Today we concluded our poetry unit. I returned the tests and then asked students to complete a self-evaluation of their war poetry paragraphs. Research has shown that self evaluation is an important part of the learning process, and I realize that I don't often facilitate it in a meaningful way apart from the meta cognition that occurs during the completion of your writing logs. Evaluating writing is difficult to do, and if you found it unpleasant then you had a glimpse into my world. In spite of what you may think when you get feedback that doesn't assess your work as favourably as you had hoped or expected, I do take great care when marking, and I do much marking. It is difficult for me to give someone a low mark or a mark lower than I know they expect. I really do care how you feel and I want you to experience success and no, I don't enjoy watching some one's frustration. However, you want to know that you deserve the mark you get when it's a good mark and so do I. As I said in class, marking English work is often subjective, but by using the rubric to add transparency, I hope to give you a true sense of what the different marks represent. I know it's a bit naive, but I'm hoping you will move beyond working for food pellets (marks) and work for the purpose of learning and developing your skills. That's one of the reasons I return work with feedback in forms other than marks. I think it's important to explain to you from time to time where I'm coming from, but I also know that for many years you've been boss-managed in school and old habits are hard to break. My wish is that you leave the course satisfied that you were given the tools to succeed and the opportunity to improve experiences where your desired level of success was not initially met. I want to talk to you if you ever feel you're not being treated fairly or respectfully because to be treated so is an expectation I think you should have. Keep me honest; no one likes to be wrong, especially in so public a forum as a classroom, but I hope I'm not so proud that I can't acknowledge and fix my mistakes when they occur, or explain the reasons for my choices.
Anyway, this went further than I expected when I started. As we move into Shakespeare, I just wanted to take time to have you think about your learning, in the short and long term, and the internal and external evaluation that is connected to it.
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