Burke’s readings make sense to me in that there are always forces in education that we cannot compete with. For example, I was looking over my new materials/requirements for 10th grade, and like many of you I discovered I am required to give a multiple choice/short answer final. I looked at a sample final a fellow teacher provided, and I was surprised to see the questions were all very basic. “Why does Othello kill Desdemona?” kind of basic. These kinds of questions are crafted so that students will remember the plot…why? What good will knowing the plot of Othello help us as we go through life? I believe there is a need to think about the kinds of questions we are crafting for our students. If it’s a question students can google, then we are useless in the classroom. However, if we are creating questions that ask students to think alongside the text, then we are pushing students to create their own experience with the text and think in unique ways. Burke calls teachers to make short answer questions something students have to think about (rather than Google), and that’s something that resonates with me.
As I’m thinking about what happens In My Classroom (both the assignment and in actuality), I can’t help but feel like I’ve already begun to rely on these ideas a bit. If we are required to give such assessments, how can we make them meaningful? I appreciate that Burke calls us to look at what we ask our students to write on demand, and as I move forward I want to ensure that those types of writing are there when necessary, but with plenty of opportunity for other writing. While Burke seems a little more interested in writing on demand for his students than I am, I can definitely see the value of the skill that he describes, and I think it is possible to take his ideas about writing on demand without giving in completely to all the assessments our students have to take.
Emily's Blog 
Hi, Emily!
I always love reading your writing! It’s so powerful, and it always gets right to the heart of the issues. I love what you said about the questions we ask students to answer on tests and quizzes. It reminds me a lot of your Ignite Talk from the end of the semester (although we had to listen to a ton of them, yours really stuck with me). The questions we ask students are so important.
I think it is okay to ask questions while reading to see if students are understanding and attending to the plot, but that is not what they should be taking away from the reading. Students need to be grasping major concepts and themes. We need to teach students to read analytically and critically and to leave a text with something more profound than, “Well first they walked into the town, and then the guy met the girl, and then…” Tests should have SA questions which dig deeper than, “Why does Othello kill Desdemona?” I don’t think these kinds of questions are useless in the classroom, but their place is not on tests. These kinds of basic, rudimentary questions are to scaffold to harder questions. They are to ensure students are understanding the reading, doing the reading, and taking away the important information — so that students can then grasp the harder concepts and ideas and themes.
Great thoughts as always. Good luck on your classroom activity. I’m curious to see what you come up with. Making assessments meaningful (especially when given constraints) can be really challenging, but I know you can do it. 🙂
Jennifer
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Hey, Emily!
I really enjoyed reading your thoughts about Burke and the reading this week. I completely agree that multiple choice, surface level plot questions are basically pointless and aren’t truly teaching our students anything. I think sometimes questions like this can be useful, but more in a “what happened in what we read yesterday” rather than on a test or final exam. I really love what you said about asking students questions to help them think alongside the text and to create their own experience with it!
I also agree with what you said about Burke’s teaching about WOD tasks being helpful, but that this writing should not be the only type of writing taking place in the classroom. Maybe the trick is to try and find the balance between Burke’s world and Kittle/Gallagher’s world so students can experience and grow with multiple types of writing.
Thanks for sharing!
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“These kinds of questions are crafted so that students will remember the plot…why? What good will knowing the plot of Othello help us as we go through life? ”
I love that you said this, and your writing in general. Students like to hit us with that “I am never going to use this in real life so what’s the point?” complaint, but I think what some teachers have done is mislead the students on what they actually need to take from the content, by giving cookie cutter tests like this.
I think Burke was very big on being deliberate about what we teach, therefor, we as teachers need to put in a little more work. Yes I know it is easy to borrow from pinterest and teacherspayteachers, but we have to be careful with this because we may be enabling this very same type of useless teaching.
To fix your mandatory assessment problem, are you able to add on a written portion of this test, even if you separate the grade? We have to give this same MC test, but we always add an essay question to the end. You could also incorporate more of Burke’s ideas in the classwork assignments only.
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