Homework Policy

Optimist Primer Movers in session. Today's topic. Late Work Policy


Middle schoolers are notoriously forgetful, which is why this week's topic covered late work policies. The gathered listened to Rick Wormeli's On Late Work, which  can be viewed at your leisure here.


The bite-size takeaways from this clip are that middle school students do not have control over their own time, and therefore we cannot expect the same adult level of competency when they do not have the tools or maturity. Thus far, schools have mostly been based on the factory model where everyone is expected to learn at the same time.


"Here's a bunch of stuff. Take a test. You didn't get it the first time around? Well, join us while you can."


Wormeli warns against teachers becoming ring-wavers, teachers who wave from the brink of the pit the child has dug for itself. He instead advocates redos, retakes, and do-overs for the student until they understand the material, because the real World is full of second chances. As adults we can ask for extensions or even supposedly miss deadlines without consequences. The redos and retakes will be a way to catching the "bottom half."


Here McMath quietly disagrees.


Wormeli continues that grades should be communication, not currency. Tests should be a way for the student to communicate their mastery of a subject; they should not be a token to exchange for a grade.


The Optimist Prime Movers discussed all these, wondering how this would work practically. Teachers, of course, want to grade for mastery, but late work policies are also supposed to teach students discipline, an appreciation for rules and regulations, and the abilitiy to accomodate deadlines in their lives, which are also real world skills.

Another hurdle to overcome would be time and paperwork. With students able to retake and redo tests ad infinitum, the teachers must then also be willing to regrade and reenter grades. The redos and retakes can definitely benefit the students, and most of the present Optimist Prime Movers were already allowing for retakes and extenuating circumstances. However, it must also be pointed out that the students who most often take advantage of the redo system are already the ones who do quite well, and the ones who do not take the second chances offered to them are the odd, unmotivated stragglers who rarely turn things in at all or on time.


For middle school, the previous late work policy has been amended and students lose their lunch privileges to finish missing work at the homework table.

Authentic Assessment



This is not authentic assessment.

The Almighty finger writes:

I was the type of kid whose brain would mysteriously short-circuit the moment big words were tossed around. This is a habit that has unhappily followed me into adulthood, and I still have the occasional moment where I find something far more interesting for a moment and space and time cease to have any meaning to me. Authentic assessment is intended to counteract such rarely occurring phenomena. But, you ask, what is Authentic Assessment? Grading the kids in a better way?

Authentic assessment, the Optimist Prime Movers decided, is a way to teach and test and help students engage with with worthy real world problems with real world solutions that have some menaing or relevance to their lives.

Jon Mueller defines authentic assessment as "a form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills.

"Bad" Brad McMath described his infomercial project wherein his eighth grade history students had to script and record their own Thirteen Colonies infomercial. In each infomercial, the students had to present a colony and why you should move from your cramped, smelly European city to the wonderful, wide-open stretches of the Americas. It worked better than a lecture, he admitted, and the students scored higher on their tests because they all collaborated on each other's projects, thus learning by exposure.

The students were tested on their own abilities, because group projects can be challenging. McMath admits he only lets his students do group projects when it is avoidable, simply because he otherwise has to deal with putting them into groups which they may dislike to varying degrees, parents who complain of the time necessary, or the inevitable slackers who coattail their way through the work.

Other examples of equally successful authentic assessment would be Miriam Written Word's weekly drama performances, where students work with a partner in a skit during the week and critique each other's performance in Groups. The Almighty Gabriel's sixth grade radio plays, where students had to script a radio play, edit, turn in a second draft, hire actors for their play, perform, direct, add sound effects, and finally produce a complete work. "It's so hard," these students said and added in the same breath, "can we do more projects like this?"

For some inexplicable reason, the notekeeper of the Optimist Prime Movers has written in her notes,  "McMath hates the world." This cannot be deciphered, and we must simply take her word for it.

Norms

Here follow the norms of the Optimist Prime Movers; we have sworn in blood to uphold these rules immediate to ensure the success of the Middle School and the laws general to safeguard the prosperity of civilization at large. 

1. Members will arrive to the meeting on time and prepared.
2. Members will listen and provide encouraging feedback as much as possible.
3. Discussion will be focus-driven and relative.
4. Leadership responsibility will be shared by all members and the location of the meetings will be held in the honourable Miriam Word's room.

To satisfy various voices of dissension, we publicly attest to the veracity of the above norms and also to the fact that none of us were at any point in time coerced, compelled, bullied, intimidated, threatened, cajoled, manhandled, bribed, held at knife point or otherwise strong-armed into agreeing to these restrictions. 

James Lewis Kuang III
Sanna Linnea Gabriel
Miriam Written Word
Marlene Antoinette Cooper IV
Bradley Llewelyn Richard McMath

And Introducing...

Introducing you to the brand-spankin'-new members of the all-powerful A-team, rulers of the lands of Professinonal Learning, the kings of Communities, and all around good-guys, the Swedish Glory Optimist Prime Movers.

In the first corner, we have James "the Killer" Kuang, teacher of physics and physical education , first ninja of his order, so skilled in the art of stealth you hardly notice when he leaves early. 

In the other corner we have Marlene "Crikey" Cooper, terror of the Australian outback, lone survivor of the Ayers Rock Pentathlon, feared warrior matriarch of the four-boy Cooper clan, and math teacher extraordinaire. 

In the third corner waits "Bad" Brad McMath, brave tribesman of the high north, avid rugby fan, smasher and basher of bones, maker and breaker of history and unsuspecting history students everywhere.

Rounding out the fourth corner we have Miriam Word, the breaker of backs, the silencer of crowds, the great and daring dramatist, teacher of struggling Second Language Learners, with enough fire in her belly to crush a rebellion single-handedly.

And in the fifth and final corner (because apparently we are a pentagon), is Sanna, the Almighty Gabriel, the axe-wielding Viking, blog keeper, the source of knowledge for all things Swedish and sole representative of this great, white land of the north, able to decipher even the most complicated IKEA label. Despite popular demand, she remains a middle school English teacher who would humbly worship at the mighty altar of Shakespeare had it not been considered heretical by the Powers That Be.

We all bow under the beneficent hand of our brave and noble leader, Captain Katie Den Hartog, famed teacher, magnanimous educator, Friday gift-giver, who strides grimly into the iron storm, tenaciously bent on her one-year mission: to explore strange, new worlds of authentic assessment, to seek out professional learning communities and new forms of education, to boldly go where no teacher has gone before.