Blindsided by My Own Argument

I have often talked to other teachers about an interesting phenomenon - that I could tell you a student's final grade within a few percentage points about 1 month into the semester. A student that had a 60% after the first month was likely to submit work on subsequent units that were about the same quality or showed the same level of understanding and would end up with a grade in the neighbourhood of 60%. This was true for students at every level - not just those getting 60%. Other teachers noticed the same thing and agreed that all of the marking and assessing we do is a bit of a waste of time considering we already know where the student is likely to end up in the end.

It occurred to me three days ago that I have been a horrible teacher! I had data suggesting that specific students were struggling, and were likely to continue to struggle and yet I did nothing about it. I continued to teach the same students in the same way - and, brace yourself for the shocker here - they continued to perform at the same level.

I have been involved in an education initiative over the past few years that is all about gathering evidence, adjusting practices, and really focussing on students that we can see early on are likely to fail, seeing what works for them and sharing those practices with other teachers to help them reach the same student and hopefully broaden their success. It took me three years + 1 conversation (that ironically had to do with data we were collecting not being reflective of what we see happening in the regular course) in order for me to open my eyes and see that I was failing my students.