Running head: META-REFLECTION ON ED 311/312 1

Final Meta-Reflection

Julia M. Lowe

North Carolina State University

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Final Meta-Reflection

I took ED 311/312: Classroom Assessment for the primary purpose of meeting the

requirement for pre-service teachers and had little knowledge of what the courses would entail. I

understood early on that these courses, unlike most others in my undergraduate studies, gave me

a framework for the processes and decisions that teachers have to make daily. These courses

equipped me with methods for thinking about the big picture of assessment cycles and meeting

standards at the end of each year, instead of individual lessons and assignments in isolation.

These courses, although daunting in material, scope, and wider purpose, have been essential for

cementing my original motivation for wanting to become a teacher: to equip young people with

the literacy skills and tools they need to navigate college, careers, and citizenship, while

providing a safe space to explore the human condition through literature along the way.

In these courses, I learned about the necessity of standards as the backbone of all

planning, instruction, and assessment. Where I once thought I would be designing units and

lessons around texts and writing assignments, I now see that the wider frame of long-term

transferable skills is the best, if not the only way to begin planning for teaching. I also took away

from these courses the many uses for data. I had not considered the depth of numerical data in its

ability to inform instruction in English Language Arts, but practice in data analysis has helped

me ascribe new meanings to numerical grades and learn how to make instructional decisions

based on quantitative patterns of learning. Perhaps the most important thing that I learned (or

received confirmation of) from these courses is that no two classrooms, just like no two students,

are the same. Comparing my experience in my field placement to that of my peers showed me

how much instructional context shifts based on school, instructor, grade level, subject area,
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tracking, and pacing, to name a few factors. This experience also showed me the range of

instructional decisions teachers must make daily for their individual classes and students.

A major emotional theme that I experienced in these courses is independence. I was

extremely intimidated by being let loose to make decisions for my specific content area, and

even after collaborating with my PLT members, I still was not sure if I was planning or designing

instruction correctly. However, this practice, though frightening initially, was reflective of what

the actual daily work of a teacher is like; teaching is very much a practice of learning by doing

and from being on your own. That said, the other most prominent emotional theme that I

experienced is communication. In these courses more than any other, I learned that teachers

function best through collaboration in their professional network. All of the best practices that I

have learned outside of directly observing and working with students has been through hearing

other educators’ anecdotes of successes and failures.

If I could have gained any other knowledge from these courses, I would have liked to

learn about how to incorporate self-reflection in a way that goes beyond the purposes of basic

formative assessment. I see the value in it for students to be critical of their performances and

understandings, but these courses did not specify whether it should factor into data analysis or

grading in a specific way.

In summary, ED 311/312 have had immense practical value in preparing me for my own

classroom. I feel that these courses equipped me with many useful frameworks for thinking

about planning, instruction and assessment. Additionally, my hands-on experiences with

unpacking standards and performing data analysis helped me to develop my critical and

quantitative thinking skills while giving me real-world tools to use in designing assessment.

Perhaps most importantly, these courses provided me with ample methods of self-reflecting that
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will be essential for my future teaching practice, with regards to my use of cycles of assessment

and informing instruction.