Assessment practices and diabetes

Below is a diagram of how a human body typically regulates blood glucose levels:

http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/diabetes-glucose-regulation.gif

The concept show above is common in biological processes. It is known as a negative feedback loop. A negative feedback loop works because a stimulus (in example below blood sugar level) causes an action. The action results are monitored to stop the action once the it has reached an acceptable level. 

In a person who does not have diabetes (either type I or type II), a high level of blood sugar would cause the pancreas to release insulin that would stimulate the cells of the body to take in the blood glucose and causes the liver to go through the metabolic process of changing glucose into glycogen for storage in the liver (See yellow arrows). In a person who does not have diabetes, a low blood sugar level would cause the pancreas to release glucagon, which has the opposite effect of insulin. Glycogen is broken down in the liver and glucose is released into the bloodstream. When an acceptable level of blood glucose has been reached, the stimulation of the pancreas stops and the insulin and/or glucagon is no longer released.

In a person with diabetes, the body has an abnormal blood glucose tolerance and does not produce insulin (type I diabetes) or has decreased sensitivity to insulin or inability to use their own insulin (type II). Either way, the feedback look is broken. Either the stimulus does not begin the action or the action is not stopped after monitoring.

Our current practices in assessment are like a person who has diabetes. The feedback loop is broken. Students participate in instruction, they take an assessment, and instruction continues, regardless of students' results on the assessment.

If we are to actively utilize assessment for learning (instead of assessment of learning), then the use of these assessments must be formative and instruction must be adapted to match the needs of the students (i.e. blood sugar level). 

From Kanold & Larson (2012), Common Core Mathematics in a PLC at Work, pg. 90

As seen in the cycle above, steps three and four are the key monitoring pieces to achieve step 5. Students must be active contributors to the Teaching-Assessing-Learning cycle. They must reflect on their classroom practices, as teacher should, to help alter actions in class. If this learning environment can be cultivated, both students and teachers will help drive needed changed in instruction to meet the needs of students and to assist them in achievement of their learning goals.

Educators cannot continue to provide assessments without the clear understanding of how they will be used to adapt instruction to help students meet the learning targets. If a student does not demonstrate that they have learned the information/skills from a unit, what sense does it make to just push them down the curriculum road map that is scaffolded upon that previous information?!

Diabetes is a disease that is treatable is monitored closely, but at this time, there is no way to fix what is "broken". We can fix the broken part of the teaching-assessing-learning cycle.

Coaching by listening

One of the best parts of my position is discussing what teachers are doing with students in their classrooms. I enjoy the conversations had between colleagues about the choices, practices, and results in their classes. It is a great chance to reflect and I encourage the teachers with whom I work to see the observation/evaluation cycle as the most honest professional development in which they will participate.

As I reflect on my own practices, I stumbled across the Partner Discussion Protocol from a conference I attended. When there are partners working together, here is how it generally works:

·        A shares, B is an active listener (then switch)

·        A shares need, goal, or ideas for evidence

·        B’s role is to probe and push with ?’s

o   What’s going on now?

o   Why do you want this to change?

o   What exactly is your goal (desired change)? 
o   How will you know is changed?

 In the administrator/teacher dynamic, there may not necessarily be the reversal of roles, but idea of identifying the wanted change, defining the reason for the change, and being able to assess if the change has actually occurred is definitely valuable.

As the concept of peer evaluators gains popularity, this model can be applied after a pair of observations has been completed. The role of the active listener is key.

As it has been said: "We have two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak".

Convert from consumer to producer

This post is a commentary on the shifts that are needed in schools in order to make the role of a data coach more effective.

The shift that I will comment on is this:

• Adults need to focus less on the teaching and more on the learning

In earlier days, I was a teacher of biology. One of my favorite units to teach was on Ecology. I loved to see the surprise in my students' faces when they learned that the study of ecology and the environment was so much more than a recycling program that gets discussed at the middle school level. One of the most dynamic parts of ecology is the study of energy transfer.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturewise/5060452732/sizes/m/in/photostream/

 

 



My reason for bringing up the food web is to discuss the concept of producers and consumer. A producer, or autotroph, is an organism that can create its own food within its cell via a chemical process (i.e. photosynthesis or chemosynthesis), whereas a consumer, or heterotroph, is an organism that much eat another organism in order to sustain its existence. In the classroom, I would discuss the current carrying capacity of the Earth and how the that could be increased if we all acted as lower order consumers instead of the tertiary or higher consumers in the food web (i.e. top consumer).

Students would then ask if they could be a producer, instead of a consumer. This would indicate to me that we needed to discuss some cellular concepts a little more...

But, when we move from an ecological discussion to one of educational preparation, the environment of the classroom takes on a new look in the terms of producers and consumers. For anyone who has been through a teacher preparation program up through and including the past few years, was taught to have their students be consumers of knowledge in the class.

Teachers, classically, have been taught and prepared to be the smartest person in the room and provide all of the information to students. Even older teacher evaluation models focus on how well the teacher can impart knowledge upon the class and create a sense of order and control of the young people in their room. The focus has been completely on the teaching in the room and had very little do with the learning that is happening by the students. (Take a look at how student grades are entered -- mentioned in my last post).

Recently, there has been a (needed) change in education that teachers need to guide and facilitate the learning of the students instead of directing it. (The biggest challenge to this is that Federal laws and tests that are required.) If this change can be realized in the classroom, then the students will be able to make the change from the consumers of knowledge to the producers of their own learning. This would allow focus to shift from the teaching to the learning.

Coaching needs to reduce blame

This post is a commentary on the shifts that are needed in schools in order to make the role of a data coach more effective.

The shift that I will comment on is this:

• Placing blame needs to shift to inquiries in examining potential solutions

I feel that a lot of this feeling of blame and accusation when looking at data comes from the issues of when we look at the data. Most times, we look at autopsy data. Autopsy data is the information that comes out and is available after time to affect any change on the issue has passed. Ex. Parent-Teacher conferences after the grading quarter has ended. If we examine data when there is no chance for change the questions the arise are all about "why did this happen" and "what didn't you do".

Another issue is that while we are bombarded with numbers and data, we don't know where to being. This causes us to suffer from the DRIPs (Data Rich, Information Poor). Teachers can look no further than their own grade books to begin finding a lot of valuable information.

When I was in the classroom, I know that I would fall into the grading trap of either doing a mad rush of grading at the progress report and report card times or, when I was on top of it, just entering the grades in the grade book without examining what the data is telling us. Think of a time when you were entering grades into your grade book...how often do you look at the aggregate? Most times, teachers get so caught up in the individual cell at the intersection of the assignment and the student, that they do not look at the entire row (to see if any patterns are developing for that student) or the entire column (to determine if there are patterns developing for the class on that assignment).

(Looking for some alternatives to traditional grades? You can look at this article on Motivating $tudent$ or De-grading your classroom)

Simple measures of central tendency can illustrate volumes about a particular assignment. If you are asking "measures of central tendency" that is the fancy way of saying average. There are multiple ways to measure this though. We can take a look at the mean, median, and mode.

The arithmetic mean is commonly known as just the mean and what we think of when we discuss average. Simply put, add up all of the numbers and divide the sum by the number of terms. This can give you an idea of how most students performed.

The mode is simply the most repeated term in a set. The mode can help explain a low or high mean and also provide another insight into how students performed.

The median is simply the middle number of a set when the terms are arranged from lowest to highest. If you have a data set that is skewed, this can help provide more insight that simply the mean.

Even if you hated sadistics (or statistics), these are simple things that can be calculated and provide insight into student achievement. Importantly, these measures can get you or your curricular team asking questions about the assignments and level of understanding of the students. More importantly, these calculations can be done quickly, help provide immediate feedback to students and the class, and allow for change before the autopsy of the report card.

By examining the data as it is entered, blame is reduced because it is live information and the information from the data can help raise questions about how to improve the practices within the classroom.

Avoid the blame game by doing these calculations in your own class. Get comfortable with your own information and then begin working with colleagues. When we can move to a space that is safe and supportive, we can then seek out the help of a teacher who has better or improving student achievement to determine how to improve one's own practices.

Fantasy Teaching

An interesting thing happened on Twitter today. Dr. Chris McGee (@cmcgee200) and Josh Stumpenhorst (@stumpteacher) had conversation starter of what teaching would look like it teachers were drafted like pro-athletes. The conversation had a root in the educational practices of Finland and their great successes.

As an aside, did you know that in Finland, students do not start school until the age of 7 and receive all post high school career training for free? Pre-service teachers in Finland go through extensive internships and training and receive salaries on par with other educated professionals in the country. The training is so extensive and challenging that only 10% of the participants complete the program! You can read more here.

Once the idea of a pro-draft was discussed, the conversation took a turn to how might a fantasy teaching league look and how would the "owner" of a league might score points. The conversation started with a few people and eventually had dozens of people contributing. The conversation started around 11 AM CST and within 2 hours had over 200 contributions.

The contributions ranged from serious to silly including:

• +2 points for giving borderline students an opportunity to publicly succeed (@wmchamberlain)
• DQ'd for using sarcasm to put a kid down (@jmarkeyAP)
• +2 points for admitting, out loud, in your class, that you just learned something from a kid, and being proud of it (@ktvee)
• +1 point per hit for playing Dodgeball with 200 kids and letting them hit you (@stumpteacher)
• -2 points for splling errrors (@jaymelinton)

The amazing thing about this conversation the contributions were all about what we want our learning environments and schools to be. These are some great tips and observations about small changes we can each make in our classrooms and schools to make it a better place for the students and the teachers. Why can't we make our fantasy a reality?

See the storyfi of the #fantasyteaching conversation below. If you want to contribute, please do by tweeting with the hashtag #fantasyteaching!