Chapter 9

When I first began teaching, assessment wasn't really important to me as I'm sure it wasn't with other first year teachers. I was more focused on other things such as classroom management and lesson planning. Today as a fifth year teacher, I am beginning to pay more attention to assessment. One thing I don't realize is that many times I AM assessing my students; through observations and anecdotal notes. As a teacher, my goal is to use a variety of assessments to fit my students learning styles and that one way of testing isn't always ideal for some students. Many times they do have the knowledge, it's just a matter of finding the right testing method to elicit that knowledge. One thing I learned and realized from this summer's assessment class is that many of the assessments such as the SBA's aren't a realistic measurement of our students' strength and that they only test for certain knowledge. Our students have a wealth of knowledge and strengths in other areas such as knowledge of the land, culture, songs, and traditions of the Yup'ik people. Our Yup'ik Immersion Program has a big problem when it comes time to assessments. They are required to test the students' in English tests such as AIMSWeb, IPT, and the Lower Yukon Standardized Tests even though they are teaching in Yup'ik. What a disadvantage! It'n no wonder we always fail in tests! We are being set up for failure!

Course Planning and Syllabus Design

One scope and sequence area that fails to be available to our students is content NEED. Our school follows curriculum which in my opinion sometimes doesn't prepare students for real-life. When our students leave high school many of them don't go very far. I believe if we had local people who created relevant curriculum with the needs of the students in mind, our students would be better prepared for the Western world. Many of our students are not able to verbalize themselves effectively when it comes time for social situations. I think many of them find that they can't communicate effectively and then shut down and give up. If we had local teachers and community members that came together and brainstormed ideas about what our students needs' are, we could possibly create a curriculum that students can benefit from. Those benefits would include learning how to communicate within everyday situations where they will go to learn additional skills.

planning goals and learning outcomes

Our school has a mission statement that I believe relates to the aims and objectives. They are as follows: The purpose of our community is to ensure tradition, culture and a quality education for all children. Although I think this mission statement would be a great one for our school, I also don't believe it is being followed. A colleague and I were just talking about this a few days ago while we were discussing the new curriculum. She pointed out that although we have this mission statement, it is in contradiction to the curriculum we have adopted. I totally agreed with her. Last week (when we had our district in-service) was a good time to gather with other teachers from all over the district to voice our concerns. Not only did I hear other teachers who said that they also had mixed feelings towards the curriculum but I also heard other other teacher who said they were using it and it was working.  I just couldn't imagine how her students were succeeding. This weekend I found myself thinking reflectively about the curriculum. I found myself thinking that the Saxon math is turning out to be not so bad BUT I still don't like the Rigby!!!!! I have told myself that I am willing to be open-minded and look into using at least one unit on my students to see how they respond. If they like it, I may look into supplementing it. One teacher (a veteran teacher) kept explaining that we are supposed to make it relevant for our students. I responded by saying, " I UNDERSTAND THAT!!!" As an educator who believes in relevant curriculum, I still plan on having that critical eye when it comes to teaching our students.