Comments on: Crying in my coffee

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:06:56 +0000

Dear Vicki, thank you so much for being such a supportive reader. I’ll go and stick your beautiful stars up in the firmament.

By: Vicki

Vicki — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:30:20 +0000

I’d like to award this blog 5 stars – or more if they are available, Maximum + 1. Please keep it up.

By: Joan

Joan — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:22:36 +0000

Hi Anne,
Sorry for getting off track there and thanks for the nice reply.
No, feedback and assessment I find is indeed very important for development whatever the topic or situation. But in the case of teaching – be it adults, children or adolescents – real feedback would be best as a two-way street.
Each student evaluates the trainer / teacher and the teacher in turn evaluates each individual student. That would produce a complete picture for everybody involved. And feedback with kudos is of course exhilarating.
Yes, we’ll have that pot of tea or two, sometime soon!
And now we’re trying to build up a forum to communicate with the Ukrainian teachers, – teaching ideas, activities, good links anything of interest.
So you may have something to contribute there, too.
Cheers, Joan

By: chris

chris — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:08:21 +0000

p.s.

A friend, John – magician, blogger and published fantasy writer – has a nice warning on his blog page.

http://gratuitoussocks.wordpress.com/in-case-you-want-to-criticize-my-spelling/

By: chris

chris — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:03:28 +0000

****** (minimum)

By: Anne

Anne — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:21:56 +0000

Listen, Joan, sorry:

I didn’t respond properly. I saw your “It infuriates me as a freelance when we’re evaluated – sometimes torn to shreds by students” and looked the other way. Not ok.

OK, evaluation / assessment is a huge problem. Let’s talk about teaching now, not writing, for the moment, but things are similar. On the one hand it’s necessary, how else can we know how we’re doing. On the other, there are no perfect systems.

I was thinking this over at a recent online meeting with Alfie Kohn (Shelly Terrell was one of the moderators). He’s a guru who feels grades are wrong and should be done away with, since (he says) they impede learning. He said that even using categories developed by the students themselves to assess the quality of their work in order to create “fair” grades was wrongheaded. I’m going to explore this further, must read his books (see http://www.alfiekohn.org), because I’ve had to assess students in the past and will again in the future. Plus I’m writing tests, and they output points, so I’m always aware that students may get, yes, well, two stars out of five!

Back to teacher assessment:
1. It’s hard to develop categories and degrees that do the learning/teaching situation justice; in a perfect world, we’d work together to create guidelines to make it work, and celebrate it when it does.
2. It’s hard to deal with individual or group criticism if you don’t get a chance to ask back for clarification; in a perfect world, students would be reflective and give us honest feedback that we could work with, and we’d get a second chance.
3. It’s hard to deal with an administrator who might possibly be using the consolidated feedback, or individual instances or criticism, to disqualify you; in a perfect world administrators would be keen to build a good, productive team and would have the circumspection to recognize our weaknesses and support us where we need it, without putting us down.

Now, about that tea we’re going to have…

By: Anne

Anne — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:51:20 +0000

Dear Joan
Hope you’re having a very good weekend. Hm, let’s get together to have a pot of tea so you can tell me what’s going on in your neck of the woods.
So: rest and relaxation to you, too!