

Choose ONE of the suggestion learning activities above. What curricular areas does it connect to? Develop a learning goal, and work with students to co-construct success criteria to describe successful achievement of that goal. The criteria can be shared with families, too, so that everyone can take turns providing descriptive feedback to students as they complete the tasks.

Use this time of school closure, focus on assessment for learning rather than evaluation.

I remember seeing an artistic tattoo, “beautiful disaster”, in stylized lettering, on someone’s arm a few years ago. If you looked at it one way, it seemed to read “beautiful”, and from the other perspective, it seemed to say “disaster”. I was mesmerized. How could something be both disastrous and beautiful?

And yet, here we are, in the midst of a global beautiful disaster. Around the world, people are both hoarding toilet paper and volunteering to shop for the elderly and otherwise vulnerable. People are both “stuck” at home under government- or self-imposed isolation, and taking glorious “social distancing” walks in large open areas, breathing in earth’s abundance like never before. Hospitals are inundated and overwhelmed, and some of the most smog-impacted places on earth are healing and clearing up due to the reduced CO2 emissions resulting from social distancing and the (temporary?) collapse of the airline industry.

If these are not examples of “beautiful disaster”, then I don’t know what is!

As an educator long interested in the possibilities of the internet and digital tools for collaborative, global learning, I personally am intrigued to see how those who have been saying, “we can’t” and “not yet” are now jumping to “we must immediately”!

While nervous for students and their anxious parents who are waiting to see what all of this means for “public education”, I’ve also been extraordinarily inspired by the many corporations and individual educators who are developing/co-developing and/or sharing for free some of the most creative resources I have seen in a long time.

The global implications of this beautiful disaster are profound, in education as anywhere else. Earlier this week I attended a webinar put on by an Ed Tech company, on the topic of “supporting remote learning”. The panel consisted of a principal, a Kindergarten teacher and a middle school tech teacher. In the chat pod, i counted over 150 participants, from at least 11 different countries. I found out about the session from an educator I follow on social media. I’ve never met her in person.

The big themes in that session, shared by the people on the ground, were threefold: First, a reminder that teaching is a highly personal profession. For all the systemic complaints some people may express, the truth is that Teachers usually have a lot of control over what they, personally, do with students and how they do it. Second, teaching well is about relationships. Relationship with students and their families, and relationships with one’s colleagues. If and as teaching moves to online, teachers will have to leverage new and existing tools to (re)establish and maintain strong relationships with the little (and big, in secondary) friends who often have spent more time with their teachers than their parents! Finally, differentiation. “Live where they are” said one of the educators on the panel, referring to the fact that — since the middle schoolers she taught “hung out” on Instagram — that was where she was posting her lessons. This women knew her clientele!

In our excitement to contribute, there will be a lot of “stuff” that continues to be created and shared. It will be a challenge for the average person, also dealing with the personal fallout of this pandemic (possible job losses, small abode with kids and other at home, lack of resources due to panic-buying, etc.) to critically select what’s worth pursuing, and what can be relegated to background “noise”. Now, more than ever, it will be important to consider the criteria by which we choose the things we expose our children to and share with our students. The choices we make in the coming days, weeks and months will set a precedent for whatever comes next. There is no “going back to normal”.

Like never before, we have an opportunity to work together to create something new, something more beautiful than disastrous.

Here’s hoping we get it right!

I’ve been lucky enough over the past several weeks to find myself with enough time to devote daily sessions to practising not only my drums, but also rediscovering the xylophone (which I hauled with me to PEI, finally, and set up in my new music cabin here), and attending to the trombone, which I started playing last year, in order to be able to complement Alex (French Horn) and Simon (Trumpet).

As my practising has become more consistent, I have noticed a distinct pattern: Spending sufficient time on warm up exercises each and every time I practise, and playing for at least 20 minutes total, have both led to a noticeable improvement in my playing. I know I’m improving with the trombone, because I am now able to hit notes I could not reach a few weeks ago (this afternoon I finally played high F for the first time!!), and also because my teacher recently told me that my tone was “really coming along”. :-)

When working through Stick Control exercises at the kit, my double sticking feels much smoother than it did a month ago. A benefit derived from drumming regularly (at least three times a week now) and for a minimum duration of 20 minutes each time.

My xylophone skills are slowly but surely returning to the levels I was attaining in Grade 13 (yes I am that old!!) when I played Flight of the Bumble Bee for an exam. I know this because I have been working on Bach’s Violin Concerto in A Minor (First Movement), and am inching my way closer to my desired speed on the metronome, with considerable accuracy. Both my speed and accuracy are also improving with the Gallop Solo, which I still have memorized from some 30 years ago, and which I have also been practising, for fun!

Working in a focused fashion on “boring” warm up exercises for all three of my instruments, and repeating sections to perfect accuracy, speed or tone, is (re)teaching me valuable skills which I hope to transfer to my professional life once I return to work later this month and leave my music cabin behind for another year.

For more discussion on the benefits of different approaches to practising, check out this article (with link to other articles) I found online.

What is it, exactly, that makes great teaching?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot, as I think back to my time as a classroom teacher, and reflect on how my practice changed over the nearly 20 years I spent with students before moving to a permanent position as a public servant with the Ministry of Education. In particular, as a parent who is too often underwhelmed with the practice I observe through the experiences of my own children in the school system, I am compelled to consider what, specifically, is the difference between a good teacher and a great teacher. (And perhaps more poignantly, was I ever the latter?!)

The more I learn about the roots of public education (how many of you knew that it was originally intended in many places as a tool of eugenics, not much different in purpose from the residential school system here in Canada?!), the more I am convinced of the truth of Michael Fullan’s suggestion from his book, Stratesphere, that we are nearing the end of our current system’s useful life. (Some might argue, we’ve long exceeeded its usefulness... and yet, in many places right here in this very province, the factory model and all its accouterments continue to shine as an exemplary model of mediocrity!)

So, then, one must ask, what IS the purpose of public education, if not to inculcate the youth of a society with the cultural mores of that society? What is it that we want/need kids to learn?

One problem I’ve observed as a parent, a classroom educator and a system leader in various roles is our lack of courage to ask these very questions: What is our purpose here as a larger system? Why are we doing what we are doing? What are we hoping to achieve?

Though blissfully ignorant at the time (as a young, white, able-bodied settler) of the broader colonial implications, I personally always subscribed to what I interpreted to be a well-intended, equity-minded approach suggested by Susanna Moodie, an early settler to Canada, and a strong advocate for public education, namely, that “the want of an education” is the only thing that separates the different “classes” of people.

Though I know enough now to understand that things are a little more complex than I understood them to be as a new teacher some 20 years ago, I still believe in the potentional for public education to act as an opportunity for universal access. In my ideal world, any student, anywhere could get what they need from a public education system, and use it to lift themselves out of their current situation, whatever it may be, and into a situation that allows them to fulfil their potential. It also allows them to realize the moral imperative of lifting one another up and supporting one another in achieving their potential, but removing barriers they have the power to remove for one another.

But as I am coming to realize, this requires incredible insight and humility on the part of classroom educators and school and system leaders, and a willingness to make themselves (ourselves) vulnerable as we examine the probably enormous unearned privilege, in most cases, that brought each of us to a job in public education.

When I think back to my early years of teaching, I now finally realize just how NOT “woke” I was. Despite thinking I was, and wanting to be. I was a good teacher, but I wasn’t great. I know this because I can think of specific students whom I did not serve well.

There are numerous examples (more in the earlier years and fewer in later years, I think) of students to whom I spoke more harshly than I should have, with whom I was more impatient than I should have been, and for whom I just really lacked a deep understanding of the barriers they faced within the system that had (mostly) advantaged me, and which I — in the very act of being a school teacher — was contributing to upholding.

And there is a more general shortcoming, too. An eager learner and quick study, early in my teaching career, I was already doing many of the things the “good” (well, decent at best, in some cases, I would argue — but I know I’m judgy!!) teachers my own children have do now: I photocopied packages of handouts like crazy, communicated detailed unit plans with parents, and shared specific, graphic, classroom management and behaviour plans with my students and their families. And they loved it, because they didn’t know any better.

It wasn’t until my latter years as a classroom teacher that I began to let go of some of my obsessiveness about my classroom, and began to focus on the students rather than the program. I developed outlines, but left the details to be fleshed out with my learners. I moved away from assigned seating and more into daily circle time (yes, even for intermediate level students!) followed by self-selected seating in one of many work areas around the classroom. I allowed math to flow into language to flow into social studies and back into math again... and while I read with some students, others worked on an art project, or researched something they were interested in from an earlier conversation in social studies, or helped a peer figure out how to upload an assignment into the new online classroom we were all figure it out how to use, or went to the contained class and read with kids who had ASD.

Imagine the chaos! It was beautiful... and the vast majority of the students in the class were engaged.

One of my former students connected with me on LinkedIn recently.

And not just any former student, this was a kid from the very beginning of my teaching career! Back in the day when I had more enthusiasm than experience, more passion than pedagogical knowledge.

I remember this kid. I have often seen his face in my mind over the years, because he was one of those creative souls for whom school seemed just a little too basic. Teachers, I suspect, didn’t really appreciate the true value of this guy’s innovative mind. He wasn’t a troublemaker, in the teachery sense of the word, but I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar that he was rarely if ever intellectually challenged as much as he could or should have been in elementary school.

Naython (not his real name) darkened my door his grade 6 year at the K-8 school where I started my career. It was my second year in the classroom, and I really cared about the kids, but I was a new teacher, and still had lots and lots and lots to learn!

Likely bored to tears by by my basic, beginning teacher lessons, the kid would sit quietly while I droned on, and glue little bits of pencil and eraser to the legs of his desk. Quite creative, actually, if you overlook the fact that he was vandalizing board property.

Yep, The kid was quirky all right. I remember his deadpan query, when I was delivering the slightly over-the-top instructions for EQAO’s written component (it was the first year of the provincial testing, and there were extensive instructions about what students could and could not write for the fiction part of the assessment, and what our responsibilities were as educators, if we had concerns about the violent, bloody/glory, or otherwise troublesome nature of anything a student had written). Pokerfaced and in his usual monotone, Naython wondered aloud, “what should we write about, Ms. Teschow? Rainbows and puppy dogs?”

Indeed!

Speaking of rainbows, judging by the young man’s LinkedIn profile (he still looks very much like he did in Grade Six, btw!), I would venture a guess that he might be of my tribe, so to speak. Both his volunteer endeavors and his paid work over the past decade would suggest that he is either part of the LGBTQ family, or a very strong ally.

Assuming the former, I am struck with a nagging sense of guilt.

I did not come out of the closet – – to myself or my students – – until the final few years of my teaching career. And as such, I missed many opportunities to model for the students in my classes what a “normal“ queer adult could look and sound like. And if I’m right in my assessment of my new LinkedIn contact’s sexual identity, then he was one of the statistically 2 to 3 kids in my class that year who did not get to see and hear that it was OK to be gay (or bi, lesbian, trans, 2-spirit, etc.)

Lucky for Naython, he seems to be doing quite well for himself despite having had me as a teacher during his (and my?) formative years.

And now that my days in a classroom are over, and I play a more subtle role in helping to shape education policy at the provincial level rather than more directly influencing students, I must resort to guiding and mentoring other educators to be good allies, or, if they themselves identify on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, to be confident in who they are and embrace this part of their identity for and with their students.

The Naythons of the world might well depend on it!

I find myself with a renewed interest in rubrics.

Some years ago, when I was still married to the idea of a rubric (having been introduced to the concept as a first-year teacher years earlier by a particularly enthusiastic instructional coach), I was rocked into reality while attending a literacy workshop where a "Ministry Person" joked about the "over-rubrification of Ontario". 

Initially shocked that there might be another way when it came to assessment for learning, I eventually became a convert to the idea of Learning Goals and Success Criteria, and have been working on mastery of using these with descriptive feedback to improve student learning ever since.

Lately, however, I find myself wondering about how an amalgamation of the two might better support both student learning and teacher workload.

"Learning" Goal as Step One

Essential for both a quality rubric and the development of effective success criteria is the defining of an initial goal.  What is it that one wants the students to learn, in accordance with one or more overall curriculum expectations, and taking into consideration the student interests and affinities in a particular class?

As a classroom educator, I might express such a goal as, "We are learning to..." followed by some overarching description of the intended learning from the curriculum.

As an Education Officer with the Ministry of Education, I find myself pulling out these skills when considering the ideal candidate for a writing project. As my colleagues and I recently pondered while preparing a memo and call for writers, what, specifically, were we looking for in a group of writers? From this overarching vision, a set of criteria emerged, as they do when we consider how best to describe a curriculum-grounded learning goal.

From Success Criteria to Rubric

Assuming one has developed a clear learning goal, the set of criteria  that is developed (or ideally, co-developed with students) to describe said goal are used to provide descriptive feedback to students as they work though the learning.  This same set of criteria, once firmed up (criteria may evolve during the formative part of the learning) will also be used by the teacher to evaluate student learning for reporting purposes later on, in the summative phase of the assessment and instruction cycle.

Since we currently still have a leveled (or graded) report card system, it is crucial that success criteria be further developed into gradients of achievement, then.  That is, one must clarify (for oneself and the students) what different degrees of performance of each criteria look, sound and feel like. 

This is helpful both for the students and their families as they consider their development along the way, and for classroom educators, who ultimately have to make a judgement based on the evidence of student learning, and then assign that collection of evidence a mark on the report card.

In order to practice our own skill with this, and to develop an example to use in an online workshop , a colleague and I recently used the rubric maker tool on the VLE to co-develop a rubric to assess and evaluate participation in our online workshop.

We thought about what each of our success criterion might look like at each level, and then used this to flesh out a continuum of achievement, thereby creating in essence a rubric.

So, for example, we agreed that one criterion that would be essential in demonstrating our learning goal (active participation in an online learning session)  would be the contribution to collaborative online spaces such as google docs, a Padlet we planned to share, and so on.

A participant who was just beginning to develop these skills might access the spaces (which we could assess for example by noting their presence in a shared Google doc), but might not yet contribute any posts. Another participant, one who was progressing well towards our goal of active online participation in the learning, might contribute many relevant ideas, whereas a participant who was participating to a higher degree would not only contribute relevant posts, but would also build onto the ideas of others, perhaps by contributing a relevant link, or a photo of someone else's ideas or questions in action.

By taking the time to flesh out each criterion, we built a rubric that could ultimately be used to grade participant's attainment of the learning goal, were we to use this sort of evaluative tool in an online AQ course, for example.

Descriptive Feedback: A Formative Rubric

Although Growing Success (2010) tells us in no uncertain terms that feedback is an essential component in supporting student learning, we also know that feedback itself is not enough.  John Hattie’s research tells us that in some cases feedback might even be detrimental. Or, as Stiggins says, “It’s the quality of the feedback rather than its existence or absence that determines its power.”

So it’s important to have an understanding of descriptive feedback as a tool for supporting learning. Positioning feedback within the assessment process, and basing it on the criteria one develops (or co-develops with students) to describe an already-established and public, curriculum-based learning goal ensures that we are using feedback effectively to support student learning.

So how, then, can a rubric leverage the power of descriptive feedback?

The use of descriptive feedback can go hand in hand with a rubric being used for formative assessment, that is, in the middle of the learning rather than at the end. 

For example, a student currently demonstrating "level 2" in terms of online contributions in the isolated row of the sample rubric above should not be left (as my own poor students were 20 years ago when I was first messing around with rubrics!!) to puzzle out their own feedback from some random circles or check marks on a page.  Rather, the feedback that accompanies such a statement could be something like this:

​Once again singing the praises of the rubric maker on the VLE (why didn't I know about this thing when I was in a classroom??!!), this can all be pre-populated for a class in a rubric, and can still be customized for individual students where appropriate.  Better yet, photos (of exemplars) can be included, AND feedback can be audio-recorded if some students are more inclined to listen than read!

A little short term pain in terms of time commitment for the teacher in setting up the rubric for long term gain (being able to use it effectively when assessing and evaluating later on).

Feedback AND Marks?

We know from Dylan William's research that just throwing a mark on a page (even it's virtual!) doesn't move student learning forward, and yet we are still currently (in Ontario at least) stuck with a reporting system that requires grades.  My best advice, then, is to slim it down to four levels, quite possibly removing even the numbers, and replacing these with descriptors like "getting started", "almost there", "progressing well" and "progressing very well", or something to this effect.

How to interpolate the data gathered on a rubric like this and use it to inform final evaluation, or assessment OF learning, is a topic for another blog post. For now, suffice it to say that this method is one way to balance the desire to support student learning with the need to prepare for "marks" or "grades" later on.

Don't Wait Until the End!

When using a rubric for formative purposes, i.e. to provide feedback along the way, timing is key.  Don't wait until the end of a learning cycle to provide students with feedback.  It's too little, too late then.  (Just this week I saw evidence of this in my own household, where I found a small rubric in the garbage in my kids' room.  Clearly, one of them had received this "feedback" on a final assignment; the location of the rubric indicated its value!)