Being able to adapt your teaching style to fit and engage with each individual learning style has been key in the success in relationships with student and academic success.  Having adaptable approaches for your students allow them to express themselves more freely and feel their input has “value.” This is where I have conflicting thoughts in regards to blogs we have read with EDU 394 in regards to “help[ing] students forget about grades.” (Alfie Kohn. Degrading to De-Grading) The blog continues to read, “Grades reduce [student] interest, quality of thinking, the preference to take on challenging tasks, encourages cheating [and doesn’t] validate what a student ‘can’ do.”

I disagree.

Hear me out; as I have done some formative assessment with former students for the very intention of how to go about assessment and grades.  My main question to them was: “What will motivate you to want to learn?” At the beginning of the year I ask students if they would prefer having soft due dates to help keep them on track but not assign late points: the vote was yes.  I continued to ask if they would like the option to continue making corrections on assignments and hand them back in (as long as they put a sticky note informing me what they revised) with the intention that they could potentially get “100%” on every single assignment if they chose to: they voted yes.  I have had students give feedback on how they feel about my style of grading and how would they prefer I improve to help them.  Even from students that had not completed a single assignment, missed more days of school than they attended, all gave the feedback they agreed with how “fair” my assessment process was. I want to give my devil’s advocate view as to “why,” I think students gave positive feedback to grades by first exploring ‘What is grading,’ types of assessment and the philosophy behind this pedagogy. Students that have a familiar understanding of expectations that are clear and visual aids are able to see where they are at and where they are/ should be going. “Grades” provide feedback and are not limited to A, B, C, but can also be married to the hybrid of embracing portfolios, feedback through narratives, optional assignments that allow for student creativity to demonstrate the obtained learning.

Let me ask this: what is grading? Grades themselves get such a bad rep because of the assessment process; what summative assessment does is slam down on our students to obtain the grade, but that’s not all it has to be.  In order to create a hybrid that works in a system that still requires “grades,” we as educators have the ability to create our own hybrid grading philosophy (or as our EDU 394 professor like to call it: a Marriage.) By taking into consideration the philosophy of Place Based Education from a Blog from imaginED written by Gillian Judson she states: “Students’ imaginative and emotional engagement with knowledge and place.  Place-based imaginative educators seek to cultivate emotional connections with the natural world—how do we determine if these are being facilitated?” (Gillian Judson. Guidelines For Assessment Of Place-Based Learning. Ecological Education (IEE): Activities & Insights. 2016) She states that other options of assessment besides grading are encouraged such as: written narratives about individuals that are given to parents, portfolios, student led conferences and exhibitions. YES! Now, in all that creativity, all that imagination, students have the freedom and the comfortability to show you as their educator what they know- from there, using the professional judgement we have to assess each individual as exactly that: as an individual! Each student in the class is only “comparing” with themselves, to better themselves and are learning for themselves, so why as an educator would you grade/ assess them all the same? You wouldn’t.

I almost laughed at a Professional Development I attended where the speaker said, “Rather than giving out A, B, C, D, give out 4, 3, 2, 1’s.” You’re telling me that students aren’t going to link the two together?  I know I do.  But you know what else? Providing the why is so important.  For example: Our professor in our EDU 393 class recently gave us a rubric back on our last Reflexive Writing- the rubric was laid out in 4 columns and each column had a detailed description of writing abilities.  When I saw the highlighted columns in the “3 and 4” section, I breathed a little easier knowing I “passed” in this “pass/ fail” course- and so many of our students look for that validation.  This particular rubric has expectations laid out clearly, and so the learner is able to visually see where they are at, reflect and grow in their learnings.  I’ve also had the pleasure of experiencing the other side of things, where the only feedback on a paper I’ve done for another course was “I got it, thanks.” Talking with many of my cohorts, we feel like we are swimming in the middle of the ocean when that happens with no sure direction of where land is.  The feedback I’ve had from my students is the same: “Miss. T, when are you going to be giving back our maps of India from Current Events?” I never wrote a grade on these maps, but I always wrote comments, feedback, smiley faces or gave out stickers for “exceptional” work- the students began to realize this.  I still had to report “grades” into my report cards, so I simply assessed their maps as so:

A “C-“ was if the student minimally completed the assignment (in other words- they could have thrown up on the page but if their name was on it- cool.) A C was if you were able to write down a few countries in the correct spots, C+ If you wrote down all the countries, cities and rivers but no colour, B was if you wrote down all the countries, cities, rivers and gave me the colouring of a 2 year old and an A was if you wrote down all the countries, cities, rivers, gave me half decent colouring and provided the Title and Compass.  I was able to explain this to the students, and welcomed them to ALWAYS improve on assignments and hand them back in.  Having a “light due date” helped keep my students on task, but their “grade” was NEVER final unless they wanted it to be.  My students always know they are allowed to revise their work (I ask they put a sticky note on their revisions that tell me exactly what they revised) until they’re satisfied with the feedback, I give has met their own standards.  Of course, I as the educator also have established enough relationship with my students to know where each individual is at with their strengths and weaknesses, and will only be grading to the individual- not comparing one student’s work to another.  As a teacher, I felt this gave students accountability, responsibility AND opportunity to advocate for their own learning.

 

Could I turn this “Grading” blog into a 15-page paper? Easily.  But I get my own point enough that when I reflect on it in a couple months or a year, I’ll either agree or disagree with myself.  We shall see.

 

I. Am. A. Teacher.: This is My Journey