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!

Sign My Yearbook

One of my most anxiety producing moments in the classroom is when a student approaches me and says, “Mr. Hirsch, will you sign my yearbook?” I always agree to sign or ask the student to wait until I have a free moment. The truth is that signing yearbooks makes me very anxious.

I joke that I should sell a stamp when yearbooks are being distributed that says:

Dear _____________

It was great seeing you in __________ class.

You are so _________!

Thanks so much for __________.

Have a _______ summer.

Your _________,

__________

Truthfully, I have not read many student yearbook messages. While their notes to each other might be banal and trite, I think that may not be the case. I watch students spend a long time writing their messages. I see yearbooks filled with notes and drawings. Kids seem to be thoughtful about yearbook notes.

That is why I am so worried. I don’t have time to craft a well-written and personal message. My handwriting is not that great. I misspell words and change my mind after I put them on the page. I just changed the beginning of this paragraph. I just changed it again.

Yearbook messages may not be carved in stone, but they are likely to be saved and, once in a while, reviewed. I worry that this five-minute scrawl is what this student will eventually remember about our time together. By the time all this has gone through my head, I am paralyzed and I regret whatever I write as soon as I hand the book back. I worry that I said the wrong thing or didn’t say enough.

So without the personal student-specific stuff, here is a version of the message I wish I could write in my students’ yearbooks:

My Dear Classmate,

Thank you for sharing class with me this year. Thank you for rolling up your sleeves and working hard. Thank you for your contributions to class, patience with me and our classmates, and willingness to laugh at my jokes. Thank you for the kindness you showed every day.

I want you to know how capable you are. It is healthy to doubt our abilities sometimes. However, your growth this year is not something you should question. It proves you can learn anything you want and become whatever or whomever you choose. You have that power. Use it for good.

I will miss you next year. Actually, I will miss you next period, tomorrow, and over the summer. I will miss you right after we greet each other in the hallway. When you graduate, I will continue missing you. I will think about you when we discuss the topics you loved and hated. I will remember you when we explore assignments that shaped your experience in this class. That is why I take a lot of pictures. They randomly appear on the background of my computer, and I will smile and miss you more when your photo surprises me like a found coin.

Please don’t doubt our relationship. Come back and visit school. You have a permanent standing appointment. At the front desk, when they ask if someone is expecting you, tell them that Mr. Hirsch is expecting you. I am always expecting you. Yes, you may befriend me on Facebook (after you graduate), yes, you may connect via Twitter or Instagram or email or owl or Morse code! I encourage you to use whatever way works for you to stay in touch – and that choice is yours.

When you have those moments of struggle, when you think the audience is empty and yearn for even the echo of applause, when you doubt yourself and your abilities, when things seem unbearable, remember that I am a card-carrying member of your fan club and I am cheering for you from Deerfield. Your audience is never empty and I know that you have the skills to figure out anything. It may take time, effort, creativity, and resources. You have more resources than you know – and I am one of them.

I care deeply about you, even when we have struggled or disagreed. I care deeply about you even if sometimes we fall down and make mistakes – and I make mistakes, too! Sorry about those. I know that, although I want you to master the skills and know the content and all that stuff, it isn’t the real core curriculum. You are the center of this class. Who you are and what you are thinking and feeling is far more important than any target, objective, or standard.

Be well. Make good choices. Move slowly. Read a lot, and continue to discover and create the extraordinary person I have come to like so much.

Your teacher and friend,

David Hirsch

Graduating to the Empty Nest

Our school parent organization hosts a special dinner for parents whose last child is graduating from the high school. Recently, it was my turn to attend.

This year has been a string of lasts: the last open house, homecoming, musical, concert, play, and now: graduation. This past week was a series of landmarks: the last day of classes, honors night, choral awards, theatre night, and soon, the big event itself.

My daughter entered high school in 2008. She graduated in 2012 and her brother took her place. His graduation means that my wife and I will be empty-nesters at home and at school. While we will attend concerts, plays, and events, I’ll leave my camera at home. We’ll only see the theatre productions once.

Life will be different.

When my daughter graduated college, she came home for the summer and then moved to Boston for graduate school. The pattern was the same even if the details were different. But that pattern is gone forever. It is unlikely that we will have another summer with the four of us at home. Even though my son will be home until late August, his job will keep him out of the house in the day, and his friends will most likely occupy much of his free time. He will teach us how to live with his empty room, just as we have grown accustomed to his sister’s absence.

I have never been good at letting go, and I don’t really want to let go now. I have loved being a father, and while my children’s launching doesn’t make me less of a father, it means I am more a long distance dad instead of the father on the line. I like being the father on the line.

I love being the teacher on the line, too. This graduation means saying farewell to students some of whom I have known since they were in elementary school. I will deeply miss my son’s classmates. Many were my students or we shared homeroom, advisory, or another activity. Although new students will fill the chairs in my classes next year, the class of 2016 has spoiled me and I am working hard to lower my expectations for the classes to come.  I am going to be pining for my former students next fall.

Right now, I am simply wishing that all of them, my own child and his wonderful friends, could do it again. I offered to home college my son, but for some reason, he didn’t take me up on it.

My son will come home once in a while. Most of his classmates I will never see again. I will bump into some throughout the years. Through Facebook or email, I will keep in touch with a few. Because they are my child’s class, I have a better chance of hearing about them through him. But graduation is the big goodbye for most of us.

My camera is out and I am capturing all these last events. I am dreading them because of their finality, but I want to enjoy and celebrate these special milestones. I am trying to negotiate both. 

Each year, I want to hang on to my students. I take photos, write cards, and try to capture the specialness of the moment. I am always partially successful. We leave an indelible mark on each other. But such marks fade.

I am so grateful that my son and his class have permitted me to share high school with them. I am so fortunate that, as a high school teacher, I got to play a unique role in my children’s lives at home and at school. I don’t want that to end. I am not sure what my new role looks like. The old role fit so well. 

So Class of 2016, bon voyage, mazel tov, and qapla’; I am looking forward to your new adventures and our new relationship – and I will miss you!

Teacher's Favorite

Something transformative happened in fourth period. While we were discussing an assembly about gender, a student noted that one of his teachers always picked on the boys, “The girls are her favorites.” Somehow, this moved us into a discussion about teacher’s favorites, and they asked me the question, “Do you have favorites, Mr. Hirsch?”

The answer was easy, “Of course, I have favorites!” I said. I asked them to raise their hands if they liked some teachers better than others. Every student raised a hand. Teachers are just like students, I told them. There are people who we connect with better than others, and there are some who press our buttons.

That was the moment. It happened right then. When I noted that teachers, like all of us, have students they don’t like as much, the entire class looked toward one boy. They all thought he was the student who fit that description.

They were wrong.

Being a teacher is improvisational. No matter how well you plan or how many years you have taught, you cannot prepare for everything.

I shook my head and told them that the boy in question was my favorite. Gasp! No one was more surprised than he was. I told them that I work hard to make sure that all students feel as though they are my favorite. It is my goal to give the teacher’s favorite treatment to every student – even the ones who may be a little challenging in class.

Of course, teachers gravitate toward some students and away from others. We are human. However, it is our job to recognize this, acknowledge it, and then consciously control it.

Yes, there are a few instances where that is not possible. In more than thirty years in the classroom, I can count on one hand the students I really wished were not in my room. They are rare. The boy in question is as far from being one of those students as I am from being an NHL quarterback.

I don’t know who started it, but the kids in fourth period started calling each other, “favorite.” We greeted each other that way for a while.

“Hello, Pat, my favorite.”  

“See you tomorrow, my favorite.”

“Do you have a question, my favorite?”

It even carried into the halls for a little while, until we agreed it was a little embarrassing to be so open about such things.

But the tone in the classroom had altered subtly. The boy who was the focus has changed substantially. His behavior since this discussion has been different. His need for my attention has diminished, although not completely. My reassurance that I liked him, that he was not one of “those” kids, that he was a favorite, has transformed our relationship and even the feeling of the class.

Should I declare that I like all my students in public this way all the time? Probably. I thought I was doing it in other ways, but perhaps I need to be more direct.

It feels good to be a favorite. It feels really good to know that someone, especially the teacher, likes you. And I do like them – all of them. It is not an act. It is a decision to make sure that I convey that to them. Some of them can read that from our day-to-day interactions. Some of them know this because of the way I greet them when they enter our room, from our hallway hellos, and the notes I write on their assignments.

Some may need more than that; some may need me to look at them and say, “you are my favorite.”

Next year, I am telling them earlier.

Twenty Years Walking

When I first started teaching in 1986, I knew that I was going to spend a great deal of time at school – and I did. For my first decade or so, I would arrive at school around 7:40am and leave sometime after 7pm. Often, I would leave at 10pm or later. One day, after a long rehearsal, I sat down on a couch and awoke at 6am!

Spending this much time at school was one thing; spending more time in a car commuting was another. My first apartment was about ten minutes from school. When my wife and I married, we lived in the center of town. In 1996, we moved to the neighborhood immediately south of our school. For the past twenty years, I have walked to school almost every day.

While I know this is not possible, practical or desirable for many people, being so close to my work has been wonderful. When we moved, we had a two-year-old who was attending the nursery school in our building, so the three of us walked together. In all kinds of weather, we would make our way down our street, through a short pass-through, and into the rear parking lot of our high school. We didn’t have to fight a car seat, traffic, or horrible early morning departures. Yes, sometimes walking with a two-year-old can be maddeningly slow. Yet the experience was significantly different than when we were in the car.

For much of my daughter’s early years, my mother-in-law was very ill, and we would make long trips to hospitals in Chicago. We sat in traffic during rush hour. She ate, cried, played, and did many other things in the backseat of our car. I drove and tried to keep her happy, but it was very difficult and uncomfortable for both of us. I thought about doing that every day, and I was thrilled to walk, even if sometimes at a beetle’s pace.

We walk in all weather. If it rainy, no big deal. It is far better to walk in the snow than to drive. First, some students and parents are terrible drivers. Second, it takes a while out in the cold to clear off and warm up a car. Many times I have left the building chatting with a colleague. I walk home, and my colleague walks to his or her car. As I put down my school bag in the kitchen, I can see my colleague driving away. 

My van just turned twelve years old. It has about 94,000 miles on it and is still in great shape. Both the savings in gasoline and wear and tear on our vehicles is another fantastic advantage of walking to school.

I know that many people’s commutes afford them time to think, catch up on the news, or decompress. I do those things too, on my walk to school. Getting into the air, walking down my street, greeting kids and their parents, and chatting with my neighbors puts my school day in perspective. It centers me on the real importance of a school.

Often my wife and I walk together. Sometimes, our son joins us. We joke that his dorm in college next year is further from his class buildings than our home is from his high school. He will miss his walk to school. I will miss walking to school with him. His absence will make my gratitude for the years of walking with him, his sister, and his mother all the more poignant.

I’ve been walking for twenty years. That little amount of exercise and short break from the stress of the day has made a big difference in my life. When I retire, it is my plan to move immediately next door to retirement!

The Tyranny of the To Do List

I confess that I am a list maker. I have a to-do list, lists for specific tasks, procedure lists, travel lists, important date lists, class lists, shopping lists, and countless other lists. I like to be organized, and I do not like to forget important things.

I use Wunderlist as my primary GTD (getting things done) tool. However, the truth is that my email is also a to-do list. My school planner is another to-do list as is my in-tray at my desk at home, my calendar, and even the open tabs on my web browser. And then there is my wife’s to-do list.  I am married to another list maker and, frequently, her list is my list.

I am very efficient. I am productive and focused much of the time. Yet, there is a downside to all these lists and this intense focus on productivity. My lists loom over my head like a sword of Damocles. Even if I finish all of today’s tasks, empty my email box, and clear all the items in my school planner, I will think to myself, “I can get a start on tomorrow’s lists!”

The list is like a never ending roll of paper. It will spool out into infinity. There is always another item on the list. There is always another task to be done. Sometimes I wonder who is in charge, me or my lists?

My joke became that I set aside every third Tuesday from 7:30 to 9pm to be spontaneous. I have it as a repeating list item. The truth is that I have to make a conscious decision to leave the lists behind. Forgetting them and just relaxing has almost become the last item on all the lists.

The lists do reduce my anxiety about forgetting things. They are a very good technique to help me manage my many roles and responsibilities. I believe they help me use my time more effectively.

But they are not the best choice for balance. Lists are addictive. We get a little dopamine kick every time we check something off our lists. I strive not to feel guilty when I open my pleasure reading book, turn on the TV, or do something off the list.

It is far easier to put things on the list than take them off. Sometimes I move things down my list until I realize that I don’t want to or cannot complete that task. Deleting a task feels like failure and probably costs ten of those little dopamine kicks.

I don’t think a “fun” list is the answer. Balance means setting the lists aside. The same strategies I use for efficiency may not be the best choice for leisure. The lists have an addictive quality and it is easy to see them as the solution for my challenges. I have tried the fun list approach. It doesn’t get me to have more fun; it gets me to make more lists. The real skill is letting go of the lists. I am still working on that.

Life is about far more than a never-ending roll of administrivia. It is unhealthy to think of the items on my list as standing between me and what I really want to do. So I hereby resolve to put all the lists in their proper place, just as soon as I get this blog post finished!