7.+Assessment+Interview

I had the opportunity to interview Claudia Jarado. Ms. Jarado is a second year bilingual teacher at El Valor School. She currently teaches 3-5 year old students. This year she has 14 students and of her 14 students, 11 students’ L1 is Spanish and 3 students’ L1 is English. She is not certified yet. She is currently enrolled at program at Columbia University and the city of Chicago is paying her tuition for her to complete her teacher certification. She really enjoys working at El Valor and looks forward to a future there.
 * Assessment Interview**

Based on my interview with Ms. Jarado, she feels that the most stressful part of job is the excessive amount of paperwork she has to complete for assessments. Assessment is an ongoing, daily process for teachers at El Valor. El Valor requires teachers to fill out paperwork on each student and their development daily. The process is lengthy and is usually done during nap time for the children. Children take a two nap each day and sometimes she is barely getting it done in that amount of time. During one of my observation days, Ms. Jarado was not able to take a full lunch due to the amount of paperwork she had to complete.

Ms. Jarado has used two types of assessment tools during of her time at El Valor. Recently, El Valor switched over to a new program designed by Creative Curriculum called Teaching Strategies GOLD. She believes that this tool does provide better data than the old program but she does not believe that it is easier to use than the other program. In the end, she said that it was due to the fact that she was still learning about it. Daily Ms. Jarado is required to input data regarding the students and their progress using this program. When I asked Ms. Jarado what other forms of assessment she used in her classroom, she shared that observations were her primary means for assessment. Differentiation is not optional for Ms. Jarado because her students range in age from 3-5 years old. Sometimes there is an extreme variance between what some of them know and do not know. She has to accommodate those differences. Her only frustration as it related to classroom instruction was that sometimes she does not have enough time to engage all of the students.

When asked about her communication with parents, Ms. Jarado shared that she communicates with parents daily when they drop-off and pick-up their child. She also communicates data with parents through parent-teacher conferences every two months. However, if she suspects a problem with development she would schedule a meeting with the parents as soon as possible. All-in-all, Ms. Jarado feels that they have a very good system for assessment at El Valor. Based on what I have learned in this course, I would agree with Ms. Jarado. Her students are observed within social and academic settings. Taking into consideration that the goal is for her students to learn English, being immerse in an environment that allows opportunities for authentic assessment will allow her students to effectively learn English. Although the daily assessments are time consuming, it is worth the time because it will provide her with accurate data that will help track the progress of students’ development.