“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
― E.E. Cummings
Spent a day learning about a teacher evaluation tool. The principles of effective teaching for learning were in no way followed for our ‘training.’ In fact, every example provided of what those bad teachers do is what we experienced. Mostly, we listened for hours.
In some way I’ll find value in the occasional mind numbing experience– a visceral reminder of how it is for the learner to sit and listen without a chance to process or ask question or figure out application of learning.
One of the ways I kept myself quiet was imagining how the presenter might have worked with us, given the limited time she had, the material she felt she had to cover, the limited number of packets/resources she had, her lack of time for preparation, not knowing us or what we already knew and finally, not having a clear picture of what we were going to need to do with the learning–our outcomes.
Oh wait….I have just described the conditions many of our teachers, who are being evaluated, face as they try to meet the many indicators on these evaluation rubrics with high stakes for their schools and their jobs–no excuses for them whereas our presenter believed the excuses were valid for her.
We are wasting everyone’s time if kids aren’t learning and growing.
There are so many evaluation instruments being peddled now to meet requirements for evaluation of teacher effectiveness. They are all many pages long, more than a teacher can hold in her/his mind for application.
In my current practice with student teachers and most recently coaching teachers in schools that were part of the International Studies Schools Network, I was lucky to work with a curriculum framework that was simple enough to hold in our minds. We trusted teachers to discover endless potential in this framework for their practice. That trust in itself for teachers and in turn, the students, was transformative. The possibilities they discovered, the boundaries they explored were inspiring. Human spirit was shining.
Here are the basics that transformed teaching and learning:
For curriculum design, 4 domains:
- Investigate the World
- Recognize Perspectives
- Communicate Ideas
- Take Action
For instructional design, 4 principles:
- Student choice
- Authentic task that people do in real world
- Global Significance
- Exhibition of learning for audience beyond the teacher.
More information about this transformative curriculum framework initially developed with teachers is available at asiasociety. I hear it is only open for a limited time.