We Are Not Alone

I just received an interesting rant via Facebook (excerpts reposted with permission):

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"[I'm annoyed about how] some tests are purely memorization and how hardly any intellect is used at all... we just had a biology test that was like that and you could ask me anything about what we just learned and I couldn't tell you simply because I don't know."

 I asked why.

"Basically the test itself is written on the board and everyone can either copy that or literally make a copy of someone elses notes or pure memorization. It's very frustrating, especially when we get to topics that get more complex and you need to know those things from before."

 I empathized, and got:

"The way I see it is grades reflect how much you care rather than how smart you are. I know several people who are smarter/sharper/cleverer than me who don't get very good grades."  

Often times, it feels as though I'm the only person around here who worries about the meaninglessness of grades. I need to remind myself more often that this is not the case. This conversation helped me keep my perspective, and gave me hope that other students share my concerns. And after all, these concerns may be the only thing with the potential or power to bring about change.

Three Reasons I Hate Grading

Reason 1.

I am tired of overhearing statements like:

"I don't like the teacher, but I love the worksheets."
"That class is an easy A."

Reason 2.

A grade can (huge emphasis on "can") show how much of a curriculum you've mastered. But what happens when you get rid of the curriculum?

Reason 3.

Grades have become all school is about. If we removed the current idea of a "grade," then we could get down to actually learning things.

I'm Still Here. And I'm Still Thinking.

First off, an apology. I've learned several things about myself this year, and they tend to be along the lines of "I don't have the energy for this." Between performing in a musical, working in the tech department of our high school, taking nine classes during school, and the typical stresses of being a teenage male...reflecting here has been one of the things pushed onto the back burner.

But I'm back now.

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Twice over the past few days, I have found myself trying to explain to others why I don't think worksheets and lectures and droning on and on can really give me the background that I need and want to have.

Then I found something else. Chris Ludwig recently wrote (in this comment on his blog):

"In fact, our job as teachers switches over to being what some are calling “curators” of information, pointing students to some of the best resources. That’s how I see my role at this point in time."

That's going to become my new motto. Teachers should be curators or librarians of knowledge, not mailmen delivering it in packages. When learning becomes oversimplified, it ceases to be learning and becomes memorization.

I Hate Schedules

Disclaimer: At the end, I get whiny. Sorry.

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Physics. Third hour. It's the class that, right now, I live for.

We've been modifying the designs for our full-size trebuchet, and I'd say that we're about ready to go full scale. You can read another post all about it if you want to. (Our small-scale model is currently capable of flinging a ball bearing approximately 25-30 yards, and we're aiming for one that will launch a pumpkin...a long ways. We won't say how far just yet.)

I'm still somewhat amazed at how well the execution of this class went. After the first week, the entire class had divided itself up into several groups, one working on designing a hovercraft, another on the trebuchet, and another is off in the "corner" playing around with video analysis.

Here's the best part, though: We (both my group and the others floating around) are not confined to a specific workspace (or, for that matter, a specific worktime). In fact, the vast majority of the trebuchet's construction has been done in the unofficial office of myself and another team member.

But like I said earlier...it's third hour. Only third hour. 9:41 to 10:34 (9:17 to 9:59 on Wednesdays).

Every day, I have to go through this, and it's annoying. I can't help but envy Shawn Cornally's class for having 80 minutes to work with--on a good day, my team and I might get forty-five minutes to really work with. Every day, just when we get into the swing of making improvements, the time to leave comes.

Of course, it's not quite as bad as I'm making it sound. I'm in the office at lunch, and quite a few team members have been coming in after school. We do get a chance to develop our ideas, and we're even considering scheduling in some Saturday worktime.

So, let's back up and think about what we have. Here is a group of high school students, working on a project for school as often as they can. No one is forcing us to do this. There's not a grade attached to it. There wasn't a worksheet telling us how to do this. We're doing it because we thought it would be fun.

And once it's built and flinging pumpkins into the field behind the gym, we might just sit down and look at why it works. We'll learn some mechanics while we're at it. We've already had a few mishaps which forced us to sit down and figure out what broke and why, and I've learned the hard way that if you get a TV cart packed with equipment rolling, it will keep rolling, even if you're in the way.

However, I'd still like to see a better way of scheduling classes so that I don't have to pack up my trebuchet every day to go sit in a desk for the rest of the day. So then my question becomes: Why not?

Why not give students time--just time, no strings attached, to work with? Trust me. If you give us the chance, we'll eat it up. We're tired of sitting in desks and doing "activities." And we're tired of not knowing what the things we are doing really mean. In third hour physics, we have a chance to change that. And nothing could be better.

A New Year

This blog began as a blog for a class. And although I think that, as I began blogging, keeping this blog with that class blog was appropriate, this year, I'll run it differently.

Here's the link to my physics blog.

And here's my chemistry blog.

(Confession time: I would like to move over to WordPress, but I really don't want to bother with rolling over this blog yet, and really don't want to use two different platforms at the same time. Maybe later.)

Do You Trust Me?

There's been a lot of talk about student-designed education. For example, this post. And, of course, you've all seen Shawn Cornally's TEDx talk.

In case you somehow missed these ideas, they're about giving students less of a rigorous, pre-defined curriculum of things they MUST learn, instead allowing students to take their education where they want to go. (To get the full effect, I really recommend that you go read/watch the original presentations.)

Now, sure, this idea of giving students more control over their education sounds like a great idea--and it is. But it has a major catch: For this to have any chance of working, there has to be--HAS to be--an element of trust between the teacher and student. For this to be implemented on a larger scale, this trust has to exist between students and administration. And to be accepted on that larger scale, this trust has to exist between the public and the students, not to mention the school.

At least where I am, I wouldn't say that this trust really exists--with, of course, a few notable exceptions. Perhaps Chris Ludwig's implementation of a student-designed physics course will help, but that's only with a handful of students. We have to make this work on a larger scale.

If you need more proof that there are apprehensions about loosening restraints on students, look at this letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal. In particular, consider these two paragraphs:

Businesses are governed by their owners and not employees. The school system is governed by rank: teacher, supervisor, principal and superintendent. So where do students fit into this organizational environment? They are at the bottom!

They do not have a voice in what they are required to learn. They do not have the option to decide if they will do an assigned task. They do not have voting rights. They do not have an elected representative to bargain for them. They are to do what they are told, the same as the military, businesses and at home. So when we change our thinking in this matter, we see that the First Amendment of free speech does not apply in any of these situations.

Arnold D. Seligman, the author of this letter, is not arguing for a change in this hierarchy. He is suggesting that this is the proper way things should be. I think it's clear that he does not trust students to take a part in their education.

Somehow, this perception has got to change. How can we make this come about? One obvious solution for the smaller level (trust between students and teachers/administration) is a suggestion box for the school. This would be a chance for students to, if not prove themselves, at least demonstrate that we have valid ideas. For that matter, I'm honestly not sure why we don't have one already. I don't see any valid reason not to.

On the larger level (trust between the public and students), I think students have to start using their voices more. Recently, via Twitter, I've met two other students around the globe doing exactly what I'm doing. Over on Cooperative Catalyst a while back, I read (on a post that I could not find) about a student wanting to start a blog much like this one. And I know that John Burk wants to see his students do this as well.

It won't be a short process. But I think that, with time, it can work. And, I'm afraid, it will have to.  

"Even our brightest students..." Part II

In a recent post, I spent a lot of time criticizing the attitudes of students--including myself. Even back then, I knew that I was being pretty pessimistic about the future, and that bothered me.

So I tried to find out if my outlook was accurate.

A few things I should say before I start:

The students that I work with have only had--at most--two flavors of standards-based grading. Whenever I refer to SBG in this post, I'm generally referring to Chris Ludwig's approach, because that's the one I've seen in action and debated.

With that out of the way...here's what I've found:

1. Some students agree with me--even though SBG is preferable to a points-based system, it wouldn't be widely accepted.

2. Some students don't like SBG. Period.

So, basically...nothing new. I've been hearing both of those all year, typically when I'm, for some reason, describing SBG in a group setting--and someone else jumps in and says either:

"Yes! I really like standards-based grades!" and then goes on to explain why, or the student will say:

"But standards-based grading [is confusing/kills my grade/is hard]!"

Why is that second response even there? I think the answer is quite simple: students on the whole--especially after over ten years of grades--are so used to viewing a single letter grade as an achievement or as something that communicates some sort of information about them that many simply don't get why that's really not the case.

What I'm about to say has been said many times, but in a summative system--which is basically all I've seen for the past eleven years--grades are developed by building points that often become meaningless. I've heard teachers say, "Now, if you can just remember that the answer to Question 14 is C., you'll get more points for the test." And before this year, I didn't really have a problem with that. But when grades simply become who brought in the most Kleenex and could remember certain answers to a test (and, of course, forget them five minutes later) it's ridiculous to think that they have any meaning.

And the more I think, the more I believe that some students really don't want them to. After all, when we're signing up for the ACT and the SAT (and, after all, that's our only chance to get into a good college), we meet pages like:

 and

 

Since grades obviously matter so much, students have to get the best ones they can! Right? RIGHT?!?

Now, those of you with incredible memories will recall that, at the beginning of this rambling, I mentioned that there are some students who agree with me--that SBG is preferable to a summative system. And it's these guys that give me hope. I look around and I see classmates' posts (like this one and this one) and I realize that SBG really did bring out a different level of learning in many students--and that they appreciate it.

Students like those two--self-motivated and willing to adapt--are the only reason I believe there is a chance for SBG to become widespread. They know about this idea, support it, and hopefully they will continue to spread it in discussions, like I've been trying to do all year. After all, many people do not know about these non-traditional grading/instruction methods--as I've said before, before the 2010-2011 school year, I had never considered either.¹
 

Ok, I've rambled enough by now. Seriously, though, if you don't think I'm giving an accurate representation of students, yell at me. On this issue particularly, I really want to know what you think.

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1. Of course, some may suggest that teachers should be forced to use SBG so that we can let more people know about it. I disagree, because I think that, if a teacher is going to make this change, they should make it because they understand the reasons behind it--because they truly believe that the conventional method of assessment is flawed.