I'm not even thinking about the faith one needs to have as a fan of any sports team...even though right this moment my hope around the future and progress MN Golden Gopher Men's Basketball is a bit strained! (No breakdown of last night's events at Williams Arena...too fresh, vivid, and hurtful)
This is more about trusting the process (or processes) we put in place for the learning, growth, development, and overall furthering of our students --> and I'm sure in many instances our clients (see post last week), relationships, and personal goals.
There are so many facets and levels to the processes we work hard to establish at school. Curriculum development; state standards unpacking and alignment; technology integration; literacy and numeracy best practices; personalized learning pathways for students; culturally responsive teaching strategies; PLCs and data leveraging; development common assessments and rubrics, to name a few. And at the end of the day, knowing you and your colleagues are working hard and putting in good-faith efforts, you need to have a certain amount of trust in yourself and the process that the desired growth and learning is indeed happening.
A benefit we have is continuous checking of progress. It could be through formal means, e.g. yearly standardized tests, unit tests, etc. It could also be more informal and frequent --> formative check-ins, quizzes, student reflections, showcasing of work, and other demonstrations of knowledge (speeches, presentations, gallery walks, group projects, essays/written work, etc. Because of all these diagnostic checks, we can get steady affirmation that what we're doing is working. Or, early signals to make adjustments to the process, as things my be going astray.
Of course, the fun of dealing with middle school students is that each day can bring a different set of adventures, variables, and "instrument readings." 😉
Impressive Mr. Moore, but I would expect nothing less from a former Ronglien player!
ReplyDeleteHa - thanks! Always good to see real recognizing real ;)
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