A graph you’ve seen before.
Doki Doki Panic
It’s 1:50 PM, and school is almost over1. Your homework tonight involves the test you took earlier:
- List the sixteen skills and traits used for GAP assessments. Put them in the prescribed eight pairs, too.
- Define interstitial in terms of this course.
- Define galvanizing in terms of this course.
- Explain the criteria for a third-tier grade abatement profile.
- Explain the criteria for a fourth-tier grade abatement profile.
- Explain the criteria for a GAP score of 9.
- Briefly describe Joan Didion’s perspective on writing. (Juniors only)
- Briefly describe Paul Graham’s perspective on writing. (Juniors only)
A test of this sort has been mentioned in the past, but it was written about on this site only in the footnote of this AP post. We can call them DDTs, either for direct diagnostic tests or doki doki tests, depending on how weird we’re feeling. The origins of the stranger version of the acronym are here:
Some of your predecessors eventually came up with doki doki as the onomatopoeia. You, too, should take an active role in shaping this sort of assessment. That starts with today’s assignment, which is to write insightfully about your performance, especially what it means for you moving forward.
Before you write, think about some of what today’s DDT performance reveals:
- your previous close reading of instructional posts and central texts;
- your internalization and recall, especially of the language of grade abatement;
- your critical thinking and understanding of how the course works;
- your integrity and character.
Then write specifically and introspectively. This is a moment captured in writing; it is reflective and metacognitive in equal measure, covering both the wider narrative of your learning and the narrower focus provided by a single day’s lesson. What do you know about this class? How much have you studied its particular requirements? How carefully do you read the central texts?
On my end, this allows for a kind of triage. Patterns emerge. What have you internalized? Which ideas are unclear? How many students are in a position to teach others? How many need an intervention? The answers help me adjust for the rest of the calendar year.
Quick FAQ
Q: What do we do about the Pavlovian “cheating” that occurred immediately as students sat down to take this test?
A: I don’t know, but it was alarming to see students cheat out a copy of, e.g., the GAP checklist in order to copy answers. That betrays such a fundamental misunderstanding of the course that even my empathy is staggered. I saw a hundred versions of this:
Maybe I need a stick like Miss Wormwood has there.
The point of these diagnostics is to diagnose. Cheating on them would be like cheating on a test for strep throat: I guess you didn’t get bad news now, but if you’ve got strep throat, you probably want to know. Treatment seems important. And in here, pretending to know things sets you up to be embarrassed and humiliated later, when you’re called on to demonstrate that expertise or internalized understanding. We care so much about growth that it makes no sense, except as a reflection of a system that batters students into these pathologically frightened creatures, to cheat.
Q: What do we do about students who wrote for nearly 39 minutes in response to a test that should take about ten minutes?
A: I don’t know this answer, either. In a way, that level of panicked overkill is more troubling than the student who drew a picture of a flower instead of doing any work. None of these prompts requires much in the way of writing. They test a student’s understanding and internalization of straightforward concepts and ideas. Here’s a key:
- The sixteen skills and traits used for GAP assessments, in their respective pairs, as seen in a half-dozen handouts and posts:
- Collegiality ⇆ Empathy
- Integrity + Character
- Close Reading ⟹ Internalization
- Critical Thinking ⟹ Metacognition
- Effective Communication ⟹ Writing
- Amenability ⇆ Self-Awareness
- Assiduousness ⇆ Self-Efficacy
- Organization ⟹ Autodidacticism
- Interstitial, in terms of this course, means to learn and to create in those brief, spare moments we have during our hectic and often overscheduled lives.
- Galvanizing, in terms of this course, means to teach others what you’ve learned from some expert source. The protégé effect is a significant factor in how we galvanize others.
- Third-tier grade abatement profiles “reflect varying degrees of incomplete work, disengagement, and misunderstanding.” That’s lifted directly from this guide. The class period matters significantly more than anything else, and we can almost quantify student work at this level.
- Fourth-tier grade abatement profiles require a little more explanation, but still less than a half-page. Look at the top of page five in that same guide:
That’s only about 250 words.
- The most important criteria for a GAP score of 9 are “a precocious strength in metacognition” and evidence of being “consistently, insightfully reflective,” both in person and in writing. The other, obvious criteria are to teach others, make the learning environment better, and develop discernible strength in every skill or trait.
- The juniors read Joan Didion’s “Why I Write” as a preface to this journey essay. Her perspective on writing is nuanced, but I especially like this section of the essay:
[I was] simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.
- Paul Graham’s perspective on writing is so important to us that it got its own post and series of assignments. He’s nuanced, too, but we could get away with a list of at least some of what he suggests:
- Observe carefully, looking for what is most interesting and surprising about a subject.
- Let the essay take its own course toward what is most interesting, like a river seeking the sea.
- Clean up your thoughts as you write, keeping an audience provisionally in mind.
- Ignore all the rote, repetitive, literature-dependent habits you learn in English classes.
Q: Why is this cross-posted to all courses?
A: Because the skills and traits of this course are universal. How we develop and apply them differs from grade to grade and level to level, but it also differs from student to student — hence the focus on individualizing the curriculum. The terms we use help give clarity and direction to the work we do. The only way a makerspace (really, an atelier; more on that later) works is if the participants know the basics, and that goes for everyone.
Q: Why is the post available only at 1:50 PM, not during every class?
A: Because you need the occasional period without Chromebooks in front of you, and because you need to see the importance of work done at home. Remember this essay on the chambers of your day? We used that to emphasize the importance of our 39 minutes together, and those 39 minutes do determine your profiles to a significant extent. Your learning should continue at home, however, and today’s writing assignment forces you to do that.
The post is up a little early to give P9, when the siren call of home is strongest, some added support. This is our equivalent of lashing Odysseus to the mast. ↩