Abby Cohen, Mackenzie Potter

HDFS 421

Dr. Vallotton

25 November 2017

Interview Of Early Childhood Professionals

Introduction

This assignment features interviews of two early childhood professionals on their use of

assessment in their classroom. Both Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Schmidt, the two professionals

interviewed, are currently working with children younger than 3rd grade. The purpose of this

assignment was to gain a better understanding of how assessment is used in early childhood

classrooms. It gave the interviewer a better understanding of how types of assessment that have

been taught in the classroom can be implemented by a teacher. Likewise, it gave the interviewer

a better understanding of the types of assessments available and other professionals opinions on

these assessments.

Mrs. Graham currently works at the East Lansing Child Development Center in the 24 to

32 month old classroom. Mrs. Graham has twenty-five years of experience in education. This

includes experience with young children, early elementary, and college students. The reason I

chose to interview Mrs. Graham is because she is new to the child development center and so I

thought she could bring new perspective on the assessments they use there. Similarly, Mrs.

Grahams curriculum takes a nature/naturalistic approach to learning which is a strategy I am

also interested in.

Mrs. Schmidt is a Kindergarten teacher at Wilkshire Elementary in Haslett, Michigan.

She has been teaching Kindergarten for more than fifteen years, with an overall background in
teaching of almost thirty years. I chose Mrs. Schmidt to interview because she is my current

mentor teacher for my elementary education classes and she has an incredible amount of

experience working with young children. She has become one of my role models throughout the

semester as she has given me a lot of knowledge about assessments, teaching practices,

classroom management, and how to make connections with students and their families.

Summary of Interviews

1. What types of assessments do you use in your work with young children?
Mrs.Graham: ASQ (screener) for parents, COR advantage, PQA (environment assessment)
Mrs. Schmidt: Formal, informal, summative, national (dibbles)
2. How often do you assess children?
Mrs.Graham: Once a year for the ASQ for monitoring purposes. COR goes by three periods in
one year and is something we do everyday with anecdotes and PQA is twice a year.
Mrs. Schmidt: Progress monitoring happens weekly, formal assessments are done every 6
weeks, and national assessments are done 3 times a year.
3. How do you use the assessment information that you collect?
Mrs.Graham: For COR you look at the children's development and try to move them further
along, but I also allow children to be at their own level. We are always setting goals and trying to
improve. It also changes and tells us what to do for planning and the environment.
Mrs. Schmidt: It drives your instruction, and it drives your planning; it helps you create groups
of children that have intensive/strategic academic needs, and gives you an understanding of who
is at benchmark.

4. How do you share assessment information with parents?

Mrs.Graham: I share them at parent-teacher conferences and before and after school when I see
parents. Also the weekly newsletters share how the learning in the classroom is connected to
assessment.
Mrs. Schmidt: We have conferences two times a year. With children who are not at benchmark
we share weekly progress monitoring assessments with parents. We are in biweekly contract
with parents who have children in intensive and strategic academic needs.
5. Do you use any technology in your assessment process? If so, how?
Mrs.Graham: COR is an online assessment tool. Sometimes I will use the ipad for videoing both
my students and the college students for assessment purposes.
Mrs. Schmidt: We did a sample on MStep for Kindergarten. As of now, we wont do it at the
beginning of the year but we may be asked to do it at the end of the year. Assessment tools are
given to you by your administration, so it usually depends on what they want you to use.
6. Are you ever assessed as a professional? If so, how and how often? What kind of
feedback do you get?
Mrs.Graham: PQA assesses me when there is an assessment done. I also will meet with the
director about how I am doing and what I need to work on.
Mrs. Schmidt: We are assessed if our children are meeting benchmark, and also everything as a
professional; classroom instruction, outside of classroom professionalism, we have to make so
many hours/attend a certain amount of professional development. We use the Charlotte
Danielson framework for the four domains of what we are assessed as professionals.
7. What are the biggest challenges you have faced in using assessments?
Mrs.Graham: Time. And when I was younger, like you are, presenting challenging information
to parents.
Mrs. Schmidt: The time you have to give the assessments, the number of assessments, and the
type of assessment (one-on-one is so hard with 23 students). So much of your instruction has to
be taken away when you have to do assessments.
Additional Questions:
8. In terms of assessment, how are you differentiated from other professionals? I.e. how do
you individualize assessment unique to your own personal beliefs?
Mrs. Graham: I always bring a notebook when I am around children because you never know
when you are going to need to document something. I believe in not testing children and instead
playing, watching to monitor their development.
Mrs. Schmidt: I like doing trifold and portfolio assessments but here, they dont care if you do it
or not. I believe these types of assessments are really important and should be done, so I do them
anyways because theyre valuable to my teaching. However, some of the other assessments I
have to do just show a score, but it doesnt reflect what the children in my class can actually do.
If I didnt have to do the assessments I was given, I would change them because a lot of them are
difficult for children to do and difficult for me to administer.
9. What are your own personal attitudes and beliefs about the assessment of children?
Mrs. Graham: I believe in anecdotes and individualization
Mrs. Schmidt: Formal assessments are necessary, but its difficult for children who can do it but
cant do it fast enough. Soon enough, children have to do timed math tests and many children
need more time than what they are given. Sometimes its best to do individual assessment with
some children and whole-group with others who can focus more. Whole-group assessment helps
for me to figure out where I need to re-assess individually for specific children. For some
children, you can tell from their scores that something else was going on during the time I
assessed them, which may have resulted in a different score.
10. If you could choose any type of assessment to use what would it be and why?
Mrs. Graham: Anecdotes and portfolios, if they are done in an authentic, individualized way.
Mrs. Schmidt: My trifold assessments and portfolio assessments are the most helpful because
they help explain to parents what growth has occurred in their children. This has helped to show
me how my students have grown but it also shows the parents how much their children have
learned and grown.

Analyzing the Responses

After reading through the summaries of the two interviews, there are many similarities

between Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Schmidts responses. For example, both professionals mention

in the second question that certain assessments are for monitoring progress of the children, which

happen more frequently than other assessments. While the assessments done may be different,

they each fit into a specific type (formative, summative, etc.) that dictates how often they are

administered. Additionally, the third question that asks about how the professionals use the

information found in assessments fostered answers quite similar to each other. Mrs. Schmidt

explains how these results help her to find where students are at, how she can improve her
instruction, and where students may need additional support. Mrs. Graham also mentioned how

assessments such as COR help to find out where children are at and how she can further structure

the environment to support further development of skills. Both professionals answers also seem

to agree when it came to their biggest challenges being the time given to complete assessments.

While it may not be surprising to many that teachers are given very minimal time to complete

assessments with their students, it was actually surprising that an early childhood professional

would say the same for her practices. This was a learnable moment when noting the similarities

and differences between the answers as it broke the assumption that early child care centers have

more leniency with time for assessments. While these two professionals happen to share a lot of

common information about assessment, they each gave some differing responses as well. For

example, while Mrs. Graham has used online tools frequently for assessing children, Mrs.

Schmidt notes that she does not see much technology incorporated into assessments at this grade

level. This may be because of the lack of accessibility to technology when assessing an entire

class of students, whereas in Mrs. Grahams room she is often focusing on individualized

assessments and this may warrant more opportunities for technology to be present. Additionally,

when we asked each professional one of our own written questions about individualizing

assessments to cater to their own beliefs/teaching, Mrs. Graham noted that she prefers to observe

and take notes of things children do rather than test them. While Mrs. Schmidts response is

similar to this, she also notes that her administration does not care whether she does portfolios

for each student. While she finds it valuable, her school does not enforce this type of assessment,

so she does it mainly because she feels it will benefit the child, the parents, and her own teaching

to see where there are still areas for growth. Overall, Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Schmidt gave very

similar responses to our questions, which leads us to believe that their beliefs and opinions of
assessments come from their strong backgrounds in teaching young children and the decades of

experience they have in the field. Comparing and contrasting their answers side by side has

helped us to see where the age differences and environment differences may change their

answers or where one type of assessment may be more prominent.

Reflection

As mentioned above, it was surprising to see how many of the responses we received

from each professional ended up being very similar. While Mrs. Graham is currently the head

teacher of a 24-32 month classroom and Mrs. Schmidt is a Kindergarten teacher, they each

shared similar beliefs, experiences, and facts about their knowledge of assessment. Ms. Potter

was surprised by the cohesion of what assessments to use and how theyre used by the teachers

at the CDL. She was thinking that Mrs. Graham would have more of a differentiated view about

assessment since she has just started working at the CDL, but she seemed to have the same view

of what assessment is her favorite as the other teachers who have been working there for a while.

This tells Ms. Potter a lot about how the people and environment around you influence your

work style, which is important for future endeavours as a teacher in terms of how she wants her

classroom to operate. Additionally, both of us were surprised to see the difference between

assessments done on Mrs. Schmidt by her superiors versus Mrs. Grahams experiences. It seems

that Mrs. Schmidt is assessed more formally for her ability to get her students at benchmark, as

well as for her professionalism as a teacher. Ms. Cohen was expecting assessments to be similar

in this aspect, so it was interesting to see the large difference between these settings and how it

affects the way these professionals are assessed. The assessments done on Mrs. Graham seem to

be more informal, while the assessments done on Mrs. Schmidt are more formal and happen

more frequently as she is responsible for evaluating students growth throughout the year to see
if they will be ready to move to the next grade. Having the opportunity to interview two early

childhood professionals who have extensive experience in their fields was helpful in building our

understanding of the benefits and challenges when working with assessments. As we decide what

age we would like to teach and what setting we will be teaching in, we can refer back to these

important conversations to remind ourselves of what will be expected of us and how we can best

accommodate for the assessments that will be done on us and our students.