Marks, my students tell me, are a carrot on a stick.
"Do this and I will give you marks" is the basic motivator in the traditional high school classroom. "Don't do this, and I will withhold marks." Dangle the prize forever just out of reach and the donkeys will move forward, if grudgingly.
In a school system like this, everything is transactional: the end always justifies the means.
Trouble is, learning is not a series of ends. It is not an outcome. It is a process. What we should be trying to do in schools is create not people who have learned, but people who are learners: people who understand and value the process of learning, and can use the process in their own lives without a teacher dangling a carrot or waving a stick.
So I did away with marks. No carrot, no stick. This is where the panic creeps in at the edges: after 15 years of developing resources, strategies, and techniques for a marks-based classroom, what does that leave me with? How will I motivate them? How will I make them DO anything?
Pause. Think about that. Those three questions above are all about me and my own fears--fears of letting go, fears of losing authority, fears that the children of today won't bother learning anything at all without some Shea-shaped éminence grise lurking in the shadows, driving them onward to adulthood.
This is ridiculous, of course. There are already a host of motivators, both intrinsic and extrinsic, driving these young adults. They may be the most thoroughly driven people in our society today. What they might not be motivated to do is to master the skills and concepts required by the Ontario English Curriculum. What they might not be driven to do is to appreciate some of the finer points of literature that I, an English teacher, might want them to appreciate.
So I have two ways forward:
1. Set clear goals and expectations: whatever it is you are reading, whatever it is you are working on, you must accomplish outcomes X, Y, and Z, as outlined in the curriculum. Explain why these are important outcomes. Trust students to understand. Give them checklists so they can track their own progress, set their own directions, move at their own various paces.
2. Be a coach, role model, and cheering section: whatever it is I ask them to do, whatever it is they decide to do without me asking, help them understand not just the what, but the why; work alongside them to show them the process and the value of these activities; whatever it is they are doing, support them and help them to do it better.
There is no room in a gradeless classroom for a joyless teacher. There is no room in a gradeless classroom for a teacher who does not, on a personal level, value doing the work that students are doing. And there is no room in the gradeless classroom for a teacher who projects their own insecurities onto the classroom by seeking to control student behaviour.
No carrot, no stick.
2 comments:
That's right. The power struggle is over. The need to control using marks disappears. I think many students would be insecure at first about no marks, but given plenty of opportunity to understand what the goal of the learning is, and understanding how it will benefit them, they will buy in.
And your happiness (and their relief?) at you not needing to control them, and the trust that is built up, will likely make them want to show you their best work.
Huge problem with this marks-free scenario – which is really a teaching strategy – is that it doesn't connect to post-secondary.
Thanks, GB--that's a great issue you raise. I don't really know how it connects to post-secondary. My hope (and I admit that this this is pure pollyanna speculation at this point) is that the skills they develop are ones they will use in post-secondary.
The gradelessness itself, obviously, doesn't transfer. But the ideas of developing internal motivation, self-monitoring, peer-moderated learning, and the ability to set personal goals and directions within the parameters of a course seem like they would have immediate and obvious application.
At least, that's my hope. I should tag a couple of university teaching friends for some feedback.
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