Reflecting on the 2013-2014 School Year

Wow! What a year it has been. It is hard for me to believe that it is once again June and that this weekend, 2,560 students from my school have graduated. I couldn't be more proud. I feel so lucky to be a part of their lives and help them be successful. Every year at graduation I get to personally congratulate many of my own students face-to-face for the first time and this year was no different. I received hugs and smiles and I cheered each of them on as they proceed to their next stage of life.
Much like our students, the school year is full of learning for teacher as well! This year, my third year of teaching, I have learned so much and experienced many new challenges and celebrations.

I began the year armed with a new tech tool: Google Glass! I used it to make demonstration videos for my students and also to make videos explaining art concepts like linear perspective and getting inspiration from the world around you. The students responded positively to my videos with a higher engagement rate than I've ever had before and better quality work. These videos have become a permanent fixture in my art classroom and I continue to use Glass to make new resources for students. Hopefully next year I will be able to try out a virtual field trip! Also tech related, many of my students received tablets to access and complete their school work. Though I didn't have much time to implement tablet lessons this year, next year students will have the option to complete some of their art projects on their school tablets in order to give them more exposure to digital art and solve supply and scanner issues. Students will also be able to use them to photograph their work so 3-dimensional media is finally possible in my classroom!

This year, I experienced a training about Formalized Instructional Practices where I was reminded of the value of measuring student learning through all parts of the instructional period and also how to help students set their own learning goals. I have now implemented FIP into several of my lessons and the majority of my synchronized instruction. I am excited to further implement these strategies next school year.
I also learned how to best prepare my students for Student Learning Assessments so they meet learning targets. This new practice of evaluating student learning in the art classroom was very challenging for me as my students barely met the minimum growth the first time I gave the test. For the second time around I used study guides, review games, and increased the number of motivated students taking the test. Because I teach online, students are able to choose to take my SLA rather than being required to. This was a tricky issue to combat but a much higher percentage of my students hit their growth targets the second time around.

I implemented a discussion board in my classroom for the very first time this semester and even though it was extra credit, I received extremely high engagement. I asked students to reflect on contemporary and relevant questions about art. I used Scholastic Art magazine to start the discussions. I learned that some of my questions were more text-dependent than others and not all of the questions inspired high quality responses. I also only tried a handful of assignments where students needed to respond to each other. Next year I would like to implement more responses that encourage student-to-student interaction and improve the questions to be more text-dependent.
It has been a fantastic school year and as always, I am excited to take what I have learned and make next year even better. To close this entry I wanted to share an email I received from one of my graduating seniors this year. I feel incredibly lucky to do what I love every day and to make a positive difference in my students' lives. This is why I do what I do!

Remembering Why We Do This

For the past few weeks, I have been collecting data from my post-test for my SLO. I wrote about this test earlier this year when we implemented it for the first time. At my school, this test is 23 multiple-choice questions offered through a website outside of our LMS. Students take this test during the first 3 weeks of school and the first 3 weeks after quarter 1 of Art 1. I started this journey feeling very upbeat and excited to see what my students came into my classroom knowing and how they would grow throughout the quarter. What I have found is some unsettling data.

At the moment (several hours before the closing of my post-test), I am sitting at 58.9% of my students hitting their growth targets. That puts me in the "Least Effective" category as a teacher. Throughout my young career as a teacher over these past 3 years, I have been told nothing but good things about my teaching methods by administrators. My students have given me positive feedback about what they are learning when I speak to them and I have generally felt fulfilled and proud of where I am as a teacher. These results threw a wrench into my teacher ego!

As it is, I am still not sure what is causing my students to do so poorly. I know of the barriers we have that might affect their performance; students not engaging with the content, test anxiety, students tired of taking all of these assessments (one per class, 2 times in 10 weeks), the weakness of multiple-choice questions to assess project-based learning, home environment, test questions with confusing wording, and a lack of effort to name a few. I have gone through many days of discouragement this week, feeling like everything I have learned about education is wrong and all the compliments about my teaching methods have been lies.

But then, I started to look at the data more closely. I began to see students growing by leaps and bounds! Some of my weakest performers have grown by the highest percentage. I even have students who have scored 100% on my post-test. When I was inputting the data of one of my students with special needs and saw that he not only hit his growth target but surpassed it, I jumped for joy! I was reminded why I am a teacher. It is not about crunching the numbers and hitting this arbitrary goal. It is about teaching each individual student and helping each of them grow. Maybe the data isn't showing it, but the students who have actively engaged in learning in my classroom have a wealth of new knowledge. I know this from talking to them, and from watching their work improve every single week.

I will continue to troubleshoot my assessments for my SLO and how I can overcome these barriers so the data starts to really reflect more of what is going on in my classroom. But, there are just some things that you can't quantify.

Am I a least-effective teacher? I certainly don't feel like one.

SLO's in the (online) Art Room

Since December I have been working with my team to prepare for next year, the first year that teachers will be measured in the art classroom based on assessments that (hopefully) show student growth. A Student Learning Objective (SLO) will be created which shows goals for students in your classroom based on certain data (example from ODE). The way we will measure if students meet these goals are assessments called Student Growth Measures (SGM). More information about SGM from ODE can be found here. 
As you may know, I have given a pilot assessment to my students to see what a pre-assessment and post-assessment could look like in the Art 1 classroom and what issues may come up. The pre-assessment was given to 4 different sections of Art 1. Two sections gave a test with multiple-answer, multiple-choice, essay, and short answer questions. The other two sections gave a pre-assessment with multiple-choice, short answer, and essay questions. I did this to see how different types of questions may or may not show student growth. So far, the data has been helpful to seeing what students already know and don't know when entering my classroom. More about data collected here. However, we did run into a few issues along the way.

One of these issues is collecting reliable and objective data that tests student knowledge. I mentioned we used essay questions on this pre-assessment. Though this is a great way for students to explain their knowledge, it was difficult to grade the content opposed to a student's writing style/skill. Even though we had a rubric, grading was subjective and the results varied in a large way between different teachers (see above). Since we are being evaluated on this data as teachers, it is important that our assessments provide reliable and valid results. 
Changes have been made to the test since we first gave it to create one solid version that does not include essays or short answer. This is the version that will be used next year. We included multiple-choice (making sure every question as 4 choices) and multiple-answer questions. To create the final (for now) version of the pre-assessment and post-assessment, we looked though the scope and sequence of our course, the existing questions on the test, and student results. The assessment includes at least one question about each topic in the course.
Example:
3. What kind of drawing is a quick sketch that captures what the artist sees?
A. Portrait
B. Point-of-view
C. Gestural
D. Linear Perspective 

I am also currently working on a SGM for my Art 5 class but because this course is so independent it is difficult/impossible to create a multiple-choice type of assessment for it. Therefore, I am considering reviewing student portfolios as they enter and at the end of the course. If graded by an unbiased source (someone outside of my classroom) using a rubric, perhaps I could get reliable and valid data from this method. I will also be able to see where students are coming from and what their strengths and weaknesses are before I begin working with them. 
I look forward to the weeks to come when I will be giving my post-assessment and be able to see if my students have grown. I will continue to post my results from this assessment journey I am on!