Dialing Down Stress Without Dumbing Down My Class1 DR. IAN KELLEHER
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t St. Andrew’s, we are living through year two of our new daily schedule (see “Think Differently & Deeply Volume 3”), designed to deepen learning and support student well-being. It is based on the fundamental principle that deep academic challenge and well-being are intertwined — that great schools design for both, rather than force students and parents to make a false choice. The flow of each day and the school week as a whole has been a revelation. But this got me thinking: changing a schedule is a large scale effort. What was I doing on a smaller scale in my physics class to combine rigor and well-being, strategies that could be done by any teacher without asking permission? Here are just a few: Disrupting the rhythm When I started teaching I fell into a familiar rhythm, like the beat of a dance track: quiz, quiz, quiz, test, quiz, quiz, quiz, test… Everything counted. But a light went off while in a conversation with a colleague who said, “Sean is so good on tests; it is a shame his quiz grades are so low, they are
really dragging his grade down.” It was a revelation — surely his test grade was by far the most important measure of what Sean ultimately knew, and if he failed the quizzes but ultimately learned from them, why should the quizzes count against him? Formative Assessments And then I learned about formative assessments. One of the most dramatic changes since I have started using research to inform my teaching has been knowledge and impact of formative assessments. They are a low- or no-stakes tool to find out what students currently know and can do, and what they are still struggling with. And then, importantly, I can alter my teaching based on what I find out, and get students to alter their practicing and studying based on what they find out. I made the commitment to never put a concept, skill or block of key knowledge on a test that students had not previously encountered on a formative assessment. This commitment made me change the way I design my day-to-day teaching to make it happen. I also talk to my students about what formative assess-
I made the commitment to never put a concept, skill or block of key knowledge on a test that students had not previously encountered on a formative assessment. This commitment made me change the way I design my day-to-day teaching. 16
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