Existential Questions in Education

  CHAPTER 14 : Putting it all together Which equitable practices did you try? How do you know whether they are successful? Explain. Do you let your students know about the new grading practices you are implementing and why?  What would a partnership with students to make grading more equitable look like? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "name/URL"  in the drop down menu  and add your name before typing your comment and clicking publish .  Comment on two peers' posts by clicking "reply" > choose "name/URL" in the drop down menu underneath their posts  and add your name . Participants are required to comment on one " I notice...." and one " I wonder..." on two peers' reflections in each chapter. Due. April 29, 2022

  CHAPTER 13 : Practices that build “soft skills” without including them in the grade Do you believe each soft skill has an equal impact on a student’s academic performance, or do some soft skills have more impact than others? Does it depend on the industry or the context? Might this mean that a part of teaching soft skill is teaching students how to assess a context? How might we scaffold the teaching of soft skill? How student specific is the connection between any given soft skill and an academic performance? How much does it change depending on the academic subject or skill to be performed? What implications does this have on how to give feedback on a student’s soft skills competence, or the use of a student tracker? Some schools use student-led grade conferences in which students, alongside their teacher, explain their performance to their caregivers. They share academic and study skills data, identify strengths and weaknesses, and identify goals and plans for improvement. It’...

 CHAPTER 12: Practices that “Lift the Veil” Think about your professional career. How Have your supervisors made the evaluation of your work transparent, or opaque?How has that transparency, or opacity, affected your feelings or trust, empowerment, motivation, and how you did your job? How could you have gotten more clarity about your supervisor’s expectations, and how would greater common understanding between the two of you change your feelings and your work? Draft a rubric for an upcoming assessment or select one you’ve already created and assess it against the rubric for rubrics. What are ways that your rubric could be more transparent and equitable? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "name/URL"  in the drop down menu  and add your name before typing your comment and clicking publish .  Comment on two peers' posts by clicking "reply" > choose "name/URL" in th...

  CHAPTER 11:   Practices that support hope and a growth mindset When in your professional life have you been given a redo? Who offered it to you and why do you think you got that second chance? What did it feel like receiving it? What happened before and during your second chance? How did it benefit you?Was there time when you were asked to demonstrate competence and weren’t given a second chance? Why weren’t you given that chance? Did you ask for it, or believe that you could? How much of a motivator is hope? How much do you notice a change in student behavior and motivation, particularly among lower performing students, before the first assessment of the term compared to after they have received the scores of that first assessment ? At the beginning of the term versus after the first progress report? How could offering redemption via retakes, weighing more recent performance, minimum grading, or 0-4 scales throughout the term affect motivation? How would the commitment to m...

  CHAPTER 10:   Practices that value knowledge, not environment or behavior (Cont.) Look back at Tangela and Isabelin Chapter 4. If summative assessment were the only element in the grade, what grade would each receive? What are the implications? What message do we send each of them? How might it change how they and their caregivers think about each student’s progress? How might it change how each would respond moving forward Ask students about why they copy homework, or what gets in the way of students completing homework. What is more important to you– that students do as much homework as they can themselves, or that they copy it so that they get the points? What would need to change to explicitly communicate this priority? Look at the gradebook for one of your classes. Compare students’ test or summative assessment scores with their homework scores. For which students are their summative assessments higher than their homework scores? If a student learned the material, how m...

  CHAPTER 9:   Practices that value knowledge, not environment or behavior 1. In the professional world, what are some different consequences when something misses a deadline? Do those consequences exempt the person from ultimately performing the task? 2. Some consider cheating on an assignment not an act of disobedience, but as a signal that though she is strugg;ing, she is still engaged and cares about her success. Why is cheating arguably a reflection of greater engagement than if the student simply skipped the assessment? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "name/URL"  in the drop down menu  and add your name before typing your comment and clicking publish .  Comment on two peers' posts by clicking "reply" > choose "name/URL" in the drop down menu underneath their posts  and add your name . Participants are required to comment on one " I notice...." ...

  CHAPTER 8: Practices that are mathematically accurate (Cont.) 1. Many of us give students a grade bump when they have shown improvement or growth over the term. By allowing students to demonstrate growth over time through improved performance, and recording that most recent performance, do we still need to include a separate bump for growth, or does the improved score itself recognize and reward growth? 2. How easy should it be for a student to be able to calculate hwe own grade? How could we use a student’s own grade as an opportunity to teach mathematical principles of median, mean, mode, scale, and percentages, and thereby empower students to be more critical consumers of statistics? 3.Think of an example in the professional workplace in which group work is expected. What is the rationale, and how is the effectiveness of that collaboration determined? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "...

  CHAPTER 7: Practices that are mathematically accurate   1. If you’ve assigned a zero, was it intended primarily to affect students mathematically or psychologically? Knowing that it is mathematically unsound as well as inaccurate, does that change your opinion of it? Would it change your opinion if you discovered that there is no evidence that receiving a zeo motivates students, but in fact it often demotivates them? 2. Because the zero is never an accurate description of a student’s knowledge, some teachers use a 1-5 scale instead of a 0-4 scale. What makes the grade more accurate? More equitable? More motivational? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "name/URL"  in the drop down menu  and add your name before typing your comment and clicking publish .  Comment on two peers' posts by clicking "reply" > choose "name/URL" in the drop down menu underneath their p...

   CHAPTER 6: A new vision of grading 1.  Review your classroom’s current grading policies through the pillars of our vision: How accurate are they? How bias-resistant? How motivating? 2. How much does this book’s vision for equitable grading align with your own, personal vision for grading? What concerns do you have about this vision? What are your hopes? How much does this vision match against your school’s overall vision? How likely is it that your school community could agree on this vision? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "name/URL"  in the drop down menu  and add your name before typing your comment and clicking publish .  Comment on two peers' posts by clicking "reply" > choose "name/URL" in the drop down menu underneath their posts  and add your name . Participants are required to comment on one " I notice...." and one " I wonder......

 CHAPTER 5: Traditional grading demotivates and disempowers Interview students. Are they motivated to achieve success or to avoid failure? What specific actions, policies, or words by teachers cause students to experience one type of motivation  instead of the other? Do you think of your  tasks at work as performance or mastery goals? What affects how you define the goal? How does this affect how you pursue the task? In what ways do schools and classrooms end a message of competition for achievement? How does your school’s treatment of awards and honors promote or undermine a growth or fixed mindset? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "name/URL"  in the drop down menu  and add your name before typing your comment and clicking publish .  Comment on two peers' posts by clicking "reply" > choose "name/URL" in the drop down menu underneath their posts  and add your n...

 CHAPTER 4: Traditional grading hides information, invites biases, and provides misleading information What confidence or uncertainty do you have that two teachers in your school would assign the same grade to a student? Are there teachers with reputations as “hard” or “easy” graders? What, specifically, defines them as that? How does this categorization make you feel? How does it make that teacher feel? How do students react? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "name/URL"  in the drop down menu  and add your name before typing your comment and clicking publish .  Comment on two peers' posts by clicking "reply" > choose "name/URL" in the drop down menu underneath their posts  and add your name . Participants are required to comment on one " I notice...." and one " I wonder..." on two peers' reflections in each chapter. Due. February 18, 202...

CHAPTER 3:   How traditional grading stifles risk-taking and supports the “commodity of grades” In this chapter, we'll discuss the following questions: How have different supervisors (or those whose opinions you care about) responded to your mistakes? How have helpful responses impacted you and your effectiveness? How have unhelpful responses impacted you and your effectiveness? Recall something you learned to do outside of the school context. What motivates you to learn and to continue learning when you struggle? Some teachers think, “If I motivate students to learn with points now, they’ll realize success and become internally motivated.: If you believe this, how could you test this theory? How Effective are the use of points for students who are the least motivated and engaged? How might the use of points –the addition and subtraction throughout a student’s day —affect those students’ relationships with adults and their self-concept about whether school is for them? Post your an...

 Chapter 2: A Brief History of Grading In this chapter, we'll discuss the following questions: 1. How do schools in the first half of the twenty-first century, their design, their purpose, their students, compare to schools in the first half of the twentieth century? 2. How do you see the ideas and beliefs of the early twentieth century manifesting themselves through your school's communication, curriculum, instruction, policies, and grading? Post your answer to the questions above in the comment section here by clicking "Enter you comment" >  choose "name/URL"  in the drop down menu  and add your name before typing your comment and clicking publish .  Comment on two peers' posts by clicking "reply" > choose "name/URL" in the drop down menu underneath their posts  and add your name . Participants are required to comment on one " I notice...." and one " I wonder..." on two peers' reflections in each chapte...

Chapter 1: What Makes Grading So Difficult to Talk About? Based on collaboration with peers during the orientation on January 21, type response to the following questions: What makes it hard for us to critically examine traditional grading practices? Read chapter 1 and provide responses to the following questions: 1. What are some deep beliefs you have about students? What motivates and demotivates them? Are they more concerned with learning or their grades? 2. What is your vision for grading? What do you wish grading could be for students, particularly for the most vulnerable populations? What do you wish grading could be for you? In which way do current grading practices meet those expectations, and in which ways do they not? 3. What brings you to this book study? What are your goals for this course? How will the way you read it help or hinder you from realizing those goals? 4. Which of your grading practices do you believe best support learning? Why? Which of your grading practi...