One thing I plan on telling him when he asks me about how I have grown professionally this year using SBG is this: "If teaching were clothes, I am going to need new 'teaching clothes' about 3x larger than I have now."
I have learned that putting theory into practice is harder than it looks. I have learned that putting theory into practice that overturns long-standing educational norms, values, and traditions is even harder. But I have also learned that if something is good for students, you should never give up.
But a huge step in my professional growth came in realizing that, even though I had a standards-based system that was working, it wasn't working as well as it could be. While it did focus students on their learning, it just didn't fit the needs of our students and their parents; it was too far of a shift away from the traditional notions of what teaching and learning should be for most to comprehend. So, I have decided that I need to make some important revisions to my system. Below is a summary of my changes for next year:
- Emphasize and reemphasize the purpose of standards-based grading, pointing out how it will help students achieve true learning and understanding. Really, this is about focusing (and refocusing) on the positive. I let student and parent negativity drag me down, feeling like I was being attacked from all sides most of the year. As a result, I got very defensive with pretty much everyone around me. This made me lose sight of the positive message I should have been sending to promote more buy-in at all levels.
- Introduce a standards-based scoring system that is familiar, yet different. Part of the reason I think students and parents resisted my scoring system was because it was so far removed from the traditional methods of grading that it became a huge psychological obstacle to overcome. Not using points, in my opinion, is what shook a lot of students and parents. Many times I would be talking about a student's learning with a parent, and I would get cut off with, "Yes, but how can my student get the points he/she needs to get an A?" So, I decided to go back to points in a limited fashion, so at least parents and I could have some sort of common language to communicate to parents and students about their learning. However, I still believe that we will never get students and their parents to focus completely on learning until we get rid of points (and the GPA system) altogether; that's why I will eventually transition back to not using points at all.
- Communicate to students and parents about their learning without creating more work than necessary. This year, I put every student objective, or "I can statement," in the gradebook, since that is what we have students master in class. While very effective at communicating with students (and their parents) about what they mastered and what they still needed to master, this created a lot more work on my part. Every time we had an assessment, I had to go back through the gradebook and, for each student, adjust scores for each objective. Since we have about 10-15 objectives per unit (and I have over 100 students in Biology alone) this method is much more time consuming than just entering one summative score for each assessment. So, I decided I would just put our content strands in the gradebook instead of each individual objective. For example, in our Cell Transport Unit, we had 4 main strands: Cell Size, Plasma Membrane Structure, Passive Transport, and Active Transport. While students will still focus on the individual I cans during class, scores will only be reported for the content strands. This system of reporting would still inform students and parents about what students have learned and what they still need to master while removing a lot of work I created for myself this year.
- Report nonacademic factors in a manner that is accessible for both parents and students. My gradebook will be set up much differently (the gradebook that my district makes me use, anyway) this year, so as to communicate not only content mastery, but other skills as well. I will have the following categories in my gradebook for each unit: Content (where I will put the content strands), Assignment Completion, Effort, & Technology Skills. The key here is that the Content category is the only one that will be included in a student's overall score; the others will have weights of zero. Thus, the grade given will still be a measure of student learning, but not be "contaminated" by other factors. It will also give parents and students a clearer picture of how the student is doing. By the way, I did record all of these things before, but in a manner that wasn't readily available to students and parents (translation: really big and clunky spreadsheets).
- Clearly communicate to parents and students about how the standards-based scoring system works. Because this method of grading will still be foreign to parents used to more traditional methods, I have decided to communicate, communicate, and communicate some more. This year I had students students take my syllabus (which outlined my scoring system) home and get it signed by their parents. This, obviously, wasn't enough. Next year, I will be sending home the syllabus, but also a parent letter detailing how my scoring system works, as well as having an informational meeting with parents one night after school about a month into the school year. This way, parents can come and ask me their questions rather than getting secondhand information through their student. I will also give out more information during parent/teacher conferences, and during the second semester, as needed.
- Make sure students understand thoroughly what each level of mastery/understanding looks like. I need to use more examples of what each of my levels of understand look like. I described everything to death, but, when it comes down to it, my students need more concrete examples--especially of advanced mastery. I usually shy away from using examples, because students tend to just mimic your example--and you're left with a beautiful creation that still doesn't provide you with much evidence of learning. However, I am going to have to provide some exemplars (carefully constructed, of course) for them in order to make it clearer as to what is required for each level of mastery.
- Use portfolios as the primary means of assessing standards mastery, and have students practice scoring their own learning in the portfolios. Just like students should be responsible for learning, students need to be responsible for evaluating and scoring their own work. Portfolios are one way to do this, and I am going to experiment next year with using portfolios as the primary method of assessment in my class. With portfolios, not only can students earn a score, but they can develop metacognitive skills as well through reflecting on their work and what level of understanding it shows.