Teacher Stories
Submitted by Joy of Teaching, on October 6, 2011
For many years of my career, I taught first grade. I loved the energy and the desire to learn that came with my young students. For many of those years, I used a basal reading series, designated by the school that only assessed my students on the end-of-unit tests that accompanied the series. Even then I knew something wasn’t right. I was missing something, though I wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was.
Later in my career, I decided to pursue my reading specialist certification. At the same time, I began teaching first grade in a collaborative school that provided me the opportunity to use my reading knowledge in class with my students. It was then that I was introduced to and began working with authentic reading assessments. I used the QRI, DRA and a variety of real-world reading materials to observe, evaluate and plan instruction. There were no end-of-unit tests, bubbles to fill in or true/false words to circle. I used meaningful, engaging tasks that taught ME what it was that my students needed to learn.
My instruction, based on these assessments, was individualized to each student. We worked in guided reading groups based upon the student’s need. I worked on specific skills using (Gasp!) real books! I taught one group how to hold a book and another how to decode a word using context. It was what they needed, individually to succeed. And it worked. My students felt valued, their level of knowledge was accepted and they truly enjoyed the work. Oh, and their Terra Nova scores rose. Whatever that meant.
Now, it seems that there is nothing authentic about assessment. It seems that standardization is the norm. It all seems so contrived. I think back to those end-of-unit tests. All I knew about my students after administering one was that the Bluebirds were smart, the Redbirds were satisfactory and oh my, those Buzzards….
I didn’t know that Dawan knew all of his beginning sounds but he didn’t really look at the whole word. I didn’t know that Sara could read every word on the page, but had no idea of what she had read. I didn’t know that Tisha never learned returned sweep, or that Donald never paused at the end of sentences. All I knew was a number. A number, which translated into, well, a number. Nothing more.
Not knowing this important information about my students prevented me from being the best teacher for them. I even feel guilty about not knowing. How many students have slipped through my classroom many years ago, that I didn’t know how to teach effectively. How many Buzzards were Butterflies waiting to emerge? And how did that influence their futures.
Now, with everything we know about good reading instruction, it seems that we are going back to the days of one-for-all assessment. Teachers are no longer asked to evaluate their students individually. Teachers aren’t practicing the art of authentic assessment. Instruction isn’t designed for the learner; it is designed to raise standardized test scores. Whatever that means.
I hate to see this happen. I hate to see teachers reading scripts, students taking tests and the loss of creativity in designing a lesson for each student. Teachers won’t know what Dawan, Sara, Tisha and Donald don’t know. And what we don’t know could hurt them.