Blindsight<\/p>\n
The definition for blindsight can be viewed as looking or holding a view\u00a0 of something with a bias without knowing a particular view is held.\u00a0 I wonder how it develops.\u00a0 Is it through experience, social conditioning, education etc?<\/p>\n
When I think of this word it reminds me when our ESL department wanted to move towards eliminating marks and in its place\u00a0 to use rubrics which would let parents know how their child was progressing in their English language skills.\u00a0 We addressed the 4 areas of language development, reading, writing, speaking, and listening.\u00a0 However, we had an imbalanced rubric because the section on writing was so heavily weighted.\u00a0 Were we “blindsighted”?\u00a0 We as a department didn’t realize it till someone outside the school said, our rubric heavily weighted writing.\u00a0 How did we get that way?\u00a0 We had a departmental discussion on this\u00a0 and concluded that we took on the lens of the English department, who always complain about the lack of writing skills when ESL level 4 students enter mainstream English.\u00a0 We obviously agreed and subconsciously produced the first rubric with its primary emphasis on writing.\u00a0 We were our own barrier till we revised the rubric to make it more balanced.<\/p>\n
Before we even got to this point of even creating the rubric we tried to get departmental consensus over the idea and implementation of this new way of assessment.\u00a0 All of us agreed except one person.\u00a0 She felt that the parents would not be accepting of this new way of assessment.\u00a0 We couldn’t get her to agree, although she did attend the meetings when we tried to work on the criteria and language.<\/p>\n
We were told by the administration and I think our department head agreed that no one could be forced to implement it and we could move forward with or without her.\u00a0 Our VP had some heated discussions with her in our meetings when we were working on the rubric.\u00a0 Both VP and teacher wanted to know WHY and WHY NOT?\u00a0 Most of the department was willing to implement the changes.<\/p>\n
We finally met with parents to explain our reasons for assessing students with the rubric, and without too many problems the parents were receptive to the change. From that day, the teacher who resisted change felt a lot differently about the rubric.<\/p>\n
When it comes to technology, I know there are teachers who are on board and teachers who are not on board to implement technology into their teaching practice or into the learning experience of their students.\u00a0 Some say that it is a big investment and that retirement is coming and don’t want to spend the time to make the changes.\u00a0 Others are just fine with what they are doing now-curriculum hasn’t changed or some don’t have the patience with the infrastructure that makes it hard to use technology.\u00a0 There are many reasons not to use technology, but the phenomena of technology is here and with new changes to the education plan, we will be mandated to implement technology and we won’t be ready unless we start.\u00a0 The why and the how are such important questions- a little scary to even try to or attempt to answer.\u00a0 Educational leadership??<\/p>\n
The final project, a blog which is trying to help teachers collaborate is coming along, but I’m a little scared to launch it because I can foresee the “blindsightness”.\u00a0 I guess I need a plan to address the “what if” scenarios.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blindsight The definition for blindsight can be viewed as looking or holding a view\u00a0 of something with a bias without knowing a particular view is held.\u00a0 I wonder how it develops.\u00a0 Is it through experience, social conditioning, education etc? When … Continue reading