Professor Sharon

100 Day Project – Day 46 – 7:18 pm

Today, at the community college where I work, I had the great fortune to spend the day in a workshop with Barbara Walvoord.    It was an excellent workshop about Curriculum Mapping.  The overarching task I’m not so fond of — each department/division/program at the school – is being asked to curriculum map their program and create a connection to the college’s larger general education competencies.  I don’t disagree with the need for the task, just that it’s another large task on top of so many others.

Like so many institutions, each of us is already doing two jobs, so it’s challenging to find time to add another item to the in-pile.  This aside, I find her a great teacher — our Dean, in introducing her, called her “a teacher’s teacher” — and she is indeed.  To attend an all day workshop at the end of a week where I put in three 12-hour days was not something I looked forward to doing.  I really learned a good deal, I’m excited by the task, even if I don’t see any way around the challenge of finding the time to complete it.

Assessment gets a dirty rap — presented the way Dr. Walvoord presents it wipes it off and shows it for the useful tool, done authentically, that it can be for a teacher to support a learner’s journey to learning well.  Today I’m thinking about Assessment.