Softening the edges requires finding the time to reflect on our own processes within our school context and refine them in alignment with our personal philosophies about teaching and learning. Advocating for the need to do this may be difficult, but it is an essential aspect of change and growth. Richard DuFour (2015) says, “We have yet to establish a cultural norm in which working and learning are interwoven, ensuring educators are continuing to grow and learn as part of their routine work practice” (p. 79). Supporting ourselves and each other on our own learning journeys is vital for equipping us to do the same for the learners in our classrooms. We have to make time to slow things down and explore classroom moments a little—clean off the dirt of stories, egos, and daily stimuli, and see what is underneath. We need time to contemplate the significance of our classroom experiences to better understand ourselves as teachers.
Giving educators the opportunity to develop assessment practices that serve our need to learn who our students are and respond with confidence, accuracy, and integrity is another way of softening the edges. It honors the important relationship between teachers and students and respects the teachers’ responsibility to apply professional judgment to learning contexts—in essence, reprofessionalizing teaching. This requires trust in students’ learning potential and our own ability to capture that potential. If we are going to change the story of assessment in our schools, we are going to have to shift our processes. A new story cannot replace an old story without time to reflect and alter things bit by bit.
To work toward softening the edges, teachers must be invited to work together to come to collective understanding and shared purpose. Creating common collaborative assessments and working together to analyze student work and determine the next steps on the learning journey is a highly empowering practice that also has the benefit of greater student learning. Over time, collaborating and reflecting allows our practices to be more efficient and effective. Slowing down for a while means speeding up overall. Creating a collective clarity in our practice empowers us, as individuals, to invite change, creativity, and wonder in our shared classrooms. Teachers need the chance to experiment together and determine the effects on learning, learners, and their own well-being. Collaboration and reflection practices are essential to softening the edges for teachers while at the same time giving teachers a voice in the midst of change.
The Structure of the Book
Softening the Edges explores assessment, focusing on aspects of the whole person and leaving room for future discussion and questions. We will consider whole as being integrated, not complete or comprehensive. This invites us to take our assessment practices, dust them off, and reimagine how they could better serve the needs of those they are intended to serve. There are many ways we can adjust our practices to support student learning while at the same time supporting our need to ensure we are making a difference.
Chapter 1 explores critical understanding about assessment, and chapter 2 introduces the learning continuum that teachers must use to ensure effective assessments that honor the whole person. Without this foundational understanding, softened edges become very difficult to establish and maintain.
The remaining chapters each explore a different aspect of assessment: preassessment (chapter 3), formative assessment and feedback (chapter 4), self-assessment and goal setting (chapter 5), summative assessment (chapter 6), and reporting (chapter 7). These chapters establish a conceptual understanding of each assessment focus and answer the question, How do I put this into action? These chapters address both background information and steps for engaging in strong assessment practices. Each of these chapters includes extensive reflection questions to consider as we embark on softening the edges of our assessment practices. The prompts can be used to reflect on assessment architecture, student responses to assessment, and personal feelings about how assessment is working in the classroom. Each of these chapters also includes two reproducibles—one to help identify practices and circumstances that can create hard edges, and another providing specific and practical recommendations for ways to ensure soft edges. Both teachers’ and students’ voices are explored, and consideration is given to the best ways to support everyone’s needs while nurturing an empowering and engaging learning environment. Readers can use these tools as quick references, to refresh their memories, or to discuss the contents during collaborative work and professional development.
Softening the Edges is about bringing out the best in our students and in ourselves by assessing well and nurturing the whole person’s needs. Let’s get started!
CHAPTER
1
Assessment and the Whole Person
In my first year as principal in a brand-new community, I spent the summer before school trying to figure out how to be an administrator. I thought about all the practicalities: the school discipline process; how I would communicate with staff; what kind of school-home relationships I would engage in; and how I would manage playground supervision and assemblies. The list was endless. I interviewed teachers and surveyed the students to determine where they felt they needed support. I did all the homework I could think of until I felt like I was drowning in details and plans. In spite of all this preplanning, I still felt I was missing a focus on the most important things—students and learning. In short, I was preparing myself to be a great manager but I was missing the leadership part. It took an event in my personal life involving my daughter to clarify what I was missing—a mission and a vision. I needed to step back from the details and look at the bigger picture.
Around this time, my young daughter developed what seemed to be a small infection in her finger. We thought we were responding appropriately by putting a bandage on it, keeping it clean, and hoping it would clear up. We went away for a family holiday and while we were away, her infection worsened, and we decided to visit a clinic. The waiting room was empty, and our daughter was quickly ushered into a treatment room. As soon as the doctor entered, it became clear he was not a pediatrician, nor did he have much patience for young children. In the course of our fifteen-minute visit, he yelled at both me and my daughter, accused me of ignoring my child’s needs, and treated her injury in a very painful and abrupt manner. We left the clinic completely shaken by the experience.
This doctor treated my daughter’s injury, the infection cleared, and the pain disappeared. However, the damage to our mental health lasted for quite some time. It was through this experience that I came to understand some very important things about my role inside schools—the methods I may consider using as an administrator may work, and I may get the results I am hoping for in my school, but the end does not justify the means when dealing with human beings. It was important for me to ensure that the processes I chose to shift practices in my new role would also respect the people involved in the process. I needed that doctor to treat my child’s injury and honor her whole being. I needed empathy and kindness as her parent. It was not enough to manage the problem; the problem was a human problem, and the response needed to equally respect the humans involved.
This event led me to realize that the students in my school had similar needs when it came to their learning and assessment experiences. A single