It's time for my yearly presentation to the staff on improving assessment practices. By now, they've heard it all before. Currently about 20% of the staff is actively working with me to improve our practices. A few have jumped all the way into standards-based assessment. I know what my next step is. I have to talk to teachers who have been doing more of the same and figure out what is holding then back. Are they satisfied with traditional grading? Do they see the problem but don't feel they have the time? Do they see the problem but feel standards-based is not the way to go? Really, I don't know. There's a part of me that automatically wants to throw all those teachers into the "doesn't want to improve so I don't want to deal with them" group. I know that's not really the case for most of them. Maybe all of them.
So why is this conversation so hard for me to have?
Is it my personality? Or is it part of those ingrained cultural mores of teaching? I don't know. But if I'm ever going to spread good assessment practices to the rest of the school, I'm going to have to overcome my problem.
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