There is no I in team

Michelle J. Beymer

Seated across the library table from me is a teaching intern. I am prepared for our after-school discussion of our upcoming co-teaching, but I am not prepared for his leading question, “I have observed that you and Mr. G have starkly different views on assessment. How do you make it work professionally on the team?” The silence and then sputtering that shortly followed was just the tip of the iceberg, “Well, I’m not quite sure I have that figured out, but I do know that I have to hold on to what I know to be best practice. I mean this is directly effecting students, right?”

One must understand a few things in order to see the whole iceberg, not just the 10% above the surface. I am a second year teacher at an alternative middle school. “Alternative” in the sense that the curriculum is structured around long-term in-depth investigations, that are interdisciplinary in nature. Students are engaged in meaningful and relevant topics that have strong connections to their community, be it local or global.

I knew early on in my teacher training that I was not built to teach in a traditional school setting. Although as a student myself I had flourished in one. I took the job because of this designation, not because I was particularly enthusiastic over the hour I would spend in the car each day commuting. I am a team player. I always have been. I learned early on in life that more could be accomplished with people working together than individuals acting solely. I had valued teams I had been a part of personally and professionally and had over the years perfected the art of bringing people together around a common goal.

In my school there is a predominant culture around teaming with an emphasis placed on all members contributing equitably. This goes hand in hand with the school-wide focus on interdisciplinary curriculum. One would assume this structure would lend itself to a more meaningful approach to student assessment than just to prove content was “covered”. Ideally, in a teaming model you have the ability to have a significant snapshot of a particular student or students’ learning across content areas. Together you can address learning problems that may result from a student’s lagging skills or a need for different or varied instruction.

This “all hands on deck” picture to teaming is not a reality for me. In fact there are jarring differences between views on (and implementation of) assessment and how it both informs instruction and aids student learning within my team of colleagues. The teaching team I am currently a member of is comprised of 2 other teachers, one of whom is Mr. G who happens to be mentoring the teaching intern who prompted my cogitation. I have experienced difficult or challenging colleagues before and had been able to navigate differences in opinion or practice to benefit the common goal. So how is it that I had failed so miserably to come to a compromise with this one?

The assessment of teaching and learning can be viewed as two complementary and overlapping aims (formative and summative) that benefit both the quality of student learning and the instruction delivered. By nature the goal of formative assessment is to gather feedback that can be used by students and the teacher to guide improvements in the ongoing process of teaching and learning. In my classroom, formative assessments are presented to students as “low stakes” and students are directly involved in the assessment process. In contrast, summative assessments are used to measure the level of success or proficiency that has been obtained at the end of a unit, by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. These are cumulative in nature. Summative assessment is heavily present in Mr. G’s classroom, but formative assessment takes the back seat and students are not involved in the assessment process. It is teacher imposed and directed.

The difference between these two types of assessment and the way in which they are implemented in the classroom is a banned conversation topic for Mr. G and I. Mr. G has deemed our thoughts on the matter not cohesive and more pointedly (after 25 years of teaching) that his are correct. How did it get to this point? Well, let me tell you.

I started in my position as any first year teacher would with a healthy mix of enthusiasm and idealism. Unbeknownst to me, it was my core ideals and experience student teaching in a similarly modeled school that landed me the job. I was viewed as the golden nugget. The faculty had adopted the alternative model 6 years prior, but had not fully bought into its application. There was an unhealthy level of skepticism and scoffing and I was seen as the person who would change it all.

It is not uncommon that bright new teachers, fresh out of teacher education programs, are seen as change agents by administration in their schools, but I had no idea the effect this might have on both me personally and my relationships with colleagues. My ideas were dismissed as not realistic. Often with the reason that, “It won’t work here. That works in big cities with more resources.” I continued to trudge through the trenches of that first year and did my best not to ruffle too many feathers. I had already experienced enough conflict with the teacher on my team. I was a “marked” woman.

After completing my first year teaching with a quagmire of frustration concerning the disparity in assessment practices within the team, which threatened at times to nearly swallow me whole, my principal admitted having intentionally placed me on this team that my practice might “rub off” on the veteran teacher. This unstated assumption would have been more founded if I had been supported in the endeavor by my administrator, but the truth is he spent the year putting out fires elsewhere. Not only was I fighting a battle alone, but also I was grossly unprepared for it. It is the mindset of the team teacher and the lack of supportive guidance from administration that is directly impacting student learning and pitting teachers against each other. It is the team structure and interdisciplinary curriculum, which makes these differences in thinking a significant struggle and barrier to both students and myself.

In a more traditional setting I could be blissfully unaware of what was happening across the hall. However, this is not an option when you are expected to make team wide decisions, communicate with parents as a team, and advise students academically and socially. Recently, I approached Mr. G concerning one of our students and his progress in his class. Sam is a student in my crew (advisory) who is a pleasant and bright kid, but has trouble demonstrating his understanding by completing products and persevering with things are difficult. Although I see Sam as curious about the natural world and how things work in my classroom, he often lacks motivation when it comes to literacy-based tasks. He is a struggling reader and is often deflated by this barrier to his learning particularly in Mr. G’s classroom. The structure and forms of assessment present in this class do not meet Sam’s needs as a learner nor do they boost his morale. Each day he is inundated with the fact that he simply, “Can’t do it”.

On a typical day, students enter Mr. G’s classroom and are immediately seated. Where they will stay for the remainder of the 70-minute class, in rows, facing the front of the classroom. Mr. G quickly reviews the agenda for the class and turns students loose on their independent work. The curriculum at our school intertwines content from the Common Core of Standards in social studies and English. The lens or theme in which these standards are explored is at the discretion of each individual teacher.

Mr. G’s class is heavily booked based. Although digesting and analyzing a variety of texts is a pivotal English standard, the pacing at which students are asked to digest these texts and demonstrate their understanding of literary devices and connections is unprecedented. I would argue it would send even the most brilliant of kids racing to the medicine cabinet for Tums and experiencing the unpleasantness of indigestion. How could deep meaningful learning happen when students are asked to read a quota of pages per night that most high school students never achieve? Not to mention when a student isn’t invested in the material. This was certainly the case with Sam.

Mr. G described his current predicament, a failing grade in his class, as being caused by Sam’s own volition. I’m not so easily convinced this is the case. I knew the structure of Mr. G’s book based units; the expectation that students complete the packets of worksheets which are given to help them “digest” book content and then do the summative project. However, what if a student doesn’t do the packet? Does this hinder them from successfully completing the project? Are the packets meant to be formative in nature? If so, why does the formative assessment need to happen in a packet format? Sensing a disparity in assessment practice between my classroom and Mr. G’s and being an advocate for students, I decided to ask some probing questions regarding Sam’s problem.

Feeling there was no real natural way to broach the subject, I focused on Sam and his current litany of incomplete work in Mr. G’s class. I figured that a student-centered approach would yield more information than questioning Mr. G’s instructional practices or validity of assessments. That was certainly not a mountain I was going to die on. I had done that before. Mr. G expressed exasperation at Sam’s incomplete packet of activities and incomplete project, stating that he had tailored the project based on students’ multiple intelligences and didn’t understand why Sam was not able to complete it. Sam had not finished reading the book, let alone did he have the skills and knowledge needed to successfully complete a project, regardless of how many ways it was tailored. “If Sam hasn’t finished the book. It doesn’t matter how multi-faceted and individualized you’ve designed the project. If he’s not going to read the book than what’s the use? What are the essential skills and content you are assessing?” Mr. G quickly became defensive and assured me that the entire packet was important. Unyielding, I pressed on further, “What can we do to help Sam demonstrate his learning?”

Mr. G held firmly to the intended course. I hadn’t expected he would differ from this, but had hoped he would see that the assessment was not aligned with the skill and knowledge base Sam had. He was being asked to complete an inappropriate task to demonstrate his learning. Knowing Sam meets success through discussing learning, an approach I take often with him in my own classroom, I suggested he could put together a podcast discussion for his project. After some pleading Mr. G agreed to allow Sam to complete this “alternative assessment” in order to meet the desired standards. I had achieved victory in one battle for Sam, but the war on unfair assessments raged on for him. In the future there would be other projects, more books, and the same frustrating results.

Emily is identified as a gifted and talented student in reading and writing. She is a self-directed learner and eager to make connections between her educational experience at school and the outside world. She is best known for her warm demeanor and quiet reserve. For a young lady of 14 she is an incredibly well rounded individual. She is an accomplished violin player and ballet dancer. During a year in elementary school she and her family were in S. America as her mother, a professor at a local liberal arts college was working on an archaeological dig. Simply put, she is a student who flourishes in any environment.

In Mr. G’s, students had completed a Holocaust unit centered on the book, Night. For the unit project, students were to write a monologue from the perspective of a minor character in the book. The purpose was to tell the “unknown” story. Eager to share her finished product, Emily asked if I wouldn’t mind reading hers. To say that it was a beautifully written account of the violin player’s story would be a gross understatement. So moved by her intricate weaving of characters and details, I cried mid-way through. It was powerful.

This caliber of high-quality work is normal for Emily. She is a student who is not hindered by the inequity in assessment the same way Sam is, but she is hindered. Emily routinely exceeds standards for Mr. G’s projects, yet rarely feels challenged. Emily’s comments on her progress reports and grade cards for this class read like expressive word bubbles, “Wow! Fabulous!” and lack the feedback for how she might extend her learning or demonstrate it in new and creative ways. She has expressed frustration at this and has led on that she is becoming bored with the assessments she is given. This is in contrast to her experience in my classroom.

In 7th grade science, Emily was given content at a 9th grade level. She along with several of her high achieving peers completed what I refer to as an Exceeds Opportunity. In addition to studying various ecological impacts to ecosystems around the globe with the rest of the class, Emily and her peers tackled a more complex issue, the curse of the black gold of Nigeria. After spending several sessions digging into and digesting content, Emily prepared for a Socratic seminar with her peers. Throughout the process Emily sought out clarification to her many questions and at one time stated, “This is really interesting, I didn’t even know this happened! I’m learning how there are so many factors at play when it comes to how humans impact the environment. I had no idea.”

Through this project Emily was challenged more as a learner than she would have if she were just given the same project as everyone else. Emily’s experience previously in Mr. G’s class had lacked a level of academic rigor comparable to her ability and knowledge. Given this desired rigor, she was able to make meaningful connections with the content. Unfortunately, Sam and Emily’s stories are not isolated ones. They merely serve as examples of what occurs when assessment practices are inequitable.

When I first stared off teaching I felt it was within my power to inspire change in both my colleagues and myself. At this point, I have come to the realization that a solution for students like Emily and Sam may very well be out of my control. Even so my alternatives are not promising and I have an even greater sense that I have exhausted my options with Mr. G directly. I could continue on in my assessment practices and merely look the other way when it comes to Mr. G and his or continue to insist that students experience equity in the assessment process in his class. The latter of these two options seems a bit absurd considering Mr. G has expressed no willingness to change. In fact, he seems philosophically opposed to the idea of being student-centered in his assessment practices. The alternatives I could take really aren’t alternatives at all; I would choose them at the detriment of our team dynamic. Either I would succumb to silence on the issue of inequity students experience or I would reach a point where working with Mr. G no longer was a viable option. I can’t help but feel like I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. What is a new teacher to do?

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