What Was It All About?
The most humbling moment I have experienced was after my first-year teaching and we were preparing students for the end of the year Regents examination, my teaching methods fell short and not one single student passed the chemistry examination. At this moment, I had questioned my entire choice of becoming an educator. Even though it had its struggles, I really did love my first-year teaching because of the relationships that I had built with my peers and with the students, so the fact that my pedagogy was not as effective as I had anticipated was heartbreaking. However, I persevered and committed to another year with another subject (physics) after I spent a summer reflecting upon my practices to see how I can improve. Happily, I can say that my second year felt like I was a whole new teacher, but I still was making mistakes that followed me throughout the remainder of my teaching years so far.
Prior to starting my master’s program in the fall of 2019, I had already fallen into habits and routines when designing course curriculums and lessons. I defaulted to teaching the way that I had been taught when I was in high school: I lectured and then assigned homework. What I tested students on included both the application of content and the rote memorization of facts and vocabulary. Honestly, whenever I did assess students according to the guidelines set by administration, I realized that there was little material retained because students do not truly “learn” through being told to facts and to regurgitate them back. When I assigned projects, they lacked student choice and the rubrics were subjective. I was afraid to take risks because I did not know how to approach them; I wanted to remain where I felt comfortable. However, my entire mode of thinking changed as soon as I enrolled in my first course, which was focused on language diversity and literacy instruction. Here, I learned that my vocabulary heavy lessons were preventing many students from learning content because there was much more diversity in language comprehension than I originally anticipated.
The Master’s in Arts in Education and Educational Technology programs were off to a strong start in challenging my thinking, and this was just the beginning of my journey. I especially focused on the following aspects of my teaching processes:
Student Assessments
The idea of diversity in language comprehension was internally debated even further in the way that I was approaching assessments. Luckily, I enrolled in a course where I was able to reflect on how I assessed student mastery on material. The course was entitled “CEP 813: Electronic Assessment for Teaching and Learning”. Coming from New York, where students were given a state mandated final exam after each core course called the Regents, testing was a key component of preparing students to pass (they needed to pass a certain amount of Regents examinations to receive their high school diploma). Immediately upon entering the course, we were asked to assess our own summative assessments to determine if they aligned with our beliefs – and my answer was no: I had made many assumptions of skills that students had to succeed in the content, and these included reading and language comprehension abilities as well as math manipulation. I was not alone in making these assumptions when designing tests, and unfortunately, these mistakes could further perpetuate inequities that lie in the schooling systems if they are not approached mindfully.
One way to alleviate discrepancies, which can also highly engage students while assessing them, is games! Incorporating gaming also teaches soft skills to students and it moves away from the rote memorization and vocabulary heavy tests that I was using; in summary, they can allow students to take the role of someone in the field that they are studying. In my example, I created a “choose your own adventure” type assessment, in which students assume the role of a psychology researcher designing an experiment:
Gaming is one tool that can be used for testing, but to ensure that every student learning style is being accounted for, choice is key. Providing options also decreases the risk of testing “privilege” rather than “mastery.” For example, if a student does not own a calculator, they should not be punished if that is required for a take-home test. However, if there is a choice where concepts can also be shared, they have a better chance at succeeding (more on this here).
Using Technology
The idea of privilege in the classroom was magnified in the course “TE 831: Teaching School Subject Matter with Technology,” specifically with Cathy Davidson’s “Now You See It” speech. Within her dialogue, Davidson brings awareness to many points that prove that a paradigm shift needs to happen in schools to give the youth a better chance at thriving in this current technological era. The current state of schools is still using the structures designed during the industrial era, for example, hierarchies based on nothing else but age and standardization, but many of these traits are no longer beneficial to prepare students for the careers they will encounter. What will be beneficial, however, is teaching technology literacy with options for creativity and human interaction.
Throughout the course, I had the option to explore which technologies provided the best opportunities to accomplish what Davidson suggested – allowing students to create endeavor-based work while learning content. Allowances and constraints were then analyzed for many online resources, and I realized that those that I was previously using were not allowing students to learn the skills needed to thrive in this new era. Again, I was using sites that focused on memorization or preparation for standardized tests, but neither of these would allow for students to become innovative. To learn resources that students could use to demonstrate creativity, I tried one myself and created a Vodcast:
Vodcasts are a great tool to implement as a summative assessment because it teaches students to be able to verbalize their knowledge and engage an audience using imagery and music. This not only tests student mastery, but it allows them to learn editing tools independently as well as accesses a part of their thinking that a standardized test cannot by designing a visual presentation.
Innovation in the Classroom
Again, as Davidson said, there needs to be a paradigm shift within the educational system that starts with allowing for innovation to be taught in the classroom. But how do we add new systems in the curriculum that make this possible? The course “CEP 817: Learning Technology Through Design” involved teaching a process in which problems can be identified and approached using unique methods. CEP 817 focused mainly on approaching a problem using the Stanford Model of Design Thinking, which calls thinking outside of the box into action: once a problem in the classroom is identified, solutions are designed through empathizing with those who are affected by the problem, defining what the root of the problem is, redefining what the actual problem is, ideating solutions to the problem, prototyping a solution, testing the prototype, and then repeating the process until the problem identified is solved. If a new paradigm is needed in the field of education, this design process is perfect to test possible solutions. The problem I focused on deals with the standardized testing that was mentioned earlier – students were not retaining information, and it was discovered that an additional reason why was the pressure! So, my entire approach to delivering content was altered. In addition to the way I was teaching (by focusing on the memorization of facts), the pressure I was applying to students for them to pass the exam could have also easily caused testing anxiety. But the reality is that tests do not define learning and it took this class to realize that I need to implement more opportunities for students to showcase their learning and build confidence in the same manner passing a standardized test will. This also eliminates other aspects benefiting students with having a certain learning style over others.
I was able to use material acquired through CEP 813 again - I wanted to ensure that my approach towards assessing content knowledge was also simultaneously ensuring that it was not only testing student privilege. Therefore, further analyzing the problem identified in order to use the Stanford Model of Design Thinking dealing with anxiety towards testing. AP Psychology is a course that was the focus of this study and one that is highly affected by standardized testing: college credit is given to those that pass a summative assessment near the end of the course. Because so much pressure is given to one test, anxiety is bound to occur amongst students. Using the design methods and the opportunities from CEP 817, however, I was able to approach this idea creatively and developed ideas that I never considered. Now, I am pitching ideas to the principal about having a “psych fair” (similar to a science fair) to build student confidence about content knowledge!
The ultimate guide to knowing how to remove grading prejudice in a classroom is MSU’s adapted Ungrading Policy, which I believe provides the opportunity for students to better demonstrate what they know rather than worry about making a deadline. The Ungrading Policy, in my experience, does still hold students accountable to turning in assignments by a certain date, but it also allows for revisions. Feedback is key when growing, so I have learned to accept what I am suggested as that instead of viewing anything from a professor as negative criticism. If implemented in the K-12 classroom, students can learn from their mistakes and push themselves to prove their potential and not solely seek validation through the grade on their report cards.
The classes listed are only a few that have changed my approach to education – I now know that the old routines that I became comfortable with were perpetuating the ideas that I went into the educational field to eliminate, so cognitive dissonance ensued. I experienced most of my graduate school experience during the Covid pandemic, and I am grateful that I was able to experiment with many online programs directly within my lessons. However, I was more aware than ever that my approach to delivering content was not beneficial for teaching students how to thrive in a technological era. Now I know innovation is key: rather than focusing solely on end of year standardized assessments, I know that students can learn more through designing their own display of thinking. By having the choice to display knowledge, students can choose to demonstrate what they have learned through means that best represent their own personal learning styles: no two brains are the same, so no minds will process content in the same exact manner. Diversity in content and assessments is key and providing such can even do as much as help alleviate disparities in the performances in standardized tests that are still focused on to predict future success. Again, although standardized tests are not the only way to prove mastery, students are not often told this narrative directly. What I learned through the multiple aspects of the MAED and MAET programs is that assessing student knowledge in an equitable manner is possible, and there are many technological tools that make it possible for the new revolution we are in.
Access a PDF version of the essay here.