By October, we were heavily into gathering evidence that would support our claims about our program here at C.H.S.. This evidence was gathered primarily within departments, whose members would disseminate it out not only to the department’s evidence box, but to the appropriate focus group boxes as well (for example, one of my pieces of evidence, a sample student BarCode laserdisc presentation, would not only be placed in our department’s box, but in the "Powerful Learning and Teaching" box [for the use of technology], the "Assessment and Accountability" box [student assessment], and the "Curricular Paths" box as well [use of the lesson across teaching strands]).
Or at least, that was the way it was supposed to work. By this time in the year, it was becoming obvious that the usual suspects were the only ones leaving evidence. The same old teachers were sharing their goods (and bads and uglies--since WASC wanted to see the entire spectrum of the program). Some teachers were not contributing, as usual. Some teachers were contributing but not putting together evidence cover-sheets. Others were clueless about putting copies in the focus group boxes. And Aimee was having one helluva time getting the department chairs to explain the process to their departments. It was beginning to get ugly.
If that wasn’t bad enough, now that the departments had answered their discipline-specific questions, and had gathered the evidence that would support those responses, the departments now had to write narratives (simple prose paragraphs) that would describe the departments’ strengths and weaknesses to the WASC committee. While this sounds easy, it wasn’t, especially to the old-timer for whom WASC meant "whitewash." Many of the narratives had to be sent back to departments to un-do their PR quality. Others Aimee and I rewrote.
That was our/my job. And Aimee was beginning to "work (my) ass."
No comments:
Post a Comment