I hope everyone had a nice Labor Day, we certainly had beautiful weather.
It was very busy in the assessment office last week, and this week looks to be more of the same. Teachers are gearing up for the first round of assessments that will be placed into our Pearson Benchmark system. The system allows the teachers to work within their departments or grade level to analyze student, class and grade level performance. Results can be analyzed to determine weaknesses in curriculum, instruction or weaknesses of the assessment. Much of this work is accomplished during early dismissals on the first Wednesday of each month. On those days teachers work together to sift through the results to determine ways to improve learning for our students. This process is instrumental in our efforts to improve as an organization and as individual educators.
While I am currently reading several books for my ISU class, my "fun" read this week is The Homework Myth by Alfie Kohn and while I haven't finished the book, the first three chapters have given me a lot to think about. Kohn like many educational writers are asking us to question the common assumptions that we often perpetuate in education. Those items that we have kept in practice without testing the effectiveness or benefits of them. This specific book is about the practice of homework and whether homework is giving us the results that we expect. It's good to read authors that push us to think about change in our organization, however uncomfortable it might make us feel. I'm looking forward to finishing his book. If anyone has read it and has any comments about it, please post them, I would love to hear what others think about this book.
To continue with my theme from my first post, my "thanks" this week goes out to Carrie, Jessica, Tammy and Ronnie. I met with these four exceptional educators last week during department meetings. Starting a comprehensive Spanish program K-8 in the 2008-2009 school year was an enormous task. Not only did they get the program up and running last year, they have it flourishing. They work very hard to share best practices to help all of their students learn the language. The second year is going to present different types of challenges, which we discussed at the meeting. The difference is the attitude they take toward those challenges. Many people see challenges as something to sit around and complain about and people like Carrie, Jessica, Ronnie and Tammy see challenges as something that professional educators face, so they dialogue about ways to overcome the challenges. They know that complaining isn't going to help their students learn Spanish, brainstorming and coming up with solutions to fix the problems will. They are a great group of positive individuals, and we are privileged that they are a part of the CCUD#1 team, our students are certainly reaping the benefits.
Thanks for reading.
Tammy