The Gradeless Classroom: A Call to Change

In 2015, I had been teaching for 14 years. I was pretty comfortable with most aspects of my job. Good classroom management, engaging lessons, happy students for the most part, few parent complaints... in short, I thought everything was great. I was reading professional literature and implementing a few tweaks to my classroom practice here and there, but I was mostly set in my ways. I was experimenting with standards-based grading, but I hadn't really made any radical departure from traditional grading. I changed the name of my assessment process and changed "assignments" in my gradebook to "standards," but the procedures I had always followed in grading remained unchanged. I was comfortable.

Flash forward to 3:05, Friday afternoon, 2nd week of school, 2016. I checked my email and saw a message from my principal with the subject line Nothing bad... and the body text but see me before you leave today. It's been my experience that the line nothing bad generally means the opposite. I considered just heading home and dealing with it on Monday, but I decided I may as well face it and have the weekend to recover. So I headed to the office, and perched nervously on the chair across from her desk, listening, in shock, as she told me that I would be on a "comprehensive plan" based on my test scores. I knew they weren't great, but I guess the powers that be decided that they were bad enough that I needed watching. 

She was still talking, trying to reassure me, but I only heard: You are the worst. You are not doing your job. You are a failure. You have ruined English education for every student you taught last year, somehow managing to make them less capable than they were when you started, and if it weren't for your pesky tenure you'd be packing your bags right now. The voice in my head wasn't my principal, who is wonderful. It was a chorus of negativity, a cross between politicians decrying our "failing" public schools, complaining students, angry parents, and my own animadversion, delivered on my worst days.

I didn't know what "comprehensive plan" meant, but it sounded like my observation cycle would look very much like a beginning teacher's-- someone who has yet to prove they are able to manage on their own-- or like a teacher on a directed plan-- where there is some level of uncertainty about their classroom management or professionalism. I think I asked some questions, but the rest of the conversation was a blur. I was 99% sure I was never coming back.

I drove home in a fog, fluctuating between anger at the system, crippling self-doubt, and conviction that I should spend the weekend job-hunting. My family could immediately tell that something was wrong. I tried to tell my husband about it, but dissolved into tears. He and my son were both at a loss, nothing they said made a difference, and I was finding it hard to put into words how the very foundations of my self-confidence had been shaken. It was awful.

Over the weekend, I began to seriously reflect on this information and what it meant, for me personally, for my career, for my students. A few realizations began to crystallize for me.

First, I had spent the better part of five years fervently denouncing our current system of accountability and advocating for change, while my test scores had been consistently fine. Would I suddenly give credence to a system I'd always doubted, simply because it worked out badly for one year? Wasn't this just one more piece of evidence that relying on standardized test scores to judge the effectiveness of teaching is nothing but hogwash? After all, had I done anything radically different in the classroom? In fact, the changes that I had implemented meant my students read more than they ever had before! How could reading more translate to terrible reading scores?

Second, I needed to determine how I defined the parameters of success in my classroom. Would I allow success to be determined by one test, on one day, or would I seek to evaluate success based on progress over time, on ongoing daily battles fought and won? Did I really believe the numbers on a spreadsheet, based on a test I was not able to look at or delve into in any meaningful way, could somehow give me insight into my teaching? Did I believe that the numbers on a spreadsheet were more meaningful than the data I saw in front of me in my classroom every day in the form of questions and facial expressions? 

Finally, wasn't this exactly what I had been doing to my students with grades? One shot for success. One chance to prove proficiency. This would not do. If a snapshot of success wasn't appropriate to evaluate me, why would I accept such a system to evaluate my students? It was in this last realization that there was real possibility for change. I know I control little about the way the state chooses to assess learning. The system of accountability is fundamentally flawed, intentionally set up to fail as many as possible, and there seems to be little drive to change that in any meaningful way. I can protest, I can speak out, but it is the reality, at least for now. If I was going to act, it would have to be within my classroom and in my own practice, because this was the only element within my control. 

Change requires a catalyst, and for many of us that catalyst needs to be something that shakes us to our foundations. This conversation with my principal placed me on a journey of reevaluating everything on which I had based my classroom practice, from process to content to assessment to atmosphere. It began a year of self-reflection and change. It was rocky and difficult because change is never easy. There were many times I felt I had lost my way. My journey isn't over, but I feel more confident that I have found my compass in gradeless learning. I look forward to sharing the steps of my journey with you this year. I hope you'll check back often, and share your own classroom journey with me.

What will be your catalyst for change?