Alex's+Portfolio+Assessed

Dear Alex: Your beliefs about curiosity, passion and the interference of grades are very similar to my own. You want students to feel in charge of their learning, to be involved and committed to their learning, and to assess their learning—all worthy goals. The problem, as I learned in the first few years of teaching, is that students do not always share those goals, until you demonstrate what they can do, what they can cultivate in themselves, and what purposes writing and learning can serve. They do not always come equipped with this vision. In fact, they don’t really believe in it. So you must bring expectations to your class, even if you must revise them as you go along. Your thematic unit has expectations that students will see how a character evolves by separating from one culture and joining another, but students will want to read //The Absolutely True Diary// as a story of getting ahead by accepting the academic culture and abandoning the traditional one. Of course, we know it is much more complex than that, because so much is left and lost by leaving your tribe, and you don’t find your identity by mere conformity. Yet students will read the story simplistically, if you let them. They will scan the illustrations without thinking about them. They will consider Rowdy a trouble-maker, not a hurt friend. They will miss the conflicting feelings that Junior has, because they will not read closely. So you have a very active role to play. I am saying it is not enough to deplore how school and English is over-structured, you have to set up your own structures for learning, but leave more room for students to think. Analysis and reflection are not instinctive, they are provoked by a lesson you design. Students do not instinctively link their claims to evidence from a text, you have to require it and give them practice doing it in speech and writing. Portfolio assessment poses the same issues. You should study what students say in their portfolio for indications of learning. If they have written in various genres, what have they learned about those genres? If they spout back definitions, ask them to show evidence of it in their writing. If their writing shows no changes, ask them to show sequences of drafts. If the drafts show only proofreading changes, then ask for changes in meaning and organization. And so on. You have to push for more, because they will try to get by with less. I hope this does not sound cynical, because I absolutely believe in students’ capabilities and passion. But I know that adolescents are very busy people, and they will give you less unless you ask for more. So start defining what you mean by critical literacy or supporting claims with evidence or reflecting deeply on completed work. That is what students expect from you. 63/70