Tag Archives: fairness

Whose problem is it?

A couple thoughts about assessment:

1. I taught Grade 9 Math for a year then after a year of only Humanities I went back to teaching Math, but for Grade 8’s. After about 5 years of teaching Math 8 I caught myself saying something as I started my unit on Exponents. I said to the class, “Every year this is the hardest unit and the hardest test that I give you.” I had to say it out loud to realize what I was really saying.

What I was really saying was one of two things, either I wasn’t doing a good enough job teaching this unit, or I was giving students much too hard of a test. Looking carefully at the test, I realized it was a bit of both. Because I had taught Grade 9 and new what was coming, when I looked at the test I realized that I was expecting students to know the content at a Grade 9 level… I was ‘preparing them’ for what’s to come. In every section of the test I had questions that started out with basic Grade 8 outcomes, but questions got gradually harder and always ended up with a couple (or more) questions that expected them to exceed what was required in the curriculum.

It was my problem, not theirs, that they struggled. I was pushing them to learn hard concepts at a very high level and testing them so that they all had to be competent at a higher grade level just to get a decent mark. My intentions were good. The outcome and experience for students who were not strong in math were not so good. I reworked my test that year, and some of my teaching as well.

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2. This isn’t one I’ve done, but my daughter has faced this. Last year in her university French course, the professor said, “Nobody gets an ‘A’ unless they are native speakers”. He then proceeded to give my daughter ‘B’s in every assignment, no matter what she did, and what feedback she used to improver her next assignment… that is, until her final exam. In her final exam, the marking was blind (the teaching only saw a number, and not the students’ names). On that exam, my daughter got an ‘A’.

If our job is to teach students, and improve their work, then what are we telling them if our message is, “You aren’t good enough to get an ‘A’.” … Is this not also saying, “I’m not a good enough teacher to help you improve.”? What message does this give to a student who is always striving to do her best and is a high achiever? What message does this give to a student who is struggling? Whose problem is it when every student that comes to your class isn’t good enough for an ‘A’ both before they arrive in class, and also after you have been their teacher for a semester?

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Assessment isn’t just measuring progress, it’s also measuring teacher expectations, and it’s up to us to make sure those expectations are realistic and fair.

In whose eyes?

The term ‘firm but fair’ has two components. First, it suggests that if a child or a student, (in the case of a parent or an educator), is not acting appropriately, then a firm consequence is put in place. The second part is that the consequence is fair. This means that the consequence is fitting, rather than either soft or overly harsh, and it also means there is consistency in what the consequences look like for similar instances.

The often overlooked aspect of this is that fairness needs to be measured by the person who is receiving the consequence. It should be ‘firm but fair’ in their eyes. If you think you are being fair but the person dealing with the consequence does not, then that mismatch will undermine the value of the consequence, and likely not deter the kind of behaviour you are hoping to reduce.

For a parent, this can often be an issue where anger levels can undermine consistency, where the consequence is unfairly harsher because your kid was driving you crazy for an hour before the issue came up, compared to a less harsh consequence just because you are in a good mood. For an educator, this issue can often come up when consequences are not consistent between different students for similar issues.

An important concept to remember is that if you are wanting to be fair, fairness needs to be perceived by everyone involved. In whose eyes are you being firm but fair?

speak-no-evil-monkey

Things I can not share

One of the most interesting thing about working as a principal in a school is that there are many issues that I’d love to write about… but I can’t. Scenarios can easily by attributed to actual people, students/parents/teachers/staff/colleagues, and that would be unprofessional. Sometimes that makes writing this blog daily rather difficult, because much of my day is broken up into a series of things that are too personal or too specific to mention. Even in explaining this, I started to write a few ‘for example’ scenarios and thought better of it after trying. I don’t have a right to share things that can affect other people’s lives in a negative way, but I also don’t want to sanitize my thinking around a topic and make my writing unauthentic.

An example of a story I did share pretty quickly was “I’m a mop not a sponge” but in that case I was still in the meeting when I asked both the student and the parent if I could share this story (without names) and got permission… and this was a positive insight the student had and shared with his mother and I. His use of a metaphor intrigued me, as metaphors often do. This was an easy story to tell. Other stories are much harder.

Many challenges in schools can be summarized as: a) Someone was treated unfairly; b) Someone felt that they were treated unfairly; c) A decision that affects more than one person was deemed unfair. Put another way: actions, perceptions, and circumstances in relation to fairness are imbalanced. The moment I dissect one of these scenarios on my blog, I have the potential to undermine any resolution that may have come out of it. I would be unfair and disrespectful to some of the people involved.

I often deal with challenging things that I’d love to share… things that have consumed my thoughts and my day… things that I reflect on and would love to write about… but ultimately things that I can not share.