Culture Clash
Teachers want a "clean slate"
In the Juneau Borough School District, hundreds of bright-yellow folders bulging with classroom assignments, self-reflections, and teacher assessments tell the stories of children as learners. They're called portfolios, and every Juneau elementary student has one.
Every year, the yellow portfolio follows the child to his next classroom. The child's new teacher can mine the folder for useful information on her new kids. That's the district's intent, anyway. The problem is, most teachers don't look.
Time is a big factor. Portfolios can get lost in the September scramble. But there's a deeper reason. Across the district, from primary grades on up, educators say that an unwritten code in the profession prevents many teachers from delving into the records of students. Here is a sampling of comments:
"I think it's a great idea (to pass the portfolios along). But I don't think we've been real successful in convincing people that it's something to look at. Even before portfolios ever came about here, a lot of teachers would say, 'never look at the cumulative record until the end of the year when I do my own.'"Some teachers say, 'don't unpack the portfolios until I need them.' Sometimes, they think the information is too messy, that they can find it better by going to the (previous) teacher and and saying, 'How well did this kid read?' rather than looking through all that paper. And sometimes the portfolios are poorly done and incomplete."
--Mary Tonkovich
Home-Schooling Specialist
Juneau Borough School District
"Teachers never go to the 'cum' (cumulative) files unless they have a bad kid that they want to know more about. There's something in the culture of teachers. As long as I can remember, teachers have taken pride in saying, 'don't want to know the child's story because I want to judge him where he is.' That's what I hear. I remember saying that as a teacher: 'don't want to hear you tell me Freddie's a bad kid or Freddie's a bad writer. I want to judge Freddie for myself."In my heart, I've been battling with why. Why don't we want to look? I think it's because we're not making the transition yet that the portfolios are developmental, not judgmental."
--Bernie Sorenson
Assessments Coordinator
Juneau Borough School District
"Teachers go to a lot of trouble to fill those (continuums and narratives) out and assess the kids and pass them on. But incoming teachers aren't sitting down and looking at them, saying, 'Oh, this is who this child is. Now I know how to diagnose and prescribe.'"I think in the culture of the profession, the tradition is that you get a new crop of kids and you try to look at them as a clean slate. You don't go back and look at all their records. You take them where they are and you go."
--Gail Parson
Teacher
Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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