As we think about teaching children well, we know that student response and feedback is essential. That becomes challenging when our classrooms are filled with many children.
In only four days of school, my students have produced a good four-five hours of thoughtful work that I need to review and assess with care in order to teach the children well.
The challenge here is time--where is the time to assess? Most classroom teachers carve time out in the evening and on weekends for this--carving this time out during a teacher's free time schedule is challenging as it takes time away from other essential efforts such as family time, health routines, and other important events.
If we take Hattie's research to heart, and really make the time to teach well, we need to make time for careful planning and student response--efforts that take time. Yet, the average one hour more or less that teachers have a day on task for planning and response is simply not enough time for that.
What can we do about this?
First, in many cases, it's only classroom teachers that are bringing home large amounts of paperwork and online work to review. As school reconsider roles and responsibilities, I think it's important to spread out the responsibility for student response to all professionals in the building. Creating small advisory groups where every teacher is responsible for a small group's reading and writing will help with that.
Next, we have to look at professional development time carefully. Many schools are still resisting the move to more efficient and rich professional learning time use. The one-size-fits-all professional development event typically proves to be lackluster and impactless, while differentiated professional development time has the potential to provide educators with the needed response time.
Also, streamlining all events in the school building so that planning periods, before school, and after school time can be used for lesson planning and response will help too.
What other changes will help educators find the time they need to respond to student work and performance with care. To respond well takes about two-three hours for unit or writing work. For example, I have a host of reading response work to review. A good initial assessment of students' ability to utilize comprehension strategies to access text with understanding using this work will take a good three hours of thoughtful review, and that review will help to launch the classroom reading program with strength.
Some will read this and think, It's another cry from a teacher saying teachers have too much to do. I think that attitude has kept us from making thoughtful change in schools. Take a look at the roles and responsibilities of the professionals in your building, and think about how you can restructure and redirect so that all professionals have the time to plan, teach, and respond with care, thought, and success to each child in your school.
A busy week of prepping the year and getting my family ready for their school year adventures has passed, so I'll carve out the typical evening and weekend time to complete this response work. In the meantime, I'll also continue to assess ways we can change our work day routines, roles, and responsibilities to make time for what's important to student learning, and advocate to change time that is not used well in this regard. I welcome your ideas.
