I’d like to consider myself to be a good judge of
character. Occasionally, my perception is off, but this is rare. It’s impossible to fake being genuine; most
people see through it very easily. David Theune is simply incredible. He is an
authentic, charismatic teacher who cares deeply about his students and about
his craft. His passion and emotion was palpable during his presentation. He has
cultivated a meaningful, purposeful, and unique educational experience for all
his students. But, what I perceive to be David’s greatest attribute is his
willingness to change, to experiment, and ultimately create better
instructional methods.
During the presentation, David discussed his move away from
rubrics. My own gut reaction to rubrics is: ugh this is so robotic and inhuman.
I find rubrics for poetry to be especially abhorrent. It makes me think of Dead Poets Society when Mr. Keating
instructs his students to rip out the introduction and scale for rating poetry.
It’s an abomination on all that is human to grade a poem by means of rubric.
In an effort to evaluate students differently, David began
involving parents and the community in the grading process. Students read
poetry aloud to a small audience of parents and other students. Poetry was
meant to be read aloud. For some crazy reason, we have moved away from doing
this. But, David is bringing it back in a powerful way. Students are able to
express themselves and it’s really amazing material. It even raised the issue
of bullying, and both students and parents can see/hear how others are
affected. It seems like such a “duh” moment to involve parents in
presentations/grading, but parents aren’t involved at the secondary level like
in the primary level. I think it goes without saying, but what David is doing
is really special.
In my future practice, I would like to have this same style
of grading/presenting for oral history projects. I know I talk about this a
lot, but I’m passionate about it. Students could present their oral histories
alongside who they interviewed for parents and others students to appreciate.
It was be a unique, inspirational experience. I want students to do things that
they will remember.
Oh man, I wish I didn't have to miss this talk.
ReplyDeleteI feel like rubrics can be pretty constraining, although when you have a million papers to grade in a short amount of time, they can help. Do they have the graph like this? check. How about labeling this section and writing xyz? Check. Oops, they're missing this. Minus 2 points. It's basically a formula. That being said, I'm doing science and math, so there's not too much flexibility for being creative. Demos can be engaging and educational, but teachers have to consider the time it takes to set up the demo, safety when running the demo, and the cost of the equipment.
The second issue I'm wondering is how to make science and math more accessible and fun for both parents and kids. I feel like many parents become less involved after primary school not just because the kids are older and have more self control over how they study, but some parents keep saying that they're "just not good at math" or "not a science person". I mostly kept chemistry questions to myself at home because both my parents shied away from it. My mom just said she had a really hard time with it and didn't want to do it again, while my dad just said he didn't learn it.
From what you said, I think David Theune has some great ideas to get parents involved again and improve student-parent communication. I'm gonna go search his blog now.