Halloween Candy for Lunch!

The second day of Parent-Teacher conferences and no one yet.

This double bubble I just put in my mouth from the communal/welcome Halloween candy bowl is already going stale.

Ah Halloween candy. I know you're crap, and yet I still eat you. Why? Because it's Halloween and even at 30 I still want to take advantage of the high fructose free for all.

After all the (actual) drama this week, today was perfectly quiet and chill.

Everyone who came took their quiz and, for all but two, aced it. And that makes me feel really good.

But back to the Halloween candy, or rather, my reenergized thoughts about grading after reading Linda Christensen's thoughts about it in Teaching for Joy and Justice. Yeah.

Grades suck. Especially the stupid number ones that I have to do. What's the difference between a 98 and a 95? A 88 and an 86? A 70 and a....you get the picture. Who knows and who cares? It's all subjective, relative, and just plain bullshit depending on who the teacher is and what she's supposed to be "grading." Yeah, yeah you can use rubrics but I saw through their objectivity facade my first semester at NYU. I mean they're better than papers dripping in arbitrary red pen, but still: it's all about a game of figuring out what the teacher wants and how to give it to her. And is that supposed to be the point of education? To please the damn teacher? How about a way to SHOW that you LEARNED something? How about a way to make you want to learn MORE?

Grades are like the doughnuts (and candy!) we give out here as rewards: bad for you and easily disposed of and then craved for again and again. The grades become more important than what's being taught. Who cares about becoming a better writer? I want my 92!!!

On this ranting note, here are some mini gems that caught my eye this morning as I perused Ms. Christensen's latest manifesto on teaching (Teaching for Joy and Justice, p. 272-275).

"I discovered early on that if I wanted to produce writers I needed to let go of grades."

"Our grading should match our pedagogy."

"In too many classrooms, grades are "wages" students earn for their labor."

"Numbers and grades "assess" or judge the paper, rather than provide feedback about how to improve it."

"...scripts are easier to teach and easier to grade."

"When I think about grading, I am reminded of Malcolm X's quote, 'I have no mercy or compassion in me for a society that will crush people, and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight.'"

"...I need to remind myself to begin with praise, to find what's working, to find the beauty before I find the fault."

So happy that I read that today. What a good place it put me in. No, really.

The irony of all this pedagogical ranting is that I work in a school where grading is MORE important than in other high schools. We give our students progress reports every two weeks so that they know how they're doing before it's too late (which is what happened in the schools they failed out of before). The problem with this is that 1) I'm grading all the damn time and 2) we fuel their addiction to grades while subsequently deemphasizing the importance of learning. It becomes all about the "benchmark," and less about, "wow, I've learned this new thing."

But I'm trying, like Christensen, to work my way into the mold. I try to make my "rubrics" as simple as possible and remind myself that I can't hold student A accountable for student B's work. Each student on their own. Differentiation, right?

Ah, grades. You are and always will be a part of my teaching reality. How to make you suck less?????

For now, that'll have to wait until I refuel on snickers (and the whole system and stuff completely f'ing changes). My double bubble is finally done.