After focusing mainly on management and basic teaching practices during my first five weeks, I have now turned my attention to assessment as well. Up to this point, I have been using assessment to gain insight into how the students are processing lessons and what their levels of understanding are in order to be able to plan and adjust lessons that fit with their needs and abilities. I have also introduced traffic light cards that the students can hold up if they do not understand the content being taught so that I can know to slow down or explain a concept again, or alternatively, that they can use to show that they do understand a concept and need me to move on. Finally, I often read students’ work and make comments on it. However, I have noticed some resistance in myself to formally grading them using rubrics, performance standards, or other such measures. I know that this is partially because I do not fully believe in assessment used to label a student’s achievements or abilities. I think that assessment should be as learning and for learning, but I struggle with assessment of learning. I wish that we could have an education system that would not see the need to put students into boxes, and could allow learning to occur and unfold gradually without the urge to measure it. On the other hand, I also have grown to recognize that this is not the education system we have and in order to set my students up for success in the current system I must take care to evaluate and record their achievement in the fairest way and over the greatest amount of time possible so that they, as well as outside observers, can see their progress. If I wish for a reality in which the process of learning is valued more than the product, then, given the parameters I am working in, I must make the process of learning visible to more people than just myself. To this end, I have created a gradebook system that allows me to record each notable activity we do (even the small ones), the learning intentions that the activity captures from the curriculum, and the progress that the student has shown in it. This will make the learning curve of the student readily apparent to all who may need to access this information. I am also beginning to create more formalized rubrics that use fun, engaging and non-threatening language and symbols, such as emoticons and ‘I can’ statements. After all, if assessment is a necessary part of my job, I must learn to embrace it and make all I can from it for the benefit of both myself as a teacher and my students as learners.