An excellent instructional coach, Amy Thomton, at Lincoln High School has asked me to present to our faculty, or part of it in a PD group that meets about once a month, on jGR (she saw the poster in my room). By the way, the chart is more often starting to be called – in our school – the “Interpersonal Communication Skills Rubric” – ICSR. It is because the term jGR doesn’t carry any meaning to people who don’t know us in our group. I prefer the term jGR – which is more personalized to our group – but as this thing gets more and more (and more!) attention around Denver Public Schools, and not just in WL circles now, it probably has to be called something closer to what it is.
The background on the idea of a Power Point presentation on IPSR is that I presented on it to the entire group of DPS WL teachers (100 teachers many of whom were brand new to CI) last August because Diana wanted them to know about it in case they wanted to use it, but I messed it up and went off task and started talking about CI in general. I didn’t have a Power Point, just an unreadable (too small) chart next to me. Sabrina was standing right next to me watching me sweat. It was bad. If I don’t have tracks I go off track. I can’t help it. I am so right brain dominant (so far in the upper upper right quadrant of the Myers Briggs that I am barely in the overall box.) So this time I want to be ready with a Power Point. (I got the idea from Amy who presents a mean Power Point.) This is a chance to get this presentation right. It will probably be in February.
So below are the first notes I took in designing this presentation – I just scribbled it out in five minutes so it is still a very rough draft. I include those preliminary notes here because we always develop stuff together and I think some of us might like to have a Power Point presentation on jGR/ICSR handy if any of us get asked to present to some group within our school or at some conference on jGR. Who knows when or where it might come in handy? I fully know that it looks to the future of assessment in WL education, one MUCH LESS QUANTIFIABLE AND DATA DRIVEN as per the true core spirit of the current WL national standards and ACTFL, and it may have a role outside of the WL arena as well. Honestly, do we really think that we can turn WL education on its head with all that we are doing and not change the way we assess our WL kids? That is just not realistic.
I like that jGR/ICSR is getting so much attention. (If anybody wants to change the acronym now is the time). I remember when I first put the first chart up in my room a few years ago – now we have many versions of it and that is a good thing – and Diana Noonan walked in and within ten seconds she was glommed onto it. Then Amy came in this past fall and glommed onto it. In fact, jGR/IPSR has become something of a superstar poster, but only for certain people, in my room. It’s like in the Little Prince when at the beginning of the book the child draws a picture of a snake and inside the snake is an elephant and whenever the Little Prince asks an adult if the drawing scares him the adult would always say, “Why would a hat scare me?” and in that way the Little Prince lost innocence. In the same way, I can tell who knows about REALLY ASSESSING KIDS when they come into my classroom and see this big poster: some observers dismiss it (adults) and some glom onto it (people who see clearly about assessing kids). That’s just my opinion. Chris has another position, as we all know, and that also is a good thing.
Why is creating this Power Point important to me? First, I want to know if I can present clearly on this topic to a group of professionals. Just curious. I have asked Annick and my team to be up there with me, and I asked Diana to be there, so it should be easy. Secondly, and much more importantly, I want kids to become better citizens in my class. I am so tired after all these years – you have no idea – of teaching kids who for some unexplainable reason bear no civil responsibility to me. I am tired of begging kids (I shouldn’t have to beg) kids and their haughty ass parents to buy into what I have already professionally decided is best for them. I am tired of being attacked by parents, like happened at East High School (vomit). (It’s not so bad at Lincoln because Lincoln parents typically work three jobs and so are too busy to get involved.) I seriously resent those special viper kids who attack what I am trying to do when their mother, usually an A student four percenter in middle school, finds out about my outrageous plan of instruction for her left brain concrete sequential soul dry daughter who goes home in the first week crying about how she has to actually interact with me in class (perish the thought!) to get the A that she normally gets by memorizing shit. (I have a new Jason Bond article coming up in the next few days that illustrates this attack process again – yes, it’s happening in Scotland right now and makes me want to wretch.)
Let me make that point again. I believe that kids must be trained to become good citizens in class if they are to benefit from the TPRS/CI instruction that I have fought so hard to learn over the past thirteen years. There I said it.
So the draft for this Power Point, presented below, was written in five minutes and so is still very rough but I’m offering it here to get the discussion going if anyone (calling Robert Harrell! calling Robert Harrell!) wants to contribute so we can all have ourselves a jGR/IPSR Power Point in our computers, once it is done, that we can all use. It is just better if it comes from the group as a collective effort than just from me – that has always been the case.
Power Point on ICSR – Interpersonal Communication Skills Rubric
So the topic we are addressing today is about the role of the student in assessment. And the question is “To What degree should the student be involved in the assessment of their own grade?” Make a panel on that.
And the second thing we want to ask is “Does a teacher have the right in assessing their students to grade them on HOW the kid behaves in class”?Panel this.
Now these are both radical questions. Think about them. Here they are again:
Make a third panel with both questions repeated. 2 MIN. PAIR SHARE WITH RATINGS ON A TEN SCALE FOR EACH. Get their feedback. Limit that discussion to a few minutes. Entire PP must be kept simple, under twenty minutes.
Tell them that we started knocking the questions around in our PLC last year and we on our team think that the answer to both questions is a resounding YES. Barbara pinned it down with this blockbuster statement:
“We in FL education should be able to see something from the kid that is
observable and non verbal”. Panel that.
Why “observable”? – because we are tired of seeing ghosts, dead people in our rooms.
Whay “non verbal”? – because they don’t speak the languages we teach!
Tell them: So then we went to our standards in FL and we followed Diana’s district lead that we all align with the ACTFL Three Modes of Communication.
Panel here on three modes:
1. Interpretive
2. Interpersonal
3. Presentational
Explain these with hand gestures and focus on new importance in education of interpersonal communication between kids and teacher in class and in assessment.
Now tell them: And here the actual rubric that we came up with is:
jGR chart panel.
Done.
