Alfie Kohn "The Trouble with Rubric", The Case Against Grades"

                                                                 

Alfie Kohn brings up some controversial, passionate, and valid points in her two  texts, “The Trouble with Rubrics” and “The Case against Grades.” She states some points that I agree with, and other points  that I do not.  I have never done research on the topic but as an English teacher I do have some experience with rubrics and grading.  Bottom line is that we, as teachers, do not have too much of a say in how we assess these days.

Kohn states  in “The Trouble with Rubrics” “Second, I’d been looking for an alternative to grades because research shows  three reliable effects when students are graded: They tend to think less deeply, avoid taking risks, and lose interest in learning itself.”

In my experience students are driven by grades, not learning;  This is so unfortunate. I have tried to wrap my head around this concept many time but it all comes  down to the grades. For the higher level kids, they seem to e learning at the same time though. The understanding that they are learning if they get a good grade seems to go hand in hand. However, for the lower level kids, it is all about the grades and they don’t seem to care if they learn anything. A few examples:

Scenario 1:

Teacher: Ok ladies and gentleman let write a reflection of the activity we just did, pleae take out your journals and just write. Write whatever you want; did you enjoy the activity? Would you change anything about it? What did you learn? What connections did you make? Choose one if you need help getting started.

Student: Ms. Lee? Are we getting graded on this?

Teacher: No, this is your own reflections, a chance to write whatever you want.

Student puts his head down and closes his eyes:

Scenario 2:

Student: Ms. Lee, are you collecting this?

Teacher: No , I’m not going to collect it, please put it in your binder and we will discuss the answers as a class on Thursday.

Student: I need a grade for this Miss. I did the work now I should get credit for it. I’m not doin no busy work!

Scenario 3:

Student:  If I fix this what grade will I get? All I need is a 65 to pass.

Teacher: Why do you just want to pass? If you make the corrections necessary you could get a hgier grade.

Student: I don’t want to do anything more that I have to, I just want to get out of this school with my diploma.

Obviously these scenarios are not indicative of all my lower level students but unfortunately I have learned that many students want to do just enough,; not any more, not any less.  Motivating my students to want to learn is very difficult to do at times because  of the structured curriculum we have. It is imperative we use texts that the students may connect to or are interested in, especially in the lower level classes. 

“Grades create a preference for the easiest possible task. Impress upon students that what they’re doing will count toward their grade, and their response will likely be to avoid taking any unnecessary intellectual risks. They’ll choose a shorter book, or a project on a familiar topic, in order to minimize that chance of doing poorly—not because they’re “unmotivated” but because they’re rational “ (2).

Again, this is catering to the higher level kids; the kids who are motivated, who already love to read and who know how to manipulate the system. What about the kids I spoke of previously.  These unmotivated kids, who may be kids who speak a different language at home and need to work on a daily basis to help their family;  the kids who do not have the parental support and value for education that many others do. If some of my students do not think that the grade would count, they would choose a shorter story,  they just wouldn’t do the assignment. Grades are here to stay and kids are driven by them. A perfect example: The NECAP assessments.

Every year the 11^th graders are assessed in reading, writing, math and science. Up until this year, the grades have never mattered. On the three or four days during the testing it was torture for teachers to get kids to even finish the assessment. They just didn’t care! These tests  were being used a quantitative date for the state to assess the progress of the schools. Our school set incentives for the kids to show up.  For the most part, they were not giving their best effort, to say the very least. Even my own son said he didn’t try very hard, it didn’t matter. Well, the state decided to make it a graduation requirement for all students . If a student tis  not at least partially proficient he or she will not graduate! Students showed up, grades went u,  and things were quite different this year.  What does this tell us?

Learning is a process and so is teaching. In “The Case against Grades” Kohn state, “Replacing letter and number grades with narrative assessments or conferences—qualitative summaries of student progress offered in writing or as part of a conversation – is not a utopian fantasy.”

As an English teacher it is very difficult to teach writing. There is no universal formua (well there is a writing process) that every student masters and voila, they’re writing perfectly. While some kids may struggle with adding content, others may struggle with introductions,  or a thesis, or adding evidence ,or the structure . I have found a very successful way in assessing my students writing and teaching writing. It is a long process but that is what learning and teaching is. Whenever I give a writing assignment the students write it over and over until they understand it. This requires reading , assessing, and conferencing on the same text multiple times, but the kids really learn what they need to work on, and they are able to fix it over and over again. I have had nothing but positive feedback on this.  The first draft paper is given back without a grade, and often it is given back several times without a grade. My rationale is that if you give a student back a paper with a C on it he or she will take the paper, maybe look at the “markings’ and then put it away. When a student gets a paper back without a grade it is required for he or she to fix what they learned and re-write the paper over.

All level kids benefit from this. The kids who are driven by a grade do not have the satisfactory of taking that D+ and being done with it. I have had students who would end up with a B because they had already revised it several times, but they want to do it over and try for the B+ or an A. This process has been very successful in helping kids gain confidence  in their writing skills and forces them to learn more. 

 This clip is an interview by Barry Lane about the idea of Rubrics and how effective they are to English teachers.

Rubrics

I am not a big fan. At times they do help expedite the assessment process. I am required to use a rubric for our portfolio assessments. What is frustrating is that what I think deserves a 3 other teachers may think deserves  a 2.  In my school we are spending a lot of time collaborating when grading theses assessments. This works well because we all get a better idea of how to use the rubric. The funny thing is the rubrics are now given a grade. What is proficient? I guess it is anywhere between an 83 and 93, it changes on a monthly basis depending on the latest research that comes out .

For those of us who do use rubrics to assess, there is a great site that helps create your own rubrics. When you need to be more specific to the genre of writing this helps create that rubric specifically for your assignment.

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/

Kliewer "Citizenship in School: Reconceptualizing Down Syndrome"

Kliewer's text was very enlightening to read. Unfortunately I haven’t had any interaction with a person with Down syndrome. I have had a lot of interaction with people who have disabilities, so I am very familiar with the judgments, and the lack of expectations that most people with a mental or physical handicap must endure. Kliewer’s perspective from real students with Down syndrome is a wonderful way for his readers to understand more, and be less ignorant and less intolerant of people who have Down syndrome. Fortunately I learned a lot from this text, which I will share with my reader.

Judgment and Democracy:

Community is the key to becoming, or being accepted and equal.  Democracy is a word used by politicians and bureaucrats which means freedom for all, only if you are one of the “privileged” of society does this freedom come easily. Society is community; therefore if you are not accepted and valued in the community then you are not privy to the democracy. “Dewey promoted democracy as a way of life in which community both establishes and is derived from each individual’s recognition of the value of every other individual.”

The Society, our communities and our schools need to grasp the fact that every individual has the abililty to add to society. The cliché “don’t judge a book by its cover” are words society needs to live and communicate by.  “Community requires a willingness to see people as they are-different perhaps in their minds and in their bodies, but not different in their spirits or in their willingness and ability to contribute to the mosaic of society” (73).

Schooling ad Democracy

“He and fellow educators have substantiated this vision with detailed accounts of actual educational arenas where all students are welcomed, not voice is silenced, and children come to realize their own self-worth through the unconditional acceptance of one another”(74)

The words “unconditional acceptance” stuck out to me. School is a major foundation in the life a child. Creating schools that do not segregate is imperative to the well being of all children and society. Kliewer discusses that peers need to have this unconditional acceptance for each other. There is absolutely no other way but to include all students, with or without disabilities. Kids understand and learn from each other in many different ways. Kliewer gives a few first hand accounts of kids with who have Down syndrome and their experience included and not included with the general population of students. Shayne Robbins, a teacher in a non-segregated school shares her experience with Down syndrome children in her classroom. She explains that these children, although they all have Down syndrome, they are not the same. I think this is a misconception many people have. Shayne tells of Isaac, who has Down syndrome who “might have been considered low-functioning. He had no speech that was understandable to teachers; moved with a great deal of awkwardness “(75); However, Shayne did not see Isaac as imperfect but she designed her lessons with all kids in mind. She drew on every kids strength.  Anne, another child with Down syndrome absolutely loved movies, and according to Shayne, knew a lot about them. Shayne knew a good job for her would be working in a movie rental shop. However, the transition planning board thought that Anne would do well as a preschool aide. Anne did not like working with kids but in this world of “privilege” no one in authority decided to ask her, except Shayne.

Kliewer emphasizes that people with disabilities do have a voice and they have significance in the world. They are approachable, they are intelligent, they have hobbies, and passions just like everyone else.

“Vygotsky found that the culture of segregation surrounding people with disabilities actually teaches underdevelopment of thinking through the isolation of children from socially valued opportunities”(81).

Very often school officials think that kids learn better in segregated classrooms. What is it that we are supposed to be teaching? Is it just reading, writing, and math?  If school is a foundation for our kids, should we teach about “unconditional acceptance?”

                                                                                     

 Kliewer discusses multiple intelligences in his text. Multiple intelligences, developed by Howard Gardner is a theory that there are eight different types of intelligence in a person and that these intelligences help a person in learning and processing information.  I did a little work with this theory in my classroom a few years back. I think it is time to reintroduce some of these tools. Basically this theory supports the idea that there are many different ways to learn and many different idea of intelligence. Shayne supports this in her classroom. One of the quotes that I found so interesting goes back to the student Isaac. “He was not given credit by the psychologist, who noted that Isaac had not conformed to the specific directions of the test item. Shayne exploded, “He didn’t get credit for it because he didn’t do it right, but he clearly knew which was the block , which was the spoon. And he followed directions in an organizing sense” (84).

Isaac is clearly intelligent enough to determine the difference, however, he did not follow directions. It is like taking a short cut; you get to the end but just in a different way.

 http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr054.shtml

From Aria by Richard Rodriguez and from Teaching Multilingual Children by Collier

                                                             
“When does twenty-first century technological society have to be so complicated, educational politics so confused, education so bureaucratized and standardized? How do we prepare students to face this complicated world we have created and yet allow them to retain their love of learning?”

Collier poses these questions early on in her text. As teachers we can all ponder over the answers and most likely we all have a good idea why these questions need to be posed. We can go back to our very first class when we learned about SCWAMP.  It is the world of privilege and power. Collier does not have a direct answer for these questions but she certainly understands the challenges we teachers face daily. Although many of us do not have ESL students, we do understand the difficulty in teaching our students who do understand the English language. How do we allow our students to retain their love of learning? Wow! When we teachers have lost our love for teaching, our students will certainly lose their love for learning. We need to realize that in the classroom we have the opportunity to put aside the bureaucracy and the politics and do what we do best; inspire, education, and prepare.

Collier discusses certain guidelines for teaching English to second-language learners. In one of the guidelines he states “Teachers should be aware of the special kind of speech that mothers and fathers use automatically with their children, and try to emulate this.”

This connects to Lisa Delpit when she discusses how to teach with “cultural diversity” in mind. This is especially important when teaching second language learners. Rodriquez’ family changed their language, although it would have been a better choice (in my opinion) to have a teacher who embraced their culture and thier words.

I guess we can say this is a “significance “problem; significant to the classroom teacher, significant to the student, and significant to the bureaucrats.  After all, these ESL students certain bring down our standardized test scores.  Wesch states, “If our students are not “cut out for school,” perhaps we have made the mold too narrow or inflexible, or more likely, just not meaningful enough to inspire a student to fit in. That’s the significance problem”(5).

As teachers we need to make sure that all students are getting the education they deserve. Many ESL students are labeled as not performing well because of the language barrier, when in fact many of these students are very intelligent. We have been learning a lot about “Cultural knowledge” and how important it is in teaching. Cultural knowledge is such an important aspect to teaching.

 In a article I read from the LA department of Education, mentions the importance of understanding that students who use English as a second language are not dumb. Howver, many school districts refuse to put these kids in higher level classes even when they reach fluency in English.

“Martinez immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico in the sixth grade, and remained in the English learner program until the ninth grade. Even after his transition into the mainstream curriculum, he was not placed into college-preparatory classes besides Algebra. Martinez proposed translating material from college-preparatory classes into the students’ native languages, so as not to “neglect the whole student” in pursuit of English language mastery.He also stressed the importance of parent involvement in order to reinforce language acquisition out of the classroom. “

Read the whole article here.

http://www.neontommy.com/news/2011/10/department-education-la-school-district-failing-english-learners

I wonder if ESL kids feel like Peppermint Paddy when she is in school?

Promising Practice

Fourteenth Annual Multicultural Conference and Partnership Expo

Promising Practices

Putting the Movement Back into Civil Rights Teaching

With Marco McWilliams.

Those of you who don’t know of Marco, you are missing out. I first heard him speak at one of my classes at RIC last year. He is a vibrant, committed, passionate, and very current speaker and educator. I was very happy to walk into this workshop and see him at the podium. However, he didn’t stay at the podium; that is not his style.

I was instantly reminded of Gerri August when Marco spoke about the importance of dialogue. This dialogue, especially in a room full of learners is extremely important.  What I understood from this is that our classrooms do need to be one of equality when it comes to teaching and learning, equality in the sense that everyone needs to be heard.  Not just the ones who want to be heard.  We all have those kids in our class, some do not even have anything important to say , but they need to be heard. That’s OK.  We need to incorporate dialogicality into our teaching. We learn from each other and although it is difficult to get that shy kids to talk, we  (I) need to find a way to help he or she understand that what they say is valuable and that this dialogue is a tool for learning.

Marco also discussed how many of our young kids today are” historically illiterate.” I found this very interesting.  Unfortunately today’s youth are not learning. When he gave a simple history quiz to a bunch of teenagers most of them failed.  What  happens if kids today do not know their own history? Well, history can repeat itself. I guess the big question is why are kids are not learning, or retaining their own history. I was waiting for an answer but Marco did not give us one.  He did hint to the fact that kids today do not understand its importance.  His passion is apparent  when he talks about his own teaching and the words he uses when speaking to his own students.“You don’t have the luxury to not have knowledge!” Delpit, Johnson, and Kozol came to mind when Marco discussed  the privileged one percent of the country and the rest of us, the 99%  who do not have that luxury to sit around and not have knowledge.   His lecture was very passionate and heartfelt. He understands and he wants to make a difference. 

Slammin’ for Social Justice: 

Teachers and Students Talk Back

This workshop was a lot of fun. It was interactive and inspiring. We listened to some teachers and students perform their own slam poems.  They discussed that this is a great tool for students to learn. I agree.  Last year I incorporated this into my classroom  and I was astonished how open and honest my students were. Many of them didn’t want to perform their own poems but were very happy to have someone else read them for the class. What I love, and the kids love about slam poetry is that they can  write  about anything .  It always surprises me when kids are not inhibited to write about personal and social issues. It is really a wonderful release for many of them. I have imbedded two of the slams I show to my class. They are only a few minutes long but all are very powerful.

"What Teachers Make"

   

"Knock Knock"by Daniel Beaty

Teen Empowerment
“Empowering Youth and Adults as Agents of Positive Change”

As teachers what is better than being an agent of positive change.  I was inspired from the stories I heard from the presenters. Each of these kids had to overcome major obstacles in their lives and they all discussed the fact that this Teen Empowerment has helped them on the road to success.  These three young people opened up my eyes to understand more fully how teenage brains work. The presentation helped me realize how important a classroom teacher is and how we need to be more aware of each and every student. Kids get bored in the classroom and I learned three new strategies ; Stand up and Move, Wind Blows with Words (can’t wait to try this out), and Bean Bag Toss.  I learned that many youth are rebellious by nature and we as teachers need to work with this natural instinct to create a classroom where the students feel like they do have some power and that the classroom isn’t a power struggle for authority. 

The presenters were not against teachers at all and I know that they wanted to teach us a little better way to teach them. I appreciate that, however the young lady on the stage did say something that stuck out to me. I wish I had asked her about it during the question and answer portion but I didn’t. She was asked by an audience member how she felt after doing the Te Wind Blows with Words activity. She said,  “ I feel safe because I won’t be graded for my words. It felt good because I wasn’t being criticized.” This bothered me because I wondered at the time, and I still wonder if kids take our input and suggestions as criticism. We all know that we are simply trying to teach. Do our students think we are criticizing them when we conference with them about their writing assignments? Do our students take it negatively when we tell them what they did wrong but show them how they can learn from their mistakes? What would Delpit say about this? This really has me thinking about the way I conference, grade and teach my students.  II need to be mindful of what I say and/or wirte and how I say it.  Perhaps my words come out as criticism. I never want a student to take my “teaching” as a negative connotation about their ability.

Meyer's "Understanding Teachers’ (non) interventions”

“Through open discussions with all youth about feelings of isolation, feeling "different" from their peers, or being misunderstood, the classroom atmosphere can empower youth to discuss options for troubled youth and help students to watch over each other”(thetreavorproject.org).

The Trevor Project Trailor

The Trevor Project Film Trailor

Meyer’s “gendered harassment in secondary schools; discusses the issue of LGBT bullying in high school and the teacher’s role in preventing this harassment problem.  Meyer gives her reader a good overview of what determines gendered harassment and the many influences that are associated with this every growing problem. Meyer explores specific realities in high school regarding the bullying epidemic in high schools. She states that,” These studies have shown that sexual and homophobic harassment are accepted parts of school culture where faculty and staff rarely or never intervene to stop this harassment. Students report that teachers stand by and allow biased and hurtful behaviors to go unchallenged.”  

Although,  I do not want to believe that some teachers and administrators do not address all forms of bullying, I do realize that that in many cases there is neglect, ignorance, or laziness when it comes to the prevention and or the allowing of such bullying. Johnson, Kozal, and Delpit would argue that the “dominant society” has the upper hand again here. However, “the privileged” are at stake here also. LGBT does not discriminate against race, culture, sex, or socio-economic status.

I respect and applaud Meyer for the time and energy that was invested in this essay. Although upon reading I  feel as though her tone is not appropriate to the content of her study. Her tone is somewhat nonchalant. This topic she explores is so current with consequences of teen suicide I did not feel any urgency or passion on her part for the cause.  The teachers who were interviewed also did not seem to express knowledge of the seriousness of LGBT bullying. I quote Martin Luther King Jr. when I say there is a “fierce urgency of now” in this fight against high school bullying. This essay is missing this passion.

I feel the need to inform the reader to create an urgency. As a result of bullying there has been unnecessary loss of life, heart braking statistics of suicide and depression, and teens who turn to drugs and alcohol. There needs to be a “fierce urgency of now” from teachers, administers, and parents to help everyone understand that LGBT people are brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, granddaughters and grandsons. They’re being bullied in school because they are not of the “dominant” society. They do not fit into the norm, therefore they are alienated and many feel unworthy

The Trevor Project.Org : The leading national organization provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention to LGBT youth.

http://www.thetrevorproject.org/suicide-resources/suicidal-sign

“The Trevor Project believes that the high rates of suicide are preventable. To this end, we created The Trevor Workshop Guide, a classroom tool to be used in conjunction with the short film, Trevor, to constructively generate discussion about the myriad of issues surrounding suicide, personal identity and sexual orientation.”

Teacher FT03 “If there’s an incident in my classroom in my classroom I have to seek out the administration to get the follow-up on it. You just have to het to know the system and know what the expectations are cause they’re stretched.  They don’t have any time... I personally had a few issues during the year with discipline and the VP wasn’t there, and the principal dealt with it , and I always felt the same, that he just wasn’t firm enough.”

It is imperative that administrators get the resources they need to educate themselves, their student body and their teachers on the prevention of bullying in schools and the “fierce urgency of now.”

“Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15 to 24-year-olds, accounting for over 12% of deaths in this age group; only accidents and homicide occur more frequently” (National Adolescent Health Information 2006).

Teacher MT01:”(I don’t stop name calling) if I’m too tired., if there are set things I need to get through in a lesson. I know my lesson is going to take 60 minutes, I’ve only got 70 minutes to deliver it, I’ve got 10 minutes to waste.  Right now my job is being a teacher adn I have to get through the math before the end of the year. It;s not on my priority list.”

Student safety is on the top of my priority list.

“Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers” (Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey 2007).

“More than 1/3 of LGB youth report having made a suicide attempt” (D’Augelli AR - Clinical Child Psychiatry and Psychology 2002)

Teacher MT06: I’ve had no training on how to address bullying...The educational degree was really worthless.  I felt that we didn’t really get that kind of necessary education.  How to deal with certain issues like bullying.”

All teachers are adults and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that when someone is bullying and if you don’t personally know how to handle it, I think the safe thing to do, at the very least, is to report it to the administrator. At the very least give a detention. At teh very least have classroom rules that state NO BULLYING! You don’t just brush it off because you haven’t been TRAINED.  

“Nearly half of young transgender people have seriously thought about taking their lives and one quarter report having made a suicide attempt. “(Grossman AH, D’Augelli AR - Suicide and LifeThreatening Behavior 2007 

                              

Teacher FT02: “I spent the first couple months enforcing all of the (uniform policy, swearing, and name-calling) and there are some teachers that just never enforce it and so you realize that out of 20 teachers, we have about five who do all the enforcing and you just can’t anymore You can’t do it”

Why? It always starts with one person. Why wouldn’t this teacher continue to enforce the rules?

In my opinion this is a great excuses for not doing the right thing. The following statistics say we  don’t have a choice but to do the right thing.

“Nine out of 10 LGBT students (86.2%) experienced harassment at school; three-fifths (60.8%) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation; and about one-third (32.7%) skipped a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsaf)” (GLSEN National School Climate Survey 2009)

“LGBT students are three times as likely as non-LGBT students to say that they do not feel safe at school (22% vs. 7%) and 90% of LGBT students (vs. 62% of non-LGBT teens) have been harassed or assaulted during the past year” (GLSEN From Teasing to Torment 2006).

“Almost all transgender students had been verbally harassed (e.g., called names or threatened in the past year at school because of their sexual orientation (89%) and gender expression (89%)” (GLSEN: Harsh Realities, The Experiences of Transgender Youth In Our Nation’s Schools 2009).

As the advisor to the GSA in my school, I have never met a group of young people with more heart, talent, passion, empathy and love for human kind.. These kids do not have hatred in their heart but  many of them have sadness and hurt in their hearts. They only show love for one another and they support one another. As one student  said yesterday. “This is the only place that I can totally be myself and feel accepted.”