Today I continued to mull over the performance aspect of the writing classroom. The tableaux this morning was truly awesome. I loved how we each performed our own thing but were inspired by others and were connected to them physically, through touch. We had some parameters, but otherwise, it was mainly open to our interpretation of the word Lacy gave us.
The weight of assessment was really heavy as we performed our tableaux. I know I was concerned about how to assess, and the idea of being assessed weighed heavily on me as we started to work on our portfolio yesterday. We composed this picture of what assessment looked like to each of us individually, but also corporately, and I could feel the energy in the room.
Again, the performative quality of the writing comes through and the performative quality of teaching shines. There is so much we have to perform each day and there is power in the choices that we make as teachers, writers, and performers.
Also, I'm very excited about our collaborative final portfolio. I am really connected to the idea that we each get to write our individual reflection, detailing the specific ways we feel as though we have grown in our writerly identities. But also, I love the idea that people could talk back to us about our reflections and just about our journeys together. I could imagine that on this corporate website, we each have a page labeled with our name in a menu on the side. Each page would then have two parts: My reflection about me and then everyone's response to the learning that this person has been a part of with them. For instance on my page, I'm envisioning a "Carrie about Carrie" page and then a section entitled "SIers talk back/about Carrie." We could also have pages for the different sections ("analytical thinker" "questioners" etc) which we could post under and respond to each other. Make sense?
I so share your enthusiasm for our tableau!!! To be able to come together and create a living word - there is something so very spiritual and communal about this activity...our mixing together is very powerful and empowering in a community kind of way...What I think of as 'assessment' may not be what you think of as 'assessment', yet we still connect, and are connected by, the word.
ReplyDeleteCarrie--I love your image of our collaborative assessment. Lacy, Sally, and I tried to figure out a way to make it happen in the short time that we have left--and we think we might have something that will work--or at least get us started in that direction. I have been thinking about how we as a group have constructed this SI, supporting each other, digging deep into ourselves as writers and teachers. What an awesome experience.
ReplyDeleteI remember all of our discussions we had during your student teaching about the scary grade-monster. I also remember the fear of our students just 'doing' school instead of really learning. I know that fear cropped up again as we started discussing the portfolio. I was so glad we started re-imagining it. And now I can't wait to see what it turns into.
ReplyDeleteI feel a lot of what you said in this post. When we were told about the portfolio, for the first time in SI, I felt the assessment = evalutation "scary grade monster". I felt like everything I had done over the 9 days would be negated and everything would ride on how well I did the portfolio. I ask scared that I hadn't grown or thought enough or that I wouldn't represent my growth well enough. I like the idea of reclaiming assessment (which I wrote about in my blog) to simply mean assessing a situation instead of evaluating. This all has me thinking about how I am going to revamp the portfolio portion of my classroom to be more assessment and less evaluation feeling.
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