The beaurocratic messages that are placed upon teachers are one thing. Test scores, results and assessment have long forged their way onto the highest pedestal when it comes to educational paradigms and principles. Demonstrating tangible achievement through testing measures is important, valuable and has a crucial place in education. But because the standards of education have made this pillar so vital, being a teacher becomes so much harder.

I mean, how can teachers find ways to teach the importance of standardized testing when they know that the job they earned didn’t come from taking some test? And teaching is a public service; the part of society that is the most “objective” and merit-based. If you venture into the private realm of society, most employers could care less about what your transcript looks like. Maybe they are concerned with the degree you attained, but when was the last time an entrepreneurial enterprise asked a prospective candidate about the grades they got in their second year of university? I am not in this realm to know straight facts, so maybe I am wrong. But I have a lot of friends on the corporate-capitalistic side of things making over six figures that have told me that they never once talked about grades in a job interview.

Teaching these days is actually an arresting occupation. In certain ways, teachers are the liberators of knowledge and individual-actualization. But this ultimate goal is so difficult to realize because of all the systemic hoops teachers have to jump through just to get their job done. Those “teachable moments” that are so amazing are scarce. In reality, they may happen five times a year – if you’re lucky. And what that leaves many teachers with is a distaste for the mundane, day-to-day reality of teaching. So what do you think happens to the students they teach?

I would love to walk into a classroom, create (or co-create) a curriculum, and let learning happen. I would love to take teaching and learning back to the old-school; be that Plato in the classroom, sit in a corner and let young minds mature through a Play-do style of education and learning (pardon the pun). But I signed a contract that tells me how I ought to do my job. And if I don’t fulfill it someone else will be there to fill my role.

We don’t need to throw away the curriculum to make education better. We need to trust teachers in their capacity to teach, guide, and direct learning. More than that, we need to trust young people in their ability to invest in their growth. Don’t believe me? Try this then: take a bunch of “un-engaged” grade 10 students and give them “free time” for the entire period, for the entire month. I can almost guarantee what will happen. They will enjoy it for the first few days, or weeks even. But after, they will become unengaged with that! That is because we all know the purpose and value of education. But somewhere along the line it has become co-opted to fit the needs for a few which results in disengagement for most. I am talking about students and teachers alike.

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It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that every teacher teaches with the “burden” of getting through curriculum. It also wouldn’t be a stretch to argue that the curriculum currently prescribed cannot be adequately covered in 10 months of school. Teachers adapt by skimming over parts of the common core and going deeper into others, teaching topics that they have a passion for, and being flexible to students’ needs. But unfortunately, when that end of the month (or curriculum unit) comes, it usually signifies test time and we move onto the next “strand”. Under the pressure to cover curriculum, we move on whether students “get it” or not. And we do this primarily because we have to write a report card at the end of the term or year. We have to show proof of what we did with our students.

I asked several teachers how not writing a report card would change their practice. Some pointed out that they would slow down and teach according to student needs (what a novel idea!). Others suggested that they would, “teach what they wanted to teach and not what the curriculum dictated as important”. While this idea has the damaging potential to re-create provisional self-esteem and privileges the teacher once again in the power dynamic of the classroom space, teachers who are engaged with the material would also exponentially benefit student learning.

No report cards would change my classroom immensely. It would afford the opportunity to truly co-create an educational environment where kids would enact agency in their learning. We could establish relevance and engagement in a way that goes beyond what any burdensome report card produces. No report cards – fine, we can introduce peer reviews and grading, that way the teacher is not the sole authoritative figure dolling out some final piece a paper that is supposed to mark their idea of how they think a kid did throughout the school year.

If used correctly, a final pass/fail letter could be a great move. Our current system is intrinsically flawed anyways. So despite the political maneuvers between government and teachers’ unions, below the surface this “no report card thing” marks a tremendous opportunity to re-examine the paradigm of education and how we demarcate student success. Not having a traditional report card is unfortunate for the children who are programmed to base their academic validity on a letter grade or a percentage. But despite its shortcomings, it is also a unique opportunity to explore how the politics of accountability and traditional forms of professionalism impact how teachers teach.

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