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This is excellent!
Thank you!
Careful what you ask for, Ms. Greene - Patience "proving herself most thoroughly" might end up being a bit overwhelming for the teacher!
Indeed! I get the idea that Ms Greene has no idea of the chain of events she has just set in motion. :D
You get a very sound idea. More to come!
She fails to ask the next question. What is the point of proving that one has learned something? Is the learning not enough?
As a former educator, I'd say the point of proving you've learned something is to check that you actually have learned it, to a trained professional who can assess the depth of your new understanding. It's not just learning the facts; the classroom is a microcosm of the larger world. It's not so much to cram the student's head with facts; it's teaching them how to learn on their own, to seek out knowledge and to know what to do with new knowledge, to know whether something they read is reliable or suspect, and a hundred other things. Learning a fact so you can regurgitate it onto a test paper is one thing; learning how to learn on your own and developing a curiosity about the world and a thirst for new knowledge is (or should be) the deeper goal of educators.
As a former educator, I would have agreed with this years ago, but seeing my child go through a public school education based on state testing standards has eroded any value I see in carrying this concept of testing beyond the purely theoretical. Students should get useful feedback for the sake of their education alone, not for that of the teacher or the institution.
I don't think we disagree, so let me clarify. My point was that the teacher has to know whether the student has absorbed the lesson or not for the purpose of helping the student, not for any "testing standards." If I ask the student if they've read the material and they say "yes" and I drop it, I don't know if they've learned or what they've learned. If I test them on the material by asking questions about it, asking them to explain the material to me in their own words, or asking them to apply the lesson they've learned about one thing to another, similar real-world example, that will give me an idea about whether the student has learned. The point is to teach me, the teacher, whether I've been effective at conveying the lesson. The point is to see if the student has indeed learned the material instead of just seeing how well they can guess at a multiple choice test. Of course learning is the point- but the teacher has to learn, too, about what the student needs, what methods they respond to, and how well I am doing my job. This is the point of the final panels of the final page of this story- the student needs to learn, but so does the teacher. The teacher needs to teach, but so does the student.
If I'm still missing your point, please feel free to PM me. It's always interesting to talk to other teachers and share notes!
If I'm still missing your point, please feel free to PM me. It's always interesting to talk to other teachers and share notes!
We agree. I am gun-shy from seeing teaching (and some workplaces) severely degenerated by some variation of Campbell's law or Goodhart's law.
Firefly Jelly 4th Apr 2023, 9:05 PM
The City Guide Ms. Greene is handing to Patience is one of the local editions, covering the local neighborhood, in which the school is a major landmark.
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