(
post from Kim Marshall in
the Marshall Memo, issue 591 - a GREAT resource for busy educators at Marshallmemo.com)
“Students should be presumed innocent of
understanding until proven guilty by the preponderance of the evidence.”
“Teachers over-plan and under-assess.”
“The more you teach without finding out who
understands the information and who doesn’t, the greater the likelihood that
only already-proficient students will succeed.”
“Practicing for a standardized test to raise
the scores is like practicing for your physical exam to become healthy. It
mistakes measures for goals.”
“Decades of education research support the
idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater
learning. Basically, feedback is information about how we are doing in our
efforts to reach a goal.”
“If you really understand the topic, you
should have no trouble handling a question that looks a little different from
the questions the teacher asked. If you learned only by rote, however, a novel
question will stump you.”
“Assessment tasks must model and demand
important real-world work. Focused and accountable teaching requires ongoing
assessment of the core tasks that embody the aims of schooling: whether
students can wisely transfer knowledge with understanding in simulations of
complex adult intellectual tasks. Only by ensuring that the assessment system
models such (genuine) performance will student achievement and teaching be
improved over time.”
Improving
teaching and learning
“The point of school is not to get good at
school.”
“No one masters something they are not
passionate about.”
“By the very nature of the job of teaching,
we are prone to be insensitive (literally) to the actual daily experience of
our students, what they feel, unless we get outside of ourselves by acts of
will.”
“For the majority of learners, school is a
place where the teacher has the answers and classroom questions are intended to
find out who knows them.” (with Jay McTighe)
“Like the music or athletic coach, the
classroom teacher’s job is to help the student ‘play the game’ of the expert.”
“Reform is strongly needed in many schools.
Many teachers are just not currently capable of engaging and deeply educating
the kids in front of them, especially in the upper grades. Why can’t we just
admit this?” (from an open letter to Diane Ravitch)
“[T]eachers can be remarkably thin-skinned
when someone questions their methods or decisions, and many of us resist
seeking or receiving feedback from students, parents, colleagues, and
supervisors. When students fail to learn, some teachers end up blaming the
students, without an honest investigation of where student fault ends and
teacher responsibility begins.”
“My question is basic, history teachers.
Given that most history textbooks are comprehensive and reasonably
well-written, why do you feel the need to talk so much? Your colleagues in
science and English, for example, do not feel the same urge.”
Backwards
planning
“When curriculum is defined as a linear march
through stuff covered once (and where no pre-tests are ever done), it is inevitable that we end up exaggerating
differences and constantly talking (wrongly) about too many kids ‘falling
behind.’ Falling behind what? Some
mythical average ‘pace’ of teaching in a single way?”
“What we need to see more clearly is that the
common learner failure to transfer is not a student weakness or a teaching
deficit but a mistake in planning. You have to design backward from the goal of
transfer if you want to achieve it… Too often, though, teachers merely teach,
then ask in their tests: Did you learn my lesson?”
“To design a school curriculum backwards from
the goal of autonomous transfer requires a deliberate and transparent plan for
helping the student rely less and less on teacher hand-holding and scaffolds.” (with
Jay McTighe)
“We contend that teachers can best raise
test scores over the long haul by teaching the key ideas and processes
contained in content standards in rich and engaging ways; by collecting
evidence of student understanding of that content through robust local
assessments rather than one-shot standardized testing; and by using engaging
and effective instructional strategies that help students explore core concepts
through inquiry and problem solving.”
“Knowing that you’re a novice who’s a long
way from true mastery is not inherently debilitating. On the contrary, having a
worthy, far-off goal and tracking your progress in closing the gap are key to
mastery in all walks of life.”
