Of course, as a professor in a teacher education department, I shouldn’t ask that question… or maybe for that reason I should ask it more than anyone else. Seriously, we’re happy with most of the public school system here, but sometimes, things get a bit ridiculous.

For example, Ben did the following worksheet in class last week:

I have zero issues with this assignment. (I’m personally glad it didn’t include something like “Three polars bears swim through the Arctic Ocean, but two drown because global warming melted the ice floats they use to rest. How many polar bears are left?”) The issue I have is with what Ben wrote on the back. I don’t know if his teacher asked the whole class, or just Ben and his buddy who always finish first, but she had him turn his paper over and write his own word problem on the back. This is what he turned in:

(The star and the “WOW!” are the teacher’s grading.)

Yeah. Now, truth be told, I’m pretty certain his teacher does all she can for him, but her hands are tied. With the advent of the (now-legislated) “Response to Intervention” approach, children’s needs are determined by their performance relative to static criteria rather than their potential. Students who are below grade level have all sorts of interventions and resources guaranteed to them, but teachers are under no obligation to challenge students who perform at or above grade level.

Where do you think Ben is?

The end of the semester was always a relief when I was a grad student. Now I realize that it’s quite the opposite for professors. While getting to the end of your lesson plans can leave a sense of accomplishment, giving and grading finals, wrapping up committee obligations, and prepping to not have contact with anyone for a month can be unnerving.

This semester, a couple of prize students left a message on the board before our final exam that, while a bit childish for graduate students, reminded me that students can appreciate their professors.

My main job is teaching elementary and high school teachers to properly assess their students’ progress. Yes, traditional testing is a part of this, but so are interviews, observations, performances, etc. The first step is deciding what the students are supposed to know and do, then brainstorming some methods for checking whether or not they actually know and can do these things.

One history teacher wanted to assess some emotional (we call them “affective”) traits such as empathy. He proposed that his students take the role of someone in the past and write a letter to their present class. This forces them to relate the past to the present. His description of the activity was thus:

Students will write a letter from the perspective of a person living during the Cuban Missile Crisis to a person alive today.

I’m not sure if he realized that many people who were alive in 1962 are still living today.