New Year's Reality

Educators have a love-hate relationship with goals. A class goal, a SMART goal, a student growth goal... they all imply both the hopeful optimism of starting anew and the bleak desperation of evaluation data. As we stare down the end of January wondering how to get through unscathed, we often look to a new year's resolution as the pinnacle of being goal oriented and starting fresh. A brief google search confirmed my assumptions that I could find a plethora of shiny educational resolutions to commit to in the new year.

Except that eighty percent of resolutions fail. 

Without a good plan in place, the failure of our hopeful January resolutions leads to a frosty February. It seems to me that we need a dose of reality in the new year instead of another statistically deficient resolution. In education, however, well meaning but vague resolutions often overtake practical realities, and we are left grading and producing paperwork for another glittery goal that fell short.

So, as this January draws to an end, I am resolving to stop resolving and start realistically planning.

In the book Influencer by Joseph Grenny, et al., authors expand on what it means to actually create change. In order to solve education's most complex problems, they argue, we must both believe what we are doing is possible and believe it is worth it. Those two criteria provide stark clarity around why most educational resolutions and goals fail. We do not see a path that makes what we need to do for students both possible and without harm to our institutional comfort, our personal lives, or our mental health.

The solution cannot be that we just continue moving forward with programs and policies that we know do not work. The solution cannot be that we just continue to teach in ways we know students' brains do not work. The solution cannot be that we just take on more work. The solution must be that we stop doing things that do not yield results so that we have time to do the things that matter. We have to make it possible...and worth it.

With that mantra in mind, I submit the following as New Year's Realities:

Reality 1: Stop grading so much

The research on this has become incredibly clear. Joe Feldman, author of Grading for Equity, observes that grades are not the intrinsic motivation that teachers believe they are and they can exacerbate bias. The power in grading is in the feedback students receive. If your grading is happening outside of school while frantic and in a coffee-induced haze, students are not benefitting from that. If students simply look at the points and do not learn from their mistakes and change behaviors, teachers are not benefitting from that. If every task a student is asked to do in class gets graded, learning does not benefit from that. Grading takes up an exorbitant amount of teacher time, but no one in the classroom is reaping the benefits.

Instead of grading everything (or even lots of things) the students do in class, utilize opportunities for peer review or public sharing of the information while finding ways for the teacher to provide feedback to students during class. Dr. Catlin Tucker, blended learning expert, presents several ideas for keeping grading and feedback within the bounds of classroom time and for utilizing peer feedback to improve learning. While many teachers reserve peer feedback for writing and artistic venues, peer critique can be utilized in any class and on any assignment as long as we teach students to provide quality feedback. These strategies keep feedback in the classroom and allow the teacher the opportunity to focus on more small group and one on one feedback provided directly to students. These changes make grading more sustainable for educators and more focused on learning for students. According to our criteria, that makes this reality both possible and worth it.

Reality 2: Use that extra time for planning

If there is a group that understands the burden of doing cumbersome check boxy tasks, it is educators. I often wonder, then, why we check box our students. When we take a task focused approach to education, we often create death by tasking. Students suffer from cognitive overload, and teachers are beaten down by the grading and feedback. Asking students to complete a series of tasks related to a particular unit, grading all of those tasks, doing a summative assessment, then moving onto the next unit and the next set of tasks at a rapid pace has become an educational norm. If students cannot articulate what they learned in the task or see the connections between those tasks and larger concepts, however, then what was the goal? Once we remove some of the ineffective grading burden, we can move forward with better planning that focuses more on learning and less on tasking.

As a classroom teacher, I often had to spend my plan time answering emails, in meetings, copying, or completing paperwork. Outside of school, I was overburdened by grading. This scenario left very little time for effective planning. It is the planning that can save us, though. If we allow ourselves time to think and plan more, students can participate in four corners discussions, thinking routines discussions, socratic seminars, or debates instead of posting copious amounts of work to the LMS. 

If we follow reality number one and stop grading so much and combine that with less planning time spent creating paper tasks, then we will have time for creating standards walls and using more active classroom strategies that do not come with grading expectations. With a standards wall, there is a designated spot in the classroom where students can see connections between all of the learning in a unit, the key vocabulary, and the progression of concepts. It's not flashy, but it's effective. Teachers stay on track by focusing only on the most important learning, and students stay on track by reflecting and submitting the work they have done that shows mastery of standards. All of these realities are not practical if teachers are planning last minute. Making time for purposeful planning is possible and is definitely worth it.

If we let it, January can get the best of us. Instead of buying into the glittery resolutions that ultimately fail, give yourself a dose of reality. You are already working as hard as you can, so reevaluate what you are doing while you work. Grade less, plan more, make it worth it.