Assessment Module 1

To teach is not only to present them with the information so that they may learn. To teach is to instill in them a passion for greater knowledge. My Principal began our “Meet the Teacher Night” with this address to parents. “When we were growing up, they told us knowledge is power. But that is no longer true. If you have Google®, you have knowledge. What our school focuses on is critical thinking, taking that knowledge and applying it so we can be 21^st century learners in compete in a global economy.”

Critical Teaching is searching for that higher order thinking. To ask questions of material presented to us. Critical Teaching is inquiry based teaching. I found an interesting article relating to the Common Core Standards and critical teaching. The article states, “Just as students are finding themselves challenged by higher expectations, as teachers, we are being challenged to learn new teaching strategies and to prepare new resources for our students” (Augustus & Fox 2013).

Here is the article if you are so inclined: http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20131008/OPINION07/310080086/Making-Common-Core-common-standard?nclick_check=1

At my current school, we are a Professional Learning Community. We recognize that we are not just preparing students to excel in High School, we are empowering participants of a Global Community, to become 21^st Century Learners. What that means essentially, is that teachers teach in their ‘area of expertise’ (content area) beginning in grade 1. The other teachers who teach in your content area and grade level are your collaboration partners whom you meet with weekly to answer our four questions* for the upcoming Essential Learning Outcomes (ELO). Because of this process, I feel we have ample opportunity to teach critically and are currently striving to do exactly that. Our thinking is that critical teaching aims to create levels of academic performance that is significantly greater than those just motivated by test scores. Our school uses formative and summative assessments and there is accountability on everyone’s part. Because we aren't so focused on teaching towards the test, but promoting the learning of ALL children in our school, we are seeing great results.

*What do we want students to learn?

*What do we do when students don’t know it?

*What do we do when students do?

*How do we know students know it?

An article explaining PLC's and how the focus shifts from the individual to the group (Sackney &
Mitchell, 2001). Teacher isolation is lessened as educators share collective knowledge, methods and  successes to foster the growth of a successful learning community can be found
here http://education.alberta.ca/apps/aisi/literature/pdfs/FINAL_Professional_Learning_Communities.pdf

“Teachers can create classrooms that are places of hope, where students and teachers gain glimpses of the kind of society we could live in, and where students learn the academic and critical skills needed to make it a reality.” (Christensen & Karp, 2003) Schools.

The effort to rethink our classrooms must be both visionary and practical (Christensen & Karp, 2003). They need to be visionary because we need to go far beyond the prepackaged formulas and agendas that are imposed on schools. And, practical, because the work of reshaping educational practice requires effort from teachers, students, parents and communities.

My parents encouraged me to be an activist at a very young age. At the age of 11 I was knocking on doors for signatures for a petition to turn an unused area of land into a neighborhood park. After obtaining the signatures with a group of other parents and their children, I was asked to present our signatures and our pitch to the local government. I presented, along with some adults, and a few months later I reaped my reward when we broke ground on what is now called Giant’s Foot Park. In an effort to expose my students to experience something like I did, I have created a mini-unit lesson I plan to complete this month. Our ELO for Language Arts this month involves letter writing. My team has many different activities in which the students write letters, but I have decided to come up with something that may inspire activism. The stage will be set with my Principal will send us a video message saying he’s cancelling recess forever. My students will have to agree as a class that they don’t want this to happen, collect signatures and write him a letter explaining why they’d like to continue to have recess. It’s a small step, but my part-time status only allow for so much.

The recent government shutdown in the United States is a perfect time to create an explicit discussion and to provoke students to develop their democratic capacities: to question, to challenge, to make real decisions and to solve problems collectively. The Leadership Teacher and I were discussing his teaching of critical teaching and the shutdown. We came up with an idea use a quote from President Obama as a discussion point and going from there. “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt.” President Barack Obama.

My current school is considered to be in a higher socio-economic status area. Our students are from all over the world, many highly educated families coming because of good job opportunities. Because of the diversity in our school, we send out a questionnaire on each child at the beginning of the year. This gives us a snapshot into the families of our students. Throughout the year, different questions go home as ‘talking points’ for the family. The answers the students come back with give us opportunities to share, discuss and learn about ourselves and each other.

Christensen, L., & Karp, S. (2003). Rethinking our classrooms. In Rethinking School Reform Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools.