Slice of Life: Surfing the Edge of the Data Flow

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

I sat through a staff session yesterday at our school, where our school psychologist walked us through the use of new intervention assessment tool we will be piloting this year. All students will take the assessment and then we as teaching teams will analyze the data. It’s not quite Response to Intervention but we’re moving in that direction.

Good data, as we know, is valuable. Too much data, we know too, is overwhelming and worthless. I’m not making any insights into this new system. It looks fine and well-designed and likely will be useful for me as a classroom teacher. The sample reports bored down from grade overview, to class overview, to student overview, to skill overview. There’s a lot there.

I am, however, always worrying about losing students as people into the flow of data analysis. Schools are awash in data. We get reams of it from our state testing (a school year later after the assessment, which is not always too helpful) and from our trimester reading assessments (which take a lot of time to conduct but give me valuable insights). Add to that the regular classroom assessments, and soon it feels as if it is an avalanche we are surfing.

I remind myself to … breathe. And then to take each bit of data that is useful and, well, use it as best as I can. If not for intervention groups, then for classroom instruction and for writing workshop and for all the times I interact with individual students.

Otherwise, we are awash in noise.


Look What I Did – Fade to Daft flickr photo by hellocatfood shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license

I remind myself, also, to remember: students are not data point, not now nor ever. They are young people, with strengths and weaknesses, some of which might be uncovered by data and some of which might be discovered through human interactions. They are complicated people with lives outside of school.

Just like us.

Peace (01100001 01101110 01100100 0010000001101100 01101111 01110110 01100101),

Kevin

PS — https://www.binarytranslator.com/

16 Comments
  1. Thanks, Kevin, for this very important reminder. Big, big truth here.

    “Good data, as we know, is valuable. Too much data, we know too, is overwhelming and worthless.”

    students are not data point, not now nor ever. They are young people, with strengths and weaknesses, some of which might be uncovered by data and some of which might be discovered through human interactions. They are complicated people with lives outside of school.

    Just like us.

  2. This is one quite I need to hang on to: “I remind myself, also, to remember: students are not data point, not now nor ever. ” Thanks for your wise words this morning.

  3. We treat data as objective information, when assessment is a snapshot affected by our very human nature. Just like picture-taking–in a series, one can be a great framed shot while the next cuts someone’s head out of the frame. As a special education teacher, I was always careful to read the assessor’s notes on the student demeanor and behavior while being tested.

    Thanks for addressing the overwhelming nature of data, as well. We were just bemoaning the fact that teachers’ time seems to be spent more on assessment, leaving less for actual teaching.

  4. So true. I’ve been teaching for many years and it wasn’t until I had a daughter that I realized I’d been conditioned to see students as readers and writers while neglecting other aspects of their personalities. The onslaught of data and pressure tends to do that to a teacher.

    • That can be true, and it depends on the place you teach, too. My school is not driven by data, although we are doing more to gather more data, and I appreciate that our principal is someone who emphasizes the human interactions as most important.

  5. Good thing you are more than the data that’s thrown at you. You love to learn and take your students and us on lots of creative adventures.

    Thank you, breather…

    Bonnie

  6. Amen to all this, Kevin. The data might tell me a number of things about my students that I don’t yet know. Yet as we gather more and more data, I wonder what impact this may have on our curiosity about our students past and present. Because the collection of particular kinds of (numerical) data warrants a particular kind of questioning, I worry that we can become trained to only ask those kinds of questions and lose a feel for how the stories our students and their families tell can offer us whole worlds of understanding that will never show up through a series of questionnaire responses.

    • It’s all the balance, I suppose. From an administrator’s point (and our principal is moving us in a direction we need to move), data helps teams make decisions but can potentially dehumanize the situation. That’s different from the classroom experience, us teachers, seeing the students in front of us, and how they react to different situations and tasks.

  7. Huh. Maybe this will have some value. Seems more important to put some clear actions in place so if you have a concern about a kid, you can do something tangible. In any case, you’ll just keep paying attention to your kids and their writing. Especially that.

    • Yes, Karen, and action now requires hard data, more and more, particularly as resources get strained. But the human interaction remains a key component to identifying those who need more support.

  8. Universal truths from second paragraph are sticking with me, aspirationally: Just enough good data is what I’ll try to gather and respond to. Thanks for your thoughts.

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