Rosedale Global High School is dedicated to providing students with supportive feedback and assessment that empowers them to reflect on their work and advance their academic performance. Assessments from all students in our 95 international partner schools are centrally evaluated by our Ontario Certified Teachers, also called Grading Teachers, in Canada. This calendar year, the first Grading Teacher Professional Development Day occurred on January 26, 2023 and included eight sessions that were topic-specific and aimed at covering diverse areas of grading strategies. We’re happy to share this summary of the professional development training, as well as feedback provided to us from our post-training survey.
Working with students across the globe presents unique challenges and opportunities. At Rosedale, our Grading Teacher encounter students with many different social, cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds, and centralized grading requires us to be acutely aware of these differences, and support each student appropriately. Our unique evaluation model was developed to provide quality assurance in this area, and to better serve our students, support our partner school classroom teachers, and further enhance our students’ achievement of curriculum expectations and transformative competencies.
As Rosedale Global High School continues to support partners around the globe, we are initiating additional and consistent training and development opportunities for our centralized Grading Teachers. The January sessions were a mid-school-year quality assurance initiative—generating both quantitative (scoring) and qualitative (feedback) analysis—designed to prepare Grading Teachers for the upcoming graduation season that spans from February to June. Scoring and feedback from the training sessions will be used to inform future development and growth in our centralized evaluation practices.
The sessions were focused on improved understanding of Rosedale’s approach to qualitative feedback; our award-winning Learning Management System; and the application of assessment tools such as Ontario rubrics, success criteria and grading guidelines. Deepening comprehension ensures reliability among all Grading Teachers, establishes fairness in assessment, and builds trust that students are being assessed based on the most updated, and mandated, guidelines.
“The sessions were aimed at offering our Grading Teachers a broader view of the team’s work, celebrating successes and sharing important updates,” says Kruti Trivedi, Academic Manager, Assessments & Evaluations. “Training like this is a way for the team to connect, share and reflect on their own experiences and those of others.”
Twenty-two Grading Teachers were joined by Academic Managers and members of the Rosedale International Education leadership team to learn from experts in their field through presentations discussing topics specific to common themes, and the challenges and opportunities of centralized grading. The first session began with Nathalie Rudner, Director of Academics at Rosedale International Education, sharing the philosophy, practices and opportunities of ensuring feedback loops with student assignments through Rosedale’s unique model.
“For us at Rosedale, providing feedback is a way that we communicate with our students and demonstrate care,” says Nathalie. “You’re showing students that you care about their achievements, their successes and their abilities.”
Other presentations featured speakers from Rosedale’s Principal and Director of Technology, Head of Teacher Development, the Director of Academic Operations & Student Success, and Lead Teachers from various subject departments. Topics included grading standards and techniques across various levels in ESL courses; focusing on skills and competencies in grading and feedback; approaches to grading with business studies; ensuring consistency is maintained with grading; and building critical thinking skills through feedback. All presentations ended with open Q&A sessions allowing Grading Teachers to collectively deepen their understanding of the topics, share their relevant personal experiences, and learn collaboratively.
Also in attendance were local classroom teachers from Rosedale partner schools in Nigeria and Brazil—providing a crucial opportunity for our global education partners and Ontario-based Grading Teachers, normally separated by distance and time zones, to evolve their traditional roles and advance their guidance on students’ competency development, differentiated learning and personalized growth.
Here is what the Grading Teachers had to say about the new training sessions:
