OK, I was bad, I forgot to blog yesterday, but after my really long day Thursday, and getting home tonight from school and errands at almost 9:00 PM I was beat to a frazzle. I went straight to bed.

I am afraid that I am becoming an evangelical at school when it comes to power teaching. My wife and both started using it in our classrooms, and other teachers have taken note, not only the noise, but also how our classes are acting. I had gym duty in the mornings this week, I have to supervise the students in the gym before classes. No big deal, lots of conversation, etc. When it came time to release them to go to their first period class, I decided to try something. I stood in front of the 6th grade section of the bleachers and said "Class?" and the whole grade gave me a resounding "Yes?!" AND their attention. Sham-wow! After school Friday my next door neighbor told me that she had noticed what I had been doing. (Our classrooms are separated by a thin, supposedly removable wall.) She asked me to show and explain it to her, and I did. She is pretty stoked up about it now, and wants me to send her the Crazy Reading Professor for this next week.
I have been searching and searching for a classroom management style that fits my personality and the culture I want exhibited in my classroom. With power teaching I think I have found it.

My kids are going to finish their travel brochure/booklet this week which will be graded by the rubric I gave them. However, I am asking them to self-assess their performance by filling out a form I have made that requires them to tell me how well they think they did, what grade they deserve as individuals, and why they deserve it. Why am I doing this? Because in the world of work they will encounter this same type of thing. I have experienced it myself in the military, and even in factory work. This is an important learning objective in my humble opinion.

In the words of Monty Python, "And now, something completely different!" Let's face it and be honest with ourselves: how much of what you learned in 6th grade do you really remember? Not much. Now: how much of what you were taught, in the sense of how it was taught did you take forward and use in the subsequent grades or real life? Probably a great deal. My point is this: while I feel that my curriculum is important in and of itself, I have no illusions as to how much they will honestly retain, but I do have high expectations that they will remember how to do certain things or how to go about approaching a problem. That is what is important! I remember when I finally, after much struggle with real life, attained my B.S. in History at the ripe old age of 33 my older brother said "Great! Now everyone knows that you know how to use the library." He was right. The only thing a bachelor's degree tells a potential employer is that you now possess the skill set to go educate yourself about something that you know little to nothing about, that if you don't know how to do something, you can go find out the needed information.
What does this have to do with assessment? I think it has a great deal to do with it. While it is important for my kids to know that Russia is located on both the European and Asian continents, it is more important for them to know where and how to get that information. This is much easier said than done, and requires a lot of patience and perseverance. I need to teach and assess in such a way that this goal is achieved. Am I being successful at this now? No, I don't think so, but I find myself being pushed in new directions, and calling on prior knowledge from my education courses, in ways I have not in the past. This is a good thing, and has really taught me a lot in respect to my teaching.