About me
A former high school principal, vice principal, secondary teacher and instructional coach, I am currently teaching Grade 7 Language Arts and Social Studies at HW Pickup School in Drayton Valley, as well as a casual Alberta Assessment Consortium contract presenter. My career-long passion has been to develop instruction and assessment approaches that better inform students and parents, a focus that began when I returned to teaching high school after learning about outcomes-based assessment in elementary. I was interested to see how outcomes-based assessment would look at the secondary level because I liked how an outcomes-based assessment approach gave a more accurate and detailed breakdown of student learning. From there, I developed a Cognitive-Based Assessment approach and continued to develop my ideas in my master's degree capstone that focused on how grades can interfere with feedback uptake, explored ways to use grade categories to give a more detailed picture of student achievement and challenged the traditional practice of using assessment type (unit exams, assignments, quizzes) as the foundation of grade categories. My newest work is on using scaffolding to design assessments to show where students are at in the learning progression as they strive to master outcomes. My presentations are based both on current research and my own classroom and leadership practice, and I strive to use presentation strategies that I developed as an AAC contract presenter and an AISI instructional coach so participants not only learn new ideas but also experience effective instructional strategies that they can use with their own students. Being passionate about assessment and instructional design doesn’t exactly make me the most popular person at dinner parties, so any chance I get to present and engage with educators who are interested in assessment and learning is fantastic!
