Responding to this interchange, Annette offered her perspective: “I
felt a lot like Liz, that a lot of valuable time was wasted because we didn’t
know the identity of the child, because we were almost making up reasons
for things that would be completely simplified if we just knew who it was.
And yet, especially when I was choosing some of the other work, I was
really glad that people wouldn’t know who the child was because I really
wanted to hear a real reaction to the writing and not to the personality of
the child. I don’t even know how to explain why, but some of the selec-
tions I picked, if people knew who the writer was, there would be a strong
reaction because the children’s personalities are so strong. But I think
there are some really interesting pieces of writing there just to respond
to. And it really does provide more objectivity and insight.”
Withholding Judgments
In collaborative assessment conferences, teachers are asked explicitly
to keep their opinions of the work to themselves. The structure leaves
essentially no room for statements about personal taste (likes and dislikes),
judgments of quality (“This was really good!”), or judgments about devel-
opmental level (“This is excellent for a kindergartner!”). As facilitator, I
often chose to allow some judgmental statements, especially in the first
conferences. I simply didn’t want to cut people off as they did what is
habitual: make quick judgments. As participants came to see reasons for
withholding judgments in these conferences, I became more diligent in
stopping people when they made judgmental comments.
This practice is wholly different from scoring sessions in which pieces
or collections of student work are judged in relation to a set of criteria by
teams of independent readers. True, scorings by independent readers are
also largely decontextualized, although the prompt, or assignment, is
known to the scorer. Little information may be provided about the writer
or the circumstance of the writing, but the purpose and premise of the
reading are entirely different from the collaborative assessment confer-
ences. In scoring sessions, readers are making judgments immediately
and, in most cases, without benefit of conversation with other readers.
They usually can, but are not required to, provide evidence from the texts
for their judgments.
250 Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind