My secondment at Alberta Assessment Consortium ends next week. For the past 2.5 years, I have traveled the province conducting a research study in which I worked with math teachers on embedded formative assessment. We also studied the coaching model as a professional learning tool.
As I transition back to my district, I’m reflecting on my time at AAC. I’d like to share with you what I think I took most from this experience.
I could tell you about all the people I met across the province who are doing great things in high school math classrooms, but that would sound trite.
I could tell you about how much I learned about assessment, but I’d have been doing an absolutely terrible job of this work if I didn’t learn a whole lot.
Instead, I want to talk about videos.
When I took the job, I had no idea I would need to make videos as part of the project. The ones I made are posted here. They’re not in the order I made them, but an astute viewer will see my progression. After the first one, we bought new camera equipment because the flip camera wasn’t cutting it. At one point, we had a videographer come in and teach us about cuts, B-roll, transitions, multiple cameras and other tricks. We hired a video “intern”, who made one video for me, and helped me dabble in Adobe. For the most part, though, those videos are all me, and are all iMovie.
The thing is, I had no idea I’d enjoy that creative process so much. Let me tell you how much I enjoyed it.
Last week, I spent a day at a local elementary school filming K-3 students talking about their writing. I hit it with three cameras, one on a boom giving an overhead shot of the students’ work. I recorded an audio track on a separate microphone. I brought a colleague to interview the students so I could focus on filming. I did my best to film it like a pro. In the end, I had more than 90 minutes of footage, filmed from three different angles. This footage is to be used by our video intern under the guidance of future AAC employees to make 30 second snippets to use in workshops and to post on our website.
The thing is, I couldn’t let it go.
Even though I don’t own the footage, and can’t use it myself, I had to make something from it. Knowing full well that no one would ever see it outside our office, I spent hours piecing it all together into something I loved. It’s 15 minutes of young kids talking about feedback. I built in multiple angles. I worked in their funny comments. I worked in their insightful comments. I pieced it all together in a manner that really amuses me. I added transitions and pulled audio tracks from my best track into the clips from the other cameras. I learned how to line that audio up to the students’ lips. It comes in at 15 minutes long, and it’s some of my best work. I’ve revised it twice more after rendering it and showing it to people.
On Friday, I’ll wipe my work laptop clean and pass all my video (including this one) on to the boss on a hard drive. At that point, I won’t even have a copy of this creation any more.
Why did I do all that knowing that very few people would ever see it, and that I couldn’t keep it? Because it reflects the thing I learned most about and really enjoyed doing during this job. Who (other than that Bloom guy) knew that a creative process could be so enjoyable and valuable? That’s a nice thing for a rigid math guy to come to understand.
John, you will be missed! I enjoyed our chats while waiting for our respective presentations to begin. I learned so ething from every conversation and from every session of yours I attended.
Mr. Scammell, you are almost sounding like an English teacher with your passion for the creative process! Will you be re-inventing yourself when you return to the classroom? Are you even returning to the classroom? Congrats on your time in secondment land!
I didn’t land a classroom job. I’ll be returning to the district as a consultant.