Breakdown The Silos

Vancouver College, CISVA Professional Development

Unbelievable. What an incredible professional (PD) development session with CISVA at Vancouver College.  Thank you CISVA for inviting me.  I feel truly honoured and blessed to continue our edu-relationship with a common vision for our students: Assessment for Learning (AFL).  This PD session was about AFL, professional learning communities, and the new BC curriculum.  It was an excellent opportunity to be the learner, connect with like-minded people, and enhance my understanding of the new BC curriculum.  I had 3 aha’s at this session: (1) There are other people out in the field of education continuing to promote and advocate for AFL.  This warms my heart.  AFL is more than just giving formative feedback.  It’s informal, ongoing, reciprocated, non-evaluative, and informative feedback.  The uncanny part about this session is that it had the same message as the PD workshop I recently presented at the BCAMT Fall Conference titled, “Formative Assessment for Teachers.”  This is comforting.  I felt validated as a math teacher practitioner and educational consultant.  (2) The introduction to John Hattie’s research, Visible Learning, opened my eyes to effect size with respect to improving student achievement.  I saw his name hashtagged awhile ago as I scrolled through Twitter on the Provincial Professional Development Day and liked what I had read.  #hattie was brought back to my attention at this CISVA PD session.  Two things resonated with me with Hattie’s work: teacher content knowledge and finding “the story” within the data.  Best of all, I won a copy of Hattie’s book as a door prize.  Needless to say, the brief exposure to his research has profoundly influenced some of my thinking with respect to my dissertation and focus of my research.  Last point, (3) we all learn at different rates.  Although I found myself agreeing with many of the ideas presented, others in the room did not necessary share the same feelings.  For instance, some at my table continued to wrestle with differentiating formative and summative assessment.  Change is slow.  Assessment is complex.  I am completely aligned with the idea that professional learning communities are a necessary good for teachers’ sense making with respect to AFL.  Not assigning zeros and no marks for homework only scratches the surface of what AFL is and intends to achieve.  There is no question in my mind, the adoption of AFL in K-12 classrooms will require time to shift.  As mentioned in this session, AFL is a moral imperative.  It is the underpinning of how we teach and how students learn.  The presentation ends with one of the CISVA principals approaching me to say I transformed his practice 3 years ago with an AFL workshop I facilitated with CISVA secondary mathematics teachers as an educational consultant.  He kindly referred back to my workshop and said, “You were 6 years ahead of your time Christine.”  Wow.  You don’t hear that everyday.  Gratitude for CISVA is mutual.  They inspire me with their PD sessions and I inspired with my AFL workshop.  There is so much to learn and share about AFL.  I encourage BC teachers to form a professional learning community (PLC) as we move forward with Transforming BC Curriculum to establish a shared understanding of what AFL is, how it looks in the classroom, and why we are doing it.  BREAKDOWN THE SILOS.  Go visit other classrooms, schools, or districts.  We’re all in it together.  #kidsareworthit