Monday, August 2, 2021

Timing, Tracking, and Tiring

 The "theme" of this week was assessment. I ran my second ETFO Summer Academy session, this one entitled "SA-04-22 SEEING AND SUPPORTING STUDENT GROWTH: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION " with fellow AML vice-president Chelsea Attwell from July 27-29. I also composed the second set of progress reports for my Queen's University Teacher-Librarianship Part 1 AQ candidates and continue to mark their assignments. The last day for this cohort is technically August 13 and I have agreed to run a late summer TL Pt 1 AQ for Queen's starting August 8, 2021. (Sign up if you are interested!) During all of this, my husband and I have been attending classes at our CrossFit gym, which has only relatively recently begun indoor sessions. The coaches are shaping it into an "On-Ramp Program", which I'll describe in depth later in this post.

I chose three descriptive words to encapsulate some of the big ideas that ETFO Summer Academy, the TL AQ and my gym experience all share in common - timing, tracking, and tiring.







"Timing is everything". I had a hard time narrowing down who first said this. Timing really is important. Chelsea and I kept close watch on our timing during the three day, 12-hour course. We weren't rigid, but we knew that if we did not try to keep to the general plan, certain portions of the course would have to be eliminated. It's so easy to get on a tangent and talk longer than we should. Chelsea even came up with a clever way to keep track of what stage we were at, by highlighting the boxes on our e-plan sheet, a template I learned to use from my Presenter's Palette course. Tracking attendance was also useful, so we were aware if anyone had missed a concept and needed a quick summary. I found taking the attendance helpful for me, so that I could greet participants by name as I let them into the Zoom call. 

I feel like I finally have mastered the work flow for my all-online AQ course, and so much of that achievement relates to timing and tracking. I have found that reserving a certain time each evening to check my course helps me not feel overwhelmed. Evening check-ins mean that the candidates themselves have had all day to submit tasks. I also deliberately timed how long it takes me on average to check all the discussion posts each day (60-120 minutes) so that I don't despair if I see a large number of posts that need reading. (The candidates seem to produce as a group about 50 posts per day.) My spreadsheet that I use to track their work has been a wonderful tool. It helped me consolidate my comments into a single spot, so that I could refer to concrete examples when I recorded my feedback alongside their second set of progress reports.  

How ironic it is, then, that I have rejected both timing and tracking for my exercising adventures. The pandemic meant that I had a 16 month gap from the last time I worked out regularly. I had made a lot of progress from April 2018 until March 2020, thanks to the great coaches at my gym and my workout buddy. Teaching online off and on for months at a time for the last year and a half meant that there were days that I barely moved. I stopped wearing my FitBit because knowing I had only walked less than 1000 steps in a day was not a motivating piece of information. I am worse now than when I first began. Time is my new enemy at the gym. I am used to being the slowest and weakest participant and I want neither the minutes nor the other statistics to remind me of this fact. My numbers don't change enough to inspire me, and no one else needs to know that I can't even manage ten-pound weights anymore, so I deleted the Sugar WOD app from my phone. The On-Ramp program introduces new elements, like weight lifting, which has been quite challenging for me, since I have been struggling with movements that I used to be familiar with, never mind new actions. We have been told repeatedly that we are only in competition with ourselves, not others, but old me is kicking current me's butt. My husband finds joy in completing the workouts and the buzz of being exhausted from exertion after maximum effort, but for me, I lack the sense of accomplishment; the conclusion is only the beginning of sore muscles. Despite my grumpy attitude, I am still attending class three times a week. I may be D.P. (Disposition Poor) Maliszewski, but, like going to the dentist, this is something I have to do. It's just going to take a long time for me to get back into the routine and see any progress. That progress will be marked, not with numbers, but with fewer aches and better fitting clothes - a different way to track.

All three events can be tiring. We had an "open forum" section during our Summer Academy, and many people wanted to discuss how to assess more effectively so that it didn't eat up so much of their time, leaving them tired and robbing them of moments for rest and leisure. So many of the candidates taking the AQ class are simultaneously juggling full-time jobs and parenting responsibilities. I'm always tired after the gym - that goes without saying. Take naps, rest up, choose wisely ... because we can't give up (on learning, on living healthy lives, and on doing better). I'll end with a few of the tweets from #ETFOsa21 as a reminder about assessing ourselves and others.



 


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