Professional Development

One of my coworkers approached me yesterday with an idea for a book. Let me pause this little anecdote here and give a little background first.

Our state is rolling out an end of course subject test that will ultimately count towards students high school graduation eligibility. Part of me thinks that more standardized testing is a waste of time, but the other part of me thinks it's great that the state thinks knowing key concepts in biology is important enough to turn it into a graduation requirement. I digress...

One portion of this "end of course" test (I say that jokingly since it's given in May with a month of school left to go) is a so-called performance assessment. Basically that means it's a giant open-ended question that requires students to utilize multiple concepts and skills to adequately solve the task they are presented with. Sometimes you hear this stuff talked about like "authentic assessment" or "problem-based learning". All it boils down to is the students are required to do higher order thinking, not just simple recall - they need to actually apply what they have learned. This type of approach to teaching and assessment is the latest buzz, not just in high schools but also in grad schools and medical schools all over the country. Why? Simple - it's the way people need to deal with problems they will face in their "real" lives post-school. So back to yesterday...

The idea of using this type of questioning to check for understanding on the "EOC" test is great. However, not every student in our state will have been exposed to this type of experience. As with anything, practice makes perfect - so the kids who are used to problem-based learning will fare better. So how do we remove barriers that might be preventing teachers from trying this stuff out? Here's where my coworker's idea comes in...

There aren't that many good resources for high school teachers trying to implement short-term lesson plans or assessments using this approach. If you want to try it, you need to spend the time developing problems for the classroom yourself. I'm sure there are plenty of HS science teachers who have begun to develop a few of these kinds of plans, but the reality is that to create multiple lessons/problems like this for all areas of the science curricula is difficult for one person to do. Who has the time?

My coworker and I have a pretty good idea of what would need to be in a solid resource for other teachers. We've discussed hashing out a solid book proposal, firing off a stellar query letter to some textbook companies, and hoping for the go ahead to write and compile a book. The goal would be to do most of the writing during the summer. If we can't get a publisher to bite, we'll probably still do the book and self-publish. After all, the work that goes into writing the book can be turned into useful stuff for our respective classes next year. So it's really a win-win situation, regardless of the publishing outcome. I'm excited to have an intellectual and creative challenge on the horizon.