Morning, all. Yesterday, I had the honor of speaking (virtually) at the PCTELA Conference in Harrisburg, PA. It was an awesome opportunity to share more of my Project 180 work and words. For my post this week, I have decided to share my full transcript for the talk. A special thank you to Nicholas Emmanuele for inviting me to participate. Thank you, Nick.
Sorry for the long post. I left it in its speech format. Hope everyone is safe. Happy Sunday. See you next week.
Do. Reflect. Do Better.
My Learning, My Story
I am going to begin by telling two tales today.
They are familiar tales. They have been told a million times.
They are ones you have heard. They are ones you have lived. They are ones you, too, have told.
They are adventures. They are dramas. They are comedies. They are tragedies. They are mysteries. They are horrors. They are fantasies.
They are at once, all. And all at once, unique.
[Share Slides]And there’s a third tale. A tale I could not capture for you. A tale I have tried in vain to capture for 26 years in the classroom. The tale where the two converge, where kid meets letter, where learning meets grading, and we are forced to reconcile the wreck where and when the two inevitably collide at the end.
It is a tale I tried to tell too many times, for too many years. For, try as I might, I could never quite get it right.
And I knew it.
Well, I suspected it early on, but before long it became my burden to bear, and I knew. I knew I was not telling the true tale. And the longer I knew, the more I came to rue the wreck I had to reconcile there at the end, when I had to put a letter on each kid.
I hated it. Hated it. And worse, I had come to hate myself. Something had to give. And five years ago, something did.
I gave up grading.
In 2016, I took grades off the table for the entire year. On day one, I handed–literally handed–each of my kids an A for the year, telling them no matter what, they would end the year with an A on their transcript.
On day one, the awful deed of grading was done. And with grading gone, learning was all that was left.
No carrots. No sticks. No points. No percentages.
For 180 days, we would venture into and live in the land of learning with nothing but each other.
It was the most consequential year of my career.
With my grading goggles gone, I learned to see.
I no longer saw the graded in the grading.
I came to see the learner in the learning, the humans in the room.
And I would never not see them again.
Learning would never be the same. Teaching would never be the same. I would never be the same.
For in that consequential year, I learned it was not my story alone to tell. I learned that I had been, but I would never again be, the unreliable narrator in someone else’s story.
My facts were fiction.
That A was not always all it seemed.
That C could just as well be B in the room down the hall.
That mastery became mystery when it did not endure.
And that F. That F was a fable with no moral. Kids do not learn to not fail by failing.
And if anyone ever looked inside my little black book, they’d find my fiction. So, I hid it.
And the longer I hid it, the louder my telltale heart beat beneath the floorboards of twenty-year career. I was living in no small way a lie. And the ghosts of practice past, haunted me.
So, I sought to escape this plot. There had to be better. And as with any better I have ever discovered along my way, to find it, I simply had to turn to my kids.
I always discover my better in kids.
And this better would be no different.
I did not continue with the practice of giving an A. For many reasons I moved on, but I never went back.
I never went back. I couldn’t go back, for as I said earlier, once you see the learners in the learning, you will never not see them again.
So what did I do?
I began what I came to call select-and-support grading.
Kids would pen the paper.
They would select a final grade and support it with evidence. And we would meet there at the end to come to an agreement on their final grade.
The final act would no longer be something I did to them, but something I did with them.
And though this was better, for the wreck at the end was no longer mine to reconcile alone, I still thought there might yet be a better better.
And I found it in a frame.
The Story.
Learning is a story. All learning is a story. That is the frame for the classroom experience.
And if there were ever a time to frame it as such, the past year and a half has been that time. It still is that time.
For the reverberations in our world and in our work continue.
Whether it’s within our control or not, movement and motion are at hand. Things are unsettled, and when–if–things do finally settle, they will never be the same.
And that’s as tantalizing as it is terrifying.
But let’s not live in the latter. Let’s find freedom in the former. Let’s take this momentous moment in hand by putting learning where it belongs: in the hands of our learners.
Kids’ lives and learning have been disrupted in ways we never expected. And as we have tried to make sense of it all, we have found it to be, in too many ways, a wreck irreconcilable.
How do we put a grade on it? On them?
How would we–could we–do this to them? What instead could we do for them?
Hand them the pen. Let them make meaning of the mess. Let them capture their learning. Let them tell their stories.
Let them think, let them say, let them live within the frame, “My Learning, My Story.”
Fortunately, I had begun this work before the world went weird. From select-and-support, “My Learning, My Story” had already been born.
I had already handed the penpower to my kids to shape and share their learning stories.
So, how do you do it, Sy?
Simply. It’s not terribly technical. It doesn’t need to be. It’s a simple invitation for kids to write a narrative letter to me at the end where they select-and-support a final grade based on the evidence they have collected over the course of the term.
But isn’t that just their putting the gradebook in their own words?
Yes and no.
Yes, we still keep a learning record that the kids must reference in their letters.
But no, it’s not just a repeat of the record I keep for them. It’s an interpretation of that record.
More, it’s an opportunity for them to add to the record the things I may not see, or do not know.
And so, when I listen to their letters, I lean in to hear the real record as much as I can so we can come to a mutually agreed upon end.
And it is an agreement. I tell them, that if I find myself in disagreement, that means I have to present them with possibilities to get to that grade, not overrule their grade.
I have to deal in possibility, not power.
So, how does it go, Sy?
We agree. I cannot think of a single time in four years, where a kid and I have not left the table in amicable agreement.
I don’t have to degrade kids. If anything, I have had to upgrade them.
Kids, I have found, generally are too hard on themselves. As such, I have had many, “you’re-getting-an-A-whether-you-want-it-or-not-kiddo” conversations. And that is really what it’s about in the end.
The conversation.
The human effort to reconcile the wreck where learning and grading meet.
Okay, Sy, but you have a rather radical approach to grading, and it works for you, but will it work for others?
Why wouldn’t it? Whether we are traditional, standards-based, gradeless, or radical, the story is not ours alone to tell.
And when we pass the pen, and lean in to listen, we change the dynamic in the room, in the experience, and hopefully–eventually–in the system as kids come to expect that they are necessary to the narrative.
That it is something that must be done with them, not to them.
That’s the frame in “My Learning, My Story.”
But.
There’s a fault in the frame. Well, in truth, there’s a fault in the foundation.
Kids are conditioned to be passive participants in their learning, coming to believe that grading is something done to them. Thus, the longstanding line, “He gave me a C.”
To which we are often quick to respond, “She earned a C. It’s there in the book. A 74.”
Given. Earned. Or earned, given. The same story plays out teacher to teacher, classroom to classroom, year to year. And so, by the time they reach high school they tend to apathetically accept their roles of passive participants. And sometimes, tragically, the passive participant becomes the voiceless victim.
[Share Story from class.]Daily Discussion
What story does a grade tell?
-how hard we worked, how much we learned, how well we tested, the list went on.
-How much the teacher liked us. (nods around the room)
-Kristin’s story
There is a fault in the foundation. And we know it. I certainly knew it. And I could no longer simply shrug the shame off my shoulders.
No more passive participants. No more voiceless victims.
Kids had to participate. Kids had to speak. Kids had to own their learning. Kids had to own their stories.
So I eagerly gave them the keys.
And then something perplexing and vexing happened: nothing.
We just sat there.
They didn’t know how to start the car, much less drive the car.
By the time they reach me in 10th grade, they’ve been driven around for so long, they’ve no idea how to accept, much less activate, their agency, instead clinging to the comfort of their passive parts in the system’s play.
And there I was thinking, “Damn. I thought it would be easier. Give them the keys. Let them drive. How hard could it be?
Harder than it should. I won’t pretend otherwise. This is simple work, but it’s not easy work.
And I believed it was better work, so I braved better. I dared different.
And as I did, I discovered that better and different don’t avoid the crash at the end.
There’s still a wreck to reconcile.
Learning’s messy. And it gets messier when we have to make sense of the mess at the end with a grade.
But I have learned that the mess becomes more meaningful when we dig through it together.
I have learned that the more kids drive, the better drivers they become.
It’s almost like they knew how to all along.
And last, I have learned to be a patient passenger.
And that’s my advice to you.
Be patient. Let the faults fill–in the foundation and the frame.
Let kids unlearn to learn.
Let yourself unlearn to learn.
And as you learn, make it yours. The frame has to fit.
My frame is out there, it’s point peeking through the surface for others to see and use, but there’s much–so much–beneath the surface of my better, of my different, that it’s not simply a plug and play.
It won’t work if you don’t make it your own, for it’s “your teaching, your story.”
And as our stories collect and reverberate, it is my hope…
…that we do indeed fill the faults in the foundation and the frame–for our kids.
That we do indeed move beyond the passive participant, and the voiceless victim.
That we do indeed give rise to active agents who hold in their hands, their heads, and their hearts the words,
“My Learning, My Story.”
Thank you for letting me share my work and my words with you today. It was an honor to join you, but before I go, I have one more thing to share.
In my classroom, we always end with a Sappy Sy Rhyme, so I will end my day the same with you.
I wrote you a Sappy Sy Rhyme.
Pass the Pen
I thought it mine
Alone to tell
And so I did
For quite a spell
I judged and ranked
Labeled and sorted
I did my duty
Their learning reported
For 20 years running
I alone kept score
It was my job, my duty
And nothing more
But deep inside
Something bugged
Something nagged
Something tugged
A worry, a wonder
A telltale sign
That maybe, just maybe
It wasn’t mine
Alone to tell
But theirs instead
A notion I couldn’t
Get out of my head
So I then tried
Something brand new
A way to capture
The tale more true
I gave them the pen
And said, “Go tell.
Capture your story
Tell it more well,”
But they just stared
In awkward silence
Accustomed instead
To calls for compliance
They did not trust
It was not a tease
When I handed over
The car and the keys
But after awhile
They came to trust
With the wheel in their hand
That drive they must
And so they did
With me at their side
A patient passenger
Along for the ride
And what a ride
An adventure it’s been
Now that they have
The power of pen
To tell their stories
As their lives unfold
My Learning, My Story
Now theirs to hold
And I on the side
Where I belong
Where I wish I had been
And lived all along.
Thank you.
You can connect with me on my blog
On Twitter @MonteSyrie
Email: montesyrie@gmail.com
And my book will be out earlier next year!
Better: A Teacher’s Journey (CodeBreaker Inc. Publishing)