A summative assessment: an evaluation that measures the summation of learning over time.
It’s teacher talk for the word you hate most from ages 6-18. Test.
I spent a lot of time learning how to teach. I spent 3 years at Illinois State getting my degree, I spent a year abroad teaching and practicing my language skills, I went to numerous teaching conferences every year some in Chicago, some as far as St. Louis and the Twin cities. I spent a month in France doing a teacher‘s study abroad to gain more knowledge for my craft. I sat through countlesss professional development sessions during teacher institute days. I spent hours with mentors having them look over lesson plans or inviting them to my classroom to observe me. I completed two mentorlng programs at two different schools both over a period of two years. And I spent 6 years on the job learning from my mistakes, reflecting and growing, begging, borrowing and stealing any knowledge I could from my wiser more experienced colleagues.
A good portion of those 6 years was spent discussing, creating, implementing and grading summatives. In fact if you ever caught me at a Starbucks on the weekend on my 3rd cup of coffee chances are there was also a half a foot high stack of written summatives sitting in front of me. Some of you reading this blog may still have text messages from me counting off every 10 summatives I graded just to give me motivation to keep going during the testing weeks.
When I left for the World Race I was honestly glad to take a break from grading all the summatives. I was glad to have an opportunity to use my weekends and my nights for something else.
But in month 5 I began to find myself homesick for the classroom. We did amazing things but I missed watching students learn and grow and knowing I was a part of that. I started to miss being in my element. So I prayed to God that He would give me an opportunity to use my gift of teaching on the Race. His answer was almost immediate. Our main ministry this month was teaching English to the students at the Missions college that is here on the compound where we live.
I immediately jumped into teacher mode designing a 3 week unit about what it means to call Jesus a friend, with our goals being to teach the missions students how to evangelize and tell about their friend Jesus in a conversation and how to give their testimony/ personal story of how they became a Christian. We spent time reading stories about when God was a good friend to those in the Bible and pulled out characteristics and descriptions of God as a friend. We played pronunciation games. We role played alot. We taught students to ask and respond to questions getting to know a stranger and then how to transition the conversation to evangelism. We had 4 different levels of students in the classroom all at the same time most days. Some days the schedule would change unexpectedly certain levels would miss class. At one point Buddhist students started showing up from the community to learn from us and we were asked to teach only English and nothing about the Bible. We had to make the hard decision to continue to follow through on what we promised our students we would teach them to do despite the request.
Today was our last day teaching. The day of summatives. I watched our students evangelize to my fellow missionaries in front of the class in the morning and in the afternoon I got to hear every single one of them share their testimonies. Some were long , many of the first year students gave shorter ones – but regardless I got to see how every student had grown to a point where they could get up in front of a church and share their story.
Most of these students here have plans to become missionaries one day and some even plan to go to Missions school in India soon. It’s going to be such a hard month to leave behind. I cried when I got up to thank the students for their courage and boldness with sharing their stories. But I praise God for this day of summatives knowing that when I leave the skills we have taught here will always stay with them and will be used long after I am finished with the Race.
Check out some of these smiles after class.
