Self-Reported Grade, i.e. the Mirror Moment

Self-Reported Grades, i.e. the Mirror Moment by Ralph Lagana

I don’t know too many people who aren't consumers of television shows and movies.

Good or bad, we seem able to find time in our lives to watch a story presented for

us on a screen. And, because of our common appetite for watching stories on screens,

I feel supremely confident you’ll know what I mean when I write about the Mirror

Moment.

The Mirror Moment is what I call the point in a dramatic TV show or movie when a

character must finally take stock of himself. Almost always, this happens before a 

mirror. A rogue cop, a dishonest friend, even a self-deluded killer will at some point

look into a reflecting glass and be forced to “see” himself for who he really is. It’s a

decisive moment in many cases because we learn which path the character has chosen.

That’s the Mirror Moment.

We've seen the Mirror Moment portrayed on screen so many times that it borders on pathetic. What holds it

back from that precipice is that it rarely rings falsely to us. Without becoming too dramatic myself, I’ll merely

note that we've all experienced the Mirror Moment, taken stock of our day, or behaviors, or acts. The Mirror

Moment is a powerful experience as it can quite literally change how you act or think. I sometimes think it’s

what keeps one from running amok.

Knowing that taking a true measure of oneself can be so effective, it would seem to make great sense to

bring that into the classroom in some way. For myself, this means seriously considering if I've done enough by

the end of each week or day. It can even be boiled down to individual periods. Was my lesson this period

effective? This is something most teachers do. Anyone who observes a teacher doing a lesson several times a

day will see it transform rather distinctly from start to finish. I digress…

If holding a mirror to oneself is good for the teacher, could it not also be good for the student? In other

words: Would students benefit from holding the metaphorical mirror to themselves at the end of a class period?

It certainly seems like it should. And, more importantly, there is research to support this.

John Hattie’s book, Visible Learning for Teachers, aims to make plain which visible efforts by schools and

teachers have the greatest impact on students. Hattie has studied research on whether or not homework

has a high, positive, effect on students. Does student choice have a large effect? Peer relations? Home life?

Simulations and Gaming? Disruptive behaviors? And so forth. It’s a long list. One you can review here:

visible-learning. 

Actually, it’s one I highly recommend you examine.

BUT

But, before you do, would you care to guess which visible behavior ranks the highest as having a positive effect

on students and teachers in the classroom? Yeppers, that’d be the Mirror Moment, or as professionals like Hattie

call it: “self-reported grades”.

Of course, educational research is not flawless. It can be and

often is subjective. But, the data Hattie has compiled is compelling,

enough that I’m going to give it a whirl this school year. Below

is an image of a self-reporting grade card, I plan to present to

students. Once a week, if my addled brain can remember to

follow through on this, I will ask my students to stop for 3-4

minutes and reflect on their efforts in my classroom. I’ll ask

them to look into the mirror and decide for themselves if they

were attentive, managed to maintain good effort, and honestly

attempted to complete classwork to the best of their abilities.

Kids are usually pretty honest about these things -sometimes

too honest, scoring themselves lower than I might. We shall see.

We shall also see if Hattie’s data and my years of watching Mirror Moments hold up in the real world.

An Important Element to Long-Term Learning

Flies...

When you or I think of flies, I'm fairly sure it's not exactly a great feeling that washes over you. Next to mosquitoes, they're pretty much incessant-bug number one on a long list of pests we'd rather not know. Flies have that scavenger's air about them -what with their being attracted to foul smells, garbage, and rotting meat. Worse, for those of you who are even more in the know about flies, you may also be knowledgeable about the eating habits of flies. That is: eating by spitting a chemical mass onto the food they hope to consume, then sucking up the gooey sludge their vomited concoction has turned it into.

Okay, I believe I done enough to gross you out to this point; and, while fun, it wasn't my aim. I mean, I believe it's fairly clear to all of us that flies have no redeeming qualities, and that they're best found at the end of a working swatter. And yet...

Before learning the and yet, it would be much appreciated if you took 4 minutes to watch this video about training flies. 

Did you catch the "and yet"? 

If you were paying attention to the video, you now know that something interesting is to be learned from flies. Flies are not too much unlike us. Flies can smell, flies prefer some odors to others, and flies can learn. Maybe not table manners or how to stop their obnoxious, pestering ways, but they can learn.

Flies can learn. I repeat this information because it's about the last thing I'd assume or think of when someone mentions flies. More remarkable is that flies learn best over a period of time, time with breaks set in between. 

Does any of this sound familiar? 

Kids, you, even I, learn best not by cramming the night before a test, but by trying to understand, memorize, and apply things over days and weeks with those all important breaks in between. 

Teachers have know this for a long time. It's why we ask students to fill in multiple study times in their agenda planners. It's why we say at the end of every period the weeks leading up to an exam, "Make sure you study tonight."

The key is to follow through on those marked points of time, the ones that have a break in between them.


Oh, and one side note. Our bees are dying. Hardly news as Sudden Colony Collapse Disorder has been in the news for a few years now. Same with bats. It's a terrible thing as we know many of the foods we buy rely on bees and their ability to pollinate plants to survive. So, here's a thought. Since we know that flies can learn and we know they're attracted to certain smells (regrettable foul smells), can't we create a simple chemical to spray over fields that would attract flies to it? The flies would act as surrogate bees in this way. No? Maybe you just think my idea stinks. Then again, that'd "bee" the whole idea!

An Important Element to Long-Term Learning by Ralph Lagana