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| (picture taken by my husband during Caribbean cruise in July) |
I know, I know, I apologize to those of you who have been waiting to see all the awesome art work my students have been working on these past couple of weeks... but if you are from New Jersey or any other state that has/is implementing SGO's( student growth objectives ) into the public school educational system you know how overwhelming and consuming it has has been so far this school year.
I have gotten to the point where I am now teaching and implementing my SGO's in all the lesson's I am teaching ( the kids are doing a beautiful job! I swear I will be sharing pic's soon! ) I have found myself thinking about my SGO's all the time( I know it's crazy) Now that I am past all the process of developing and pre-assessing I came to a realization this morning while doing dishes( again SGO's creeped into my mind! I have been working on a Power Point presentation for an in-service with regional art educators on Monday)... getting myself to this point has been like the Five Stages of Grief!(not kidding!)
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| ( another picture from the cruise) |
1.) DENIAL: "Oh, In the end we won't have to do this..." " if they don't tell me I have to do it I am not" I think in the beginning last year we kept thinking this won't happen... we denied that we would have to go down this path that we have never travelled.
2.) ANGER: Yeah this one has gotten a lot of mileage and a lot of people still have not moved past this one. ( I know a few who are still on #1) " I can't believe they think I can possibly do all this!" " What are they thinking! This is impossible?! " " There is no time to do all of this! They are asking WAY too much of us now!!!" ( yeah, there are times I am still back here! )
3.) BARGAINING: " If I do this instead, can I do this and then I can bypass all this other paper work that has nothing to do with the creative teaching of Visual Art? " ( yeah, not happening...)
4.) DEPRESSION: Overwhelming anxiety and sadness for having to do all these assessments and think in a completely different way. Feel like I have been wasting several weeks of studio working time in the art room( still feel that way on this one ).
5.) ACCEPTANCE: I think I am here now, although I do travel back and forth to #2, #3 and #4 from time to time. I think that several, if not all of my special subject colleagues will want to have me checked into a psychiatric unit for observation after this statement... as much as I have hated this journey I find that I have profoundly grown as an educator. There I said it. There has been some value in all of this SGO insanity that I have found myself wrapped up in this Fall. I have learned that there are things that I took for granted that my students knew and understood about art but in reality didn't. By doing my pre-assessments I have found and accepted flaws in the way I was teaching and am now working on fixing them so that I may get my students to gain a better understanding of what they are learning. This is not something that is going away, it will be here for some time... Right now it is soooo hard... we are developing that which has not existed... we have nothing to review and get ideas from... we are the ones laying the ground work...we are the ones getting it all together so that in the future others will have something to look at to get ideas... we are the ones making the mistakes and the revelations... we are the beginning of the future of the way we will teach...
Is it good or bad? I don't know for sure... I do know that if learning new things grows your brain capacity my brain has grown about 300% ( that may explain my constant headache lately, I was blaming it on stress! ) I actually had a mini break down the other morning because I thought I lost data from my third grades! I freaked out! I was like a crazy woman tearing apart everything in my school bag, tears were forming, I was yelling at the top of my lungs," How could I have lost it?! " After my husband calmed me down and I thought maybe I accidentally took it out with the data for my other school I realized...Duhhhh! I am not assessing third grade for my SGO! Hello, McFly! There is no data for third grade! ( insert ok I'm an overwhelmed idiot face )
Monday I have an in-service with other regional art educators from my area. We will be spending the morning discussing our SGO's and what we are doing to implement them. I created a Power Point to show them ( another new thing I have learned during all this. That and Excel spread sheets, yuck! ) In the afternoon we will be talking about STEM to STEAM. I did some work with this last year so I have been asked to share what I have with everyone before the keynote speaker. I'm excited to be able to sit down with my fellow art educators and collaborate.
Check out what Leslie from(the way cool) Donald Art Room has to say in her recent post about having to face changes as art educators!
How do all you feel about all this change? Let it loose, tell me what you think! What has your journey been like if you are on this crazy ride? What stage are you on?
Check out what Leslie from(the way cool) Donald Art Room has to say in her recent post about having to face changes as art educators!
How do all you feel about all this change? Let it loose, tell me what you think! What has your journey been like if you are on this crazy ride? What stage are you on?
Hope you all have a great weekend! I have my progress report grades to load into the computer and then it is going to be all about relaxing! No SGO's!!!
Mrs.C :)
Right now I am happy I am not a teacher, being an Occupational Therapist working with special needs children (not with the school system) is hard enough. I know we have to have standards and all but wouldn't it be fascinating to be able to just teach? The time it takes to implement new program after new program is astounding. I hear from school therapists that they are constantly having to learn new programs for goals and IEP's then have to rewrite all of their kids notes, it seems like a huge waste of time to me. But like you said on a good note you learned lots about what your kids know and don't know, that is at least worth something.
ReplyDeleteI love your positive approach, even if it took you a few stages to get there.
Me
Meredith
Yeah I know... I I kinda went through all those thoughts during stages anger and depression... I'm glad I've moved past them and learned from this insane experience...( I do go back there from time to time though...)
DeleteOK, I think I may be feeling your pain! I'm not sure what SGO stands for, but from what you have written I'm assuming it's your state's version of SLO (Student Learning Outcomes). So far, probably because I teach art in a private school, we haven't felt the full impact of Common Core, but I know it's coming! We are just now moving from STEM to STEAM, too, so I'm going to be following your posts with great interest...thanks for sharing so much information!
ReplyDeleteSorry I'm so immersed in all this I forget that not everyone knows what SGO stands for! :) SGO stands for student growth objectives. I think it's similar to SLO's because when I started working on my SGO's that was the only thing out there to look at for ideas at the time. :)
DeleteYeah, here in NY the phrase is SLO, and NY has gone whole-hog. I'm impressed with your attitude. I keep saying 'thank goodness I retired'; I don't think I could have done it. After 36 years teaching, I didn't want to reinvent myself. But here's my biggest complaint - while I think there is certainly a lot that is of value, to me, the most important time in the elementary art room is the hands-on time. When you see kids maybe once a week, I don't like the idea of giving up that hands-on time for pre-testing and post-testing etc. And when you see hundreds of kids every week, that's a lot of little people to assess. And if you only have to assess a couple of grade levels based on class size, the next year it will be the same kids, different grade levels, more more more testing. The same kids will get hit every year. And what is the significance, if something is so important, to just do it with SOME of the kids? Like I said...glad I'm retired.
ReplyDeleteEvery colleague of mine that has recently retired is saying the same thing :) I have no plans to retire in the near future so I have no choice... I have been playing lot's of George Winston in my art rooms to soothe my nerves. When things get hairy i just breathe and prioritize by what needs to be done first... honestly now that my base-line data is done and all my Excel spreadsheets are done and handed in I am feeling a sense of calm( not complete calm but not the chaos I have been feeling) and can focus on having the kids make art.
DeleteYes I am feeling your pain. I just started working on my SGO's. Not sure whether to do portfolio based SGO or a pre and post assessment type of SGO. I only teach K-2, so I'm leaning towards the portfolio based. But if I do the portfolio based SGO I don't have any baseline data. I went to the AENJ conference and sat through a number of SGO type workshops, and I'm still confused.
ReplyDeleteI'm very lucky to have an administrator who started the ball rolling last Spring... we started writing our SGO's in March and finished them up at the end of May. I had the summer to work on how I wanted to assess the kids. I teach K-5 in two different schools. My K-2 I am assessing 1st and 2nd. My 3-5 I am assessing 4th and 5th. Since I am doing general SGO's they have to cover the majority of my students. I can't imagine coming back and having to write them now! I did my base-line assessments the second-third weeks of school. I wanted to have my assessments based on their art work but the district wanted to see hard data so I went with a pre-mid-post assessment that I designed. I'm sure there is a better way but it works for now... I was that crazy confused last March and at times i'm still confused
Deletebut I feel like I am in a much better place. I did lots of research and checked out how SLO's were written and what they covered. It helped a lot when i was designing my SGO's. I also had my administrator to bounce my ideas and thoughts off of and get her opinion.
Mrs. C- you hit the nail on the head! I've been through the first four stages with my SGO and am currently on step 5, which you call "acceptance" but I call "I don't give a *beep*!"
ReplyDeleteWe have to have our SGO submitted and accepted by Nov. 15th. We don't need the end data until the end of the year, but as I'm someone who likes to get things done, I had my SGO written up, approved, pre-assessed, etc. all by mid-last week by my boss....only to find that while I was out healing from my appendectomy, he changed his mind, and all the work I did is no longer acceptable. My first day back at school I was bombarded by my co-workers who were freaking out about how he's decided to change all the rules on us in terms of what he things are acceptable SGO's (because clearly he doesn't even know what the state wants!).
At first I felt a wave of anger, but after about 10 seconds I realized that none of it matters. I teach because I love to, and I know that I'm good at it. The SGOs will work themselves out, and inevitably will be re-worked, re-introduced, perhaps even eliminated this time next year, so screw it!
Exactly! Last year my one principal said," Keep it simple, keep it achievable, keep it meaningful to your program." The other said nothing(sound of crickets chirping) Everything i have learned on this journey was with her help and guidance and looking at SLO's from other states on the internet. Things keep changing all the time...we are the "pilot
Deleteprogram" we are the giunea pigs of this who;e mess! Who knows what we are going to be doing with it next year...I am just trying to make it through this one with my sanity intact! Hang in there! :)
ok I can't type... it should read whole mess, not who;e mess!
DeleteI totally get comparing these changes to grief. Your post inspired me to re-write a post after an inservice on Friday. You guys are not alone, although we are not doing the assessments you are. (Yet?) Change in Art Ed is huge. Hang in there and enjoy your weekend!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the virtual support! Who knows where all of this is taking us... I've accepted that I am part of this crazy journey whether I want to be or not...I might as well make the best of it for myself and my students...
DeleteIn my district, we're calling them SMART goals. Since I'm still on maternity leave, I've been hearing how we need to implement them in the art room, and I'm nervous about going back. I know I've had goals set all along, it's the extra nit-picky paperwork involved that scares me.
ReplyDeleteI am curious are you required to have an SGO for your entire student population?
ReplyDeleteNo,( thank God ) I don't have to follow my entire population. That would be absolutely insane! ( over 800 kids! ) Things have changed with our SGO's this year... I had to track the majority of my student population last year( 4 grade levels, 6 sections in each level... lot's of kids...) This year I am only tracking one grade level per SGO and I have to have two SGO's, so two grade levels. I'm tracking second and fifth grade. There are 6 sections in each grade level . This year I have to tier all my students though last year we had a choice of choosing a General, Specific or Tiered SGO. The state thought that we all did way to well last year so we are all tiering our students now. ( Whatever...) I kinda did that last year so it won't be a huge change for me. You can e-mail me if you have any other questions! My e-mail is on my profile page. :)
DeleteUpdate to what i said in my last comment: I went to an SGO workshop today and found out that the state does not require us all to tier this year, so that directive is coming from my district.
ReplyDelete