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Assessment as a Shared Journey: Cultivating Partnerships with Families and Caregivers with Tisha Jones · Rounding Up

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  As educators,
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  we know that families and caregivers play an essential role in our student
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  success at school. With that in mind,
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  what are some of the ways we can establish strong partnerships with caregivers
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  and communicate about students' progress and asset-based ways?
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  We'll explore these questions with MLCs Assessment manager Tisha Jones on this
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  episode of Rounding Up.
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  Welcome back to the podcast. Tisha,
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  I think you are our first guest to appear three times.
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  We're really excited to talk to you about assessment and families and
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  caregivers.
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  I am always happy to talk to you, Mike,
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  and I really love getting to share new ideas with
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  people on your podcast.
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  So we've titled this episode assessment as a Shared Journey with families
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  and caregivers, and I feel like that title, especially the words Shared Journey,
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  say a lot about how you hope educators approach this part of their
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  practice.
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  Absolutely.
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  So I want to start by being explicit about how we at the Math Learning Center
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  think about the purpose of assessment because I think a lot of the ideas and the
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  practices and the suggestions that you're about to offer flow out of that way
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  that we think about the purpose.
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  When we think about the purpose of assessment at the Math Learning Center,
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  what sums it up best to me is that all assessment is
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  formative, even if it's summative,
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  which is a belief that you'll find in our assessment guide.
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  And what that means is that assessment really is to drive
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  learning. It's for the purpose of learning.
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  So it's not just to capture what did they learn, but it's what do they need?
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  How can we support kids?
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  How can we build on what they're learning over and over and over again?
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  And so there's no point where we're like, okay,
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  we've assessed it and now the learning of that is in the past.
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  We're always trying to build on what they're doing, what they've learned so far.
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  I've also heard you talk about the importance of an asset focused approach to
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  assessment. So for folks who haven't heard us talk about this in the past,
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  what does that mean, Tisha?
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  So that means starting with finding the things that the kids know how to do
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  and what they understand instead of the alternative,
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  which is looking for what they don't know,
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  looking for the deficits in their thinking. We're looking at, okay,
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  here's the evidence for all the things that they can do.
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  And then we're looking to think about, okay,
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  what are their opportunities for growth?
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  That sounds subtle,
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  but it is so profound a shift in thinking about what is happening when
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  we're assessing and what we're seeing from students.
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  How do you think that change in perspective shifts the work of
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  assessing, but also the work of teaching?
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  When I think about approaching assessment from an asset-based
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  perspective, finding the things that kids know how to do,
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  the things that kids understand. One,
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  I am now on a mission to find their brilliance.
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  I am just this brilliance detective.
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  I'm always looking for what is that thing that this kid can shine at?
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  That's one and a different way of thinking about it just to start with.
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  And then I think the other thing too is I feel like when you find the
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  things that they're doing, I can think about, okay,
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  what do I need to know?
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  What can I do for them next to support them in that next step of growth?
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  I think that sounds fairly simple,
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  but there's something very different about thinking about building from
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  something versus say, looking for what's broken.
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  For sure. And it also helps build relationships, right?
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  If you approach any relationship from a deficit perspective,
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  you're always focusing on the things that are wrong.
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  And so if we're talking about building stronger relationships with kids,
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  coming from an asset-based perspective helps in that area too.
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  That's a great pivot point because if we take this notion that the purpose of
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  assessment is to inform the ways that we support student learning,
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  it really seems like that has a major set of implications for how and
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  what and even why we would communicate with families and caregivers.
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  So while I suspect there isn't a script for the type of communication,
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  are there some essential components that you'd want to see in an asset focused
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  assessment conversation that an educator would have with a family or with their
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  child's caregivers?
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  Well, before thinking about a singular conversation,
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  I want to back it up and think about
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  over the course of the school year,
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  and I think that when we start the communication,
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  it has to start before that first assessment.
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  It has to start before we've seen a piece of kids' work.
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  We have to start building those relationships with families and caregivers.
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  We need to invite them into this process.
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  We need to give them an opportunity to understand what we think about
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  assessment.
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  How are we approaching it when we send things home and they haven't heard
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  of things like proficiency or meeting current expectations,
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  those are common words that you'll see throughout the bridges assessment
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  materials. If parents haven't seen that,
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  if families and caregivers haven't heard from you on what that means for you in
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  your classroom at your school, then they have questions.
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  It feels unfamiliar. It feels like, wait,
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  what does this mean about how my child is doing in your class?
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  And so we want to start this conversation from the very beginning of the school
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  year and continue it on continuously,
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  and it should be this open invitation for them to participate in this process
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  too, for them to share what they're seeing about their student at home
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  when they're talking about math or they're hearing how their student is talking
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  about math.
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  We want to know those things because that informs how we approach the
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  instruction in class.
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  Let's talk about that because it really strikes me that what you are describing
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  in terms of the meaning of proficiency or the meaning of
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  meeting expectations,
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  that language is likely fairly new to families and caregivers.
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  And I think the other thing that strikes me is families and caregivers have
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  their own lived experience with assessment from when they were children,
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  perhaps with other children, and that's generally a mixed bag At best.
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  Folks have this set of ideas about what it means when the teacher contacts them
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  and what assessment means.
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  So I really hear what you're saying when you're talking about there's work that
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  educators need to do at the start of the year to set the stage for these
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  conversations. Let's try to get a little bit specific though.
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  What are some of the practices that you'd want teachers to consider when they're
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  thinking about their communication?
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  So I think that starting at the very beginning of
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  the year, most schools do some sort of a curriculum night.
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  I would start by making sure that assessment is a part of that conversation
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  and making sure that you're explaining what
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  assessment means to you. Why are you assessing?
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  What are the different ways that you're assessing?
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  What are some things that they might see coming home?
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  Are they going to see feedback? Are they going to see scores from assessments?
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  But how were you communicating progress?
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  How do they know how their student is doing?
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  And then also that invitation right then and there to be a part of this process,
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  to hear from them to hear their concerns or their ideas
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  around feedback or the things that they've got questions about.
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  I would also suggest that really working hard to have
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  that asset based lens apply to parents and families and caregivers.
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  I know that I have been that parent,
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  that was the last one to sign up for the parent teacher conferences,
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  and I'm sending the apologetic email and I'm begging for a special time slot.
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  So it didn't mean that I didn't care about my kids.
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  It didn't mean that I didn't care about what they were doing. I was swamped.
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  And so I think we want to keep finding that asset-based lens for
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  parents and caregivers in the same way that we do for the students.
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  And then making sure that you're giving them good news,
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  not just bad news.
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  And then making sure when you're sending any communication about how a student
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  is doing, try to be concrete about what you're seeing, right?
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  So trying to say,
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  these are the things where I see your child's strengths.
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  These are the strengths that I'm seeing from your student,
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  and these are the areas where we're working on to grow,
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  and this is what we're doing here at school,
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  and this is what you can do to support them at home.
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  I was really struck by a piece of what you said, Tisha,
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  when you really made the case for not assuming that the picture that
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  you have in your mind as an educator is clear for families when it comes to
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  assessment. So really being transparent about how you think about assessment,
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  why you're assessing,
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  and the cadence of when parents or families or caregivers could expect to
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  hear from you and what they could expect as well.
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  I know for a fact that if my teacher called my family when I was a
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  kid,
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  generally there was a look that came across their face when they answered the
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  phone. And even if it was good news,
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  they didn't think it was good news at the front end of that conversation.
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  I've been there, I had my son's fifth grade heater call me last year,
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  and I was like, what is this?
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  One of the things that I want to talk about before we finished this conversation
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  is homework. I want to talk a little bit about the purpose of homework.
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  We're having this conversation in the context of Bridges and mathematics,
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  which is the curriculum that the Math Learning Center publishes.
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  So while we can't talk about how all folks think about homework,
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  we can talk about the stance that we take when it comes to homework,
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  what its purpose is,
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  how we imagine families and caregivers can engage with their students around it.
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  Can you talk a little bit about our perspective on homework,
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  how we think about its value, how we think about its purpose,
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  and then we can dig a little bit into what it might look like at home.
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  But let's start with purpose and intent.
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  So we definitely recognize that there are
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  lots of different ideas about homework,
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  and I think that shows in how we've structured homework through our bridges
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  units.
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  Most of the time it's set up so that there's a homework that goes with
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  every other session, but it's still optional.
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  So there's no formal expectation in our curriculum
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  that homework is given on a nightly basis or even
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  on an every other night basis.
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  We really have left that up to the schools to determine what is best
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  practice for their population.
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  And I think that is actually what's really the most important thing,
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  is understanding the families and
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  caregivers and the situations that are in your building and making
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  determinations about homework that makes sense for the
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  students that you're serving.
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  And so I think we've set homework up in a way that makes
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  it so that it's easy for schools to make those decisions.
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  One of the things that I'm thinking about is that, again,
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  I'm going to be autobiographical when I was a kid, homework went back,
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  it was graded and it actually counted toward my grade at the end of the semester
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  or the quarter or what have you.
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  And I guess I wonder if a school or a district chose to not go about that to
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  not have homework necessarily be graded.
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  I wonder if some families and caregivers might wonder what's the purpose?
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  I think we know that there can be a productive and important purpose,
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  even if educators aren't grading homework and adding it to a percentage that is
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  somehow determining students' grades that it can actually still have purpose.
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  How do you think about the purpose of homework regardless of whether it's graded
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  or not?
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  So first off,
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  I would just like to advocate not grading homework if I
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  can.
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  You certainly can. Yeah, let's talk about that.
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  I think that one,
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  if we're talking about this idea of putting this
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  score into an average grade or this percentage grade,
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  I think that this is something that has so many different
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  circumstances for kids at home.
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  You have some students who get lots and lots of help.
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  You get some students who do not have help available to them.
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  Another experience that has been very common when I was teaching
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  that I would get messages where I was like, we were doing homework.
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  The kid was in tears, I was in tears.
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  This was just really hard. And that's just not,
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  I don't ever want that scenario for any student, for any family,
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  for any caregiver, for anybody trying to support a child at home.
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  I used to tell them,
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  if you are getting to the point where it's that level of frustration,
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  please just stop and send me a message, write it on the homework.
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  Just communicate something that this was too hard because that's information
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  now that I can use. And so for me,
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  I think about that homework can be an opportunity for students to practice some
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  skills and concepts and things that they've learned at home.
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  It's an opportunity for parents, families,
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  caregivers to see some of the things that the kids are working on at school.
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  What do you think is meaningful for homework?
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  And I have kind of two bits to that.
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  What do you think is meaningful for the child?
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  And then what do you think might be meaningful for the interaction between the
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  child and their family or caregiver? What's the best case for homework?
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  When you imagine a successful or a productive or a
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  meaningful experience with homework at home between child and family and
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  caregiver, what's that look like?
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  Well, one of the things that I've heard families say is,
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  I don't know how to help my child with blank.
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  So then I think it is, well,
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  how do we support families and caregivers in knowing what do we do with homework
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  when we don't know how to tell them what to do? So to me,
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  it's about how can we restructure the homework experience so that
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  it's not this,
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  I have to tell you how to do it so you can get the right answer.
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  So you can get the grade, but it's like, how can I get at more of your thinking?
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  How can I understand then what is happening or what you do know?
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  So we can't get to the answer. Okay,
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  so tell me about what you do know and how can we build from there?
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  How can we build understanding?
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  And that way it maybe will take some of the pressure off of families and
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  caregivers to help their child get to the right answer.
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  What hits me is we've really come full circle with that last statement you made
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  because you could conceivably have a student who really clearly
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  understands a particular problem that might be a piece of homework,
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  that might have some ideas that are on the right track,
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  but ultimately perhaps doesn't get to a fully clear answer that is
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  perfect. And you might have a student who at a certain point in time,
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  maybe the context or the problem itself is profoundly challenging.
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  And in all of those cases, the question,
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  tell me what you do know or tell me what you're thinking is still an
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  opportunity to draw out the student's ideas and to focus on the assets.
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  Even if the work as you described it,
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  is to get them to think about what are the questions that are really causing
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  me to feel stuck,
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  that is a productive move for a family and a caregiver and a student to engage
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  in to kind of wonder about what's going on here.
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  That's making me feel stuck because then as you said,
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  all assessment is formative.
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  That homework that comes back is functioning as a formative assessment,
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  and it allows you to think about your next moves,
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  how you build on what the student knows,
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  or even how you build on the questions that the student is bringing to you.
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  And that's such a great point too,
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  is there's really more value in them coming
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  back with an incomplete assignment or there's, I don't know,
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  maybe more value is not the right way to say it,
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  but there is value in kids coming back with an incomplete assignment or
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  an attempted assignment,
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  but they weren't sure how to get through all the problems as opposed to
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  a parent who has told their student what to do to get through all of the right
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  answers. And so now they have all these right answers,
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  but it doesn't really give you a clear picture of what
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  that student actually does understand.
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  So I'd much rather have a student attempt the homework and stop because they
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  got too stuck because now I know that then having a
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  family or a caregiver, somebody working with that student,
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  feel like if they don't have all of the right answers, then it's a problem.
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  I think that's really great guidance both for teachers as they're trying to set
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  expectations and be transparent with families,
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  but also I think it takes that pressure off of families or caregivers who
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  feel like their work when homework shows up, is to get to a right answer.
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  It just feels like a much more healthy relationship with homework and a much
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  more healthy way to think about the value that it has.
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  Well, in truth, it's a healthier relationship with math overall, right?
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  That math is a process. It's not just,
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  the value is not in just this one right answer or this paper
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  of right answers, but it's really in how do we deepen our understanding?
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  How do we help students deepen their understanding and have this more positive
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  relationship with math?
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  And I think that creating these homework struggles between families and
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  caregivers and the children does not support that end goal of having
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  a more positive relationship with math overall.
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  Which is a really important part of what we're looking for in a child's
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  elementary experience.
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  Absolutely.
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  I think that's a great place to stop. Tisha Jones,
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  thank you so much for joining us. We would love to have you back at some time.
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  It has been a pleasure talking with you.
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  It's been great talking to you too, Mike.
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  This podcast is brought to you by the Math Learning Center and the Meyer Math
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  Foundation dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover
• 19:31
  and develop their mathematical confidence and ability.