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My World Is a Flood: Trying a New Thing With Grades

3/30/2015

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Grades are something I’ve always struggled with, both as a student and as a teacher. As a student, my grades were OK, but I didn’t spend any time of any consequence stressing over them, especially compared to many of my peers. And I unabashedly ignored most homework assignments.

As a teacher, I hate the moment the first grades hit the online gradebook, where students start to see them. That moment changes the class. Before that moment, the kids often seem engaged and playful and all-in on the learning; afterwards, it seems I’m fielding vastly more questions about how to get an A than I am about how to improve (reading/writing/arguing/thinking).

I wish I had a good answer as to how to handle grades in a grade-obsessed school culture. To be clear, I’m not just talking about school, district, or state. This is a national obsession that trickles down to students. I have tried to hide them from students for as long as possible, giving just feedback without letters or numbers attached. However, in the days of online gradebooks, there’s not a good way to get away with that--not when students and parents have notifications set up to ding their phones every time it’s updated. And really, it’s just delaying the inevitable “crisis mode” anyway.

So here’s what I’m trying at the moment: flood the gradebook. I talked to Jon Corippo two years ago about this problem, along with the massive paper load that goes along with being an English teacher. He said a couple things that I’m just beginning to understand: first, grade stuff in class, as they compose/as they work. And second, he said that they should be getting 2-3 grades per period, every day. I laughed at the idea at the time, but given the current reality in my classes, that makes a lot of sense. More grades, to the point of flooding the gradebook, makes each one worth less, comparatively. So hypothetically, if each assignment is statistically insignificant, that could in turn cause students to quit focusing on individual points and more on what they’re learning. Right?

Right?

Honestly, I have no idea if this will work. At its core, it’s just trying to work with and work around a highly flawed system, and trying to do right by kids. Either way, more feedback has to be better.



**note: the daffodils have little to do with the post. they are just pretty, and there are a lot of them, like a flood. sort of. you can accept my metaphor, or you can just enjoy the beauty. :-)
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How To Successfully Go To Conferences And Actually Get Something Out Of Them You Can Use In Class

3/23/2015

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There tend to be two different types of conference presentations-- presentations intended to inspire, and presentations intended to give the participant things they can take back to their classrooms and use immediately. (I guess there are also sessions that try to sell products, but we can just ignore/not go to those.)

Usually, keynotes are in the first category-- a lot of inspiration, but not a lot of Stuff You Can Actually Do. And that’s fine. Keynotes are a place where one or two people are addressing a massive audience, and there’s not a lot of time and space to try things out.

I do, however, take issue with sessions that promise to teach me things that really just turn into self-aggrandizement or attempts to be pithy and inspirational. These are the sessions we usually walk out of.

When I present at a conference, I like to strike a balance between “here is what’s possible” and “here are some concrete things you can actually do, in your class, tomorrow.” It doesn’t do any good to make a presentation that is a pure advertisement for your class. The point isn’t really to show off. It’s to show what is possible.

And the more we present, the more we drift towards the second. I don’t like holding my classes up as shining beacons, as much as I love them. There are imperfections and problems and conflicts, just like there are in every class. I want the audiences to come away with nuggets they can apply immediately.

Because here’s the thing: we’ve been doing this Flipped Project-Based Wonderland Thing for almost three full school years now. It’s taken thousands of hours of work, and while there are no shortcuts, I do want to give teachers the feeling that what we do is not unattainable, if they want to achieve it. They have ideas that work for them which are probably better than ours. What I want more than anything is for people to take our ideas, make them their own, remix them, and spin them back into the world even better. (s/o to @ls_karl and his TED Talk.)



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The Infection Suggestion: #youredustory, Week 10

3/13/2015

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Prompt: How do you infect students with a passion for learning?

Let's start here: I take issue with the idea of intentionally infecting anyone with anything. The connotation of the word "infect" is inherently negative, and more importantly, it suggests a lack of agency on the part of the infected individual. 

Let's not suggest that students don't already have a passion for learning. At worst, they don't have a passion for learning THAT or THIS. 

And that's cool, honestly. I don't have a passion for learning forensic science (gross) or linear algebra. All I can do is to be excited myself and allow students the space to put their own spin on what we're learning. 

So let's do that. Let's create assignments with thousands of possible iterations, and give students the platform to try things out and see what works for them. Let's not make it complicated. We can remind them that they love learning, and let reawakening serve as our guiding metaphor instead of infection. 
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Normalizing The Weird. 

3/2/2015

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We had Saturday school this weekend to make up a snow/ice day from earlier in the week last week. We had a puppet-making workshop in AP Language for the two thirds of the students who made it out of the house by the time class started.
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At this point, I think my students have sort of become acclimated to the weird world that is my class. I’m guessing that if you asked them what my weirdest lesson was/is, they’d probably all give you a different answer. So maybe we’re beyond hope in B109. Unless you want a list of ways to normalize the weird. Then, I got you. 

-Do weird things every day. 


-Change up your routine.

-Watch things/talk about things that are interesting to you. Show your outside-of-class interests.

-Get students talking to each other. 

-Get students creating.

-Get students to explicitly connect your class to things happening in the outside world. 

-Let the class be loud sometimes. 


This, of course, is an incomplete list. I guess it all comes down to making connections, both academic AND interpersonal-- and letting those little moments of creativity and light guide your approach to the class. 
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    The Writer

    I'm Andrew. I write about learning. I like to learn. 

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