This blog has been co-authored by Julie Rust & Meredith Boler!
If I didn’t just see the best celebratory check for understanding of my life, I don’t know what I just saw.
Last Friday was the first of what I hope becomes a yearly tradition for our Pre-K4 students finishing up their Helping Hands unit entitled “Pre-K Pedals for Children’s!” Service learning is important in each division at St. Andrew’s, and our youngest learners find ways to build this in, too. Since our Pre-K4 students recently learned about community helpers, planning an event that tied back to learning and contributed a positive impact on our community was top of mind. Children’s of Mississippi is filled with doctors and nurses who are community helpers and serve an important need in our community and state. Each child brought their own bike and helmet from home and proudly did laps around an impromptu track around the carpool area between ECC and Foundations. Onlookers cheered with signs, including two years olds from Foundations watching in awe from the playground as well as ECC classes and older, sign-clad buddy classes running from vantage point to vantage point to cheer them on. The range of speeds, types of bikes, skill levels, and the 100% enthusiastic participation was a sight to behold. Through the event, our Pre-K4 friends not only had fun and made memories, but they also raised financial support for the hospital.
I was a few days out from a blog deadline, which meant that the theme of “checking for understanding” creeps into my sensemaking of everything I was encountering. What was this if not a perfect example of a celebratory performance based assessment, perfectly differentiated for the skill of every learner? Each lap a kid made, a new revelation popped into my head that made me rethink my own design of senior level English:
- Make sure the vehicle fits, the right bike for each kid: The size and fit of each vehicle varied wildly. There were balance bikes, tricycles, tall bikes with training wheels, and a few big kid bikes with NO training wheels (hello future athlete). Meredith noticed that a few friends weren’t set up for success. Their training wheels actually were exceedingly wobbly, which made those track curves tricky. All I could think about was in what ways are my assessments setting ALL kids up for success? And what ways am I inadvertently setting up some students for failure?
- Build in protection: Did you guys know how cute helmets have gotten? They are basically now costume attire, offering mohawks, dinosaur heads, unicorn equipment, and on and on. Style matters for SURE for the fun factor, but fit matters most of all for our young ones. How can I ensure my students are protected as we encounter new ideas, failures, and successes?
- Go at the speed you want: How often do I let my students choose the speed they take with the material I teach? (Quick answer- almost never.) I almost always prioritize an empty sense of urgency, which works for my skilled kiddos, but throws the ones that need more time off. How can I create a learning atmosphere that has room for all different speeds? Can the track of my class hold both that little guy carreening around on his two wheels big boy bike AND the little one super terrified to move faster than a snail’s pace on his balance bike?
- Provide public celebration and encouragement: What better set up is there than more advanced folks who can cheer us on our learning journey? What audiences can I provide for my students?
- Look ahead to a thing to come: How can I carve out ways to create anticipated excitement for what is to come in my class or division? Those two-year-olds were decidedly CAPTIVATED!
- Teach/assess real life things that will follow them forever: Perhaps most importantly of all, this pedal celebration was celebrating a skill that is not simply relegated to artificial classroom spaces. Riding a bike is a lifelong thing that will enrich their lives forever. How often do I stop and ask myself: how will this skill benefit my students for the rest of their lives? (Note: I recently did ask myself a version of this question and it pushed me to reconfigure a free reading assignment accordingly.)
Before I end this blog, I want to share an interaction I had right smack dab in the middle of the race:
A little boy on a small balance bike saw me and pulled over.
“I’m scared,” he said, “In fact, I think this is the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
“Why, buddy? What’s scary?”
“This crowd! I don’t know these people! I don’t like it when people whose names I don’t know are yelling at me.”
“Oh but they aren’t yelling at you! They are cheering you on.”
“Still, I don’t like it. And I don’t like that I have a balance bike. I want a different bike.”
“Oh I get that. Maybe when you grow out of this bike you can ask your family for a new kind. Maybe you can get ideas of bikes you like by looking at all of them here today.”
Slight nod
“Do you think you can do just one more lap? I’ll be here waiting in the same place.”
Chin set in bravery. “Yes. I’ll be right back.”
He took off around the curve with the confidence of a fish swimming in the ocean, legs flying in perfect rhythm.
I’m glad James reminded me of this. Showing what we can do is scary, most of all to folks we don’t have close relationships with. And it’s pretty tough when we do it publicly and can see how we stack up with our peers. These two things should shape how I design each and every assessment.
But also being scared is part of the point. And pushing ourselves to do one more lap in the face of that fear and surprising ourself with our own speed . . . . that’s part of the point, too.
