I've blogged before about the challenges of new assessments and new data lines. That, as they say, is a story for a different time. These parents understood the process of re-norming and changing the content of the assessments. What struck this group of intelligent and articulate individuals was when I explained why. I shared the emphasis of "rigor" being placed on educational experiences, standards, and assessment. One of the physicians looked at me oddly, paused, and asked, "Wait, you teach dead people." We paused. We laughed. We pulled out our phones and looked up the definition. The humor left the group as we all stared at our screens and pulled bits and pieces from the definition found on the Merrian-Webster.com website:
I went home and thought about this. I thought about challenge our kids, raising them to be good people who can handle hard questions. Then I thought about one of our middle school math teachers. When reviewing page 2 of a new math book, he explained that the problem on the page was one of those "Somebody out there hates you problems." The challenge to the problem was not the mathematics, but the wording and the way the units were organized. He explained that the language is meant to fool the students. The children are just beginning to understand the concept of slope and in the language of the problem they use x and y differently as variables and thus make the children flip their understanding of procedural knowledge. Even if the children understand how to calculate slope and what slope means, the problem challenges them to reanalyze the variables. It's like calculating gallons per mile instead of miles per gallon. The answer doesn't make conceptual sense, hence a "Somebody out there hates you problem."
At MIT, a group of professors, looked at the challenge of assessments and learning. Developing some of the best and brightest engineers in our country, the instructional leaders began to question the grade-focus of the students and wished to develop a learning and achievement focus in their classroom. Paul Henry Winston outlines guidance for grading that they developed for their 6.034 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class:
Winston goes on further when discussing assessment (at MIT!!!!):
"Further guided by our desire to test subject understanding rather than general intelligence, we decided to resist the temptation to be so clever that our quizzes test the students on how well they can penetrate our cleverness, rather than their understanding of the material."
The lessons here are fundamental. The concept that learning should be assessed by not the adult capacity to create clever problems meant to trick students but rather the child's ability to understand a concept. Assessment should be about learning. Schools need to be about learning. The goal of creating "rigorous learning experiences" may not create the type of learning situations the promoters of the term wish to obtain. Creating intrinsic learners who work on meaningful problems in situations which promote innovation and understanding should be our goals. It is in Dr. Winston's classes at MIT and the results, are amazing:
"When we first tried our new grading procedure in the fall of 2006, we expected many students to leave by the end of the first hour or two of our three-hour final, because there were a substantial number who were in the highest category for all or all but one of the four quizzes. As time went by, we noted, with some alarm, that many known-to-be-excellent students stayed the entire three hours. When the exam was over, we asked one of the highest-category students why she did all five parts when we had made it clear she needed to do only one. “Oh,” she said, “I did the rest for fun!” Our pride was palpable. We knew we were on to something."
Let's not teach dead people but those who zest for life and learning as these MIT students do.
- 1) "the difficult and unpleasant conditions or experiences that are associated with something" - Wait, can't children have fun as they learn? Shouldn't they like school?
- "a (1) : harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment : severity" - Schools are being asked to become harsh and inflexible places. Should teachers become harsh in opinion or judgement?
- "(2) : the quality of being unyielding or inflexible : strictness" - Will this definition foster the innovative entrepreneur? Is the child who is the product of this learning experience going to be our next inventor or scientist?
- "severity of life : austerity" - Are we teaching children to be reasonable in their approaches, interactions, and choices?
- "b : an act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty" - Isn't there a difference between strictness and cruelty. Does one need to go hand in hand with another? We want our children to be high achievers but also be balanced in their approach to life.
- 2) "a tremor caused by a chill" - As we got this far into the definition I was longing for the days before smartphones as a chill truly had overtaken the group.
- 3) "a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable; especially : extremity of cold" - This seemed to be the first definition that began to somewhat make the group feel better. They wanted their children to be challenged, but not to the point of being extremely uncomfortable. They wanted achievable challenges. Ones that can be overcome and the students feel value from doing. The extremity of cold as the example didn't resonate with the group as being a valuable challenge. Rather than wanting war stories of walking to school uphill five miles through the blizzard, this group wants to know what cool things you did in the classroom.
- 4) "strict precision : exactness <logical rigor>" - Precision is valuable, but the highest level of precision will always come from computers and robots. As parents we hope for innovative, collaborative, and creative. We want good skills, but value the process as much as the product.
- 5) "a obsolete : rigidity, stiffness" - Perhaps this definition is an accurate product of the children this process is trying to cultivate?
- "b : rigidness or torpor of organs or tissue that prevents response to stimuli" - It was here that the physician's definition began to come forward. Are we working to create rigid individuals, teachers, principals, or students who are prevented to responding to stimuli.
- "c : rigor mortis" - Are we teaching dead people?
I went home and thought about this. I thought about challenge our kids, raising them to be good people who can handle hard questions. Then I thought about one of our middle school math teachers. When reviewing page 2 of a new math book, he explained that the problem on the page was one of those "Somebody out there hates you problems." The challenge to the problem was not the mathematics, but the wording and the way the units were organized. He explained that the language is meant to fool the students. The children are just beginning to understand the concept of slope and in the language of the problem they use x and y differently as variables and thus make the children flip their understanding of procedural knowledge. Even if the children understand how to calculate slope and what slope means, the problem challenges them to reanalyze the variables. It's like calculating gallons per mile instead of miles per gallon. The answer doesn't make conceptual sense, hence a "Somebody out there hates you problem."
At MIT, a group of professors, looked at the challenge of assessments and learning. Developing some of the best and brightest engineers in our country, the instructional leaders began to question the grade-focus of the students and wished to develop a learning and achievement focus in their classroom. Paul Henry Winston outlines guidance for grading that they developed for their 6.034 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class:
- "We should find a way to deemphasize grades so as to make room for big ideas"
- "We should test understanding, not speed and general intelligence"
- "We should not care whether a student demonstrates understanding early in the semester, or late, as long as the student demonstrates understanding."
- "We should give an A to every student that demonstrates A-level understanding"
"Further guided by our desire to test subject understanding rather than general intelligence, we decided to resist the temptation to be so clever that our quizzes test the students on how well they can penetrate our cleverness, rather than their understanding of the material."
The lessons here are fundamental. The concept that learning should be assessed by not the adult capacity to create clever problems meant to trick students but rather the child's ability to understand a concept. Assessment should be about learning. Schools need to be about learning. The goal of creating "rigorous learning experiences" may not create the type of learning situations the promoters of the term wish to obtain. Creating intrinsic learners who work on meaningful problems in situations which promote innovation and understanding should be our goals. It is in Dr. Winston's classes at MIT and the results, are amazing:
"When we first tried our new grading procedure in the fall of 2006, we expected many students to leave by the end of the first hour or two of our three-hour final, because there were a substantial number who were in the highest category for all or all but one of the four quizzes. As time went by, we noted, with some alarm, that many known-to-be-excellent students stayed the entire three hours. When the exam was over, we asked one of the highest-category students why she did all five parts when we had made it clear she needed to do only one. “Oh,” she said, “I did the rest for fun!” Our pride was palpable. We knew we were on to something."
Let's not teach dead people but those who zest for life and learning as these MIT students do.
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