Reflection

Goodwin & Hubbell’s 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching: A Checklist for Staying Focused Every Day was created as a “Do-Confirm” checklist to provide an opportunity for educators to pause and check in on the larger concepts that create a successful classroom (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013). Many of the touchstones were simple to incorporate into my work with Ethan Simpson, while others were more difficult due to the nature of our work together.  

 

Throughout this course, I worked on integrating each touchstone into my classroom with Ethan Simpson. We are working together towards the October SAT in a one-on-one online environment. My teaching style is Socratic, which leads to increased engagement and provides the opportunity for constant feedback, formative assessments, a deep focus on standards and mastery, and an adaptive program designed around Ethan’s goals and needs. However, the “standards” that we use are not the same as in a classroom and developing a rubric for mastery of certain skills proved quite tricky. 

 

I created a spreadsheet for Ethan that touches on each of the Touchstones as closely as possible. All the elements of “Be Demanding, Be Supportive, and Be Intentional” are present, although they may look slightly different than in a traditional classroom setting. “No one definition or set of existing dimensions can characterize the complexity of the teaching practice”(De Courcy, 2015), and working one-on-one in an online setting is a prime example of this. Ethan’s spreadsheet (see the Touchstones Applications page” shows summaries of classes. I have a personal version with more intimate information that I used with Ethan separately, which includes information in the “initial conversation” such as what classes he is struggling with, what he did with his family over the past week, how his extracurriculars are going, etc.The “Plan” tab shows the standards we worked on, the individual class goals, and proficiency. The “Growth Tracking” tab suffices for a rubric, and this is an area I will be working on improving for other students. 

 

The difficulty with a rubric for this particular course is that mastery of a skill or subject matter towards the SAT does not simply include content knowledge or application, but on confidence and wisdom for when and how to apply a skill. These are completely personal and independent values that cannot be quantified, but can be assessed through conversation. The frequency of formative assessments, engagement, and constant feedback means that Ethan was able to grow his skills towards applicable mastery in a safe environment regardless of having a quantifiable guide towards his score. Practice tests provide a more quantifiable measure of growth, demonstrating specific percent improvements on content and applied skills. 

 

The framework of the 12 Touchstones did guide me towards identifying specific areas of support in Ethan’s course, and helped me recognize some of the approaches I have been taking. Ethan has successfully increased his practice test score significantly, and I am able to point to some of the touchstones that helped me coach him to that level of improvement. Using this “do-confirm” checklist will certainly help guide my teaching and help remind me to look at these supportive measures in future classes. 

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References

De Courcy, E. (2015). Defining and Measuring Teaching Excellence in Higher Education in the 21st Century. College Quarterly, 18(1).

Goodwin, B., & Hubbell, E. R. (2013). The 12 Touchstones of Good Teaching: A Checklist for Staying Focused Every Day. ASCD.