Get What You Need
We were invited to a birthday dinner. On a Saturday night. At a bar. Now, my idea of the perfect setting for a Saturday night cocktail involves my couch, the dog and ‘comfy pants.’ But it was for a good friend of my husband’s, and we’ve figured out that we’re like the village elders at these kinds of things, so we rallied. I put on my skinny jeans and even sported for some tinted lip balm to kick things up a notch. ‘This’ll be fun!’, I thought. We’ll chat about sports, and politics, and what shows everyone is watching on Netflix. Great. Let’s do it!
And then you realize that the universe inevitably, undoubtedly, delivers what you need.
The birthday boy’s choice was a beer hall. We were considered early birds at 7:00 pm, so we had a nice big table with bench seats. The kind of table that makes it slightly awkward for adults who don’t necessarily know each other and have to lurch over a bench to find a seat next to a stranger, and especially uncomfortable when you need to brace yourself on said stranger’s shoulder to extract yourself for a mid-meal bathroom break.
I found myself seated across from a nice couple that I’ve met plenty of times before, mostly in the context of a local adult basketball league that the guys play in and the wives come to in a show of support. The conversation consists of niceties and general chit-chat among the wives, and admittedly I usually bail on the after-game happy hours because of work, kids, or the unusually strong pull toward my couch and those comfy pants. So I was taken completely off guard when my bench-mate, Alan, went straight for the jugular at what should have, by all accounts, been a socially benign event.
‘What do you mean no grades?!’
‘Where are your benchmarks?’
‘You don’t administer the PARCC test?’
‘How on earth do you know if anyone is learning anything?!’
‘I just need metrics. I need data. I’m a math guy for god’s sake!’
And so, amid the background noise of college football and UFC on the big screens and smoked pork belly and beers on the table, I was put to the test in defending my beliefs, my research, my values, and understandings. I had to explain my SET Lab research study to what could possibly be, the world’s toughest critic and simultaneously awestruck admirer, Alan.
In a healthy dose of respectful debate, Alan and I spent nearly two hours talking about our respective schools, their philosophies and approaches, and the things that keep us awake at night. It helped me be sure I stand behind my hypothesis and SET Lab Research focus, as well as dust off an unintended blind spot or two. Most importantly, it connected me to another educator with differing beliefs and approaches to mine that will help add to my research and data collection.
Which gets me to the point of this blog post — my data collection!
While I’ll be sharing more detail in the coming months, below is a short list of approaches I’ll be including in the data collection for this project, as well as links to participate in collection requests, surveys and the like where applicable.
Here are my methods, in no particular order (perhaps I’ll prioritize in a future post once I start collecting and see what becomes most prescient!)
Collection of assessments and reports (past and current) from:
- My school (Hamilton Park Montessori School)
- Urban/suburban private school
- Urban/suburban public school
- Parochial school
- International schools (Finland, Italy, Liberia, Kenya and more — wherever I have connections…)
The aim in collecting assessments and reports from other schools is to create context for how schools are currently managing this process. By understanding how a school or classroom uses different types of assessments (like student project work, tests/quizzes, rubrics, etc) to inform their students reports/report cards, I’ll be able to determine best practices, learn from others, and question how employable my method would/will be in environments that are different from my own school.
Experiment with Family, Teacher & Student Self Evaluation Forms
At HPMS, students complete self-evaluation forms 2–3 times per year, typically in advent of student-led conferences with families and teachers. I am expanding this process to include family evaluation forms, and working to decide if we then need a version for our teachers so that we can overlay all three to create a multi-dimensional view of a student for a more accurate picture. Previously, I created these forms as documents, and students could access them year over year from shared folders. This year, I’m trying Google Forms in an effort to collect and organize the data more efficiently so it can be translated into a more visual format, and won’t require students to sift through multiple documents to see change over time. It’s a little more heavy lifting on my part, but it provides a bigger benefit to the student.
Corporate and small business assessment/review forms & reports
Having come from the professional world and especially the startup space, I’m very keen on making a real connection between how we are assessed and self-assess in the workplace and how students are assessed. By taking best practices from some of the most respected and well-researched employee review systems, I can adapt this information for students, allowing their process to mirror the world at large.
Google Form Questionnaire for teachers & families (distributed via social media & email)
I am part of a small but fantastic community, and many of the ideas and hypotheses I’m presenting in this study are already supported wholeheartedly by our community. To balance bias, gain perspective and inform my process, I’ll be creating questionnaires to distribute to teachers and families from as many different educational institutions and philosophies as possible to understand their current process, their challenges and how open they or their district would be to implementing a Holistic Student Report
Interviews with thought leaders, families and students
I’m a filmmaker and a self-affirmed ‘Fuzzy,’ so while radio buttons and pie charts are great, nothing beats a personal and authentic conversation with a human. I’ll be interviewing students in small groups and meeting with families and thought leaders in the educational space to explore this topic, gather insights and ask LOTS of questions.
Experiment by providing potential templates for Holistic Student Report at HPMS
At our school, we distribute student reports twice a year — once in December and once at the year end in June. As a parent and a teacher, this has often felt like it leaves a large opportunity gap in the Winter/Spring, so I’m going to take advantage of this time to create a third reporting period in late February/early March that I’ll use as an opportunity to experiment with (hopefully) two Holistic Report Templates, supported by a triangulated system of evaluations from students, families and teachers. I’ll present these templates with real student data, and gather feedback from students, families and teachers to determine if the reports are more valuable, how the information presented is interpreted, and if they’d like to see them implemented in our school.
If you, you’re school or your student would like to participate in my data collection process, don’t hesitate to reach out! And, if you’d like to check out the most interesting and applicable piece of writing I’ve read to help me think through this topic, it’s right here on Medium!
#setlab #educationscientist #changebydesign #humanfirst #startwithwhy
