Dena’s Blog

I must confess that I don’t keep up with my Google reader as much as I should. If it weren’t for these regularly-spaced blog topics, I would forget all about it. So at least thanks for the gentle reminder if nothing else.

In perusing my reader today, however, I stumbled across an interesting post by The Tempered Radical about posting standards/objectives/essential questions on the board for students. While I no longer have to abide by such silly rules as what and how to post on my board, I do remember working at a school where it was just becoming popular. Evidently we were becoming a “Learning-Focused School” because someone had paid someone else thousands of dollars to teach us how to do that, and between the stress of working on the yearbook and working on my doctorate while I taught full-time, needless to say I got in a ton of trouble for asking aloud, “So what have we been BEFORE?”

I was frequently a smart-aleck but not rebel enough to buck the system, which makes me admire this post by The Tempered Radical even more. His school insisted that teachers post objectives in the form of “Students will be able to…..” and he resisted the edict until he was called on the carpet for it. With his principal’s permission, he researched the concept and learned that the form in which the objectives were written was IRRELEVANT. So he worked on his own state standards to create “I can” statements, with the student at the center.

What a concept.

Posting “Students will be able to….” statements on the board is like talking about them as if they aren’t in the room. Turning the objectives into “I can” statements puts the onus on the students, where it should be. And this guy was teaching sixth grade.

He admits that he has spent the better part of two years on this project. It would have been much easier if he had just gone along with the rules and posted the objectives as he was asked to, but he resisted because the rule didn’t make sense. And he made it better for himself and the students.

What a concept.