When no mark is better than a mark

Recently, it was report card due date.  In the past, I would input the marks into my grade system then attach comments to the grades and submit my marks to the appropriate people.  Afterword, I would go home and enjoy a drink.

This year I decided to do things a little differently.  I inputted the marks, just the same, however after I decided to take a closer look.  Between my three classes, I noticed four students who were not meeting success in my course.  Instead of ignoring the failure, and attaching the canned “Please see me at parent teacher interviews…” comment, I took a different approach.

Before, I failed to realize that the failing mark was actually destroying the self-confidence of the student and informing him/her “You are a failure.”  This year, and in future years, I am no longer sending this message home to parents and, more importantly, to the students themselves.

This year, I removed all the marks of the students who were not meeting success in my class. Instead of sending a mark of 40%, 34% or 48%, I sent a mark of “—“ home.  Instead of having the “you are failing the course” conversation, I sat down with each student and had this conversation with a student:

Me: Suzy, currently, you are not meeting the expectations of my course.

Suzy: I know, and my mark is low.

Me: How about this?  Instead of giving you a mark we will leave it blank and over the next two weeks, you and I will review the first three units until you can truly demonstrate the knowledge at an acceptable standard.

Suzy: Huh? What is my mark?

Me: Do you feel like you understand the material I have covered in class?

Suzy: No, but I really need to pass this course.

Me: Alright, then does it really matter what your mark is?

Suzy: No, but I don’t think I will be able to pass the class, because I am pretty sure my mark is really low.

At this point Suzy started to cry.

Me: That is my point.  I don’t want you to think that.  We will wipe the slate clean, spend some time going over the material and then reassess you.  If you can demonstrate the material next week, then I will ignore the first month.

Suzy: Wow, can I give you a hug?

Me: Ha ha, no but a high five will do!

All the conversations went very similar to this.  Also, when I phoned home, EVERY parent thanked me profusely.  

Marks are not causing problems solely for failing students, but for more students than you are probably aware of.  This year, already, I have had multiple students drop a class of mine because their midterm mark is lowering their average.  Every student, when talked to, informed me that he/she enjoyed the class, has learned a lot, but he/she is too concerned about their average mark.

The students were dropping my pre-calculus class, which runs as a first year post secondary class.  Some would argue that this is a positive experience as I am “weeding” and “opening the eyes” of my students to the true post-secondary experience.  When I hear comments such as these, I want to join Suzy crying!

Even my high-end students are being negatively effected by these midterm marks.  I have heard, several, of them say similar comments such as: “I have to make sure I stay on the honor roll, and since I am well over that, I can stop trying”.

Education should NEVER be about destroying confidence, weeding students out, or informing them that they can stop trying, but unfortunately this is the message sent home when we become marks orientated.

At first, I believed for failing students “no mark is better than a mark”, but as I listen and talk to my other students I have concluded that for EVERY student “no mark is better than a mark”.  Imagine what we could accomplish if, instead of giving a mark, teachers just had to answer one question “Will this student be successful at the next level?”

My hair cut with talk of communism and democracy.

I had my hair cut by a lady who grew up in a communist country.  She moved here between the years of Gr. 6 and Gr. 7, and was willing to talk about her experiences in both Canada and her home country.  Of course, I brought up education, here is our talk:

Me: How do you like Canada over XXXX?

Her: I love Canada, the choices are endless.  You are not told what to do, and you can pick your job.

Me: How was the school system back home?

Her: Classes were very strict.  We sat in rows, wore uniforms, and were scared of our teachers.  If they told us to do our homework we had to or else there would be severe consequences.  Schools told us what classes we had to take.  I hated no choice.

Me: What did you notice as a difference with the education system here?

Her: We don’t have to wear uniforms.  Other than that pretty much the same.

There was silence, for the next couple of minutes, while she cut my hair.  After, we started discussing how good looking I was.  (haha)

Now serious talk.

I am truly saddened on how the only difference she noticed between our school system and a COMMUNIST one is that she didn’t have to wear uniforms.  Reflecting back on my first year of teaching, I followed most of the rules in her home country.  My students did sit in rows, I told them exactly which questions to work on, if they did not complete their homework I took away their lunch.

Does this make sense??  A student doesn’t do what I tell him/her to do, so I take away his/her lunch hour?  I am truly disappointed on how I started as a teacher.

When you reflect on your classroom practices, are they representative of a communist paradigm or one of true democracy?

Twitter-like in Calculus

Recently I tried to embrace the idea of using twitter in my calculus class.  I used the website www.polleverywhere.com  this site can create a Twitter-like environment for my students. 

Two essential ideas of calculus are deriving the slope at a specific point of a non-constant function, and determining the limit of a function at a point.  Without boring all my non-math followers, these are ideas which can be explained many different ways and some students have a trouble understanding them as they are quite abstract. 

The task:

My students, in groups of 4, had to come up with the process of determining the slope and a limit at a point.  As I circulated through the class I noticed some groups had a lot of extraneous information on their page.  Trying to promote a concise solution, I loaded up the website and asked my students to take out their cell phones. 

Each group had at least one person who had a cell phone with an unlimited text plan.  Students where then required to text in an answer, for both questions one at a time, using 140 characters or less.  I turned off my projector and gave my students time to think.

In the picture is one snapshot of the answers.

The learning did not stop there.  As a group, we went through the answers and critiqued them, adding any missing information, or taking out non-needed information.  I was amazed at the engagement and learning that occurred.  Students were even “googling” "when can you not find the derivative"; a concept that was going to be introduced later in the week.

Math is no longer "Page 46, the odds" out of a textbook.  If you put emphasis on repetition, in your math class, then I forewarn you that your students were learn to hate the repetitive nature you are asking them to do.  If you don't believe me, and you teach through repetition, I ask some small favour:  Ask your students if they find merit in your daily homework, and if you made the homework truly optional would they still complete it?

Working with Parents to Abolish Grading

Joe Bower is one damn good educator.  His blog can be found here. 

Many people have asked, "How do you get parents on board with abolishing grades?"  and here is his story:

Working with Parents to Abolish Grading

Abolishing grading is both a worthy and challenging task. I'm often asked how parents react to it all. In my experience, for the most part, parents have been an easy sell.

In the five years since I first abolished grading, I've yet to have a parent come absolutely unglued with the prospect of no grading. I have had parents ask questions during parent-teacher interviews or student-led portfolios about this whole no grading thing, and I am more than willing to engage in the conversation - in fact, I'm usually the one who brings it up by asking "So, how do you feel about the way I do things? No grades, no homework, etc". I've noticed that many parents are relieved that I bring it up first as they are hesitant to engage in what might appear as a challenge to my teaching.

Most parents are interested in how I do it, but none of them can really conceive how school can be done without grading. I often ask myself why this is - why can't adults envision school without grades?

There are probably as many answers to this as there are adults who ask the question, but I believe there is some truth in the idea that most of us parent the way we were parented and teach the way we were taught.

But you have to remember that school was likely just as frustrating for today's parents as it is for today's students. School hasn't changed very much. Tests and grades haven't changed very much. The game of school  prevails.

Parents may not know it, but we must remember that most parents are an ally in the move against grading - it's our job to remind them how it felt to be gamed by the fraudulent grading and testing machine. To remind them, I ask them these kinds of questions:

• Did you ever work really hard and learn a lot about something and receive a low grade?
• Did you ever slack off and learn almost nothing but receive a high grade?
• Can you think of someone you went to school with, and you knew they were really really smart, but always received low grades?
• Can you think of someone who received really really high grades but you knew they were a dolt and that they had, at best, a superficial understanding?

The whole idea here is to convince parents to see (remember) how grading is and was so inaccurate for them and that nothing has changed for their child. I have yet to speak with a parent who couldn't remember how this all felt. I tend to get head nods of strong agreement - even by those who are most suspicious of my no-grading policies. They get it - they just need to be reminded.

In the end, parents may not walk away 100% convinced that no-grading is the answer, but there is one more trump card here that has them leaving the interview satisfied and that is they know their child is learning. They know because for some reason, their child keeps coming home and talking about Mr. Bower and what we did in science or language arts today.

Their children are coming home saying they like school! Their children are reading more. They're asking questions and researching seemingly random stuff on the Internet. They are writing, talking and thinking about what we are doing in school.

How do parents know their children are learning? They don't need grades or test scores to know all this because they can see it with their own eyes.

Their children are happy, and so they are happy.

And that makes me happy.

Why are we being told what to think?

Many educators have asked the following question, and now I will as well; how did we ever come to believe that the bureaucrats, in a government office, should tell our children what to think?

To challenge this belief, educators will have to become innovators and show students that there is more knowledge than just what is required to know for a test. 

We need to realize that students can teach themselves far more superior than any teacher ever could.  For most tasks, it much more important that the students “discover” the knowledge rather than being told of meaningless facts or algorithms.  When we push or force certain ideas onto students we might be actually teaching them to hate the intended outcomes instead of learning it.  For example, we can’t teach students to be creative but we sure can destroy creativity.

In its current paradigm, schools are producing compliant citizens who will have anticipated and controlled thoughts.  Students who stand up and ask “why” are labelled as insubordinates or trouble makers, and most likely are put in an alternate learning environment.  Those who follow all the rules given to them, complete school with the highest marks, and never question authority are not the learners we want in a country.  When a practical problem presents itself, to these students, they will seem lost and confused. 

“I’m 25 years old and have two college degrees.  I don’t know how to do anything.  I don’t know how to do anything at all.  If the fan belt of my car broke in a snowstorm out in country I’d freeze to death reciting the goddamn Pythagorean theorem” – Student who spoke up at a John Gatto speech.

The reason this is happening is due largely to the fact that the student, who has the highest marks, is usually learning information that another person deems necessary.  This information does not come in small controllable chunks but actually in large (sometimes in the 1000s) specific outcomes a teacher must cover.  To assure students achieve success, we must also assign work to be completed outside of school, so that these high end students don’t have a minute to explore anything they may have a passion or interest for. 

Students are leaving our schools with their curiosity destroyed.  Anytime they wanted to explore an idea further, they are reminded, by the leader of the class, that this is neither the time nor place to do so.  Also, don’t forget the mass amounts of work to be completed outside of school; we should be asking “When is the appropriate time and place?”

We need to start realizing that our focus should be on passions, interests, creativity, and curiosity; if there is time after…..then we can focus on the mandated outcomes.

Who is to blame: The teacher or the test?

Here are some comments about high stakes exams from a reader of my blog:

"You seem to think that you can absolve them of their responsibility by simply blaming the exams for their lack of humanity or professionalism.

About the alleged example of the teachers only feeding the kids properly on test days, I agree that it's disgusting (if it really is true); but it still isn't the fault of the test. It's the fault of the teachers who are displaying this appaling lack of humanity.

Blaming their unethical behaviour on the exam, and not on them, is what's disgusting.

As for your comment about "this implies that only these outcomes should be emphasized in the class? This sounds a little corrupt to me." - I never intimated that only those outcomes should be emphasized. In fact, I consider anybody who ignores the curriculum in favour of 'teaching to the test' to be incompetent and think they should be fired.

And yes, that incompetence is their fault, not the test's fault. "

Full conversation at "Mandated Exams..." and "Don't teach that, its not on the test"

I know open the floor, to any and all readers of my blog.  Am I out to lunch, implying it is the test that is forcing our hand here, or is it really the imcompetence of teachers?

Please comment below.