Okay, none of them were actually bad or ugly, although I did have a lot more questions I think this week with some of the readings. But let's start with something a little more fun, and two doodles I draw/wrote as my response to Andrade's piece, Teaching with Rubrics. (side note: I wish I could respond to everything with doodles and drawing, sadly it's hard to get a lot of ideas and discussion into them without some SERIOUS planning and work) It was kind of hard for me to respond to this piece, mostly because she already deals with a lot of the bad things about rubric use. So I was kind of left nodding my head and saying "mm hmm". I think one other interesting idea she mentioned was self assessment of the rubric's and their performance, and checking for any bias, based on gender, race, ethnicity, etc. I'm sure a lot of teachers don't try to bias their marking, but it must definitely creep in quite a bit.
Chapter 7 Teaching and Assessing Students with Special Needs This will definitely be a hot topic for the rest of my studies and well into any actual teaching I do, and interestingly, it was one of the driving questions that brought me to apply to teachers college. I was completely unbalanced and troubled by the realities of some South Korean classrooms, where students with severe learning disabilities and challenges were just pushed through, grade after grade, and there was no way to help them.I remember reflecting on my own school experiences and being grateful that there were some specialized programs and assistance for students when I was growing up. Now you can imagine my disappointment and horror walking into an Ontario school today, and seeing that soo many students are being left behind, neglected and ignored. It's not because teachers don't care, but the reality is that there aren't the resources, training or time to make that difference. I was hoping this chapter would provide a lot of those answers, but unfortunately I don't think it did. It did in a round about, vague way, saying they need differentiated lessons, and more attention, and to be given specific tasks and "scaffolding", but what does that really mean? How do you implement that for 6 students with learning disabilities in a classroom of 30? How do you do it in a split class of 30, with 6 learning disabled children who are on completely different skill levels? How do you do that during contract negotiations where you aren't supposed to provide additional services at school beyond normal work hours and duties? The list of difficulties, scenarios and issues goes on and on and on. I feel that a lot of the material in this textbook is designed for a best case scenario kind of situation, or a middle of the road setting, where things aren't too bad, and you're finding ways to cope. It's not quite as applicable for the teachers who feel like they're drowning. At the school where I'm placed for my CSL, they've lost all specialty programs, courses and teachers, so things like woodworking/shop, a dedicated music teacher, a librarian, sports teams, all those wonderful resources and opportunities which can help under achieving students get involved, become passionate, enjoy school, have all been eliminated. So if you aren't good at sitting quietly in a class all day, and performing the assigned tasks, you're not going to do very well. Please don't take that as a knock against my school, what I'm saying is, having innovative, nice warm approaches is great, but a lot harder to do when you're scrambling to meet the basic expectations of a teacher and can't invest the time to diversify your approach or resources. I also found the idea that every teacher should be a special education teacher dangerous and frightening. Why should that be the case? Should every teacher adapt for their students and try to provide for their individual learning needs? Absolutely. But teachers are not social workers, we are not guidance counselors, we are not immigration experts and psychologists, and asking us to fulfill those roles, not just one on one with a few students, but with dozens of students, is asking way too much. Those are full time jobs, and beyond the capacity of what I believe a teacher should do. I mean, I'm not learning how to advise and counsel a troubled youth in my Bachelor of Education courses. So where should I attain that knowledge? I'm not developing new methods of teaching which revolutionize the epistemology of education, so how can I develop differentiated lesson plans for 25 students, and 5 additional ones which all need to be tailored and specific? I guess the question I'm really asking is, are those students being best served in that class to begin with? I don't think we should segregate all classes because students are of different levels, but having students reading at a grade 8 level, next to students reading at a grade 4 level, with a whole mix in between, creates a situation where effective teaching becomes harder and harder to achieve. This also ties into the portion on Educational Assistants and their roles. It was a little vague in the chapter since Cooper states the EA's role needs to be clearly defined, but then doesn't really give any framework or descriptions, besides the one example. I know this needs to be a case by case judgement call, but at the same time, how do we know what the EA should be, or shouldn't be doing? Should they be planning their own curriculum for the students? Does it become a separate class? Is that still allowed in today's system? I would like more clarification on this, because from what I've seen in my CSL, they can't do those things, and are only meant to assist, but without being involved in those aspects, it's limiting. Also, they have I believe 1 EA, split between 3 full intermediate classes, so even that interaction is very limited and sparse. I did like the idea of making sure to differentiate between which stage of the learning process students were being engaged in. We normally want more inclusive, dynamic exercises, learning as they demonstrate skills, but separating them in this context would be beneficial so that information and conceptual understanding can be reinforced, before asking them to display that through skills or presentations. Finally, the portion on assessment brought up the same question I had before. Cooper says how performance standards have to remain rigid, but we can adapt content standards to suit a student with special needs. Okay ... so I can give a student a report card that says he is performing at 80%, which is wonderful, but at the content level 2 grades below where he is supposed to be? How is that useful? Don't content and performance rubrics/assessment have to be considered in tandem since they are interdependent? How can you adjust one, keep the other, and say that's addressing the needs for differentiation while being fair? I still don't understand that logic. Chapter 8 Assessment Tools and Technology So sometimes I wonder if we should change the titles of different courses in the BEd program to "Using rubrics in Math" or "Increasing Productivity and Assessment with Rubrics" or "Rubrics: USE THEM!" since they seem to come up in every part of teaching so far. Now that should probably tell me something, like how useful they are, but the problem is I have a natural revulsion to them. It is a physical response that I just can't help. I turn a page, and upon seeing just the slightest corner of a table containing a rubric, and I start to cough, and convulse and my brain shuts down. That's why I find it even more incredible that they claim "Use rubrics, your students will LOVE them!" Really? Because I don't love them. I mean, yes, I like to know what is expected, but I don't enjoy a slew of developmental and gradual terms that reiterate the same thing with one difference: 'demonstrates little/some/strong/complete knowledge of yadda yadda yadda...'. I mean, how effect are terms like "some", "good", "interesting", "poor", "a few"? These are all terms which don't really give me actual information. If you wrote a paragraph describing the specifics of an assignment, instead of handing me a rubric, I'd probably understand things a lot more. I feel like what I should do with my time is make a phone app which auto-generates rubrics that can be differentiated by highlighting key words that change based on a 4 point sliding scale. Just input the key words, and then bam, instant rubrics at your disposal. Because that's how I feel about most of them, you're just filling space to check off all the possible parts. I know this is just me complaining, but having had to work with rubrics and try to make them more accessible to parents and students, I can say without a doubt, most rubrics presented and even the examples in Cooper, are pretty vague and useless. The last portion of the chapter dealt with technology, which aside from some small setbacks and cons, seems to be moving forward into mainstream teaching, which is great. I did find the section about the website good, however, I would definitely caution against having too many online interactions, such as in this cohort, where I literally have to check into 7-8 websites to find all my work. Being expected to check and update my e-mail, uzone, blackboard, google+, Ucal/events, sharet racker, blog, and class websites (non blackboard ones), is just ridiculous, and to be honest, I'm constantly worried I'm missing information. There should definitely be some kind of organizational program that we use to communicate across all classes with all people. So my reflections on chapter 8 were really not very specific or informative I guess, really more just grumbling over rubrics (yes I know deep down inside they will make me a better person ... I'll get used to them) and how convoluted things can get. On that note, we are getting to the end of Cooper, which is interesting, and some big group projects are coming up, so I'm looking forward to putting all these lessons into practice. Until then, adios~
1 Comment
linda radford
10/13/2015 07:07:04 pm
Peter, Who could ask for more? You begin with two fabulous drawings that certainly add texture and depth to your very personal response here. I appreciate that you want to learn more about Special Ed in Ontario. In the one year program there use to be a course which was taken at the same time as PED 3141. Now you don't get to take it until next term and it is combined with Learning Theories. We will however try to spend some time unpacking some of your questions. Also check out Growing Success (see BBL for ministry links or just google it) for more info. On the topic of rubrics, I like your aversion. Personally I think it is healthy and I too have experienced that sort of response. That being said, I still often find that they are the best option and there are a number of different versions of rubrics like the check brick that I will use for your curriculum and assessment plan.
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