My jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Who took my Earth Science students, and who were these eager young people who just asked me that question?
"Absolutely!" I said in my best oh-boy-am-I-impressed-with-all-of-you teacher voice. "That can definitely be an option for your next assessment!" I was all aglow with teacher pride.
I have to make a confession at this point. Earth Science has been my standards-based scoring, 1:1 computing, and constructivist testing ground all year long. They are mainly juniors and seniors, there are only 14 of them, and I know most of them from other classes in which the computer system plunked them that I happened to be teaching. If there is anything new that I want to unleash upon my four sections of freshman/sophomore Biology, I try it in Earth Science first--because I know that when I ask my Earth Sciencers for feedback on any new initiative, it will be honest and thoughtful. So, they have been subjected to my crazy ideas about learning and true understanding from the very first days of school.
When they asked me that question, I imagined that all of my many, many days spent saying things like, "You have to make your own meaning/You have to create your own understanding/You have to take control of your own learning/You have a right to know on what and how you will be assessed" had finally paid off. After a few moments of basking in my own educational glow and channelling my first-year-teacher naivete, I thought for a second and added this: "I'll let you have an interview option for assessment, but how about if all of you write and agree to the questions I'll ask? You could write Level 2, 3 & 4 questions ahead of time, and those would be the ones I ask you!"
I must have sprouted two heads at that very moment in time, because they all stared at me in silent, wide-eyed shock. (And that was when I saw that my Earth Science students, the ones I know and love, had returned!)
One brave young man shook himself out the stupor he was in and said, "But you're the teacher. You're supposed to come up with the questions." Another student snapped out of the state of shock he was in and commented, "Yeah-and it's cheating if we know the questions ahead of time!"
My educational glow quickly faded. And then, taking a deep, realistic breath, I said, "You have to take control of your own learning; You have a right to know on what and how you will be assessed......"
There is a Japanese proverb that says, "Fall seven times, stand up eight." In order to change the mindset of what most students think learning is to what it should be, educators need to persevere. No matter how many times we fall, we need to keep standing back up, and standing up for what's good for students.