ISPS Personal Blog Post
“Am I the easy teacher? Or am I the most successful and motivational teacher? I mean, isn’t the goal to help all students to succeed?”
I shared at the start of this school year that there were many pieces of the International Baccalaureate program that just “clicked” for me at key parts of my educational and international journey. Today I am going to share one with you with the goal of sharing one of the stronger reasons why schools like ISPS choose the IB Middle Years Program with a goal of starting the discussion on how we all can ensure we have such tools to guide our children's collective growth.
Though my first teaching experiences in the state of Ohio provided a variety of urban and suburban school experiences, I eventually landed as a 7th and 8th grade English teacher for five years in a rural school district outside of Springfield, Ohio. While there, I was able to learn a great deal about teaching from the more experienced teachers around me. However, I never had anyone ask to see my gradebook or really teach me anything about how it could or should be organized or processes I should follow in determining student grades.
As I moved into my first international teaching position in Bulgaria, teaching grade 9 English, I was confronted with not only a new country, alphabet, language, and people, but with students who had been filtered through an application process that ensured they were in the top 15% of students in the country. That brought a systematic intensity about academics that I had not experienced before. However, I was the only teacher of the course and there were again no trainings or expectations for sharing student work or norming our assigned grades. I learned as I went during the two years I was in Bulgaria to keep raising the bar from where I initially set it, but every time I did, the vast majority of my students would quickly rise to the set level.
The moment that was pivotal for me came at the close of my second year, as I was about to move to the country of Qatar and my first IB school (Qatar Academy Doha). We had one of our end of the year staff meetings and the Dean of Students presented a bar graph of grades for every teacher on campus, one after another. With a last name beginning with S, I watched as all of my colleagues A-F percentages were shown side by side, one after another, anxiously waiting to see how I would compare. The moment where the slide labeled “Grade 9 English- Schwaberow” came up is a moment seared into my brain. My grades did not show the typical “S-Curve”, with the majority of students in the middle. My grades showed what I had lived—90% of my students in the A-B range. In that moment and my later reflections, key conclusions emerged, but so did key questions. My first reaction was, “Man, I’m the ‘easy teacher’.” I felt that was likely the response of my colleagues as well. With that came shame for all I had worked so hard to do over the course of two years, muddying the waters about whether my students had truly succeeded. But after that shame subsided, I asked, “Am I the easy teacher…? Or am I the most successful teacher? I mean, isn’t the goal to help all students to succeed? And how would I truly know the difference?” “Finally, how is someone who just taught in an Ohio corn field supposed to know what the international standard is without any training or guidance?” And not far from that, “Am I an effective teacher? If I have areas to grow, what are they?” That was the key experience that traveled with me as I transitioned schools and entered the IB system.
Let’s just say, the change was swift, the contrast stark. By week three of the school year I found myself sitting with my department, watching a video of a student presenting an oral presentation, all unified with a common rubric. We all scored the student independently in each of the areas (Analysis of the character/novel- Criterion A; Presentation Skills- Criterion C, and Language Skills- Criterion D, as I recall). After writing down our scores, we all revealed our scores and debated which was the most accurate evaluation of the student’s work. Criterion by criterion, rubric by rubric we normed our scores and comments. The members of my department were examiners for the IB as well, having graded hundreds of student assessments from around the world. We also received feedback as a school on how we were grading in line with the MYP Certificate (and now the MYP E-assessment process). There was a confidence in defining our scores because we knew they were in line with a standard that was being used in schools like ours across the world. We also clearly knew “how we were doing” against those schools. Picture it like rounds at a hospital for medical students, listening to accomplished doctors discuss where patients are and how to help them get better.
After that we went off to score our own students, looked at the final data and questioning any inconsistencies across our department before releasing it to students and placing results into grade books. From that point on, for the rest of the year I was able to track student growth in each of those criteria because, unlike in many programs, the goals for the year in each subject stay consistent. So do the rubrics that help to measure goal achievement. This consistent student dashboard enabled me to see growth or a lack of growth or see who did well on certain types of assessments but not others. Compared to programs the rely upon a singular assessment, like an exam, in order to evaluate student attainment, the MYP system looked at all assessments and gave the teacher the chance to see the learner’s application of knowledge and skill in a wide variety of settings. In that manner, it was consistently more fair to those who did not do well on high-pressured, 1-off exams.
All of these apparatus gave me the ability to know how all students were doing at any time, to set targets for their goal-setting (you can listen to a 34-year old me coaching a 6th grader in this video if you would like), as well as building personal confidence, consistency, and professionalism. Greater accuracy led to greater student learning as well– on all levels of the bar graph that I now create for myself throughout a school year instead of being surprised at the end of a year.
The last element of MYP assessment I truly enjoyed after developing my professionalism was not being bound to a percentage-based system that would hold my students mathematically back if they struggled at the start of a unit of learning. MYP assessment looked at most recent evidence and then allowed me to share my professional judgment of where a student was on that learning journey during reports. The system was built to encourage inspired learning and teaching, assessment FOR LEARNING as well as OF LEARNING. This has always been in stark contrast to using a simple math equation that mixes all performances and information together in a single number and does not tell the learning story very well. There was also a perception in my mind that percentage based systems were more reliable. For those wanting to dive deeper into this myth, I encourage you to read “The Case Against Percentage Grades” by Dr. Tom Guskey, who has been one of the most influential U.S. and international leaders on assessment reform.
This is where the story ends for the non-ISPS community. For those enrolled at ISPS, I very much looking forward to working alongside Ms. Jamie Wheatley, our MYP Coordinator, and guiding how we best USE this system of assessment to help create your child’s story, uniting you and their teachers with goal-oriented conversations that will ultimately inspire them into a lifetime dedicated to accomplishing extraordinary things. Academic classes are of course just one of many focal points as we focus on the whole student at ISPS, but as we foster a growth mindset in the classroom, this consistently translates to the pitch, stage, community, and life beyond high school. In terms of goal-setting, every ISPS Grade 10 student has to complete a project called the “Personal Project” as the culmination of the program. The project is basically testing whether they can set a challenging goal and achieve it. And that takes some practice in all areas of life.
