by Stacey Britton | May 23, 2019 | Blog: A Creative Person?
I’ve never thought of collecting data for lessons as an act of creativity.
Nor have I thought tallying point for a choice day particularly creative.
More like survival for the best of teachers. Data represents thought, and in this case the thoughts of a growing person. Points represent choices by groups of little people working together toward one goal, choice by choice.
When I began thinking about a teaching career I never thought of these things and how they connect to supporting a child’s social development, stability, trust and encouragement. The tally mark represents so many things in the music room. This I NEVER thought about. Tonight, it is foremost in my mind…
Tonight as I begin to enter a copious amount of data into a district grade recording system, I am reflecting on the power of the tally mark. It’s daily impact on my life and the life of my students. The silent vote system that is one of the basic foundations of VOICE – singing and speaking, predicting and finding solutions, the tally mark is effecting my life tonight and will for several nights ahead. Let’s see, 350 students each student receives 3 music grades, (3×350=1050 grades) each grade represent at least 100 tally entries for each student for Semester one and the same for Semester two .(1050×100=105,000×2=210,000) I’m probably missing a few thousand somewhere!
At least 210,000 tallies! Sometimes just one tally means grading a test (10/20 questions = 1 tally) and if I really wanted to show you my two-2 inch binders full of observations, grades, and so forth I would. But then I haven’t even begun to share about lesson planning, building rubrics, creating power points, exit question forms, check in quizzes AND I have not even spent one moment teaching YET :->. (more, more and more…)
In my wildest dreams I would have not thought that a tally mark was creative, nor in keeping track of all the jots and tittles, the little details, would that help me be a particularly creative, fun teacher. BUT IT HAS and tally, or observing and WRITING DOWN what I have seen has been creative and fun for me. The students look at what other classes decide or vote for, their likes and ‘not so much likes’ 🙂 it begins to build community in all types of ways – the tally – who would have thought that?
Not me! A Creative Person? I never would have thought the tally could be used in so many different ways and for a multitude of purposes.
