The last week of school and grading gets a failing grade

It’s the second last Wednesday of the school year. My Grade 8 granddaughter is musing that tomorrow is the last day her teacher will accept assignments. “What about any work we do in the last week. How does it count?” Such a pertinent question! 

“How does it count?” When schooling is about doing what you’re told to do, in the way you’re told to do it, in order to be told how well you have done, in order to get a grade, it fails even if students get ‘A’s.

Learning for the sake of learning; learning how to learn and discern, being engaged, being curious. These are the attributes humans need to thrive in today’s world. A thirst to learn, discern and act. A wonderment and a belief that we have a role to play in this world of ours.

Our curriculum-centred, teacher-directed, graded schooling does not encourage these attributes; in fact, it squashes them.

Several years ago, the parent of a second grade student named Meg engaged me, the principal of an independent K – 8 school, in a quick conversation on the sidewalk after morning drop-off and before rushing onto her job.  “I thought this school didn’t assign homework.”

She was correct. Our school did not assign students homework except if a student had a special need where a small amount of repetition at home would help, such as practicing math facts for 5 minutes in the car on the way to school. We did assign parents ‘homework’. We asked parents to read daily with their children. We asked them to spend time with their children doing something together that they both enjoyed like going for a bike ride, or something that needed doing like making a meal. Driving to an activity or watching a screen didn’t count!

Why was she asking? Meg’s mom explained that the previous night she had found a book about animals, a pencil and some papers where Meg had made notes – in Meg’s bed, where she had obviously fallen asleep while working. Why hadn’t she been told that Meg had an assignment due? She and her husband would have been happy to help her complete the work. I said I’d look into it for her.

Well, it turns out there was no assignment, there was no homework. Meg had become interested in marsupials and had decided to do a project. School ended for the day but Meg wasn’t done so she took the book and her notes home. Meg didn’t ask her teacher; she just assumed that her exploration, her work, could continue at home. Why not?  Meg wanted to know more and didn’t see the need of waiting for school. This was her learning. Meg believed it could take place anywhere, whenever she had time, even in bed before falling asleep.

Schooling would do a much better job of educating youth if the system supported this type of learning – student-driven, curiosity-driven, I-can’t-wait-to-find-out driven!

Superintendents, principals, teachers, and most parents expect work to be assigned and assessed. As a result, the last weeks of school are often filled with entertainment designed to keep students quiet as teachers need time to receive work, mark it, write up report cards and have those reviewed. This is a systemic problem, the system encourages completion of assignments for the sake of getting a good mark rather than encouraging learning for learning’s sake.

But how will we know how well students are doing if we don’t grade? How about keeping track of mastery? This is what we did in Meg’s school. We didn’t give grades. We did keep careful weekly records of what each student had been introduced to, was working on and had mastered. This was essential for us because our teaching was individualized even though we had classes of 25 to 30 students. It all worked because we relied on students’ natural desire to be challenged and we tailored our interactions to their interests, abilities and needs. We could say what a student could do well, what they were working on and what they were just being introduced to in any week of the year. We had no need to give them a grade to be able to discuss who they were as a learner and where they were on that journey.

Think about it. We don’t give toddlers marks for learning to walk or talk. We support each toddler where they are with encouragement, support and joint celebration of their accomplishments. We don’t compare or grade them and yet they all become accomplished walkers and talkers unless there is some disability and even then they are driven to achieve these skills in whatever way we can help make possible.

A non-graded schooling model based on students initiating their learning for inherent joy and accomplishment would lead to a much different learning culture than the one that is most common now. The last weeks of school would have as much learning value as all the other weeks of school. And, as Meg demonstrated, learning would more likely continue outside of school, in the evenings, on weekends, and even over the summer break.

Instead of learning only in and for school, youth should be groomed to learn for life. Then our education system would be much more likely to meet today’s ever changing needs. A thirst to learn, discern and act – here are some Canadian, Indigenous and international programs that are stepping into this possibility and some organizations and individuals who are encouraging it.