I hate grades. I hate everything about them -- giving them, hearing about them, the whole shabang.
I cannot fathom the world my students live in: the pressure to get good grades, the pressure to do All The Activities, the pressure to be the best. It’s overwhelming to think about, much less live it day-to-day.
Whether implicitly or explicitly, we have told a generation of students that their self worth is tied to their GPA. Frankly, it drives me crazy (admittedly that’s a fairly short trip). I find that grades become an invisible barrier between myself and my students.
No matter how carefully I build rapport with them, it is undone and altered the moment grades enter into the conversation.
When school went virtual in March it made me assess my own assessment methods and tools. It made me get very, very clear on what criteria matters. I ended up in a place of wondering what their grades do?
What is their function?
A well-worn conversation to be sure, but quarantine made it urgent. Why do we quantify their performance, rather than provide thresholds of mastery to meet to pass the class? Why are we using a system that (to my mind) no longer serves its purpose?
Logically I understand it, pedagogically it gives me a stomach ache. Transcripts do not tell you the story. It tells you one tiny fraction of one tiny sliver of one tiny facet of a student. And yet I’ve made the choice to teach at a traditional school that requires me to assign my students traditional grades. That is my choice. My students, however, didn’t ask for any of this.
So how do I tackle grades?
Classroom Culture Shift
At the start of every school year I talk about grades almost obsessively. I talk about them until my students groan and roll their eyes at me. I tell them, “you are not your essay, you are a person. I’m not in the business of grading people. I grade essays that people write.” It’s a feeble attempt to shift the conversation, but brick by brick it builds a classroom culture that sends a very specific message about grades.
From the first week of school I let my students see “behind the curtain”. It’s messy, sure. But I invite them into my teacher mindset and teach them what a grade is for: it’s their shot to show me that they’ve become proficient within my subject area.
I am intentional and explicit: grades aren’t a measurement of effort, or of character, or of perseverance. Individually, they tell the story of a single day and not much more. It is only the gradebook taken as a whole that can begin to hint at a cohesive narrative. Even then, colleges don’t see the trajectory -- they see only a single letter. There is no way for me to tell a college that one A is worth more than another A. An A is an A is an A. A static, templated story without depth.
I have to give them grades. It’s literally what pays my bills. So how do I try to take control of the conversation? I, like many, use rubrics. There is no such thing as one rubric to rule them all in my classroom. Each assignment has different criteria, and the language I use to describe performance is in line with that assignment. I attempt to be as intentional as I can crafting a rubric. Instead of letters, scores fall under a range of categories: Mastery, Proficiency, Emerging Proficiency, Competence, Emerging Competence, and Needs Remediation. I don’t use all of these for every assignment, but no matter which ones I choose for a given assignment, they tell a very different story of achievement for my students.
To their mind, an A means they got nothing wrong. It requires perfection. Mastery, however, indicates that a skill has been fully absorbed and is ready for continual use. Maximum performance, which requires skill and skills are about progress -- not perfection. I find that when framed in this way student understanding of grading criteria replicates outward to other categories.
The language of skill building they understand. They process it more effectively than letter grades. Letter grades focus on what is lacking, but my rubrics attempt to focus on what the student has gained.
Front loading these ideas early and often means grades do not often dictate the temperature of my classroom. Intentionally setting criteria in my rubrics and getting clear on what really matters, and what is merely ornamental, improved student scores across the board.
And yet.
And yet talking about grades
is often still emotionally charged for my students. To take away the anxiety out of grades I have attempted to foster a classroom culture of progress rather than perfection. We focus on skills rather than letter grades. But to take the sting out of less than stellar assessment grades I’ve developed a pre-conference form.
When a student wants to discuss their grade, this is what we do: Students wait 24 hours after they receive a grade, and then they can schedule time with me (I use Calendly). Next, and more importantly, they download my conference form -- it must be returned before noon on the day of our conference.
The conference form tells me a couple of things. It asks things like:
What grade did you anticipate on this assignment?
Re-read the directions. Was there a misunderstanding?
Look at the feedback given. What does it tell you?
What specific, constructive questions do you have?
Getting them out of their own head and forcing them to examine their work from an outside perspective actually helps defuse their anxiety. It allows them to go through the assignment on their own, digest feedback, and put their thoughts down on paper before going in. I find that it works beautifully as a conversation starter.
My promise to them is one I learned from Brene Brown: I will only meet with you when we can sit on the same side of the table. I am on their team, and this isn’t about me versus them. It isn’t about me at all. I have found that emphasizing this class culture not only helps me build strong rapport with my students and gets me more “buy in”, but it also gives students constructive methods of talking about grades -- something my students generally find difficult.
Sitting on their side of the table has, in short, made me a better teacher. My conference form helps me get to their side of the table.
I’ve had several colleagues ask me to share my form with them, and I’d like to share it with you, too. I’ve linked it below -- it’s a FREE resource in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
I still hate grades, but teaching my students to effectively discuss grades makes life a little bit easier for everyone.
Keep calm and pretend it’s in the lesson plan,
Dr. O
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Grade-Conference-Form-5955537
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