Diversity and Variety in Learning

My work as a student teacher this year exposed me to a realm of possibility beyond conventional forms of assessment and learning activities. As shown below, Oakes and Lipton (2018) advocate for assessments that are dynamic and that redefine the ways in which students can succeed. In my own experiences up until college, many of my class assignments and projects asked students to show what we had learned in traditional forms of essays or oral presentations. However, as I was given more and more creative freedom and flexibility in my college assignments, I began to see the opportunities we have for redefining assessment in middle and high school. As Oakes and Lipton argue, we need to provide students with more open-ended, flexible, and dynamic modes of showing what they have learned. In the context of ELA classes, I believe we can and should create projects that ask students to utilize critical skills practiced in class -- close reading, written analysis, annotation, discussion -- to create something new: something that can be shared and expanded upon. There is power in showing students that the skills we learn and use in class can be used for more than writing an essay or presenting an argument to classmates. I believe that class assignments, projects, and assessments should incorporate student input and should reach beyond traditional academic forms of writing. Not only will this prove to students that their reading and writing skills hold value outside of the classroom, but it will also better prepare them for possible future work in higher education.

In my student teaching placement, my cooperating teacher and I collaborated on a variety of assignments and projects that asked students to use what they had learned to create shareable and educational pieces of media. Most notably, students wrote, directed, and edited short films that navigated their lives and learning during the pandemic. To do so, students used short films from the organization "Girl Rising" as mentor text; they analyzed what it meant to tell one's story through a script and visual media. Then, in a weeks-long guided process, students wrote scripts, filmed scenes and narration, and edited their films to add music and sound effects. After films were complete, students had the opportunity to attend film festivals during class time in order to watch and provide feedback on classmates' work.

Later on in the year, students created podcasts in which they interviewed a peer, family member, or community member on the topic of systemic racism in policing systems. Students read the book Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes and conducted independent research on police brutality, racial violence in policing, and systems of discrimination and racism in the United States. Students wrote analytical paragraphs for each resource they read and took notes on to compile on individual research websites. Then, students wrote scripts for their interviews, recorded, and edited their conversations to post on their websites. This combined website and podcast production taught students how to use analytical writing skills to share information publicly and how to translate discussion and analysis skills into authentic conversations. In the end, we shared students' websites and podcasts with families and the school community.

Overall, the range of projects I had the opportunity to collaborate on with my cooperating teacher provided me with a plethora of possibilities for designing relevant, engaging, and multimodal assessments of student growth. These projects proved to students the versatility of their critical thinking skills and encouraged them to share their work with their families, communities, and friends. These projects also engaged students more deeply as they worked on culturally relevant material and were able to carry in their interests and talents in design and digital editing. The processes in completing these assignments were gradual and scaffolded, and demonstrated the level of commitment and management that meaningful projects entail. Ultimately, I think I learned just as much as students did from these projects, and they greatly influenced the way I will design my own classes in the future.