If it works with third graders, it’ll fly with adults (From Machines Are the Easy Part)
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 10:23AM
From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part.
Illustrations by Brady Johnson
51. Law of Assessment: You'll only get what you want if you can describe what you want.
Speaker and consultant Debbie Silver has a perfect term for the kids who have the ability to read their teacher’s minds. She calls them little “bow-heads.”
You know them. The little girls and boys who seem to instinctively know just what the teacher wants on any given assignment. The ones who always get their papers displayed on the bulletin board. The ones who get into the college of their choice.
Debbie and others are out to help level the playing field for those of us who lacked such intuition by advocating the use of good assessment tools that serve as a guide to the completion and quality of school work. These checklists and rubrics are given at the beginning of an assignment and used to check progress during it.
Speaking from experience, parents of less than academically over-achieving children appreciate such tools as well.
Don’t be surprised if you don’t get quality work if you can’t describe it.
52. If you want creativity you have to ask for it.
My son once came home with the assignment:
“Write a paper about bats.”
I nearly suggested he copy the entry from an encyclopedia and tell his teacher that someone else had already done this job. Instead we worked on whether we should and how we could attract bats to our own backyard.
I have very little sympathy for teachers who complain about plagiarism but who continue to give assignments that don’t ask for any kind of originality.
Oh, for the record, it’s always been the teacher who drew the short straw who got my son as a student – through no fault of his own.
53. If it works with third graders, it’ll fly with adults.
I did not make it through Algebra II in high school and I remain math-phobic. But I aced my graduate statistics class. All thanks to the instructor.
My guess is that Bill understood that folks who take a statistics class on Saturday mornings in the spring are there to meet a program requirement, not to become statisticians. As a former junior high math teacher, Bill used the same techniques with us that he did with 12-year-olds:
- Lots of review
- Lots of relevant examples
- Lots of applied practice
- Lots of humor
- Lots more review
- Clear expectations of what would be on the test.
I can’t tell a T-score from a standard deviation from the norm today, but I can tell you that good teaching is good teaching whether it is with adults or kids.
Reader Comments (2)
I am embarrassed to admit I just now finally downloaded your book - why did it take me so long? I believe I have read parts of it but plan to read the entire book before I start planning for next school year. This article was the iteration that caused the IndexOutOfBoundsException...
Hi Kenn,
I hope you enjoy the book. You can't say you won't get your money's worth since it's free!
I am reposting snippets on the blog as simply a way of making myself re-read it. My on-again, off-again project is another book similar to Machines with entries taken from the Blue Skunk over the years. A labor of love with an audience of no one but myself.
Have a good one,
Doug