Mother Figures, May Madness, and Marking

 Happy belated Mother's Day to those for whom the day has meaning and significance. For me, the holiday is somewhat bittersweet. My (husband, daughter, son) family dotes on me which is nice, but my mother has dementia and doesn't really remember me. She's almost always happy to go with me weekly to church and can recite the prayers quite well considering her situation, but I still miss the force of nature she used to be.

My husband and I were talking about physical resemblances to our parents and I was curious to see how grey my mother was at the age I am now. Thank goodness I got into a version of scrapbooking early so I could see dates in my photo albums with my typed-on-a-typewriter captions! This photo of my mom was taken in 1989 when she was 53 years old (and I was 17). I'm 52 right now in 2024.

One of the things my mother used to do was help shelve books at my school libraries. (She did this at all three schools I've had permanent contracts with and worked.) I could really use this as right now it's May Madness. I have a "library mother" that I share with another TL, but she is not able to do her usual magic right now. My thoughts are with her this week and I miss her a lot. It's a busy time of year and I find that having a tidy, organized environment helps keep me settled - too bad that I myself am not a tidy person! This past week held a staff meeting, a TL facilitator meeting, and MC auditions for our upcoming concert and June graduation. This coming week is the Forest of Reading Festival and I'll be there with about 65 students attending on one and/or both of those days. I had boxes of painted boxes and bins of costumes floating around related to concert, and I'm trying hard to keep up with my marking.

Ugh - marking. I complain a lot about marking. It takes me a long time to complete fairly and to track thoroughly. This is true for my "day job" assessments and my AQ course work. It's important to me to keep people "in the loop". After each Learning Block, I send every York U course participant an email with their AQ completion status, detailing anything that hasn't been completed according to specifications so they can address any gaps. With my Queen's U AQ, I chose to create video commentary based on the latest two course modules, and that seemed to be received quite well. Recently I fixed up a social studies mark summary containing all of the relevant evaluations I've collected so far to send to the families of the students in Grades 1-4 that I teach.

I can hear my friend Francis' disembodied voice in my head chiding me, saying "Look for ways to be more efficient!" I know there are ways ... some of them might involve Generative AI or Large Language Models - but I'm not going to turn in that direction yet. Why? Even though I'm enjoying my "dives" into AI with students, exploring the ethics and possibilities, I am proceeding with caution on tasks related to assessment and evaluation. Growing Success is the Ontario Ministry of Education document that deals with assessment and evaluation. It was written in 2010, so it has no references or guidance on the use of AI for marking. In the introduction, it states:

The policy is based on seven fundamental principles, the first of which tells us that assessment, evaluation, and reporting practices and procedures must be fair, transparent, and equitable for all students. At the same time, students and parents need to know that evaluations are based on evidence of student learning and that there is consistency in the way grades are assigned across schools and boards throughout the province.

Generative AI is not a transparent tool. As I teach my students, algorithms (which form the basis of AI) are programs that collect data and search for patterns to try and respond to the given prompts from the user. If I have to input my students' assignments into the AI-fueled program, along with the rubric, where is that information going? What information was used as the "data base" for "training" the AI to "make decisions"? What role do I play as the educator? Sometimes, other factors need to be taken into consideration when marking, such as the student's language capabilities; would the program do that? It may be "unbiased" in some ways that I am not, but it may contain other biases that are not as obvious. (Below are the seven fundamental principles of Growing Success.)

The Seven Fundamental Principles: To ensure that assessment, evaluation, and reporting are valid and reliable, and that they lead to the improvement of learning for all students, teachers use practices and procedures that: • are fair, transparent, and equitable for all students; • support all students, including those with special education needs, those who are learning the language of instruction (English or French), and those who are First Nation, Métis, or Inuit; • are carefully planned to relate to the curriculum expectations and learning goals and, as much as possible, to the interests, learning styles and preferences, needs, and experiences of all students; • are communicated clearly to students and parents at the beginning of the school year or course and at other appropriate points throughout the school year or course; • are ongoing, varied in nature, and administered over a period of time to provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate the full range of their learning; • provide ongoing descriptive feedback that is clear, specific, meaningful, and timely to support improved learning and achievement; • develop students’ self-assessment skills to enable them to assess their own learning, set specific goals, and plan next steps for their learning. 

Just as we need to draw a line between too little, just right, and too much AI use for students, we need to do the same for teachers.

Splitting Yourself

 Have you ever had two events on the same day and wished you could attend both?

On this past Thursday, it was both the Spring GTA Resource Fair and the TDSB Heritage Fair. 

When it comes to the Heritage Fair, I really wished I could have split myself in more ways than one. Last year, I was able to use my collaborative teaching time to work with both the Grade 7s and Grade 8s on their history projects from start to finish. I loved it. However, this school year, I wasn't able to have any collaborative teaching time in my schedule. This became particularly painful as the intermediate students were preparing this year's projects.

"Why don't you come up and help us with our projects like last year?", the students asked.

When I explained that I had to teach other classes, their suggested solutions involved having a Grade 8 supervise the younger students while I came up to give advice and help them with their research. Although creative, this idea would not fly.

The students worked around my absence by frequently seeking me out at recess, lunch or after school to pepper me with their questions about their projects. It seemed as if they valued my input because I had helped with their Heritage Fair projects the previous year AND they knew that in the past, I was involved with school projects that made it to Provincials. My students are academically inclined and competitive. They wanted to do their best and they knew that having their teacher-librarian involved in the process would give them an advantage. If only others in positions of power and authority knew this!

Huge credit should go to Farah Wadia and Lisa Daley, our Grade 8 and 7 home room teachers. They devoted a lot of class time to these projects. I also want to thank Farah Wadia, Renee Keberer and Neelam Singh for supervising the students that were chosen to represent our school at the TDSB Heritage Fair, held this year at Toronto Metropolitan University. It took them over two hours to travel to the location via taxi vans. I can hardly wait until the results are revealed.

While Farah, Renee, Neelam and 14 students were in the Yonge and Dundas area, a fantastic parent volunteer, 8 students and I were by Lakeshore Boulevard West and Dufferin Street, buying books for the school library. The students were busy.

Their opinions were solicited for a survey on the TDSB Virtual Library.

They selected books and stayed in budget (as in $88 under)!

They even helped the wonderful Tippett staff (otherwise known as the Library Technical Services Department) barcode the books we bought. One of the newest members of the Tippett team is a former students from our school. I was so happy to see her again. She is a treasure.

Voldemort has taught me the perils of splitting yourself too thinly; you lose part of your humanity. Still, I regret that I wasn't able to assist as much as I wanted.