Evolving Towards Authenticity
In 2013, about 2000 8th graders in Rialto, California turned the last page on The Diary of Anne Frank and picked up a task packet designed by their teachers. The packet included the overview of the actual task as well as supporting texts they were expected to read and use in their response. The task directions began: When tragic events occur in history, there is often debate about their actual existence. For example, some people claim the Holocaust [was] not an actual event, but instead a propaganda tool that was used for political and monetary gain.
Their task was explained as follows: You will read and discuss multiple, credible articles on this issue, and write an argumentative essay, based [on] cited textual evidence, in which you explain whether or not you believe this was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth. Remember to address counterclaims (rebuttals) to your stated claim.
On one hand, the task asked students to engage in critical thinking around a historical event. On the other…. six million people. Presenting students with a passage from a white power website that relied on anti-Semitic reasoning and misleading science to deny the Holocaust and labeling it “credible” sent a message the teacher-designers likely didn’t intend.
2000 students read the packet and wrote a response. Based on their responses, we know at least 50 wrote that the Holocaust never happened, multiple students thought that a note scribbled with a ballpoint pen in a book manuscript was proof six million people were not systematically murdered, and students who denied the Holocaust received positive feedback on the strength of their writing and punctuation. We know because we can read their words and the feedback they received. What we can’t know, though, what we can only infer, are the stories students told once they finished reading or doing the task. How did Jewish students explain the task to a relative who had survived the Holocaust? Or to a family member who had lost friends and loved ones? What story may have taken hold in the mind of a white child whose parents’ used slurs to describe people of color or those of the Jewish faith?
When asked, the Rialto superintendent was “unaware of any particular standards or protocols” for how his teachers constructed their tasks and assignments. There was no check and balance or feedback system that explicitly attended to how students might view, engage with, or approach the task. This, I suspect, is where the work lies. The Rialto Holocaust task is not unique. It is only one assessment in a pattern that has not been stalled by punishing individual teachers or by telling teachers not to write “disturbing” assignments. In order to interrupt the pattern and ensure it never happens again, we need to shift our focus from the adults to the students.
When explaining her thinking behind the curation that is Identity, Power, and Education, Sherri spoke to the concept of intersectionality. Her introduction triggered a reminder to me of how various systems — our adopted or assigned identities, the power we hold or seek, and the education we provide, need, or offer others — interact. This intersectionality can serve as a powerful lens and focus as we consider the impact of assessments and tasks on students.
The assessment and curriculum design field is littered with structures, standards, and protocols teachers can use when designing student experiences. There are checklists and rubrics for attending to bias in design. There are statistics they can use to ensure multiple choice tests are fair. These tools, though, are clinical and analytical. They are easy to forget, set aside, or attend to only at surface level, especially when designing around content that carries emotional heft. In most cases, they are about the power that adults wield when designing. To get at students’ power and to ensure that tasks like Rialto aren’t repeated, we can, instead, focus on a story a student might tell as a result of engaging in an educational experience.
There is a claim to be made for students to co-design assessments and to have their choices and voices be the center of all school experiences. That we haven’t gotten there (yet) isn’t an excuse for us to look away from more “traditional” tasks and assessments. Asking the questions about the stories students tell is especially critical during periods of time like Black History Month. It is absolutely critical that we reflect on the story a black student might tell after writing a journal entry from a “slave’s perspective” or after being the only child of color in the room during a discussion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It is not the student’s responsibility to go through the experience and then report back. Nor should teachers seek out black educators or colleagues for their opinion on the task. Rather, the necessary first step in attending to the complexity of students’ stories is adults’ self-education around cultural responsiveness.
Today’s educators have access to dozens of high quality texts and resources written by fellow teachers and researchers about the thoughtful practices required and necessary to support students of color. From #educolor, to culturally responsive frameworks and student voice conversations, there is no shortage of writing around how to protect and support students of color and/or students from a marginalized or disempowered group.
The tools of cultural competency can help educators ensure their classroom routines, behaviors, and structures support students of color and students who may not routinely find themselves reflected in the texts, conversations, and even decor that they regularly encounter in school. At the same time, it’s critical that we consider the stories white students or students from the dominant culture tell about learning experiences that involve people of color, people from different faiths, family structures, gender, or classes than their own.
Consider this introduction from a teacher sharing site: This is the unit assessment I give to my 4th graders after our extensive, 5-week long Black History Month unit. We cover significant events in time, beginning with the first slave ships in the early 17th century, to the inauguration of Barack Obama.
The unit assessment is a multiple choice test. Students are asked to identify a date when the first slave ship arrived, why Ruby Bridges is famous, and what the Civil Rights Act accomplished (according to the key, “it gave African Americans equal rights”). Consider the story you might tell after taking this test as a white student, in a predominately white school that has no educators of color.
Odds are, at least one student will end up with a simple story that reduces the Black American experience to one of events, people, and dates. There is power in allowing students to engage in complex stories. Rather than reinforcing students’ thinking the Black American experience began with slaves and ends with President Obama or that it only matters in February, we can actively work to ensure that white students hear a fuller, richer story and then in turn, see how their own story intersects.
Another task, this time for 7th graders: The students will read a series of texts about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and compare and contrast their stories in order to pick a side. They will then write a letter to the editor of a newspaper explaining which man they think people should follow.
It’s easy to see the thinking the teacher-designer was working towards. As with the task in Rialto, it appears as if the teacher was seeking to add some authenticity, to give students a hook into the task. It’s compelling to consider, though, how students might engage with the task and what conclusions they may reach. On one hand, students may finish this task and describe learning about two powerful, important Americans. On the other hand, the complexity that went into being a part of the Civil Rights movement is highly abstract and not necessarily accessible to white 7th graders in 2016. Rather than walking away with a story about how the Civil Rights movement is still happening today, white students may walk away thinking making decisions about violence or nonviolence was as simple as voting for a politician.
One small move teacher-designers can make to support all students to see personal connections is to organize an assessment, task, or unit around an essential question. In the case of Black History Month or the Civil Rights movement, a powerful question to ask is How far should we go to achieve our civil rights? And then offer students examples of the different ways groups have worked towards the idea of “we the people.”
A revised version of the task asked students to read the same texts, but to consider the echoes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X today. While working through the texts, students generated lists of connections. Their teacher offered parallels to the marriage equity movement and the rights of transgender people. Students found themselves within the concept of Civil Rights and saw how their actions could support, or hinder, others’ rights. Rather than a multiple choice test, students provided feedback to teachers on the US history curriculum they’d be studying in 8th grade and identified “echo” moments — moments in the past with clear connections to the present day. They worked in small groups to identify texts that could be paired with the study of a historical period of event. Their curriculum review results in connections between The Trail of Tears and the re-naming of the Washington NFL team, Nate Turner and Black Lives Matter, and between Reconstruction and segregation in today’s schools. The goal of the revised task wasn’t to engage the students in a game of connect the dots, but rather to invite students to see that history is still happening and the work of civil rights is more than a few decades in the middle of the 20th century.
It is possible the stories students tell after the task above are more complicated and messier than the ones they may tell after a 20 question multiple choice test. They may even walk away from the task with more questions than answers. The goal of opening up tasks, of considering the stories students tell, though, isn’t to make things more complicated for the sake of complications. Rather, the goal is to shift the system towards a place where students see reflections of themselves and the intricacies of the world around them more than they experience one right answer or walk away telling the same story, over and over again.
