The methodology which is used to grade students is highly personal and also deeply embedded in a traditional system craving for numbers and letters. Majority of people who have studied in an American Education System have gone through this grading but they never knew that there were alternatives.
In reality, we often stick with whatever we know even when we are skeptical of its benefit for students. The truth is most teachers hate grading, they loathe it. It instills negative feelings because condensing a single letter or number to any child’s work devalues the process it took to reach the stage.
Even when the educators know this on the inside, we are yet working in institutions that believe to straying from the norm and we work with and for people who don’t understand the futility of assessing learning.
Depending on the age group you teach, your students must have been in a system that needs a final score. The students don’t know any other thing too, and are devised to consider grades as the indicator for evaluating their learning process. If you want to make a little difference, then you should tell the people in our school, community, and classroom about how doing the assessment differently can improve learning.
Here is a list of “THINGS TO DO TOMORROW?” which help you lay the foundation for a larger discussion.
THINGS TO DO TOMORROW
We know that adults are close minded when they are comfortable, so you will have to give them a proof how this way is better.Here is a list of things you can do.
- Grab hold of 4-6 excellent resources for reading that resonate with colleagues and administrators. Consider joining Facebook pages that support this system of grade-less learning. Also follow Facebook pages where people share their ideas, experiences, and challenges and work with each other to solve problems.
- Collect testimonials of how students have actually benefited from this new learning methodology. If you can bring students who can talk about it, then it’s a bonus. Bring a student with you when you are having a casual peer talk with them.
- Ask colleagues and administrators about starting a committee for optimizing the implementation. As of now, just have a casual conversation to turn up the heat about the situation with people at your school. If you are able to gather a few ‘beta’ testers with you then nothing can beat its utility.
- You can also write a letter to parents explaining the shift and inviting their input and questions.
- Start a class hashtag on Twitter. A unique hashtag on twitter can create a virtual space that will collect all the tweets that use it. This is the best way to get questions, concerns, and comments in once location.
- Start a YouTube channel to inform parents.
These tips will help you start a conversation and aid in building a more transparent experience for students. There will be more working in future and so many complications but just don’t give up. This is just the start.
