I love that you guys feel comfortable enough here to ask for what you want. A comment came in from a reader:
Hi Kelly,
I just had an idea. I'm wondering what you think of setting up an open summer "forum-like thread" on your blog . People could discuss whatever they like, including PBLA (let's face it, probably PBLA). Just a summer miscellany. I see it as a place that would be easy to find (no need to search through all the other topics and posts to see what people have to say). What do you think?
Interested in what people are thinking/experiencing/discovering about PBLA
That's easy enough! Feel free, everyone, to pull up a Muskoka chair and share what's on your mind lately.
PBLA isn't working in London.
ReplyDeleteI dread returning to work. I dread what will be implemented this year. PBLA is a BIG LIE.
But my life is perfect.
PBLA is fraught with convoluted distortions of fact.
Lovely photo...take me away! Thanks, Kelly. I hope you’re enjoying your summer.
ReplyDelete-Nellie
Photo courtesy of Basil Thomas via Unsplash. My two Muskoka chairs face a canal. Good enough for me! K
DeletePBLA work requirements = burn out and depression
ReplyDeleteThank you IRCC, and CCLB for creating a situation where I have now been diagnosed as both burnt out and depressed. And I have to return to work because I can't afford to quit.
IRCC and CCLB are evil.
5:39 a.m.,
DeleteI’m so sorry you’re going through this. What’s happening where you work? Are they providing any supports? Thankfully where I work, teachers are being given lots of freedom to implement PBLA. I’ve seen tons of variation. Lots of people are including any exercise they do in class (as long as it’s communicative) as an artefact. So if they do a listening exercise, that’s included. You’re probably already doing that. Whatever it takes to survive this!
-Nellie
Ok everyone....here's a question...I work at two different schools. One requires 5 'artefacts' (I find it ironic that esl instructors are expected to use a non-existent word) to advance a student's benchmark. Student can have four and be supported by one skill using and anecdotal evidence. The other school requires eight achieved ATs. Students are held back if they are short one. Also, students must have all four benchmarks at a minimum of the entry level clb to move on to the next level class. For example, they must have all 2s to progress to the clb 3 level class. In the meantime, one school prohibits a mark on a skill using task while the other requires a pass or 'not yet' without an assessment tool. So, what is it? The first school bases this on the revised pbla guidelines which state there should be 8-10 artifacts of equal ATs and SUs which would allow for 4 successful ATs to allow for advancement. So much for consistency. Do any of you know definitively? I almost got my head cut off when I said that we shouldn't have a pass or fail or score on a skill-using based on the guidelines.
ReplyDeleteSounds to me like the second school is being run by an officious moron. Sorry, not sorry.
DeleteI don't believe in any of this, but at least in the newest iteration of the guidelines they emphasize that teacher's professional judgment is to be honoured. Where I work we are trying to adhere as much to common sense as possible while doing what's best for students, as well. In light of these considerations, and following the new guidelines, a teacher must give his/her class the *opportunity* to collect 8 artifacts per skill per semester, and a student who does not have 8 per skill does not have enough for a benchmark change decision, but that has nothing to do with which class they sit in. We keep those two concepts separate. If it's in the best interest of a student to move and continue collecting artifacts under a different teacher, then so be it. We just can't change the benchmarks in the database yet.
Now comes the question of whether every single one of those 8 per skill must be passed. When I think back on my hours and hours of training I've been through over the past four years of PBLA and what it says in the new guidelines, I believe your first school is closer to getting it right. We were always trained that later performance should be weighted more than performance early in the term. And yes, add the odd anecdotal artifact into the mix. If a literacy student can text me to let me know why she's absent, I document that for her portfolio.
I still think it's terribly unfair that everything hinges on not missing one out of 32 pieces of paper, which is why we go ahead and move warm bodies to the next room even when one or two artifacts might be missing. The student simply continues to collect toward 8 per skill in the next class. BUT this could get very dicey if that person is right on the cusp of magic level 4 at which citizenship can be applied for. We need to respect these people's time. For reasons such as that, I am grateful that at least at my SPO we have a teaching assistant who is happy to take a student into the hall for a makeup test or artifact or task or whatever you choose to call these things that are neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring. The government says our clients must possess them, so we do our best. Some of us do our best to cover our asses, and our students' artifacts may or may not be a valid reflection of real learning. Some students openly cheat and exhausted teachers look the other way. Some teachers understand the folly of the entire premise and make sure the deserving students get whatever papers into the damned binders that need to be there.
In any case, the second scenario you describe strikes me as the worst case scenario: cherry picking only some of the guidelines so that the result is the perverse twisting of an already bad protocol into an absurd nightmare for both teacher and student. --KM
Thanks Kelly. I appreciate it because I thought I was losing my mind. And what about the skill using, do you give it a pass or not with action-oriented feedback and enter the result on inventory?
ReplyDeleteBTW: it's me. ..comic tragedy again.😉 Hope your having a great summer. Weather's beautiful out here.
Hi, Comic Tragedy! Yes, we count a certain number of skill-using activities toward that 8 per skill, but the ratio we aim for is to have no more than 40% of the total skill-using. So at least 60% of the artifacts are RWTs. But... the NEW guidelines state that we no longer have to attach a marking tool to receptive tasks. That just cut our marking in half! Woohoo!!! I still provide Ss with a self-assessment tool for the receptive skills. Right at this moment I can't remember if skill-building items require action-oriented feedback, rubric, etc. Just about the time I finally get everything straight in my mind, they change it or my department re-interprets it a different way, or I go on summer break and forget it all again. But it's all here in the new guidelines - https://pblapg.language.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/PBLA-Practice-Guidelines-2019_978-1-897100-78-3-RA.pdf
DeleteOkay, Comic Tragedy, I found it on page 21. No formal assessment tool is required for the skill using tasks. No rating either. Criteria can be shared on the paper or on the board, Ss may copy that down. So that just eliminated another 40% of my marking. Now we're getting somewhere. --KM
ReplyDeleteStudents definitely don't need 8 *achieved* artefacts to achieve the benchmark. They need to be successful at 70% of the indicators, NOT 100%! I feel for students caught up in this. What a mess! Imagine the pressure of needing to achieve 100% of assessments. That's awful.
ReplyDelete-Nellie
Better tell London this.
DeletePBLA is a mess there. Still. I don't blame the regional coaches. I think it is a local problem. Maybe they actually need to read the 2019 Guidelines.
To be fair, I think everyone involved is in a difficult position.service providers and lead teachers being pulled in all directions. This whole thing has been confusing and subject to interpretation. The lead teachers at both schools I work at are supportive and approachable. I do believe the disconnect between decision making beaurocrats and the rest of us is the problem.
DeleteAnonymous8/09/2019 12:11 PM
DeleteInteresting that you would identify the lead teachers as being the problem.
Couldn't it be said that PBLA is a disaster at the get go rather than it being a staff issue? But really, the new guidelines indicate a way to make things better. It is a people issue. The issue being that the classroom teacher is not respected. This is deplorable.
Newcomers, learners, students don't give a hoot about the so called (invalid, fabricated never evidenced, nonsensical "benchmarks". The whole shebang is deplorable.
ReplyDeleteCLB, PBLA - we are all down the rabbit hole...
So much harm. So much lying and cheating. NO POSITIVES. We are caught in a monumental government (IRCC) misstep. I promised myself two months if "away". to get perspective. The perspective I have is that this is a much more serious error than we imagined. Blame? Plenty to go round. Complicit, obvious, through commission and omission.
I am waiting for the hour of reckoning.
It's the CCLB that has shaped this thing. They are the ones who are dumping all of this on teachers. Curriculum design and development, assessment development, impossible assessment numbers...what were they thinking?
ReplyDeleteRegional coaches don't have any power. They're just the middle women/men. And they have a clear conflict of interest. They are told they must be "champions" of PBLA (as are hapless lead teachers). There is never a hint of unbiased reflection or evaluation of the program from them. In fact, they circle the wagons as soon as anyone suggests anything is not well in PBLA Land. It's like some kind of cult.
They're going to keep selling it because otherwise they'd lose their lucrative side hustles. I am very rarely so cynical, and have fought thinking about it that way for a long time, but can't see any other conclusions to come to here. All roads lead to Rome.
-Nellie
I agree. It's very cult like. Okay, it's not the lead teachers' 'fault', but I look at it this way. If someone asked me to sell and promote a product that was harmful to people's health, I would absolutely say no. PBLA is not just unpalatable and distasteful, it is destructive, harmful, costly and outrageously offensive to ESL teachers.
ReplyDelete10:34:
DeleteWell, why are you still in the job if it’s harmful to your health? Your participation as a teacher keeps this going, too, you know. You are not a helpless innocent. You’re making choices, too.
I can only speak for myself, but I stay in the Lead role because it gives me a means to MITIGATE harm for both teachers and students and ADVOCATE for change. I definitely don’t sell or promote PBLA as it is in its current form and all my colleagues know this.
Why are people turning on each other? It’s sad to see this happening in our profession.
—Nellie
Nellie,
DeleteYou have played your hand when you questioned why someone was still working and suggesting that the hapless teacher was keeping PBLA going by keeping their job. I believe that you speak for your intent...to help. There has been no help where I work. Southern Ontario is a terrible place to teach PBLA. The acrobats are turning somersaults in the LEAD Lounge as it is called (yes, they have their own room wherein they sit all day and create RWTs without teaching a class and admin is complicit in thinking this really is PBLA. I wonder if any of them have stopped to read the 2019 guidelines. I think all leads need to teach; and I meal all lead instructors as here lead instructors don't have classes assigned. This is a problem. Who is championing a solution for this ridiculous situation.
Our leads are actual champions of PBLA (what a poor choice of word for something that is such an abysmal failure) as you said you (a lead) are supposed to be. They are like super spies infiltrating our staffroom. Some people don't do well when given a title and power. I haven't heard of any schools where leads try to mitigate harm but that sounds like a good diplomatic way to be. But why do we even need lead teachers? It would be cool if leads could all take on a new secret role wherein they pretend to be championing PBLA and doing binder control, but in fact they let teachers (as you suggest happens at your school) toss any old exercise into the binders and call it an artefact, effectively tossing PBLA out the window which is where it should be. Then they could just teach as they would have done pre PBLA. Boy. We must look like such idiots to our students. Hard to say which is worse - the teacher who tries to follow PBLA diligently and nit picks and doesn't allow students to move until they've filled their binders to bursting or the teacher who tosses in exercises to allow students to fill up the binders "Here throw this in! once your binder is full you can move to the next level!" Why are we filling up binders instead of teaching?
ReplyDeletePS I am still in the job because I need the money and it's the only job I've been doing for over 20 years now. I don't love it anymore. I like my students a lot though. I feel like a benevolent prison guard who sees the prisoners as real people and who knows just what to do to make them succeed and become better people, but is forced , within the confines of the institution , to follow stupid rules and go against his nature in order to keep his job. There's that prison reference again. Cool hand Luke? "What we've got here is failure to communicate!"
Just to clarify—what some instructors are adding to binders is communicative, (as I said) so it qualifies as a skill-using activity and portfolio artefact. Teachers are *not* adding skill-building items to binders. SU activities do help to ease the assessment number pressure, thank goodness.
Delete—Nellie
I despise the “championing” language. If PBLA is so fabulous, it should be able to stand on its own. The benefits should be clearly and quickly visible to teachers and students. It shouldn’t need “champions” to sell it. Cult-like tactics.
Delete—Nellie
Where I work one of the leads decided to quit teaching (gave up her classes) to be a full time lead because teaching with PBLA was so much harder to do than 'lead' the poor teachers while they are forced to do PBLA which said teacher did not want to do anymore ! How's that for madness?
ReplyDeleteSo a leader of a group who doesn't believe in the work and is not dedicated enough to do themselves. Sounds like we work in the same place.
DeleteIt certainly has the characteristics of a cult. Sure feels like it.
ReplyDeletePBLA has done the same thing to ESL:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/opinion/sunday/childhood-suicide-depression-anxiety.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
PBLA is terrible but it is the service providers who twist and turn to trouble their employees that make it worse. Oh, and the PBLA leads who took "power" to the level of torture...working on that here. Undoing the damage is taking time. One down, three more to go. Three more steps and it should be better.
Delete5:38 am,
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by “One down, three more to go. Three more steps and it should be better.”
Four considerable changes needed to be made. One has been made. Three more changes to go.
DeleteIf we guess the other three correctly, will you tell us? I think one necessary change is to make the portfolios TRUE portfolios: students choose which work goes into it. Also, do away with the train-the-trainer model. Hmmm, what else? Start PBLA at level 1 or 2. No assessments for literacy level. Oh, and reimburse us all for the hours and hours and hours of unpaid labour we’ve already been forced to contribute because this was rolled out half-baked.
DeleteChanges I’d like to be made:
ReplyDelete1. Re-imbursement for all past unpaid labour
2. Equal pay for equal work - there is at least a $50 wage gap between some LINC providers—I’ve seen anywhere from $18 to $74 per contact hour
3. Full curricular support - new PBLA & CLB aligned curriculum, CLB-aligned skill-building activities, full assessments for EVERY level, EVERY theme and common topics (settlement needs don’t change that much over the years)
Or the choice could be made to simply really respect teachers, their years/decades of experience, their expertise and the fact that they know their students best and just let them do their job. Maybe we could just get out of their way?
—Nellie
anonymous 8/19/2019 12:29 PM is teasing us and leaving us in suspense with her (his?) list of changes. I almost forgot to add 'his' because I don't think PBLA would fly with a mainly male staff. We're just not fighting hard enough and are used to taking crap as ESL teachers, and I do think it's relevant that we are mostly women.But that's another can of worms. re: suggestions by Nellie - I agree with 1 and 2 but the acronym PBLA almost makes me feel physically ill. I would do away with PBLA completely. My 3 more to go - wait, which change has been made? The revamping of and ever so slight loosening of the PBLA rules? I have four changes I would like to see. 1. Do away with PBLA in its entirety and that includes getting rid of all the binders and crap that goes in them, doing away with lead teachers, no more stupid pretend or otherwise assessments , leave teachers alone to do their jobs because most of us are very good at teaching ESL, and go back to the usual supervision (e.g. if you're an hour late for work or fail to show up for work or get caught drinking or smoking a joint with a student in your classroom etc.) 2. Make sure PBLA is gone forever. Nooooo sneaking binders back in! 3. Visits to every school from whoever is ultimately responsible for this mess with verbal apologies, and maybe a hug or two. Periodic checking in to make sure nobody is using it anymore because of the damage it has done to both teachers and students and 4. Reward us, after apologizing, with um, let me see - a paid vacation like a trip for two to our destination of choice, a paid dinner out for the entire staff, a new and improved work environment kind of like Google's with onsite gyms and massages, delicious free food, and the installation of those super cool decompression capsules Google has. You know, the pods the employees sleep in to decompress? A gym with fun things to do between classes or on our lunch hours would be an added benefit. Do you think anyone is reading this or listening to me?
ReplyDeleteI am:
Deleteanonymous 8/19/2019 12:29 PM
because the change that happened was a personnel change I can't elaborate
lol - Anon 8/20/2019 10.38 AM.I read, I listened.I smiled. I sighed.
ReplyDeleteThe PBLA acronym gives me the sweats, makes me nauseous, gives me knots in my stomach, raises my blood pressure. When will the farce end?
I’ve just come back from NYC. My son in law is taking ESL classes. No portfolios. No fabricated jargon: “Real World Tasks”, “Skills Inventories”. Skill using. Skill Building. Reflections. Not even “Goal Setting”. There’s a curriculum. A syllabus. Working towards (gasp) summative tests. Not perfect. But logical.
He’s doing well. Writing. Functioning. Improving. (OK, I helped a bit with Spanish to English pronunciation issues.)
Scrap this ghastly costly unintelligent illogical failed experiment - the IRCC “panCanadian” “Portfolio Based Language Assessment” mandated protocol. It is worse than nothing. It is unfair, discriminatory, and the worst, a CON.
Unlike you, Anon, I want more than compensation. I don’t need pampering. I need to have respect for and trust in my leaders(political) and in those that are called civil servants (who serve US) and I need respect for my ESL professional leadership and decision makers. At this moment I do not have either trust nor respect. Especially for those in leadership positions who privately criticise, but publicly are silent.
I do not trust the “expertise” of anyone involved in creating and promoting “PBLA”.
They do not know what they are doing. Years ago I said “PBLA is like amateur night at the Roxy”. And that is our problem.
I want those who failed in their responsibilities as MPs, policy analysts, integration managers and specialists, education “managers”, ESL professionals (YOU know who you are - and so do I/we) to be reprimanded and fired. (OK - you can’t fire MPs - but there IS an election round the corner). They have no business being rewarded for this monumental failure. That includes CCLB people.
I hoped that the CLBs would be valid, true, useful, workable, intuitive, userfriendly. They aren’t.
Let us face reality.
There's no way to make this work.
From the gitgo it was irreparably flawed and damaged.
It needs to be shelved.
The whole system needs to be dismantled.
Maybe LINC needs to be suspended until somehow this can be worked out (yes, that’s my job too. And I need it. But prolonging the agony is not productive).
My only source of relief?
There’s a Twitter hashtag:
PBLA - Pool Boys Los Angeles.
To relieve tension I imagine some of the culprits in Speedos.
Sent from my iPad
I agree 100% Claudie. I'm anon 10:38 again. PS I don't really want a massage but I would settle for the way things used to be. Speedos is a good start. Heads need to roll.
ReplyDeleteComic tragedy here again. Since my organisation forbade me from teaching because I wouldn't sign a contract with one of many amendments being that we 'waive our common-law rights', I have discovered that more service providers have snuck it in with more cunning wording so that people don't realise they are actually agreeing to it. I have to wonder if they all decided to make this change together in order to avoid legal obligations to instructors when they let them go or reduce their hours on short notice due to budget cuts. If it is a collective agreement, that is even more horrific. I would urge you to check your contracts as I find it unlikely that it is a coincidence. Compare all your contracts. You'll find these changes under the termination clause.it is a highly important change which is extremely unfair.
ReplyDeleteComic tragedy.
What would you say about PBLA if had the ear of the Premier of your province?
ReplyDeleteI will have a chance to get information to the Premier of the province of....this weekend. Please let's make this a good info sharing session. What changes do you want?
I would like to see PBLA scrapped. I don't know how it could possibly work. It's a random mess, requires far too much [unpaid] work on the part of the instructors, does not help the learners in any way shape or form and stresses them out unnecessarily when they are already stressed, it is based on the idea of constant assessments and filing and creation of 'tasks' which have no consistency from teacher to teacher or program to program. Everything that it was meant to do or be has massively backfired. I do not see it as salvageable. I've been teaching ESL 30 years. Also, binders are outdated and absurd.
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely. Whoever is headed to see the premier should take along Yuliya Desyatova's publications that have resulted from her research, should take Kyle Lachini's petition, and should point out that the latter recommends we stop PBLA and the former concludes with a recommendation of a moratorium on PBLA until more research can be conducted. We should not be using refugees and immigrants as guinea pigs in this train-wreck of a pedagogical experiment that is, as you say, backfiring royally. In almost every one of its intentions, results are often the opposite.
DeleteHello dear colleagues, I hope you dont mind but I'm taking the liberty of asking for some ideas. The theme/needs assessment in my program has canada as a separate theme. To my mind, Canada is the on-going theme. Do you have any ideas for a clb 4 module? Help!!!!I'm struggling vwith narrowing it down and coming up for ideas for assessments.Need to submit before starting. Comic tragedy.
ReplyDeleteYes, Canada is a separate theme and encompasses Canadian geography, history, government, and people. A great resource is "Citizenship Resource," which can be downloaded as a PDF and comes with audio files that are available on Settlement.org. http://atwork.settlement.org/downloads/atwork/Citizenship%20Resource/Citizenship%20Resource.pdf . --KM
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Kelly.I really appreciate it.
DeleteAnytime. My website www.kellymorrissey.com has a section FREE. Under that, if you click Settlement Themes, you can find some resources and often links to the resources I rely on most. Here is a link to the Canada and Citizenship page of my site: https://www.kellymorrissey.com/canada-and-citizenship.html
DeleteAnonymous 8/27/2019 3.15 p.m.
ReplyDeleteMy Premier is Doug Ford.
If I had the chance to meet with him this is what I would say.
Change: Do not send any more Ontario tax dollars to the Centre fir Canadian Language Benchmarks. Do not support PBLA in any way with our tax money.
Change: DEMAND objective evidence of validity of CLBs and PBLA. DO NOT accept (as is done now ) the declaration of fairness, reliability, validity of CLBs success and the success of PBLA in some places from the IRCC Integration Managers and analysts, CCLB personnel, some SPO administrators, without hard factual evidence of ROI and efficacy (especially of PBLA) from OUTSIDE researchers,
Change: Dismantle the PBLA organisation in Ontario. Tell the federal government “No”. Create a body to develop a logical, valid, consistent way of assessing learner language proficiency that reflects Ontario’s reality and needs.
Change: Save money by “revamping” the portfolio part of Portfolio Based Language Assessment. Just as over testing was found in OHIP and money saved by limiting tests ditch the unweildy binders, the arbitrary 32 artefacts,, and find a simpler way to demonstrate learning progress (can be a combination of a simple folder with a FEW up to date work samples/tests AND some standardised tests.)
———————————————————————————————
This is some of what I might add to support my suggestions.
According to the Annual Reports of the CCLB from 2008 to 2018 of all the provinces Ontario has given the Centre for Canadian?Language Benchmarks the most money to develop and promote the CLBs. (Over $17 million)
This includes the development and management of the experimental and controversial Portfolio Based Language Assessment Federally mandated pan Canadian ESL /LINC “new” assessment methodology.
This sum is obviously NOT the total cost of the Portfolio Based Language Assessment project...the binder costs, the personnel and administration costs.
Why did the large support of the CCLB become Ontario’s responsibility - and what is the ROI (return on investment). How is it measured. Where is the separation between Federal and provincial responsibilities in education?
The CLBs are problematic in that they have never shown any evidence of their validity (because-there is no direct research to show validity). They aren’t accepted ANYWHERE as a valid standard of English proficiency - except in Canadian government settlement related programs. Many inaccuracies and issues have been identified. But so much money has been sunk into this political project no one dares say the CLBs are a failure.