Let’s look at this hypothetically while remaining objective. A student answers a question on a test and you see that they have some decent content but the coherency is lacking. You use an “objective” scale to grade the answer and move on to the next. You proceed to follow this protocol throughout your entire class set of assessments. You do this for each section and then calculate the grade. You even cover up the name when you are totaling the assignment. Then you enter the grades in your mark book and finally start to compare some names with some grades. Johnny, as usual, gets 94% and Sherissa gets a 45%. Hey, you think, I graded this thing objectively and I did the equitable thing. If you do this, I honestly hope they make human-like robots soon enough to replace us all.

I do look at names when I grade. I do so because I actually have a functional idea of what equity actually means. Equity doesn’t mean same standard for all my students; they are not programmed the same and they are definitely not robots. I know that some students may even feel a different type of way knowing that today’s math time is going to be test time. Why I look at names when I grade is because I understand the human component to education. I realize, as a teacher, that I am not assessing and nurturing mere “students” but actual people. I am definitely not special, but I do maintain that the people in my class are actual people with a future, hopes and aspirations and self-esteem that I am hopeful to positively nurture. As teachers, we are not in the role to objectively judge. I repeat, we are not in the role, as teachers, to objectively judge.

The whole teachers’ preparation standpoint on grading made sense to me at that naïve point in my career. Deliver curriculum in the way you think is best, assess based on that and then turn around and again, “objectively” judge their learning based on your methods. Reading this, you may think that I am unabashedly suggesting a free-for-all method of pedagogy. I am not. I am simply saying that the idea of consideration and context plays an enormous role in student potential. Keeping those two ideas in mind, there is no way you could not look at names when you grade.

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Let’s take (the majority of) the boys for starters. Most of them rushed through the gingerbread house making activity. They were not patient enough to set the walls in place. They used too much or too little icing on parts that were supposed to connect the house together. Some hastily unpacked their pieces which subsequently led to the gingerbread being already broken before they even started. A few made a diligent attempt to construct the house, but when a piece would eventually fall or slide out of place, instead of having the resilience to re-set the falling piece, they grew frustrated and impatient. End result: maybe two out of fourteen boys went home that day with an intact gingerbread house.

After observing and laughing with the boys for quite some time, I went over to see how the girls were doing. (For this activity, we organized the class by pushing the desks into two long groups and I let the students sit wherever they wanted; so naturally, all the boys went to one table and all the girls went to the other). On the contrary to where you think I was heading with this piece, I observed much of the same things that I saw over at the boys’ table. Some of the girls made elegant gingerbread houses equipped with amazingly designed and perfectly distributed icing. Some had so little patience that after fifteen minutes their gingerbread house was a pile of broken cookie pieces with icing layered all over it. A small group of girls, instead of making the actual house, sat and ate the icing and candy that came with it while chatting. Out of sixteen girls, maybe nine went home with a pristine house.

How does this story tie into themes of teaching and education? One activity, as fun and engaging as it might be, is never going to speak to the unique abilities and strengths of every student in the class. Most of the students didn’t mind going home with half crushed, falling apart gingerbread houses. But when we take the gingerbread houses and replace them with grades and tests, we can start to see the flaws in teaching to a one activity, one assessment approach. If building the gingerbread house was a test, eleven out of thirty would have passed. Now, some would have done better if they got to see someone else model how to make it. Others would have done better if they could work in a quiet environment. You get the basic point here: a cookie cutter, one box approach to teaching and learning is a faulty way of going about our job as a teacher. We’ve got to mix it up, add a little icing so to speak. Yeah…these were just some thoughts as I watched my students having fun on a cool winter day.

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As a teacher, I am pretty candid with my students. Sometimes, I gather my class of fourth and fifth graders on the carpet and couch in my classroom and we grade assignments together. I hold up a student’s work, we highlight the positive aspects of it and then we talk about where it can use improvement. I wouldn’t recommend this for the first year teacher, but I think I have a pretty good grasp of the mentality of the junior learner and the things that push them towards excellence. And to be brutally honest, it makes my job a whole lot easier when I involve students in the assessment portion of their education. But with an open-style comes the opportunity of students challenging grades.

But being so candid comes with its negatives. Because I am really real with my students, I open myself up to a dialogue and relationship between students and myself that many teachers would feel uncomfortable with. My students constantly challenge their grades. I’m not talking about talking back but these kids don’t sit back and take that B- or C+ without objection. But I am secure in my pedagogy, so I not only expect this from my little 10-year-old students – I appreciate it.

As pertaining to the curriculum of my province in elementary school, I am obliged to teach different “writing styles”. Now, I am teaching my students how to write a procedure or an instruction. Versing my students in the language of fiction versus non-fiction is important. But I am a little confused as to why I have to spend a month teaching a strand of writing that basically consists of showing students how to write rudimentary “how-to” manuals. My students need to learn how to write a dang sentence! Let me refrain.

While I was teaching my students how to write procedural texts, like recipes and directions, and pedagogically implementing my community-based assessment strategies, a few students got upset that I was valuing neatness and organization over content. I am all about the “teachable moments”. These were mainly a few of the boys in the class voicing their complaints. I have no problem with students sharing an equal platform with me and challenging my decisions; whether it is 10-year-olds or undergrads (ironically enough, my 10-year-olds make more authentic and concise arguments than most undergraduate or post graduate students I have been around in recent years, see last post.)

The argument a few of my boys made about organization and “neatness” would be valid – if we were talking about an essay or paragraph response. But we were talking about a procedure. My kids were asked to write a simple recipe! Most wrote about how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! This is where open communication between the student and the teacher comes in. I have established an environment that supports constructive criticism. If a student feels that something is wrong and unfair, they know to speak up. I don’t even care if they put their hand up at this point. My class is filled with 10-year-olds that operate and challenge thinking akin to a post-graduate classroom.

But this is where I feel most worthwhile. After a few of my students voiced their complaints of my tendency to validate organization over content, I took the opportunity to speak to them in a way that would educate them. I didn’t talk about content but about context – I explained that in a unit that is simply about writing down directions, the main gist of the learning pertains to format and overall appearance. Everybody knows how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But who took the time to add the things we talked about in the lesson before – who added pictures, headings, an introduction, a diagram, and all that jazz and went the extra mile to actually demonstrate that they listened to my lesson and took what I said and applied it. And that is what they heard in my rant about organization and “neatness”. That is what they so courageously asked about and that is hopefully what I eloquently answered for them.

That is learning, it is not simply about a lesson and regurgitation, it is about a lesson, a product and classroom conversation and then a challenge. Through this experience of teaching, we will build students who actually understand a little better what their purpose for doing things are. I have no doubt that, after today, my boys will hand in their next “recipe” or procedural text with a little bit more neatness than the prior procedures they submitted. And that is all that I want. That is why I teach.

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To do assessment well, you must:

Know your students first

The children you are responsible for nurturing come first. When assessing children, you must understand, firstly, your students. You must learn their work habits, their styles, their engagement – them personally. Without understanding your students and what drives them to answer questions and write what they do on a paper, you will be lost, and your formative assessments will serve as mute reference points.

Understand that all assessment is fundamentally subjective

Unless we are talking about black and white answers in math and maybe science, all answers by students are personally judged. Some teachers use formative assessments to boost students’ “grades” on the presumption that the summative examples they dole out will be the ultimate arrival point of objective knowledge. But all knowledge, realistically speaking is subjective. So we must understand that when we assess we are using our subjective biases, for better or worse, to judge children. Counterintuitevely, keeping this in mind will lead to a more “objective” stance in understanding the various unique knowledges that our students possess.

Assess formatively in ways that are not always “formative”

Formative assessment is not confined to the barriers of nonchalant observations. Tests can be formative. Assignments can be formative. Formative assessment derives from an understanding that knowledge is split into two terms – a priori knowledge, and posteriori knowledge, both still underpinning the fundamental assumption that the human is always capable of learning more. If you want to test, that is fine, but understand that your students often learn at different paces so be prepared to scaffold your classroom learning to accommodate for varying deadlines and overall objectives.

Reject your savior role and understand that your students sometimes garner other needs

All types of assessment instill a sense in teachers that they are the be all and end all of their classroom. This is true to a certain extent. But grading and assessment must take into consideration the effect they have on a child. We may feel like Old Testament God in the classroom, but we are not. Some students need more nurturing, more positive encouragement, and a host of other needs that are not solely derived from a grade or a teacher student conversation. Be flexible in your role as a teacher and understand your importance without getting caught up in it.

Grades are not the be all and end all of education

When you mark an English paper and give a paragraphs worth of personal commentary on the back page, what is the first and only thing students do. They look at the grade only! I am close to being an advocate for a grade-less educational system at the elementary level because I know that power that a single letter or percentage has on the psyche of a young mind. But teachers weild this power. And they often use it with the understanding of the implicit and explicit damage (or reward) that it can do to a child. Stepping away and instilling a notion of creation, innovation and personal growth that is not necessarily attached to a final grade is a move that education desperately needs. It will take a lot to finally move there, but when teachers create a classroom community that is dependent on a heirachical order based on grades, it perpetuates the dysfunctional aspects of the society we live in today. Grades are important, but they are not the ultimate marker of a child. Teachers should constantly relay this message to students when handing back work that has been assessed. Personal growth is the key, not a grade.

When using assessment, keep these keys in mind. There are many other watch-fors when assessing, but with these 5, you will ensure that you are as “objective” as possible and putting your students first.

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The age-old pedagogical questions when teachers grade work always seems to eek its way on to the table of progressive practice year after year. Ultimately, grading involves notions of fostering self-esteem or delivering “objective” (but very subjective in most cased) assessment. So, where do you fit on the continuum of “grade dealers”?

I recently finished marking a pile of culminating Language assignments. This is the second part of the job that I would love to avoid if I could. What usually tends to happen is that soon as I get around to marking a set of assignments, I collect another pile of work! Unfortunately for teachers, the turnstile of grading work never stops. Teachers must not only mark but must also wrestle with the dualistic realities that are espoused through grading a student’s work. Two prominent and dueling philosophies arise when teachers talk about the “purpose of grading.” One is grading to send a “wake-up call” to students and the other is grading work to boost student’s “self-esteem.” Put into context, this means there is usually two different ways that most teachers’ grade work. Some give a student a little better mark than their work deserves because they want them to live to those expectations set for them in the hopes that the elevated mark will boost their self-confidence and make them believe that they are actually capable of achieving success. This sort of self-fulfilling prophecy works in athletics all the time (which is a loaded sentence in itself and a topic I may eventually blog about).

By using the “positive validation” method, you also run the risk of inflating their competence and diminishing their understanding of effort. Youth are forever internalizing experiences. If they know they did not put their best effort forth and still got an A, instead of wondering how well they could have done if they worked their hardest, they may be satisfied and fall into a complacent false consciousness of what merit, self-worth, and effort all mean. But again, it depends on the student and their character.

Then there is the other pedagogical side of “waking up” your students with an assessment that delivers the brutal and “honest” truth (and at times, may even exaggerate it). A numerical “you need to step it up” can sometimes shake up students and re-focus their efforts and eventually churn out better work in the future. Whatever philosophy you begin to employ, grading is an especially fragile subject near the beginning of the year. From my own personal experience as a student growing up, high scores on early assignments encouraged me; they pushed me to continue working hard in class to maintain the high grades I initially received. They also demonstrated to me that my teacher thought I was smart. Conversely, once I received a low grade or two at the beginning of a course, I subconsciously “checked out” of that class, putting forth minimal effort with the simple intentions of sliding by since attaining excellence seemed unreachable. This dynamic speaks to the adolescent mind and what the beginning of a new school years means to them. The beginning of the year serves as a fresh start for students; a chance to create or improve an ever-developing identity in a whole new classroom and an opportunity for them to “re-classify” themselves.

Individuals have a multiplicity of motivations that run their daily hopes, goals, and ambitions. These internal drives combine with external experiences to create one’s character. With grading, you have to judge it on a case-by-case basis. When you are looking at a student’s work, it is important to have a thorough understanding of that student. Some students need a boost in confidence; others need to be brought back down to reality. Grading then becomes especially effective when you have a feel for your students. This is precisely why I don’t support the idea of “blindfold” grading. Teachers often tell me, “I cover up the names when I mark that way I am objective.” And while I understand the premise and logical pedagogy behind their statements, I feel that a teacher is more that a body whom is simply distributing “un-biased” assessment. Grading is yet another facet in which we teachers are provided the opportunity to build and nurture tomorrow’s future, our students. So we need to be a little personal about it.

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