Before I became a teacher, I was a chef. Well, to be exact, I worked as a cook, although one of my job titles actually was "Executive Chef". I had a fledgling catering business, too.
The thing I liked best about cooking was the immediate gratification: you cook something, and there it is. You can see it, taste it, smell it. It sizzles or simmers or snaps or murmurs. It has texture, temperature, and mouth-feel. There were other pluses, too. My biceps were cut from all that lifting, whisking, scooping, and chopping, and there was never any work to take home at the end of the day. After seven years in the kitchen, though, I reached a point in that career where I realized that I either needed a plan, or I needed a change.
Around that time, a guy I’d cooked with at the beach moved to D.C., and he and I decided to open up our own place. We were working with a realtor to find a commercial space, and we had already purchased a 500 pound, six-burner gas range for a hundred bucks and put in my shed. One evening, after an all-day SBA seminar on writing business plans, he dropped me off at home. "I'll call you tomorrow," I said.
"Sounds good," he answered.
I didn't speak to him again for six months— there were no hard feelings, though— we had both just realized that we were not heading in the right direction. By the next time I talked to him, I'd already finished the first semester of a graduate program, on my way to an M.Ed. and teacher certification.
I once read a description of the difference between formative and summative assessment. Formative assessment is when the cook tastes the soup in the kitchen, and summative assessment is when the guests eat the soup in the dining room. That’s a clever comparison, but it’s too easy. The work I do today is nowhere near as tangible as cooking. No matter how much I assess and document and despite all the high-stakes testing, it is impossible to know what the true product of my labor is. Teaching is an act of faith, but I work hard, because I know that whatever the end result of my effort, it will last a lot longer than even the finest meal.
You're right, this is too simple:
ReplyDelete"Formative assessment is when the cook tastes the soup in the kitchen, and summative assessment is when the guests eat the soup in the dining room."
However, I LIKE IT!
I'm right there with you-- it's handy when it comes to understanding the difference. I think about it all the time.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was at that place where the teaching day had been too long and I was tired and tired of not knowing if I was invisible or helpful or useful or if anything I did mattered, my husband quoted to me the line from Man for All Seasons where Paul Scofield rebuts a comment that teaching is so lowly (or something like that). He says that the students and God know what you are doing, and that's not such a bad audience.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I've completely mangled that, but your post was thoughtful and provocative and made me think of that idea--that while so much of what we teachers do IS invisible (although our school's trying like crazy to have "summative assessments"), I can rest at night knowing I've done my level best at doing what I know how. Trite, yep.
But for me, teaching's satisfying even though sometimes it feels too hard.
Okay, it's late. I'm rambling.
Thanks for the post, though.
Elizabeth
http://peninkpaper.blogspot.com/
I've never heard formative and summative assessments described in terms of food, but I got it.
ReplyDelete