Dear SBG,

We have been together for a few months now, and since we are coming up on our 2nd term report card, I just wanted to share some of my feelings with you.  We have had such a great time, and in our relationship I have learned so much from you; it is amazing.

I remember first hearing about you back in University, and I just always thought that you were out of my league. I was accustomed to my life with Traditional Grading and I never thought I could break free of that life. You saw how awful it was last year when Trad and I were together. It seemed that every time report cards came around we would get in a fight and there was nothing I could do but limp along in the dead end hole of a grade-book. I didn’t understand what was going on, and it felt like we were just making numbers for the sake of making numbers.

Then in the summer, after hanging out in a few blogs, you and I came to see each other again. I was no longer worried about finals and writing papers, like when we first met, and I was free to sit down and really get to know you.  First it was just reading, then we started getting more serious: making grade trackers for my students, preparing learning targets, and creating spreadsheets with conditional formatting. It was the stuff of fairy tales. You even helped when it came around to prepping for my current school year!  I couldn’t believe how much clarity you brought to my life.  No longer did I have to worry about what I was going to teach; we had worked that out together already.  I knew what I wanted my students to learn and, thanks to you, I was able to focus on how I should teach my students, what a beautiful prospect.

When I look at you now, I know that what we have is special. I see so much in you. I now know that Billy’s three in the Pythagorean theorem means he knows how to apply the formula to a given problem, but sometimes forgets to find his square root on the last step. I look at what we’ve created, and I can get a sense of the class’ ability just by our colour scheme! This is something I never had with Trad and what I look forward to in the future.

Not all is perfect though. It’s funny I see you with @jybuell and @thinkthankthunk and wonder if that will ever be us.  I know, I know, you guys have a history and I can’t expect that we would work as well together so early on, but darn-it, I cannot wait until that time.  We have so much still ahead of us.  We have to improve our student buy-in, we need to incoroporate reassessment more naturally in the day to day culture of the classroom, and we have to have more student input in the process.  I am deeply sorry that not one student has helped develop a rubric this year, little to no peer assessment has occurred and our self-assessment has been very shallow. We still have the hills to climb, but based on these first few months, I know that we are headed in the right direction.

SBG you have done so much for me to relieve my anxieties of teaching and understanding my students.  You have shown me so clearly what those cherubs can do and what they know. How can I ever repay you?  Thank you so much for being a part of my practice.

Sincerely,

Timon

I am a lucky bugger.  I had a great practicum and professional development from teachers that were really ahead of the curve.  I also am a part of a private school system that is extremely productive to my desire to become a better teacher.  The more I read and interact with the teachers in the twitter/blogosphere, the more I realise that I am blessed to be where I am.  This is clearly evident in my mentors approach to assessment.

Standards Based Grading was never around when I was in high school, but it was taught in my university, and is promoted at my school, so professionally I have felt that there is really not any other way to do it.  In my first year of teaching did I climb the great peak of assessment and profess "Veni, Vici, vidi?"  No, it was somewhere more along the lines "stressy, no sleepy, defeatsy."  This summer however I have had the chance to read also sorts of blogs from master assessors, and I have really begun to hone in on what I desire from my classes.

One major problem that I have been looking to rectify is the conflict between numbers, and feedback.  Personally I just don't feel ready to get all Blue Harvest up in here (though it is an ideal that I long for), but I feel I can have students engage in meaningful assessment that looks to their feedback as a guide rather than simply look at there number grade and leave it at that.  My thoughts here today have stemmed from reading Dan Anderson's post  where he gave a great visual of what students see when they see a number.  Since I am not abandoning numbers cold turkey I devised this strategy.  Have them self assess before getting to see the number.  I created this small reflection.

I feel like this would have students think about their assessment, maybe get rid of the time spent grade comparing, since students would be preparing their reflection.  I don't know if this is a fix, or if it is just more busy work for students at the time of assessment, but it seems to fit with my understanding of assessment as learning.  Will it work?  I have no clue.  I'm still new at this...