November+12th

~Meg

Don't get me started. If teachers are truly dedicated to helping their students then they would embrace assessment. The purpose of assessment is remediation. How can you possibly begin to appropriately "help" students build skills and capacities necessary for future success without knowing what they "know" and "don't know". Assessment drives instruction. Pure and simple. This is not to say that assessment ,as Tchudi & Mitchell point out, is souly carried out by teachers alone. Student individual and collaborative assessment can some the most powerful assessment tools available to teachers. The reality that any assessment, in any form, carried out in the classroom is simultaneously a refferandom on student' learning and teacher' teaching. End of story. As teachers seek out the " holes" in student knowledge, they must be willing to examine the holes in their teaching. If after an item analysis of any assessment reveals that a specific question or concept was overwhelmingly wrong or misunderstood by the students, then that is about the teacher and how the the information was taught. Period. Seductive teachers would embrace this stance and then go about the business of re-teaching until students misconceptions were corrected and their knowledge base is solid. These are the 3 guiding questions that have and continue to serve me well in my teaching career:

What do I want my students to know? How do I know if they know it? What am I going to do if they don't?

Wolfe & Antinarella clearly believe that the "master" seductive teacher purposefully impacts the intellectual culture at their respective schools. This is no doubt an intimidating endeavor. Setting off "small explosions" in the classroom is one thing; to set them off the larger school context is a "true mine field." However, if the "weakest link" principle holds true, then leader teachers must wade in to help elevate the practice of all teachers who work with all of the students. And just like any other reform, once you move forward in word, action and deed, you can not go back. seductive teachers who have achieved Stage 4 can see no other option then to share the "good news." They are **compelled** to. If the student is the center of any educational transaction, then teacher leaders must broker for them with all other stakeholders. If done in this spirit, others will surely follow. ~Lisa