Roskelly - An Assuring Work

I was inspired by the Roskelly article because it touched upon a subject I am quite passionate about. While I sat reading it, I did not feel like I was necessarily reading anything new though. I was reading points and assertions that I had already known, that I had already developed on my own, and instead was being assured that my thoughts were sane.

I will most likely end up using this article as a secondary source for my thesis (which I hope will be about collaboration in the classroom and in the institution). There are so many intricacies of this idea that can be thought up, that already exist but need to be developed, or that are unfortunately non-existent that need to be introduced. I have already written an entire outline (obvi not finished - nor will it be ever finished) that includes student collab, teacher collab, student-teacher collab, lesson plans, digital/multimodal sources for encouraging collab, and that's only the beginning.

What I like about Roskelly's thoughts is that she takes specific examples in the class to show how competition is encouraged over collaboration. Though most would argue it is in an attempt to prevent cheating, her description of students being encouraged to cover their papers while taking tests rung a bell for me. It brought me back to high school when I was a "bad" student. I say this because I ultimately cheated my way through high school math and can't say I never cheated in any other class either. One day in US history (a class I absolutely loved, got an A and usually did not cheat in) I hadn't had the time to study for an exam so I wrote the answers on my desk and placed the question portion of the test over it, lifting up the paper every time I needed an answer. The teacher came over to me, lifted up the paper I was covering the test answers with (meanwhile my heart palpitating thinking I was done for), put the paper over my scantron, smiled and said "Make sure to cover your answers." In this instance, the teacher was far more worried about other people cheating off me - the good student, the student who loved the subject, the student who always got As - rather than seeing what was right before her nose. Irony... (I've been told people use the would "ironic" incorrectly and I hope I'm not one of those people though I understand I may very well be).

Lastly, I enjoyed the way Roskelly gave examples of how to encourage, maintain, control (gross word) collaboration in the classroom for teachers. Very helpful. I dig it.