better understand your current perspectives around assessment in Syracuse; what you’re seeing, hearing, thinking & feeling Emily instructs the participants, As you complete this exercise, focus on what your experience is now with regard to local assessment in the district, generally She unveils a blank empathy map (on chart paper) divided into 5 sections, portraying what the targeted persona sees, thinks/feels, hears, hopes and is challenged by. She explains that for this activity, you will write your feelings on sticky notes, which you will then stick onto the respective section of the empathy map. She gives people 5 minutes to write on their post-its and another 3 minutes to stick them up on the map. (8 mins) Once the chart is complete, Emily analyzes the empathy map aloud by reading the post-its in each category, then comments that this information about the “current state” of assessment in Syracuse will be very valuable as we all think about how to achieve our goals for this project (7 mins) Emily explains that next we are going to move on to asking you some questions on issues about important upcoming deliverables. After we talk through each of these 3 categories, jot down answers to the questions on post-its and then put them up on the chart under the relevant question #. We will then organize your thoughts into “affinity maps” to see if we are on the same page or have different thoughts about each of these issues. You don’t have to answer every question for every category if you don’t want to ASSESSMENT SURVEY (15 mins) Emily explains that we need to decide the appropriate grain size of assessment to ask about in the survey we plan to send schools in a couple of weeks. Our current proposal says any assessment given by “2 or more teachers,” which will be a huge number, vs. grant requirement speaks to district-supported assessments in the existing inventory) 1. Is it better for teacher teams to focus more deeply on fewer, higher-leverage assessments, or focus more
better understand your current perspectives around assessment in Syracuse; what you’re seeing, hearing, thinking & feeling Emily instructs the participants, As you complete this exercise, focus on what your experience is now with regard to local assessment in the district, generally She unveils a blank empathy map (on chart paper) divided into 5 sections, portraying what the targeted persona sees, thinks/feels, hears, hopes and is challenged by. She explains that for this activity, you will write your feelings on sticky notes, which you will then stick onto the respective section of the empathy map. She gives people 5 minutes to write on their post-its and another 3 minutes to stick them up on the map. (8 mins) Once the chart is complete, Emily analyzes the empathy map aloud by reading the post-its in each category, then comments that this information about the “current state” of assessment in Syracuse will be very valuable as we all think about how to achieve our goals for this project (7 mins) Emily explains that next we are going to move on to asking you some questions on issues about important upcoming deliverables. After we talk through each of these 3 categories, jot down answers to the questions on post-its and then put them up on the chart under the relevant question #. We will then organize your thoughts into “affinity maps” to see if we are on the same page or have different thoughts about each of these issues. You don’t have to answer every question for every category if you don’t want to ASSESSMENT SURVEY (15 mins) Emily explains that we need to decide the appropriate grain size of assessment to ask about in the survey we plan to send schools in a couple of weeks. Our current proposal says any assessment given by “2 or more teachers,” which will be a huge number, vs. grant requirement speaks to district-supported assessments in the existing inventory) 1. Is it better for teacher teams to focus more deeply on fewer, higher-leverage assessments, or focus more
Syracuse-10-17-Strategy-Session-Annotated-Agenda-DRAFT-v6.docx