Miss Arguello's Classroom

This past Thursday, I had the great pleasure to observe a classroom in my community. (I won't specifically name the school or the teacher I was observing for confidentiality reasons, but let's call the teacher Mr. T. For Mr. Teacher.) I volunteer at this high school twice a week, and I happened to see Mr. T in his classroom on my way out one day. I saw that he had several statistical models of data pasted to his door, so I took a chance, walked in, and asked if he was a math teacher. This led to a conversation about me pursuing my math education degree at Grand Valley, and we set up a time for me to observe in his classroom for two hours one morning.  Flash forward to Thursday.  I arrived at the school a little before 8 and got my visitor's pass in the office. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel, because while I had volunteered at this school before, I was unfamiliar with how it would feel sitting in a classroom wondering, "How would it feel to teach this clas...

When I mentioned to my roommate one night that I hoped to eliminate testing as much as possible in my own classroom, instead of being met with support, I was met with a mixture of surprise and possibly a bit of horror. "How are you going to assess them on if they learned the material then? Where will their grades come from?" she asked.  "Well, I think you can assess student performance in other ways besides exams," I explained. "I don't want a student's entire grade riding on how they do on a test. I think every student is brilliant, every student has something they are good at. But for a lot of students, testing is not one of the things they are good at, and I think its unfair to simply cater to the students that are good at taking tests."  I understand why my roommate was a bit aghast at my statement. In high school, she had no trouble taking tests, and she is still that way even while taking difficult science courses that way beyond my und...