What's the importance of grades? I mean, you could definitely argue that grading was created by teachers to make a social empire of students that will soon dominate the world with their intelligence; or you could say that grading is used to evaluate what their students are learning. Call it what you want.
In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me a piece of advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.* Essentially, through a college professor-worthy lecture, my dad said that having the highest grades in my class should not be my goal, though incidentally that happened, rather progressing as a student over time. Cheesy, yes. But there's a lot of stock to that. You can't contol external factors; that inevitable duel with the new kid that ends up getting a better test grade than you. But you can control your self-growth.
I'll be honest. My first year of school was eye-opening. I won't bore you with my life's story, but basically I was the snarky, self-assured smart kid that stole the cheese off of kids' pizzas. Odd, yes. Unfortunately, I had a C in conduct/behavior and A's in all my other subjects. My parents were concerned with this, but after my teacher explained that stealing the cheese off of other kids' pizzas at my age was totally normal, they settled. In other words, my C in conduct was average. This is traditional grading; those report cards you take home with you that are splattered with 100s and 95s. There's nothing wrong with this way of grading, in my eyes. It's straightforward, simple enough, and it's what we've been using for a while. We associate these grades with different levels of knowledge and understanding. 98% on your spelling test? Sorry, that's not refrigerator-material, Johnny.
Look, we've developed this grand new grading system known as standards-based grading, coming to a school near you. What's this standards-based grading, you ask? Let me elaborate: it's an in-depth representation of what a kid knows. Instead of using letters and numbers to represent your understanding of a certain subject; the grades are partially proficient, proficient, and advanced proficient. Each grade is pretty self-explanatory and yet gives us a better look at what little Johnny is learning in school. He's partially proficient in spelling? Time to whip out the flash cards. It gives us more ground to build off of and you can really get a grasp for what areas you're strong in and the ones that need help.
Personally, I'm a fan of the standards-based grading. It's what my old school used to assess us last year and it was incredibly effective. For instance, if I was excellent at relaying current events through essays yet I was partially proficient when it came to world geography, I knew what to study. Snazzy, right? It's easy to see your growth in subjects over time through this method of grading.
'Tis all for now, readers. In between this blog post and the next time I grace the internet with my presence, enjoy this nifty little video.
Rock on, guys.
--Internet Superhero
*Gatsby references, folks. I'm just that cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment