[MUSIC] This leads me into an interesting question: if the importance of Maori education is around the individual, and the relationship of the teacher with the child, how do you handle that with educational assessment? Where everyone has to do the same task, where we need to report about children's performance against common standards - talk to me about how you handle that tension between the individual and assessment? >> I have a multilevel, seven to ten age bracket in the classroom and that was the biggest question I had this year and last year. How do I perform to that? Not perform as in "performance". I actually have a great time in the first few days just talking colloquially with children, I start off with myself, and I introduce myself and I say that I'm a big sister in the Maori world, to this Maori classroom. But I'm also a person with these values, and we get to know each other really well and that leads on to every child contributing their own fingerprint, their understanding to this lovely great basket of knowledge. And it starts from there-- I start teasing out where their learning starts. What are their personalities? What are their backgrounds? I don't impinge on family life, I just talk about who they are right in front of me. And it's fantastic because you get this lovely collage of their prior experience in the world. >> That's a very informal and interpersonal approach to assessment. Is that all you're allowed to do? Or are you not expected to do more standardized and formal types of assessment? >> There are standardized tests, but I suppose that it's your approach to delivering them to the student. Where I'd say the few assessments that we do have available in terms of literacy and numeracy, they're not too invasive. >> Mm-hm. >> They're, you know, one-on-one or, you can do them as a whole class, but I think it's just the environment that you create in terms of the time for the assessment. You know, you start with telling the student "Oh, today we're doing this and this is the reason why we're doing this, so try your hardest to do as much and as best you can." Take them through the process no matter what the type of assessment is, just explain to them, you know, and keep them comfortable before they're going through the process. >> I see assessment as having two very different roles. There's the assessment that needs to happen for myself, as a teacher, to meet the need of each child. >> Mm-hm. >> And then there's the assessment that's required for a governance level, for the government for data, so they can number crunch and see who's above, who's below - that's a number game. And that's high stakes, because of there is a fear for-- I believe even for myself-- that you are getting judged for the quality and your ability as a teacher based on those numbers. So, there's two definite roles. >> Uh-huh. >> The role for me that I think is most crucial for our students, is for me to know where our students are at, prior to the learning. I want to be able to measure and know how far they've learned and how much they've gained in the time we've learned. So, the school doesn't always provide that assessment at all or that test, so I create my own. >> All right. >> And have it open, so that it might be as simple as-- if the topic is around say the sea, what do you know about the sea? And they are allowed to respond in any way that they feel strong, and so if it's by drawing it, or writing it, or verbally telling me and I record it, then that's what I aim for, and then move through that. So, sometimes there is a tension between what the requirements of the school is, but we've discovered in the class. So, it's managing that as a teacher to meet the requirements of this particular tool here. >> Yes, Rose, please go ahead. >> Sorry, I was going to mention that after that relationship is developed with children, I then look at a range of assessment data, and I explain what the spelling test is, where it came from, why do we need to do it, how does it fit in with your prior knowledge, or a maths test, whatever we have to do, how they can do it and how they can use it, how they can merge it with their own knowledge and start from that baseline. So basically, sharing with them and then we do the test, and we debrief afterwards. How was that? What do you think? Did you read the brown cow now story? What do you think? And then I actually talk about my experiences as a child. >> Okay. >> When I read them, "brown cow now", we used to laugh at all the pronunciations. But now, I think it's a type of genre, it's a type of text type. And I get carried away with it because I try to explain it in a way where they can take it and say, "Okay, I'm ready for these journals for the next number of days or books. I'm ready to do this maths. Wow, I want to be on the escalator with basic facts to here." Just recently I was just teaching measurement to my sixth grade level, and I had one year three student tell me what perimeter meant. And she started with just converting centimetres and millimetres, and I was in awe dancing around my room. And they say, "There goes Rose, She's lost in the learning discovery time." And I tend to use this before I've even thought about anything else. >> So, you do use formal tools, as well as informal to establish a baseline of what do they already know so I can move on. >> Yeah. >> You've talked very much, naturally, of assessment from the teacher perspective, can you give me some insights, how do Maori students experience assessment? What's their view of assessment? Are they willing participants, are they terrified, do they hate it? >> I think in my experience I've seen the full spectrum, I've seen avoidance. And I've seen children that are quite adept to that setting especially if it's sitting down and having a formal test. Well, I think that if there's a formal situation, introducing it, explaining it will put a student at ease a lot better prior to to sitting their test. Whereas some children I've noticed if it's a mathematical assessment, and they're not necessarily a strong reader but it requires a lot of reading, then I'll say to myself the barrier is there. They're having difficulty reading but they are actually strong at working out the math problem, so I'll read-- >> You'll make adaptation. >> I'll make adaptation to the assessment to get to-- so I'm always keeping in check that what is it that I'm looking for? What is it that we're trying to do? And eliminate any of those barriers so that they all participate in the assessment task. >> I think as long as the students are introduced to the different types of questions or whatever that are going to be provided in the sort of assessment wherever it is, prior or at the end, that's when they get more comfortable because I noticed with me traveling to different schools and being there during test time, you can actually see what practices the children have been through with their teacher. When they come to a question and they're like, "Oh, I don't know what this is." And you know they are telling the truth. You know, you don't want to give them stuff they don't know because that's when panic mode happens. >> Yes. >> You know, and even if it's just the layout of the paper, they're just like "Whoa! I never done this before." >> They won't try it. >> Won't try it, yeah. >> Pens down. You're needing to observe the children while they're completing the task, the assessment task, and knowing their behaviors, because you know that when you get the paper and look at it, it's not a true reflection because they didn't attempt it in the first place because it was too new. >> Great. What about on the aspect of reporting, telling kids, sometimes you have to tell kids bad news - like, they didn't do very well - and that's always hard for the teller and the receiver. How do you handle that aspect of communicating results which aren't always what everybody wants-- not everybody gets 100%, not everybody's a star, how do you handle that? >> Well, exactly what you've just said-- well, this is how I handle it. We've just been through an assessment phase just in the past week, I say just that - we all are always learning, explaining that to the children. We're here to find out your strengths. We talk more on strengths and weaknesses. And, I'll talk about my own strengths and my own weaknesses as an example, as Rose has talked about. And we share, prior to sharing the data, the findings, and often it's on a one-to-one basis - not all sharing of information is with the whole class or group. So, on a one-to-one, start with the strengths first - "This is what you did really well." And it's not that "You failed!" It's "Hey, look, you struggled here. How about if we look at how we can improve and help you to improve for next time to move forward?" So, it's not seen as a bad thing, it's seen as "Let's move forward". >> Okay. >> Yeah-- and the sooner the better. And the more you behave in that way, I've found, the children get used to that culture and that it's okay and then they start to self-reflect on themselves. How do you think you did? Did you find anything that you struggled with? And often, they'll see exactly what you've found. And that's a really good leader. >> Great. >> I think that's also one good thing about this new term-- well, not "new" term-- but the term overall teacher judgment. That's that teachers sort of have the power to to say, "Oh okay, look Johnny, you didn't do this today, but I know, during group work you did it here, and this group work you did it here - were you not feeling too good today?" or something, you know. "What happened to effect however the outcome of your of your test today?" Because sometimes how they are feeling that time could be whether they pass or not. >> Right. Thank you, ladies. I think we've covered very well this initial introduction to how Maori are being catered for in the New Zealand school system, and how you as Maori teachers are helping your own students. Thank you for sharing. In our next session, we're going to look at how we deal with purposes of assessment, and how New Zealand has multiple purposes for assessment and the tensions and challenges these teachers face with those purposes. [MUSIC]
