Three stories from my K-12 teaching days exemplify the theme of this month’s column, focused on authentic teaching, learning and assessment.
My third graders were studying mammals and were absolutely transfixed by the size of the blue whale. They were also learning about measuring, using rulers. I marked out the distance from head to tail of a blue whale and set the students up in pairs, with measuring tools to determine how long it was. We compared our results with each other and reflected on the challenges and successes of measuring the whale, on using rulers and on working with a partner.
Aware of the chaotic WTO Ministerial in Seattle in 1999, my fifth-grade students were confused by why it was happening and curious to know why people were demonstrating against it. As a way of helping them understand some of the economic issues of concern, I had them research how products they cared about were made. We started together researching soccer balls and asked several questions focused on the basics: Where are they made? What materials are they made from? Who makes them? What are their lives like? What is the process for making them? And how do they get to us in Seattle?
The students discovered that the soccer balls were made by children in Pakistan, sewing by hand for pennies a day. They were outraged and curious to know more. They worked in small groups to research the manufacture of other products of their choice. They had weekly check-in meetings with me, kept learning journals and then presented their information to the class, and then at family night, to the public. Finally, we as a class reflected on what we had learned together from the process, about the ways goods are manufactured and what the research process entails.
This last story comes from another class of third graders who wondered about a group of homeless men who lived in the park they walked through on their way to school. Who were they? Why were they there? Should we be afraid of them? We were studying our community and city at the time, so we launched an extended unit on homelessness in our town, with much of our writing, reading, science, social studies and art lessons related to that theme.
Midway through our unit there was a massive and devastating earthquake in Japan, with many deaths and thousands left homeless. The children immediately decided that we needed to collect food, clothing, toiletries and blankets to send to Japan. They wrote letters to our school community launching a school wide drive, and they appealed to local merchants to donate goods. I connected with agencies in town that could ship our collected goods to Japan along with what else was donated across Seattle.
The students did not stop there. We had invited a social worker and a homeless teen to class to learn more about children who were homeless in our area, which led to the class deciding we had to do something for homeless children. I contacted teachers at a school for children who were homeless and after speaking with them the class decided to make quilts for their classroom. With help from our school parents, one of whom was an experienced quilter, we made two full-size quilts. The children had to measure and design their quilt squares (math); we read about quilts in history (social studies), and about the lives of children who were homeless (The Orphan Train series) (literature) and spent some time cutting and sewing. Students from the school serving homeless children came to our class, to meet our students and to receive the quilts. We also invited media to cover the event as the third graders wanted to make sure that the public knew that there were homeless children who needed support. A week later, we received a thank you note and a quilt square featuring drawings from the children who had visited our room.
Voters decisively rejected the MCAS as a graduation requirement in 2024 and there are now questions about what, if anything, should replace it. Many have called for a more authentic approach to teaching, learning and assessment as a step in the right direction.
What is authentic teaching, learning and assessment?
Authentic teaching begins with getting to know the students, as individuals, as a class, and as learners. Once the teacher has a sense of who they are and where they are starting from, they can begin to develop some clear learning goals and objectives for their units of study. Each of the scenarios I describe above started with questions that came from the students. The third graders wanted to know how big blue whales are. The fifth graders wanted to understand why downtown Seattle was filled with police, demonstrators and tear gas, and what were the issues that ignited such passion and discord. The students walking through the park were both afraid of and curious about these men who were living there and wanted to know more.
Once the teacher has a sense of the learners in their room they can create learning goals and objectives, guided by state standards, student interest, and by identifying learning goals that are worth knowing, that will help students to develop their skills, content knowledge, and experience, and that will prepare them for and encourage them towards further learning.
Once the teacher has determined the learning goals, they design assessments that will help them (and the students) know whether the students are gaining the skills, knowledge, and experience that will keep them on the road towards those learning goals. The assessments in the three examples were clear: in the first, could the students use their measuring tools to measure the length of the whale, could they work with a partner, and could they adjust their approaches when they ran into difficulty. In the second example the assessments were focused on their approach to and the quality of their research, their ability to work with others, their presentation skills, and their ability to reflect on their learning. In the third example, the most profound assessment was the way they made use of their growing knowledge and appreciation of the realities of homelessness to respond to that learning by taking action.
The third step in the process is then to create a sequence of lessons and experiences that will move students towards gaining the skills, knowledge and experience that will enable them to meet the learning goals. In each case I designed and adjusted lessons, guided by the learning goals and objectives, and then by what I was learning from the work that we were doing each day.
Authentic teaching, learning and assessment stand in stark contrast to the top down, one size fits all approach of the MCAS that the voters wisely rejected. Authentic teaching begins with and is focused on the particular children in the room and what they need as learners. The teacher’s responsibility and challenge is to assess the children’s knowledge and abilities at the start of the year, to know the mandated state standards in each subject area and to design a course of study that helps the students to meet those standards in ways that are engaging, involving, and effective, and that encourage the students to want to keep learning.
My third graders learned deeply about homelessness because they wanted to know; it was important to them. And as they learned about homelessness, they took that learning to a whole other level in their response to the earthquake in Japan, and their choice to make quilts for homeless children who lived nearby. Their making deep meaning from their learning, brought them into unexpected and profound new learning. When the children from the homeless class left our room after receiving their quilts, we talked about it and one of the third graders said, with surprise, they’re kids, just like us. It was pretty easy for me to assess the learning that had taken place throughout the unit on individual assignments, but their actions made clear their more profound, deeper, and authentic learning that they will take with them through the rest of their lives.
Doug Selwyn taught at K-12 public schools from 1985 until 2000 and then at university as a professor of education until he retired in 2017. He is the chair of the Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution education task force. You can reach him at dougselwyn12@gmail.com.