I found Mrs. Krebs Blog very interesting and she was kind enough to respond to one of my comments. I read a lot about the journey she has embarked upon by taking a Kindergarten position in Bahrain off the coast of Saudi Arabia. I wrote about the post where Mrs. Krebs was moving and packing up her daughter’s keepsakes, deciding which papers and school mementos to pack as space is limited. The bulk of the saved items from her K-8 education went into the trash. Mrs. Krebs writes a poignant comment for the reasoning behind the purge:
“It doesn’t matter if a student is a high achiever or a low achiever, no parent wants to have years worth of test scores and reports cards that give little information about who their child really is. Most of the report cards had meaningless letter grades with few heartfelt comments. Year after year of high stakes test results don’t show anything worth knowing about my daughter or her education.”The comment I wrote spoke about how I was envious of her ability to be honest about the meaningless scores, certificates and grades we as teachers are obligated to assign. Authentic learning is harder to measure with a mere number or graph, but will present itself much later when it is much more important and vital to the success of the individual. Mrs. Krebs responded to my comment by telling me to “speak up” of sorts by creating opportunities for authentic learning by allowing children to tackle problems, create solutions and develop a love of learning and no one would be able to argue with that strategy, even if they agree with the use of high-stakes testing.
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