Pointless

Recently, I heard teachers complaining about their districts’ grading policies. One teacher was against the policy of giving students 50% for missing work. Another railed against grade inflation and giving students points as behavior or completion rewards. 

Whatever you think about these issues, they both presuppose two ideas: that kids should earn points for classwork and these points should be used to arrive at their grades. I would like to challenge both of these assumptions. 

I have written about grading many times. I have asked questions about the side-effects of grades, made an argument against averaged grading, discussed grading’s arbitrary nature, presented the mathematical reality of averaged grades, discussed my way of evaluating students, and presented many stories and examples of the problems of our current grading systems. 

All of these issues rest on the reduction of student learning to points. We use points to make grading seem fair and based on students’ performance. Like money, students receive point payment for tasks: the better the proficiency, the more points. Usually, the total points possible are considered the top grade and students are given a letter grade based on how far away they are from perfect. 

So, a student who walks in without any skills or knowledge and, by the end of the term, has reached the desired goals, would end up with something like fifty percent (a failing grade). That doesn’t seem right, so we break down our goals and give students points for taking baby steps. Some students need more baby steps. These students’ grades will probably be lower.  This is because making more errors costs points, even if the student ends up fully proficient by the end of the term. Thus, the point average grade is really a measure of how quickly a student achieves proficiency. 

Teachers, schools, and districts have contorted themselves to find ways to make this system make sense. The “no zeros” rule is one of those attempts. The reason for this rule is that half of the grading scale is failure; each grade band is ten percent and everything under 60 is failing. Some schools have redistributed that scale more evenly. Some schools have said that practice (sometimes called formative) assignments should not be graded and points should only be given on end-of-unit exams and assignments (summative evaluations). 

How does a teacher determine the value of a point? Is a good thesis worth ten grammatical errors? Why is a question worth two, three, or twenty points? Points are not objective: the teacher makes professional judgments about what activities are worth. Good teachers do this well. Poor teachers can manipulate this – and kids can then manipulate their teachers and the system. 

Rather than learning, students can become grade grubbing point collectors. They must work hard and have a high degree of maturity to see the goal through the point payment. Every teacher can tell too many stories of the students who would negotiate every point. “It’s not about the points,” teacher says. “If the points don’t matter,” the student retorts, “then just give them to me!” Both points of view are misguided. 

Learning is not an average of accumulated minutia. Averaging points, as I have written before, devalues the learning process and penalizes students for taking more time to learn or thinking divergently, even if they eventually succeed in fully reaching the goals. Shouldn’t a course’s evaluation really reflect the student’s ultimate proficiency? 

How do you measure proficiency? What does it look like? The more complex the subject, the more difficult to do. Elementary arithmetic is straightforward. What about high school social studies, science, or literature? Points simplify this problem so completely that the real worth and complexity of the subject is turned into the collection of green stamps. Put your points on a page and trade them in for a prize! 

Points are not aligned with the way the working world measures effectively reaching goals. Many professions use object metrics, like sales and billable hours, there are many things like interpersonal relationships, team contribution, and non-quantifiable results that figure into employees’ evaluation. Is there a job where each thing is translated into pennies and put in a pot and then, at arbitrary times, pulled out and evaluated? There must be. Points are far too seductive not to transcend education. There must be employee evaluation systems that mirror grading. I’ll bet they have the same issues we are discussing here. Ironically, most teachers are not evaluated the way they evaluate students. 

The reason the point system is so popular is that the alternatives are messier and more difficult to implement. Teachers will average themselves into oblivion to prove that their grades are objective.  There it is: to make points unimportant and create a grading system that really values learning and the achievement of educational objectives, we must let go of the idea that learners must be labeled by letter-based categories.  

You can get rid of points but still assign letter grades. I did it. Teachers all over the world have lots of ways to do it. Here is a video of one talking about it. However, if we want systemic wide change that acknowledges that our real goal isn’t an A, but is helping students to be able to learn specific skills and understand specific content, then we must stop tallying the trivia and instead focus on the learning!  

Twenty Years Ago: November 2003

 I must have had a cold for all of 2003!  November in 2003 was rainy and my son had a cold, too. While later in his life, I would wish for rain to cancel baseball games, in 2003, I dreaded rain because it did not cancel his soccer games. Can you see how much I loved sitting outside watching my children’s sports? 

My elder child was trying to battle her way into the school’s gifted program. She was upset that she was not selected and I had to hide my relief, “There are so many problems with that program. If she was selected there would be more issues than if she was not. Let her do her “gifted” thing in high school. I do not see that those who have been TAP’d have any advantage over those who do not. Often, they are more arrogant and more concerned with grades. Some are brighter, most are not. This is a blessing in disguise.” Of course, my child did not agree – until she got herself into the program in middle school. Then she understood what I was talking about. Oh, well. 

In November of 2003, I was phenomenally busy, “I am fighting the overwhelmed feeling. This weekend, I’ll take my Sunday School class to Willowcreek. On Monday, I’ll get essays. I need to get a Shabbat service ready for 12/5. Mango Street and the Book Circle unit are coming up and I don’t feel like either is fully developed. I am feeling like a ton is on the horizon. My grades are done, the parent notices are due. Get me to the end of the year.” 

I was also preparing our yearly holiday card. Prior to digital photography, getting a good picture could take months: shoot a roll or two, have it developed, reject the results, rinse and repeat. Fortunately, in 2003, I had my first digital camera. However, my three editors/critics could be very demanding; they wanted only their finest images on our yearly greeting card. It took a while to come to an agreement. 

Like this year, November meant a Saturday at Windycon. Since I was preparing to officiate at a bat mitzvah, I was debating whether to see one more mitzvah on a Saturday or travel to the convention. I made the healthy choice and gave myself a wonderful Saturday of celebrating science fiction and fandom. 

It was in 2003 that I integrated my Sunday School curriculum. In 2001, I taught comparative Judaism and in 2002, I taught comparative everything else. Why it wasn’t clear to me that was out of balance then, I am not sure. Perhaps because I was out of balance, too. So, I reorganized religions by theme and philosophy, had five field trips per year, and acknowledged that, since my students were going to many of their friends’ mitvzahs, we didn’t need to go to Reform and Conservative services. They were getting more than enough of those. 

In November 2003, I took my Sunday School class for our first trip to the megachurch in Barrington, Willow Creek. It was a foundational experience for them – and for me. We have been going back to Willow Creek every other year since then. 

The dog’s issues amped up in November. It was clear that the dog was now blind. I joked, “We have decided that we need to hire a seeing-eye person for the blind dog. Well, not really, but poor PJ is really struggling and it will be a few weeks at least until he gets better, if he gets better. It is really tough.”

I took my new Humanities class on a field trip to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. This raised my level of busyness to a brand-new pitch, “Teach until afternoon, meet with the team, come home, go back for the faculty meeting, come home for dinner and give PJ his meds and then go back for the field trip. I’ll be home again around midnight! But it will be a good day, even if it is an exhausting one.” My optimism must have substituted for my lack of sleep. 

If I was questioning the value and manner of grading my own students, the grades my children were earning furthered that process, “Over and over, I question the value of these report cards. In the short story we discussed in Power Reading today, ‘Tom Edison’s Shaggy Dog,’ Edison invents an intelligence analyzer and predicts that we will be able to ‘grade people as easily as we grade oranges.’ Isn’t that what it is all about? I read my Humanities kids’ self-evaluations. One thing that came up a few times was their resistance to our grading system. Kids want to be graded. What a shame.” 

It is interesting to look back twenty years and see who was important in our lives then and now – and who we no longer see. We used to spend a great deal of time with neighbors who had kids the same age as our children. There were several families with whom we had both family and couple dates. We don’t see any of them anymore. However, there are folks with whom we were close that we see regularly. Yes, there is a message there: relationships based entirely on the kids didn’t last.

So, teaching, Sunday School, running Shabbat services, getting ready for a Bat Mitzvah, the neighborhood homeowner association (the annual meeting had to be planned), planning winter and spring break travel, taking care of a sick and blind dog, and the kids’ activities made November of 2003 a very long month. I am tired just writing that list. Oh! I noted that I joined the school crest committee at school. Did I ever say, “NO?” 

Twenty Years Ago: June 2003

January may be the official beginning of the calendar, but for a teacher, it really starts in August and ends in June. Teaching is a profession that has clear cycles. As a young parent and teacher in June of 2003, cycle was the operative word.  

As we get to the end of the school year, all of the conflicts and issues of the semester move to the foreground. I hate grades. I hate the effect they have on students, their families, and what they do to relationships. It is one of the reasons why I have never used an averaged grading system. 

In 2003, I was using a portfolio grading system. Students would demonstrate their growth by analyzing their work throughout the semester and evaluating it on our skill-based rubrics. Of course, this meant that they had to complete that work. 

There was one student in particular who had failed to turn in so many assignments that demonstrating growth was nearly impossible because there was so little to see. I met with him almost every day on his free period and helped him with missing work. My goal was not a “good” grade by a passing one! I noted in my journal, “It is amazing that this boy is not sick of me yet nor has he become mad at me. It is clear that he needs attention. I have given him opportunities to tell me to stop supervising him so closely but he does not say it. He wants this kind of close attention.” Throughout my career, I met many students like this young man. 

Grades weigh heavily on me. I err on the side of the higher grade if a student is on a bubble. Students used my evaluations and their own and their work to demonstrate what grade they thought they deserved. Most students are surprisingly accurate. Many are harder on themselves than I am. 

For some students, grades are critically important – but not for all. But they were ALL important to me, “I am spending too much time thinking about these kids’ grades and what they want, and how they’ll feel and react. I need to move to a grading system that takes it out of their and my hands more – a more objective system. That will be helpful.” That is why so many teachers use a purely numeric system: it is easier when it is cut and dry. It is also inaccurate and unfair. So, for my entire teaching career, grading was a process, conversation, and a pain in the mind.

If you are related to a teacher, you know that the end of the year is the busiest and most stressful time of the year. That spills into all parts of my life. I developed another cold. I had to close down websites so people would not think we were in school to reply to their requests. At the time, in addition to my own teacher website, I was also “webmaster” for the English Department, the Counseling Department, Peer Helping, StageWrite, and recommended reading websites. I was also putting together a new website for my new class: Humanities. 

June is also a time to say goodbye to retiring colleagues. I have attended every retirement celebration that the school has thrown while I worked there. At the time, the school retirement party was held after graduation. Thus, it was never particularly well attended. People from the retirees’ departments and older teachers would attend, but many people had just spent a day teaching, an afternoon at graduation, and needed to get home to their families. It was certainly one of our most challenging daycare days. Thankfully, my parents had our kids and we celebrated three wonderful careers. 

I was delighted at how our principal talked about each of the three retirees warmly and in great detail with few notes. There was a stark contrast between the two classroom teachers, one of whom was in my department, and the retiring department chair. I wrote about how narrow the teachers’ scope of influence. Neither had sponsored clubs or coached sports. Neither was that involved in building committees or projects. They were very focused on their classrooms, kids, and courses. This was not the case for the department chair, whose influence was far-reaching.

If the year ends in June and starts again in August, then the time in-between is not a “break,” it is project season. Every year I taught I had a list of things that got pushed into summer. I start trying to hit this list as soon as the last bell rings: everyone has their yearly doctor and dentist appointments, all home improvement projects are scheduled, and preparations begin for the next school year. 

My kids were keeping doctors in business that spring. I worked on my new course preparation a few hours every day. We had a new roof and siding put on the house and remodeled a bathroom. Summer was a blur! I wrote, “I don’t feel like I am on break. I worked at the building most of the day yesterday. I straightened out the English website. I think I have a handle on that now. I worked on putting my computer back in order and doing a few other bits and pieces.” I even served on an interview team to fill a spot in our department. 

Speaking of cycles, my son learned to ride a bicycle without training wheels! My brother and aunt visited and it was good to see them. The kids started day camps. We had workmen at the house six days a week! I had a planning session with the Sunday School faculty. Each day was very busy and I noted that I was falling asleep quickly and sleeping soundly. Consequently, my journal entries were often short. I talked about a great deal -but briefly.  

I was planning a summer vacation; my wife and I always took an “annual honeymoon” and the kids stayed with my parents. It was almost always in July. I took a school workshop learning to use Adobe Illustrator. I used it to improve graphics on my websites and to create some functional and fun posters for my classrooms. 

In the wider world, a new musical called Wicked premiered. The Mars rover was launched. I put our car phone, cell phone, and home numbers in the brand-new National Do Not Call List from the Federal Trade Commission. 

But like that list, June was a long parade of all the things that didn’t fit well during the school year. I suppose a teacher’s two seasons are not winter and road construction but the school year and everything else you need to get done! 

Reading for Treasure: Articles I Can't Stop Thinking About

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction!

My theme this month is articles that have taken up residence in my head, that I cannot stop thinking about. I strongly recommend you read them. Many of them will probably end up being the seeds of my own writing on this blog. 

Lifehacker contrasts two thinkers who have confronted evil: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Donald Ewen Cameron. The piece asks what is the difference between being evil and stupid: “Why Stupidity Is More Dangerous Than Evil.”

When I was first hired as a teacher, I told my department chairman that I wasn’t going to give grades. He said I had to, so I said I would give everyone A’s. He said that wasn’t going to work either. So, I tried to make the idea of grades fit with real student-centered education. These two pieces about how institutions of learning are rethinking grades are excellent discussions of this issue: KQED’s “Some colleges mull the idea of 'Ungrading' for freshman students” and Wired’s “The End of Grading.”

Similarly, I struggled with kids’ use of their smartphones in the classroom. I ended up hanging a shoe tree near the door and requiring my students to relinquish their phones during class. This also made taking attendance quick and easy. This wonderful article in The Atlantic looks at “The Schools That Ban Smartphones.” 

This quick article from The Daily Herald addresses a question I have been asking since I moved next door to the school at which I taught and my children attended: “It’s Good For Kids and the Environment. So Why Aren’t More Students Walking to School”

As a follow-up to several sets of articles about gun violence, The Chicago Tribune addressed a part of this issue that does not receive enough attention. While we hear about people killed and injured by shootings, we don’t hear about how those who are shot cope afterward: “Doctors: A firearm-related injury is a chronic and expensive condition, but many victims are forgotten.” 

Two very political articles from The Atlantic fascinated me. As a former debate teacher, the “Gish Gallop” technique that the former president uses is both effective and highly problematic. “How To Beat Trump in a Debate” is a great analysis of more than Trump’s rhetorical style, but the philosophy behind it. Similarly, “Why Fox News Lied to Its Viewers” looks at how ratings and pandering to the desires of an audience were more important than journalistic ethics on the Fox News Channel. Is there a connection here? 

Finally, two more articles from The Atlantic (can you tell that I am a huge fan of that magazine?) about reading. First, “The People Who Don’t Read Books” looks at some high-profile people who are proud that they don’t read. Second, “A New Way to Read ‘Gatsby’” was fascinating to me as I finished Nghi Vo’s magical spin on Fitzgerald’s classic, The Chosen and the Beautiful. Read them both and you will see why this book has staying power. 

Besides The Atlantic, I am reading Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany. 

Advice for New Teachers

As another pandemic school year begins, I am concerned about those who are new to teaching. I worry about the first year and young teachers, our pre-service teachers, and newcomers to schools and communities. 

I wish I could go back in time and give myself the benefit of experience before I had any. I wish I could tell my younger self a few things that would have made my students’ and my experience far better. 

But I had to learn it on my own! 

I had mentors and guides who helped me along the way, and much of their wonderful wisdom stayed with me throughout my career. Sometimes I understood their advice and other times it took me years to realize what they were trying to teach me. I hope that, even with the problems of the pandemic, that our new teachers will find nurturing mentors, as I did. 

A little while ago, I was talking to some of my son’s friends who were either training to be teachers or just started teaching. I also had a long conversation with a man who is changing careers to become a teacher. I wanted to give them something practical they could use and straightforward strategies that could accelerate their growth as teachers. I wanted to help them avoid the mistakes I made early in my career. I am well aware they will make many mistakes, but I hoped they might not be the same ones I made. 

In the moment, it was difficult to prioritize – and not pontificate. Like our students, young teachers learn by doing, and words of advice have limited effect. With that limitation in mind, here are a few suggestions for those who are new to their roles in the classroom: 

It is all about relationships: building strong relationships takes time. It is easier to think about units, objectives, targets, tests, grades, and assignments. However, kids learn within the context of a social environment. Just as the presence of certain students can enhance or hinder learning, kids’ relationship with the teacher is the ground in which all learning grows. Like it or not, the kids’ feelings about their teacher are either moving learning forward or making it more difficult. There is no escaping this. We are not programming computers. 

This does not mean the teacher must be a namby-pamby pushover or a buddy-buddy friend. Nor do teachers need to manipulate their students by showing them how cool and connected they are. These are also traps that young teachers may fall into. There is a delicate balance between being a person and being a professional, between being distant and being close. While each teacher must navigate this on their own, they all must be aware that the creation of this relationship is crucial and the most powerful element in the classroom. 

The emotional environment teachers create in the classroom comes before any curriculum; it is the first curriculum. Without learning about the kids, the curriculum is handicapped. Teachers must create means of exploring each individual safely and simply. They might greet kids by name as they enter the room, learn their interests and hobbies, find out about their families and support networks, and look them in the eyes when they are speaking to them. Teachers must show students the respect they would want anyone to show a child anywhere – especially when the children least deserve it.  

Most of all, teachers must actively demonstrate to EVERY student that they like them – even (or especially) when they don’t. They must help EVERY student feel like they are the teacher’s secret favorite. Every student should see the teacher as an advocate and coach, a cheerleader and helper. This doesn’t mean we can’t disagree or discipline. A strong word from someone you respect has far more power than from someone who you think doesn’t like you anyway. 

The teacher must make it okay for kids to say, “I don’t understand,” “Please say that another way,” and “I need help with this.” Teachers should model those behaviors. Let kids teach and help the teacher, too! The classroom should be the safest of spaces and the place where it is okay to take off the teenage mask (even if retaining the one to prevent illness), if only for a few minutes. 

Which means the teacher must be their most authentic self: young teachers feel like they must establish their expertise and authority. Of course, they are unsure of themselves. They think they look weak if their students see them as less skilled than other teachers. The truth is that a new teacher is not as expert as a more experienced teacher. Trying to pretend to be one is a futile act that will certainly not fool students. Kids see through this kind of pretension and are eager to poke holes in the teacher’s false image – but they respect honesty. 

Instead, new teachers should lean into the fact that, like the students, they are learning as they go. They must be candid with kids when they are doing something new, scary, difficult, or complex. New teachers must embrace their neophyte status and enjoy it. I often encourage new staff members to use their “new kid” card as long as they can, “I was supposed to clear this with the assistant principal? I didn’t know that. I am new here,” “I have to call home? No one told me that. I’ll know better next time.” New kid permission goes away quickly. Enjoy it while it is still okay to make those errors. 

While I am clearly advocating being highly authentic in the classroom, there is an exception to this rule. Kids in a classroom are emotional mirrors. If the teacher is angry, soon there will be dozens of angry people in the room. If the teacher is distracted, sad, or anxious, the students will unconsciously amplify and respond to the teacher’s affect. So like the coach going into the locker room to give a pep talk to the team, teachers must have a good game face. To a certain degree, this is pure and simple professionalism. There is nothing wrong with starting a class by saying, “I am struggling today and I need your help.” That is authentic. However, the teacher must then do their best to put those challenges aside and be the best professional they can. While teachers shouldn’t fake the content, they must do their utmost to even out their emotions and put them aside until the kids leave the room. The worst classes I have ever experienced are almost always terrible because of my emotional state before the kids even arrive. A new teacher must ask themselves, “Would I want a classroom full of me right now?” If the answer is no, the teacher must become the person the students should be, if only for the class period! 

Part of teacher self-care is realizing when this is not possible. If my feelings are so powerful that I cannot hold it together in class, that is an indicator that I need to put my own needs first. A teacher’s mental well-being is at least as important as their students’. It is critically important that we take care of our own mental health needs. Just as one would not spread germs if one has a fever (or COVID), one should not come to school if one is in emotional or mental distress.  

Finally, kids come first, grades come second. New teachers get a ton of messages about the importance of assessment, specifically the all-important semester grade. It is often parents’ number one issue. However, the student comes before the grade. Almost without exception, if a teacher is asking themself, “Should I change this grade?” the answer is yes. I have already written, several times, that if ever a teacher thinks or says, “If I do this for you, I will have to do this for everyone,” then it is something that should be done for everyone right away. Grades, too. Grades feel so weighty and laden with meaning and import – and the truth is, they aren’t that important –except in how they reflect that emotional environment. Always round up on grades. Always give kids the benefit of the doubt. Always do what you would want the teacher of your child to do for them! 

Let’s say that again: If my child were in this situation, what would I want their teacher to do? 

Just to make this list too long. Here is an earlier piece I wrote about some things I learned by teaching in the same school my children attended. Some of these items are particularly applicable for new teachers. Some may be for later. 

If a traveler in a blue box comes by and scoops me up to go exploring through time and space, I will request a brief stop at Deerfield High School in the fall of 1986 to whisper a few words in my own ear. I hope I would listen to myself. I think I would. It would then take me a while to figure out how to put my advice in action, but there is no shortcut for that.   

Physically Safe, Emotionally Supported, and Academically Engaged: Twelve Ideas for School in the Fall

In person or not in person, that is the dilemma. Schools are trying to figure out how they will engage with students in the fall. Some schools have already decided that they will continue teaching via computers distantly. The American Academy of Pediatricians has recommended that schools open in person and have provided guidance about how to do that.

 

It is a complex and dangerous problem. For the most part, schools like to play it safe. In this case, all the options are significantly problematic. Bringing students into the school building is fraught with medical risks, but teaching them at home has not been working well.

 

Some parents may choose to home school their students in the fall. Students and staff members may spend large chunks of time unable to attend or connect to school due to illness, family assistance, or other problems. The 2020-2021 school year will be the opposite of routine.

 

What should schools do?

 

Distance learning has not been successful. Returning students to their classrooms creates hygiene, space, attendance, and countless other challenges. While there appears to be evidence that children are less likely to get COVID-19 or infect others, we have already seen the problems that come of even small number of infected people in groups.

 

Recognizing that one solution will not work for every student, school, or family, here is my brainstorm list of school opening possibilities:

 

Build the Relationships First: Spend the first few weeks, regardless of whether they are in person, remote, or both, getting to know each other. Focus on building the student-teacher and classroom relationships: bonds first and give the creation of that bond significant time and priority.

 

One Student At A Time: Consider one-on-one options. Could teachers and other staff members check in with kids for brief periods a few times each week? Could teams of teachers collaborate such that they have a shared group of students with whom to connect? Fine tune curriculum for each individual student. With absences, illness, and the many challenges this time is bringing, it is likely that few students will be in the same curricular place and one size will fit no one. Focus on each student singularly. 

 

Teachers, Not Students, Change Rooms: Organize students so they are with kids who are taking the same classes and then move the teachers from room to room and leave the kids in the same place. If a group of eight to fifteen students stay in the same room and work with a team of teachers, we have limited the number of people with whom they are connecting, removed lots of hallway and lunchroom exposure, and given students a singular home that could be sanitized. In addition, we create a team of teachers working with the same students!

 

Classes In Person, Broadcast, and Recorded: Make sure that all in-person classes are simultaneously broadcast to the kids at home as well as recorded and posted. We must constantly plan for lots of short and long term absences of students and staff! This is another argument for teams of teachers working together.

 

Classes in the Community and Outside: Move classes out into the community and incorporate community service activities that connect to course concepts. Move classes outside to the greatest extent possible.

 

School Families: Create multi-age groupings of students and form families or Harry Potter style houses. Eating together helps bring people together. So does low-level self-disclosure. We all know that just because students were born in the same year does not mean they are developmentally in the same place or possess the same skills or knowledge.

 

A Huge Group Project: Make the first few weeks of school one big group project. The group might be the class or a larger team or the entire school. This could be a community service project, figuring out how school will work, career-focused, problem based, or some other highly engaging active work. What if school was transformed into a singular enterprise working together toward a shared goal?

 

Integrate the Arts and Student Support Services: Have every class have an art, music, theatre, and/or dance component – and teacher. Ask counselors, social workers, case managers, school psychologists and others to stop by classes on a regular basis. Make sure they become an integral part of the classroom community.

 

Slow Down and Focus on the People – not the Content: Slow down the curriculum and the content and focus on the people instead. Make sure that students and staff get to know each other really really really well. Rather than focusing on coverage and content, be sure that social-emotional needs are met and that students are psychologically and physically well. Treat every student as if they are suffering from trauma – because they are. 

 

Look at Grading Differently: Make evaluation far more in-depth than letter grades. Ask students to create criteria and then to self-evaluate. Make these evaluations meaningful and relevant to students. Ask kids to track their growth over time. Make sure that every child knows that the goal is for that they succeed and earn an A  - whatever A looks like.

 

Create a Department of Parent Connection: Support parents and families that are struggling with childcare, food, shelter, and other issues. Many universities now have offices of parent communications. Perhaps having some staff dedicated to coordinating assistance to and communication with parents would be a good way to open school’s door wider – and thus provide even more support for kids! 

 

Each Teacher and Class Must Partner With Parents: Include and partner with parents and families. This means reaching out to parents on a regularly. Elementary schools often have a home newsletter, why couldn’t middle and high school classes also reach out to home in both directions? Parent phone calls and emails will be critical, too!  Home and school must be even more closely connected than ever before.

 

I have not addressed nitty-gritty issues like busses, making hallways one way or having two-stage passing periods (even rooms, odd rooms). Such logistics must not be allowed to overshadow making sure that students are physically safe, emotionally supported, and academically engaged. Schools must focus on how to best support students and their families.

 

Some old structures will be useful, but many will be restrictive and problematic. Schools staffs must be willing to reinvent school, let go of rigid mindsets, and be highly creative. They should talk to each other and learn from each other – and from any source they can!

 

Here is an outstanding article that I saw after I finished this entry that goes into more depth into some of the same ideas and some even better ones!

The Grading Treadmill

At the end of each marking period, I obsess over grades. Teachers like to say that they don’t “give” grades, but that students “earn them the old-fashioned way,” as if John Housman was speaking. I don’t believe that.

The game of grades is rigged and teachers control it. Students must learn how to play the game anew each time they enter a classroom. And while grades are supposed to be a measure of success in a course, that is not the whole truth. They are a reflection of the personality, priorities, and preferences of the person grading. The teacher, team, or school decides what is valued and how much. The grader decides if we are averaging or using standards or a contract or some other “system.” The students simply have to do their best to get to the cheese – over and over again.

I get tension headaches staring at my computer screen perseverating over grades. How could the student be earning a B+ when she had an A only a few weeks ago? Sometimes, students’ grades appear to be going in the wrong direction – or don’t make sense. I look for my error or where the student changed or a reasonable rationalization for a simple truth: students’ growth is not a direct learning curve. They fall down and get back up. They have bad days after many good days. They fail at the tasks they could do well just a few days before. They are human beings and there are myriad factors that influence their work – and I am only one of those factors.

I have written about grading many times.  I continue to struggle with our reasons and methods of grading. I feel like George Jetson on the treadmill screaming for Jane to “Stop this crazy thing!”

I am a proud standard based grader. That means that, instead of assigning points to everything happening in class and then performing some magical formula to arrive at a grade, I base grades on students’ demonstration of proficiency on a set of measurable skills. This makes grading far more challenging than plugging numbers into a computer and arriving at an average.

I assess how well and how often students can write a complete thesis, analyze a quotation, or infer a theme. The problem is turning these assessments into a single grade. Is the ability to cite correctly as important as integrating evidence? Should all claims be treated the same? Are reading and writing equal? Are skills on which we spent more time more important?

My judgment is not perfect. I fully understand why teachers love the point averaging system. It gives the illusion that the grade is objective. It is not. I, the teacher, am creating that grade regardless of how many layers of arithmetic sit between me and letter – or the student. Sometimes, I am not sure. Sometimes, I can see multiple interpretations of students’ work.

A grade isn’t the best form of feedback to students. I give far more detailed and thorough feedback about their work and skills than a single letter. The grade, no matter what form it takes, is such an amalgam of so many factors that it certainly doesn’t communicate the journey we’ve taken in class and often obscures important information.

I just turned in my grades for second semester. There were several on which I spent more than a few hours. I reviewed old work. I read final exams multiple times. I changed my mind and then changed it again.

I have been doing this for a long time and it hasn’t become easier. Grades have value. They are symbols of self-esteem and college currency. They add up to awards, scholarships, and auto insurance. I can’t take them lightly.

Arriving at students’ grades is not easy. If a teacher can do it quickly and casually, something is wrong. Like a diagnosis, it is a professional judgment based on lots of information, observation, and assessment – and it should be accurate!   

In a Kurt Vonnegut short story, Thomas Edison creates an “intelligence analyzer” and tells a young man that, ‘“It will be your generation that will grow up in the glorious new era when people will be as easily graded as oranges.’”  No one should be easily graded. Perhaps no one should be graded at all. In addition to being treated like oranges, grading traps us on George Jetson’s treadmill!

Don’t Move Final Exams – Remove Them

When I asked my son how his first final exam went, he shook his head and told me, “I am done with it. I don’t remember anything.” While I hope this is not entirely true; he will have the second semester of that class to deal with, it is true that the trivia on final exams leaves kids’ brains as rapidly as they leave the room.

I just finished reading Most Likely To Succeed, which makes the argument that our content-based educational system is obsolete. The authors, Tony Wager and Ted Dintersmith, describe an experiment run by the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, “When students returned after summer vacation, they were asked to retake the final exam they had completed three months earlier. Actually, it was a simplified version of the final, as the faculty eliminated any detailed questions that students shouldn’t be expected to remember a few months later. The results were stunning. When students took the final in June, the average grade was a B+ (87%); when the simplified test was taken in September, the average grade was an F (58%)” (Wagner and Dintersmith).

If the material in finals often doesn’t stick with students and is often irrelevant to anything they will do in the future, why do we make them memorize this minutia and regurgitate it back?

As I greeted students in the hall after my first final this year, and I asked them how they felt about their first test, many told me that their teacher had already graded it! The finals session had ended less than twenty minutes ago. It would take me a week to finish grading all the writing my students did! If a teacher doesn’t have to think to grade the test, how important can it be?  While there are ways to make multiple-choice tests meaningful, students are studying facts, words, and other bits of information that they could easily look up on the supercomputers in their pockets!

Many teachers finish the quarter with large unit or chapter tests the week before finals and then test on the same content on the final exam. Why test twice? Why beat up a kid with a ton of material on Thursday only to test again for even higher stakes the following Tuesday? How much learning happened in those four days? Did they go over the first test in the meantime? It is double jeopardy.

Many teachers are still using a percentage based grading system which makes the cost of making mistakes high. In our school, almost all finals count for twenty percent of the semester grade. In my experience as a parent and a teacher, finals don’t help students’ grades at all. Either the final simply strengthens what they were already earning, or it hurts their grades – and for kids on the grade bubble, finals frequently push their grades down. One test! One big long test (that will not stick with them) is what makes the difference!  

Should one seventy-five-minute test be equal to four weeks of class experience? Should it count as much? Can we put what is really important, relevant, and meaningful into it and then grade it in five minutes?

My finals are skill based. My freshmen read a story and then write about it. They demonstrate the skills we have been working on all year long. Although I call it a “final,” it doesn’t count for any more than any other assignment. I use a standard based evaluation system in which students’ grades are based on their ability to demonstrate specific skills. I look at their most recent work in each skill area to determine their proficiency and to guide what we need to study together.

Recently, my department chair asked what we thought about moving finals before winter break. Many schools are doing this so kids do not have homework over the vacation. My response was that moving finals solves nothing. It gives the appearance that we are addressing issues of student stress and meaningful assessment, but we are in fact shuffling shells.

We need to change what we teach and how we teach it. We need to make assessment (and school) meaningful and relevant. Finals are an archaic and problematic practice. Simply stating that colleges do them and we must prepare our students is inadequate justification. If colleges are doing something that is not pedagogically sound, that doesn’t mean we should follow. High schools and colleges need to get out of the nineteenth century. The well-being of our children depends on it!  

Stop Beating Up The Kids!

Students don’t have a choice. They must be in school, and they are required to do what their teachers tell them or face the consequences. Educators have a choice.  Why do so many choose ineffective and outdated strategies that feel like torture? It is no wonder that kids see the rigor of school like rigor mortis: stiff and dead!

Let’s start with the way that many students receive their precious learning: lecture. While I like a good monologue, I usually can’t repeat more than a few lines even after I’ve just heard it. When so many better methods are available to communicate content to kids, why would a teacher drone and on and on? In high schools and colleges alike, there are countless instructors putting kids to sleep, reading their slides, reiterating the textbook, and missing the point. Educational research is clear: the lecture is the least effective way to teach kids. In small amounts, here and there, it can supplement other strategies, but it should never (yes, I wrote never) be the primary method of instruction. Lecture is the first refuge of the weak teacher who has no other teaching tools. It is the favorite of the self-indulgent teacher, who likes to perform and entertain rather than teach, and it is the sure fire way to kill student motivation and engagement. Shut up and teach!

An NPR story looked at how colleges from Maryland to Harvard are finding that the lecture is not effective even in their science classes. The Arizona University study cited in NPR’s story found that, “The traditional lecture-based physics course produces little or no change in most students' fundamental understanding of how the physical world works.”  The study’s author went on to state that, "The classes only seem to be really working for about 10 percent of the students…[a]nd I maintain, I think all the evidence indicates, that these 10 percent are the students that would learn it even without the instructor. They essentially learn it on their own.” So, lecturers, you are preaching to the choir.

And while we are discussing the lecture, why are many teachers obsessed with filling course with massive amounts of material? The lecture is long because the teacher has stuffed it with too much content. One has to wonder if whoever “designed” the curriculum could make choices, understood the subject well enough to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, or was far more enamored with the subject matter than with the idea of teaching it. In an age when almost any factual question can be researched in seconds using a device smaller than a piece of toast, is it so important to list them all on your PowerPoint slide, professor?

Once the kids have been subjected to archaic recitations of long lists of facts, they are then bludgeoned with tests. These tests are frequently so long that they are not only assessing students’ ability to regurgitate the material, but also if they can do so at breakneck speed. Tests at both high school and college level seem designed to trick and confuse even the most prepared students. Most of us don’t do our best work when we are rushing, yet countless students are evaluated this way.

Alfie Kohn, the renowned author of Punished By Rewards, noted in an article in the Washington Post that tests “are typically more about measuring the number of facts that have been crammed into students’ short-term memories than they are about assessing understanding.” Kohn goes on to note, “That’s why it’s so disconcerting to find teachers who are proud of their student-centered approach to instruction, who embrace active and interactive forms of learning, yet continue to rely on tests as the primary, or even sole, form of assessment in their classrooms.”

As I have noted in the past, grades are also used as a way to beat up students. Students who learn and demonstrate their learning throughout the term will get an averaged grade that penalizes them for learning because they were not proficient at the very beginning of class. Shouldn’t education change us? Shouldn’t we grow from the class? Shouldn’t the grade reflect that?

Assistant Professor Paul Thomas of Furman University sends his students an apology letter at the end of the term. He regrets having to give them a final grade, saying, “In my quest to honor the essential dignity of each one of you, then, I have fought the good fight against what I feel is deeply dehumanizing—grading.”

As the semester comes to a close, I examine each student and look at my record of his or her learning. I, too, wish that I did not have to reduce our wonderful process to a single letter. It devalues and diminishes the educational growth that has happened in our classroom. The best I can do is find a way to make the grade an aggregate of students’ proficiency in the skills we have practiced all the semester. How would you like eighteen weeks of your works to be reduced to a single letter? What does that say about what you have accomplished?

Good teachers work hard to foster their students’ learning. Good teachers carefully craft their lessons and assessments to facilitate student success. Lectures, overwhelming content, and dehumanizing and punitive grading are the antithesis of good education. Once upon a time, a long time ago, they were the only tools we had.  The old quotation (attributed to many) says that, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Educators, stop nailing your students. It is time to use brave new tools!