Assistant Principal - Learning

 

Grades stink!

Last week was one of ‘those’ weeks - a week not dissimilar to any other in its very nature, but a week in which, yet again, I was reminded of the incongruence between the world we need to prepare our students for and the one in which our anachronistic system and the rules, the traditions, we have to follow are perpetuating. If we know that the jobs our students will be applying for in 10, 5 or even 2 years haven’t been created yet, and we know that the technology our students use is evolving before we can even think of what might be, and we also know that change, adaption, and rapidity are signifying characteristics of our students’ world view, then why do we hold on to the very practices that undermine their true realisation of participating in this contemporary world? 

Well...grades stink. That’s right, grades and marks are the absolute nemesis of progress, flexibility, and confidence. Their purpose may have been to foster intrinsic motivation, it might have been to provide a means of reporting progress to parents, but in our world now? It would seem that their true purpose is simply to categorise, and as a result...demonise the learning. In fact, I can’t think of anything more undermining of significant learning growth than assigning a grade or a mark prescribed by a poorly defined, nebulous set of parameters. But... let me take a breath for a moment as I take you through the learning experience last week that has cemented my belief that we must do things differently…

Extension English is the Stage 6 course that I would suggest most closely resembles learning at University level. Students must draw on their own internal learning resources for resilience - their independence, a desire for improvement, proactive seeking of feedback and then synthesizing that feedback into their work. They try, fail, try and master. Students must check their egos and embrace their vulnerabilities, as they encounter more challenging, complex, nuanced ideas and test their own understanding against the ideas of others. The teacher provides stimuli and provocation but not a definitive answer; for there is no right answer. Students must self-regulate their reading, their study; balance the demands of a course offered off-line with all of their classes on the lines. They must have a voice, it might be wavering to begin with, but in time it firms; yet, they must develop, alongside this conviction, the agility to value and appreciate difference. 

Last week, our Year 11 Extension English students confidently published their Independent Learning Projects in the form of a TED Talk to a room of friends, teachers, school leadership and parents. This evening was the culmination of over a term’s worth of independent research, analysis, creative and critical thinking around the values embedded in a seminal text that may parallel, challenge or offer alternatives to a later manifestation. Once the presentations concluded, the students participated in a forum style Q & A session. As the students responded to questions that moved beyond content, process, and key learnings to philosophical musings and the audience’s desire to truly hear the students’ perspectives, opinions and reasoning on what makes humanity tick, clarity set in. What the students had reflexively uncovered about how they learn, and what they need to learn...and the thinking -  the problem solving, that enabled them to critically deconstruct the nuances that were posited to them in those questions simply could not be reflected in a grade. 

These students demonstrated, in spades, the skills that a plethora of research proffers as necessary to thrive in our changing world - character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. We should be celebrating and strengthening this skill acquisition and development not eroding it with an inadequate, irrelevant mark/grade. We know that as our students move into the world beyond school, they will not be paid for what they know, but rather what they can do (OECD, 2016). Then why I ask you, do we continue to operate with a system of categorising a students’ knowledge? 

Eli Simpson

Assistant Principal (Learning)