Valda Harris - Vice Principal
Our teachers have always been committed to wise practice with the student at the heart of every decision. Working in collaborative teams with subject area expertise built in, our girls are challenged and engaged in their learning through the exploration of questions that lead to interdisciplinary studies of depth, breadth and interest. Conceptual understanding is the goal. Throughout our last school year our assessment teacher leaders led an ongoing discussion about our assessment practices. Three times a year, percentage and grade based report cards overshadowed powerful narratives carefully written to describe each girl as a learner within that reporting term. We had noticed for years that the weeks leading to report cards were ones in which anxiety in our girls escalated along with all of the behaviours that accompany that anxiety. Girls worked for the mark rather than the learning. Interdisciplinary learning experiences seemed to freeze as we stopped to ensure that a mark could be assigned to the work, temporarily putting inquiry and interdisciplinary exploration back into the silos of disciplines - and often, that which could be assigned marks in this way was assessing lower level learning. It was inauthentic and lacked the congruence of the rest of the programming we were providing. Our marking system was not able to accurately assess that which we truly valued and worked daily to develop: deeper understanding and the ability to transfer that understanding to new situations and other disciplines.
