The most profound section of this book came from chapter 2 thus far. This chapter took me back to a time early last year when I was struggling with dealing with measurement scores published by our District that in my opinion were not a reflection of who I was as a teacher. I'll share some back ground knowledge about how data is read in my district. In my school, we are grouped into Small Learning Communities (SLCs) where we share the a common group of students. How I am graded as a teacher is based on the FCAT scores and mini assessments given to our SLC students. The problem is, the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT) measures Reading, Writing, Math, and Science, all core classes. I'm a Technology teacher who teach students how to utilized technology and my courses fall under electives. When a student does not do well on the mini assessments or FCAT, I am lump in the group with core teachers who's primary job is to teach, re-teach, and prepare students for the Reading, Writing, Math, and Science portions of the exam which I do not teach. There are times when I'm teaching Microsoft Word application and I give the students an essay assignment on how to format the document but I'm not necessarily teaching them how to write an essay, just how to format the essay in an application. Maybe I'm teaching them how to include a formula in an Excel Spreadsheet to add several columns together, but I'm not teaching them math equations per-say on how to solve say a quadratic equation.
Chapter 2 reminded me of a prayer I prayed after I saw the workshops that I had to attend after data showed that the our SLC students failed to show gains on the assessments or FCAT. I had to attend the workshops because I was a part of SLC team. My prayer was to be delivered from what other people and assessments stated about my teaching skills. I no longer allow conventional performance and achievement measurement, competition, or comparison to other teachers to trouble my thought process. I love this new found freedom. I like Benjamin Zander's comment on how he measures his success by the sparkling eyes all around him (TED). I measure myself by the number of students who I have to run out of my classroom back to their classroom on a daily basis because they are not engaged enough in their other courses and trust me when I say it's a lot of students.
The Art of Possibility, by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander
I'm glad that the book spoke to you and I'm sorry that what you do is being "defined" by numbers that have nothing to do with the efforts and results that you get out of your students. I like your attitude that it's up to you to redefine "success" in your classroom and then do it, regardless of everyone else's ideas about "measurement".
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