“Your Hand’s Not Raised? Too Bad: I’m Calling on You Anyway”

I first came across this article by Alfie Kohn on the practice of cold-calling students last year, and I felt embarrassed that I had never really questioned this aspect of my own pedagogy.

Should teachers call on students who haven’t indicated they want to talk and, in fact, have tacitly indicated they don’t want to talk?

I’ve never been too much of a jerk in the classroom, but I’ve certainly used cold-calling on students whose hands are not raised as a way to keep them “on their toes” or even to shame those who were very visibly not engaged. So what’s the alternative? Mr. Kohn suggests:

What we need to develop — with students, not just for them — is a model of discussion that encourages everyone to speak up when they’re ready without forcing anyone to do so, and that supports the community in becoming self-governing rather than giving one person in the room the sole authority to decide who talks when.

I have not successfully created this kind of atmosphere, but it sounds like a goal worth working towards. I do think there's a way to build a rapport with my students such that I can call on them in a way that is still respectful, as part of a "self-governing community" like he describes.

The closing statement from Mr. Kohn sums it all up quite nicely:

But the general rule is that treating students with respect — which means we neither compel them to speak nor determine unilaterally who gets to do so — is ethically appropriate, educationally beneficial, and practically realistic . . . as long as we’re willing to give up some control.

“When Grading Harms Student Learning” →

Another good post about grades and their impact in the classroom.

His take on giving a student a zero:

Zeros do not reflect student learning. They reflect compliance. Instead of zeros, we should enter incompletes, and use these moments to correct behavioral errors and mistakes. Often, one zero can mathematically destroy a student’s grade and pollute an overall metric that should reflect student learning. Here, grading is getting in the way of truly helping a student, as well as showing what that student really knows.

Imagining a Class without Grades

I have complained before about grading. The thing is, the more I do it (and as an administrator, I am now responsible for tracking the grades of over 700 students each year), the more flaws I see in the entire process.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, Ashley Lamb-Sinclair highlights this issue. I want to quote the entire article, but please just go read it. It begins:

At the beginning of this school year, my colleagues and I decided to avoid giving the sophomores in our English classes any grades for six weeks. Research shows that providing students with a number or letter in addition to quality comments prevents them from authentically reflecting. Quantitative grades also diminish student interest in learning, reduce academic risk taking, and decrease the quality of thinking. But beyond academics, as teachers, we saw the negative impact grades made on our students’ mental and emotional health.

The article is full of links to research that supports her experiment, and I have done my own share of reading on the topic (I'd recommend anything by Alfie Kohn on the topic, starting here). Personally, I would love to rid my classroom of grades, freeing myself and my students for authentic feedback. As it is, I sometimes try and trick students into actually paying attention to my feedback and to their learning, by giving them comments without the grade attached, asking them to assess themselves or their peers, and other strategies. And while these are all fine, they are not much more than Band-Aids. At the end of the day, students often care far more about the letter grade on their report card than the feedback I've provided over the semester.

One way in which this problem manifests begins with forcing students to study topics in which they have no interest, simply because The Curriculum demands it. Then, once that student is sitting in World History or Geometry or Chemistry class, the grades become one way for teachers to compel performance from those uninterested students. Grades become a way to raise the performance floor, to ensure at least a minimum level of achievement (and compliance).

In my environment, the more-noticeable impact of grades is not preventing students from simply sleeping through class or skipping school (they have other extrinsic motivations in their lives to prevent that). No, what I see here is that along with that raising of the performance floor, a lowering of the performance ceiling. Students are absolutely going to do what they need to do to get the A+, they will accept no less. However, many are also less willing to do more. If the rubric lists exactly what to do to get an A+, what's the incentive for going beyond that, for working harder or thinking more creatively than the teacher expected when writing that rubric?

What would my classroom look like without grades? To be honest (don't tell the administrators), I've deemphasized grades a lot in my World History class. It's not just that I'm an "easy" grader, but I've found that the more paths I give students to earn the grade they want, the less energy they'll spend trying to fight over every point. But if I truly got rid of grades? A few possibilities:

• I would have to work harder on creating assignments and giving feedback. Currently in my class, there are some student tasks where the only feedback I provide is a number or letter grade, which essentially says to the student, "Thank you for doing what I asked." Without grades, I would have to spend more time giving thoughtful feedback, but also more time planning those assignments. If the assignment is not worth me providing feedback, is it still worth their time doing it?

• If grades aren't motivating students, then what will be driving them? Maybe their own interests, or a desire to share good work with their peers, or any of the myriad other reasons that adult humans around the world do good work without getting a numerical grade for every task. Students would be preparing for the "real world" much more authentically.

• I would need to work harder to engage with every student. Again, I have a population that is relatively driven. But most of them are in World History simply because it's required rather than out of love for the material. For some, if they don't have the incentive to work for that A+ towards their GPA, they may not be interested in doing much. How would I engage them? I could give them more choice in topics we study, or maybe more freedom to demonstrate what they learned to their peers. Whatever it takes, I couldn't fall back on, "Just do this because I told you to."

• Communication with parents would become very different. Sadly, some parents in my community check their daughter's grades as if they are a stock ticker, either up or down every day. For most parents, the primary way I communicate with them is by the numbers I type in the grade book for their daughter. Without grades, how do I help parents feel connected and informed, while also helping them give their children the space to succeed on their own? Without letter grades and 200 canned comments to choose from for report cards, I would have to proactively give parents meaningful comments about their daughter's progress and what she's been doing. Not only would that take time to do that communication, but it would also require me to have strong relationships with the students to be able to have anything meaningful to say.

I know I've glossed over much of the research (but go read it, really) and potential outcomes. And the issue of grades is wrapped up with many of the consequences of compulsory education. But two things are clear to me: grades are harmful for students, but make things easier for teachers. I know what tends to win out in that scenario most of the time.

This time, it's personal

My son was born 6 weeks early, and spent 17 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. After that, he spent another 90 days on supplemental oxygen at home. After all that, and multiple visits to see specialists, he is a healthy, happy baby. I am still new to parenting, but one thing I'm learning quickly is that I will never stop worrying about him until the day I die. He's only 7 months old, so I'm very aware that I have only scratched the surface of these anxieties.

For a long time, we only ever knew him with a nasal cannula and oxygen tubes.   

Before my son had left the hospital, he had racked up almost a quarter of a million dollars in medical bills. (Fortunately my wife and I are insured through our employers, though we have spent entire days on the phone as his primary insurer tries to avoid paying his bills–that's another story.) From the moment he was born, my son had what could be considered a "pre-existing condition." Prior to March 23, 2010, that would have meant that if my wife or I (or he, later in life) ever had to purchase a healthcare plan, he could be denied coverage. Studies show that not having health insurance can lead to depression, bankruptcy, and death. I'd rather my son not have to deal with any of those.

He may've only worn it once, but it was worth every penny. 

Fortunately for him, he was born in 2016, after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This law, among other things, made it illegal for insurance carriers to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. That meant my son wouldn't be punished throughout his life simply for arriving 6 weeks early. The phrase "pre-existing condition" would not hang around him like some terrible birthmark. On the endless list of things to be worried about for my newborn son, his ability to get insurance was able to slide down somewhere above "scorpion crawls into his boot at summer camp," but below, "heart broken when his first love turns out to be a Jason Bourne-style secret agent and leaves him."

At one point does his fascination with his toes go from adorable to concerning?

But as of today, January 12, 2017, all of that is changing. Those protections for people like my son, for people with cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, or myriad other conditions are in the process of being destroyed. Now the possibility of my son being denied healthcare because he or his parents cannot afford it is very real.

I need to get myself more adult onesies.

This isn't political, it's personal. There are so many things I cannot control, unknowns from which I cannot protect my son. Right now, my wife and I have insurance from our employers, and we are able to provide for our son. But the future is unseen, and it is frightening enough without having to add concern for basic healthcare for my son.

I just feel like he doesn't deserve to get sick and die just because he was born early. But maybe I'm biased? 

→ "Reading is no way to learn" →

Attention-grabbing headline aside, there's some good insight in this piece from Roger Schank.

No learning takes place without conversation.

And:

Every year I would ask my students on the first day of class at Yale and Northwestern if they could pass the tests they took last year, right now. No one ever thought they could. They studied. They listened. They memorized. And then they forgot. We don’t learn by reading nor do we learn by listening.

→ "Late Work" →

I long ago decided that penalizing late work was not helping the students achieve any of the learning goals for my course. I want them to learn how to read Latin or write a compelling essay. Generally speaking, if it takes a student an extra day or two to accomplish that, that's preferable to me giving them a zero and then them not doing it all.

Plenty of teachers do not see things the same way, and enforce strict penalties for assignments that are submitted even minutes late. Whenever I ask teachers about these policies, the response is usually some form of, "We need to teach them a lesson?"

At a teaching blog run by Instructure (full disclosure: my school uses the Canvas LMS owned by Instructure), Sean Morris asks many of the same questions that I do, and tries to follow them to their logical conclusion.

What is the classroom meant to be? Should it be a microcosm of an unforgiving world? Should it be a retreat from that world? Should it be some kind of safe synergy of novelty, rigor, and relevant experience? And if it is this last, what “rules” must we establish in the classroom to keep our pedagogy intact?

→ "The Growth Mindset : Telling Penguins to Flap Harder?" →

When I read psychologist Carol Dweck's now famous book Mindset, much of it rang true to me personally. I could certainly see myself in many of her examples of a fixed mindset, and I've written about that before. And teaching our students to be more receptive to challenges is, in my mind, a valid goal.

As Dweck's book has become more popular, so too have critiques against those with an overly-simplified takeaway for schools from her research, namely the idea that "grit" (hard work and perseverance) and a mindset that sees failures as positive are all students need to find success in school. I've been dismayed in my own position by teachers who use the phrase "growth mindset" as a cover for claiming that students simply need to work harder. There's a subtlety to Dweck's claims that seems to be getting lost.

I think "Disappointed Idealist" does a good job expressing some of my own concerns about those who are using the growth mindset in a way that harms students.

For all the reasons above, some children will be penguins in an education system which values flight as the ultimate goal. And when they flap their wings as hard as they can, repeatedly, and still fail to take off, they are then hit with a double whammy: firstly they’ve failed to fly, and secondly they’re being told that the only reason that they’ve failed is because they’re not trying hard enough.

→ "A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days" →

In this classic, the late Grant Wiggins shares the experience of a teacher who shadowed two students for two days.

The whole thing is worth reading, but her three (related) takeaways:

Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting.

High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes.

You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long. I lost count of how many times we were told be quiet and pay attention. It’s normal to do so – teachers have a set amount of time and we need to use it wisely. But in shadowing, throughout the day, you start to feel sorry for the students who are told over and over again to pay attention because you understand part of what they are reacting to is sitting and listening all day.

Considering how much teachers complain when they spend a day sitting in professional development, it's unfortunate that we forget what our students endure all day every day.

We spend a lot of time in schools observing teachers, trying to quantify good teaching. But much could be learned by focusing on students and their experiences. I wonder what a student shadowing program would look like at my school, and what insights it might provide.

Teachers work hard, but I now think that conscientious students work harder. I worry about the messages we send them as they go to our classes and home to do our assigned work, and my hope is that more teachers who are able will try this shadowing and share their findings with each other and their administrations.

Curriculum

In my freshman World History/Global Studies class this year, we have a habit of getting into the weeds on all kinds of topics that are not directly related to our curriculum, which covers the first few millennia of human civilization. Our 10-minute Daily Briefing projects that begin each class have consistently evolved into 30-minute discussion of ISIS, Syria, liberal vs. conservative philosophies, Palestine and Israel, and other items. None of these topics are explicitly covered in the curriculum for the course, but I think helping students understand, for example, why ISIS is such a vexing problem is essential.

Last Thursday I was giving a very brief lecture on some background on ancient Greece, including Homer. As a Classicist, it breaks my heart to try and summarize the Iliad and the Odyssey in about two minutes, but I did, highlighting a couple of my personal favorite scenes from each (Hector and Andromache from the Iliad, and Odysseus and Argo from the Odyssey), knowing we'd come back to them in more detail later.

After I regaled them with these barebones stories, multiple students said, "That sounds really cool, can we read them? Can we read the Odyssey?"

"This is it," I thought. I had actually inspired 14-year-olds to want to read Homer, the foundation of all of Western literature. What more could I ask for as a teacher? I wanted to stop everything and say, "Great idea, let's spend the next four weeks reading and discussing the Odyssey! We can even find free translations online!"

But of course, that's not what I did. Reading the Odyssey isn't in the curriculum for World History/Global Studies 1. I have just one semester to cover not only ancient Greece, but also the Neolithic Revolution, the rise and fall of Rome, Egypt, China, India, Nubia, the Olmecs, not to mention a plethora of skills like SPICE charts and thesis writing and five paragraph essays. There's just no time to read the Odyssey in class.

My point is not that the Odyssey should be on the curriculum. Sure, I'd love to teach Homer to all our students, but even if this particular group would enjoy it, I've had plenty who didn't share their interest. No, what I can't help but note is that it increasingly breaks my heart just a little bit each time I'm made aware that I can't allow students to follow their own interests, even though I know it happens every day in large and small ways.

I realize that most students would not likely have signed up for World History/Global Studies 1 to even hear about Homer if they weren't required to take the class. And I know that each day my classroom activities are likely not engaging the interests of each and every student. But the more I teach, the more I try (even when I fail) to focus on the students and what they are interested in, not me.

I love teaching about ancient Greece. I could lecture about Pericles and the hubris of Athens all day, or show countless examples of Greek art and architecture. But the last few years, I've essentially stopped lecturing about Greece at all beyond the basic introduction, instead allowing students to choose a research question that interests them and then to present their research to the class.

Does it pain me that some years no students will choose the topics that I love the most? Absolutely. And if I think a topic is important enough, I'll make sure we cover it in some way. But the students are vastly more engaged and the work they produce is better if they are able to follow their own interests.

For example, on Thursday after this exchange about Homer, the students split into groups to work on crafting research questions for their presentations. I had three different groups tell me that they wanted to research the role of women in ancient Greek society. That's a topic that I only very briefly covered in my lectures back when I started teaching, simply because I chose to spend my time on other areas. Whether it's me choosing what topics to cover or the students, either way we're only going to be able to scratch the surface of all there is to know about ancient Greece. Once I accepted that I'd never be able to cover everything, it helped me give up some control and hand it over to the students.

But despite my halting efforts to try and take into account the students' interests, I still have to make sure I am serving The Curriculum. Don't get me wrong, as curricula go, World History/Global Studies 1 at my school is a good one, with a solid mix of content and skills. And of course, I'm in a privileged spot only teaching one class, so it's easy for me to wish I could adapt things for my students when I don't have to worry about teaching other classes who may have different interests. There are very practical and pragmatic reasons why I can't drop everything and read the Odyssey with my students, but increasingly, the practical and pragmatic answers have become less satisfying for me.

→ "Do schools kill creativity?" →

In this old TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson discusses the impact it has on children that schools still value very narrowly defined academic skills:

And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly-talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go on that way...

I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won't serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children.

How can schools adjust to value all the skills our students possess, not just those that will get them into college?