When we acknowledge something, it becomes the gift of knowledge for someone else. In the classroom, this usually plays out as assessment. We acknowledge what students know or don't know or we acknowledge how students are behaving or misbehaving. In this case, another word for acknowledgement is assessment. Through assessment we give ourselves and our students the gift of knowledge.

Recently I was in an assessment academy, and in their definition an assessment should inspire hope. This resonated with me like a mallet hitting a gong. It reverberated through my soul. I have not had the experience that assessment has inspired hope. In this revelation I realized that we (the big society we) aren't looking at knowledge as acknowledgement. When we acknowledge what students don't know, we aren't giving them the knowledge of what they do know. And if we spend a majority of our time acknowledging their intellectual ability, we aren't acknowledging the things that make them human - their capacity for love and growth and joy. We haven't given our students the gift of knowledge of what makes them whole.

I'm going to go for the gold here and say that we probably aren't assessing ourselves or others in our lives in a way that inspires hope either. I know I don't acknowledge myself for the love that I put into my work, nor do I do a great job of acknowledging my daughters or my teammates or my friends. I don't give the gift of knowledge to these humans that make my life fabulous and joyful.