Jen continues her reflection on Claire’s original articles:
In summary at some point I will be accused of “grade inflation.” But I have the advantage of being the only Spanish teacher at the high school, and in fact in the whole district bc the middle school only has French. So I will keep doing this until I get caught. Which might be next year, since we are doing all the prep for RE-ACCREDITATION. UGH. So a lot of energy is now going into UNIT PLANS –which must all use the same template, all across the school. UGH. ALL OUR UNITS MUST BE SUBMITTED SEPTEMBER 1. UGH UGH UGH. But I will follow this thread for more ammo on how to talk about it, define it etc. Because it is the right thing to do. But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE I would love to hear how others assign the evil A-B-C-D?
I got a little called out in a “Quality Performance Assessment” peer review session a couple months ago. People totally “got” what I do BUT they had all the usual questions “Are you preparing them for college?” “What if they leave the district?” blah blah. AND especially “This doesn’t really line up with the school wide rubrics.”
So I am working on changing the school-wide ones to align with SLA research BUT one sticky thing is my French colleague bc she is an eclectic teacher who is very popular and who forces a TON of output AND who openly criticizes her students “Seriously? You are in French 2!? The tu form of être! It’s right up there on the poster! You should not be asking me about that!.” So not sure how to manage this one because I don’t want to alienate her as she’s a fierce supporter of me and has been super positive and enthusiastic when she has observed my classes. This is probably because I am the first Spanish teacher the kids have liked, and the first one in 5 years who will be renewing my contract.