Your course calendar tells us that we’re a couple of days away from the second GAP score of Q3. As you read this post, especially the GAP protocol, keep in mind that your organizational skill is the concrete on which everything else is built. Make time for all of this, in class and at home, and never lose sight of the purpose of what we do and what you’ve been assigned.
And think about pushing some of your peers to stay focused during the period. Even a day or two of renewed focus is enough to shift the GAP score up a bit, and the alternative…
Clear and Unyielding
As you read the following essay, replace every reference to teaching with a reference to you, your learning, and what it takes to evaluate yourself through grade abatement:
A copy of this will be provided in class, too, to facilitate your reading of it. Take the time to see past the superficial audience — teachers — and into the universal insight on display here. To help, start with the pull quotes from the article. Here they are, with the language altered so that they reference student learning and GAP scoring, not teaching:
You talk enough dirt about yourself and [teachers and peers] will start to believe it.
I’m as guilty as anyone of distorting my [learning]. When talking to [peers and teachers], I often play up the progressive elements.
As an aside, any time you edit the original text of a quotation, use brackets. In this case, it shifts the nouns and pronouns so that you can apply them directly to yourself.
The first of those pull quotes is always a concern: You must avoid downplaying your success, especially when collaboration and collegiality are vital to our work overall. You need to develop confidence, which isn’t quite as difficult as you might think. The second pull quote is part of one of the most important paragraphs, because it deals with a more common problem: ducking the ugly truths about our own progress. Here it is with the language altered again:
I’m as guilty as anyone of distorting my [learning]. When talking to [peers and teachers], I often play up the progressive elements: Student-led discussions. Creative projects. Guided discovery activities. I mumble through the minor, inconvenient fact that my [learning] is, at its core, deeply traditional. I let my walk and my talk drift apart. Not only does this thwart other [peers and teachers] in their attempts to honestly evaluate my approach, but it blocks my own self-evaluation. I can’t grow properly unless I see my own work with eyes that are sympathetic, but clear and unyielding.
The bolded sentence is critical. This is where you all are, two-thirds of the way through the third quarter of the year: in need of “eyes that are sympathetic, but clear and unyielding.” If, at its core, your learning remains deeply traditional, you must account for that.
Start here: What does traditional learning look like in your life? To what extent do you “play up the progressive elements” of your learning, especially during GAP scoring? To what extent is the core of your progress “deeply traditional,” and how can you remove that obstruction?
Answer these questions in conversation and in writing. Focus on insight. Then use that insight to inform the GAP scoring assignment outlined below.
GAP Scoring: March 10, 2017
First, though, let’s test your self-control, close reading, and self-awareness. Do not complete this form until Friday during your class period:
Again, do not complete that until Friday, March 10. Don’t complete it in its embedded form, and don’t complete it through Google Classroom. You still have two days to generate evidence for your GAP score. You have another post assigned to your class that deals with your recent writing work, a reboot of your Pareto Projects, and plenty of good and bad decisions made during those all-important 39 minutes. Give yourself 48 hours or so to read these instructions, work through recent posts, and think critically about your progress.
You should also use your newly strengthened organization to revisit the updated guide/overview of grade abatement, which will recalibrate you before you tackle one of these GAP forms:
Even some of the students who have earned a GAP 9 in the past have lapsed over the last three weeks, which was always a possibility when we moved to shorter time frame. Each bad decision is magnified. By the same logic, all of your good work is magnified, too. Look carefully at the profiles and even more carefully at the protocol, which has been updated slightly in order to clarify how to apply it to your body of work. As always, you must focus only on the evidence you’ve generated.
Ask questions about these instructions in class and in the comment section below, and remember: You are balancing many assignments right in order to test your organization and advocacy. If you feel overwhelmed, advocate for yourself. If you are confused, keep attacking the work, alone and with peers, until it makes sense. If you feel frustrated, find someone who knows how to listen, vent, and then fix the problem.