(Vol. 1, No. 2 - Spring/Summer 1997)

Louisville Teacher Cadre Profile: Kym Rice

Youthful and slender as a model, math teacher Kym Rice decided that teaching at the high school level was not for her when "a senior asked me to the prom." She found her niche in the middle grades, where the in-between age of the students appealed to her and allowed her to pursue her content interest in science and math.

Rice followed a degree in biology with middle-school certification in math and science, perfectly suited to Newburg Middle School's math/science/technology magnet program. She began as an instructional assistant where she worked with students on open-response questions and other methods of classroom assessment. She learned even more as a member of the school's Transformation Plan Committee, the group that developed a long-range plan for standards-based reform at Newburg.

Now as a teacher cadre member, Rice is still on a learning curve. Her first development session with other cadre teachers left her a little "overwhelmed" by the terminology, but she has worked out, for example, the difference between questions and rubrics ("the former is to find out what they know, the latter tells me how well they interpreted the information").

Rice plans to implement an authentic assessment with a partner teacher, then present the experience and assessment to the whole faculty. She finds the teachers at Newburg "very receptive to using authentic assessments because they know that real-life situations have more meaning for students."

As a KERA "school in decline," Newburg has been working with a Distinguished Educator on open response questions and sharing their perceptions of the quality of student work. The emphasis on authentic assessment complements what teachers are already doing with rubrics and open responses, Rice says.

Standards-based reform and its emphasis upon performance tasks is, in Rice's opinion, good for her students. "They are able to show more of what they know instead of memorizing and spitting facts back at me," she says. "As they get older, they will realize that this is a good way to learn."

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