One of the biggest challenges of teaching Never Let Me Go isn’t helping students understand the plot. The plot is fairly straightforward. Students tend to have more difficulty understanding how to read the novel.
Many students approach the book as if it were a mystery. They spend the first half asking, “What’s really going on?” and become frustrated by the unanswered questions. While curiosity is part of Ishiguro’s design, it’s not the novel’s primary challenge.
The real challenge is learning to read Kathy’s narration, which makes it perfect for teaching the AP® Lit CED skills on narration:
4. A Identifyanddescribe the narrator or speaker of a text.
4. B Identifyandexplain the function of point of view in a narrative.
4. C Identifyanddescribe details, diction, or syntax in a text that reveal a narrator’s or speaker’s perspective.
4. D Explainhowa narrator’sreliabilityaffects a narrative.
Students often assume that if a narrator leaves things out, they’re being deceptive. Kathy isn’t lying to readers. Instead, she remembers selectively, revisits events with new understanding, and tells her story through the imperfect lens of memory.
That distinction changes everything.
Instead of asking “what happened?”, students begin asking:
Why does Kathy remember this?
What doesn’t she fully understand?
What is Ishiguro asking readers to infer?
Once I realized this, I stopped organizing my unit around plot developments and started organizing it around interpretive moves.
Each lesson asks students to practice a different way of reading:
noticing what is withheld
examining how memory shapes meaning
investigating emotional subtext
tracing patterns of delayed revelation
building literary arguments from inference rather than summary
The goal becomes helping students learn how to read the novel rather than simply finish it.
When students begin reading Kathy’s narration instead of chasing answers, they notice that the novel’s emotional power doesn’t come from surprising revelations.
It comes from the gradual realization that readers, like Kathy herself, have been living with an incomplete understanding all along.
That’s a much richer reading experience, and it leads to more thoughtful discussions and stronger analytical writing.
That shift in my thinking became the foundation for my inquiry-based Never Let Me Go unit.
The resource includes seven lessons built around narration, memory, identity, structure, and ethical inquiry, along with original activities, writing instruction, Socratic seminar materials, quizzes, and teacher resources designed for AP Literature, IB Literature, and advanced high school English courses.
If you’re looking for a unit that helps students move beyond plot summary and into genuine literary interpretation, I hope you’ll find it useful.
This site and resource are not affiliated with or endorsed by the College Board.
In June I successfully defended my dissertation at Northeastern University. My research focused on grading and assessment, which will likely not surprise anyone who has been reading this blog for a while, as I have written about grading and assessment frequently.
My dissertation was qualitative action research, a dissertation in practice grounded in the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate. Grading and assessment are ripe for qualitative action research because we have over a century of quantitative research in grading and assessment, and not as much positive change, at least with grading, as we might like to see. I might argue we are seeing more authentic assessment in schools, but grading remains, well, stuck. One of the reasons I think we’re stuck is that we believe persistent myths about grading.
Grades Communicate Students’ Proficiency
One of the most persistent myths about grading is that we agree on what grades mean. As long ago as 1888, researchers were raising questions about inter-rater reliability (Edgeworth, 1888). Study after study indicates that grades are highly inconsistent measures of students’ learning. Starch & Elliott (1912) conducted a study that examined consistency among graders and found that scores on student writing varied by 30-40 points out of 100, or a probable error of 4.5. You might be thinking, “yes, but isn’t writing a little subjective anyway? I’m sure that doesn’t happen in, say, math.” Well, the following year, Starch & Elliott (1913) found that scores on a geometry exam varied even more widely—as much as a probable error of 7.5. They ascribed the difference to several factors: the possibility that graders differently evaluate the students’ methods for reaching the solution, that they assess quality of the students’ drawings, and that they assign different values to problems.
Naturally, things have changed in a hundred years. What do more recent studies say? Brimi (2011) sought to answer that very question. Brimi (2011) engaged 73 participants working for the same school district trained to use the 6+1 Traits of Writing Rubric developed by Education Northwest to score the same argumentative essay using the rubric. The participants’ grades ranged from an A to an F on the traditional grading scale; furthermore, the range of scores assigned to the essay spanned 46 points (Brimi, 2011).
Grading is inconsistent for many reasons, but one of the chief reasons is that teachers evaluate different things when they grade. Some teachers offer extra credit or give students points for bringing supplies (Townsley & Varga, 2018). Teachers can be highly individualistic in selecting criteria for students’ performance (Bloxham et al., 2016). Other factors also impact how teachers evaluate students’ performance. For example, Brackett, et al. (2013) found that a teacher’s mood while grading can impact students’ scores—teachers in a bad mood tend to rate students’ performance lower. This holds true even when grading more objective criteria such as correct spelling (Brackett, et al. 2013). Think what this means as we are teaching in the midst of a pandemic and during a time when it feels as though teachers are being attacked from all sides.
One of the reasons traditional letter or number grades emerged is due to perceived inconsistency, inefficiency, and complication involved in narrative grade reports (Feldman, 2019). It was thought that letter grades could communicate learning both efficiently and plainly (Schneider & Hutt, 2014). By the 1940s, the A-F letter grade system had become the most popular grading system (Schneider & Hutt, 2014).
Traditional grades tend to be derived by averaging the performance on all assessments during a grading period; this average may not capture students’ eventual proficiency in learning and can place undue emphasis on performance anomalies rather than tendencies (Feldman, 2019). In addition, traditional grading sometimes incorporates assessment of student behaviors, such as participation, engagement, and effort (Feldman, 2019).
We might think that grades communicate students’ proficiency in learning, but there are simply too many variables to say this definitively.
Grades Motivate Students
One fear many educators express is that if students are not graded, they will not be motivated to do the work. At best, grades serve as extrinsic motivation for learning. When students care more about the grades than the learning, they are more likely to resort to academic dishonesty. In fact, pressure to earn high grades contributes to academic dishonesty and mental health problems (Rinn et al., 2014; Villeneuve et al., 2019). Grades affect students’ achievement, self-concept, and motivation (Casillas et al., 2012; Pulfrey et al., 2011). Students who earn low grades tend to achieve less and feel lower self-esteem over time (Klapp, 2018).
Fear of earning low grades or focus on earning high grades both serve as extrinsic motivators for learning rather than intrinsic motivators, which demonstrate more effectiveness in supporting learning (Froiland & Worrell, 2016; Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Intrinsic motivation is positively associated with both engagement and achievement (Froiland & Worrell, 2016; Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Helping students develop their intrinsic motivation to learn may increase students’ achievement (Froiland & Worrell, 2016). Extrinsic motivation to earn good grades or avoid the negative consequences of poor grades drives many students rather than the desire to learn, and over time, extrinsic motivation decreases students’ achievement (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). In addition, the reward of good grades tends to decrease motivation for otherwise engaging learning (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).
It’s worth noting that motivation appears to change depending on the grading system used. When students are graded using a 100-point system in which the sum of all student work is worth a total of 100 points, students tend to view each point deducted as a loss (Smith & Smith, 2009). Bies-Hernandez (2012) describes such grading systems as “loss-framed grading” (p. 179). However, when students are graded using a total points system tallying all points earned, they tend to view grades as opportunities to improve and build toward a desired grade (Smith & Smith, 2009). Students who are graded with a system weighting assignment categories by percentage fell in between students in the other grading groups (Smith & Smith, 2009). Even if controls ensure that the resulting grade is the same regardless of the calculation system, students’ responses on a Likert scale questionnaire indicate they still perceive greater risk in 100-point systems and were less motivated and self-assured (Smith & Smith, 2009). Bies- Hernandez (2012) replicated these findings and further found that students’ performances in courses with a loss-framed grading system also decreased. Thus, the framing of the grading system not only has an impact on students’ perceptions of their performance but also on their actual performance (Bies- Hernandez, 2012). The implication is that teachers’ approaches to grading may affect students’ academic achievement (Brookhart et al., 2016).
However, proficiency-based grading (sometimes known as competency-based grading, standards-based grading, or mastery-based grading) has the potential to make grades more meaningful and purposeful (Buckmiller et al., 2017; Guskey, 2007). Proficiency-based grading practices may also lead to greater academic achievement, particularly if the grades are paired with formative feedback (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Proficiency-based grading practices may also foster more cooperation and less competition (Burleigh & Meegan, 2018). Taking academic risks, weighing differing conclusions, and considering varied points of view are all necessary for developing critical thinking skills, but if students must risk failing grades in order to do so, they are much more likely to take the safer route to earning a higher grade (Hayek et al., 2014; McMorran et al., 2017). Knowing that they could continue to learn, revise, and reflect on their work may increase students’ motivation to learn (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; McMorran et al., 2017).
100-point Grading Scales are More Precise than A-F or 4-Point Grading Scales
Do you know why we use the 100-point scale? It’s not because it’s more precise. It’s because it’s the scale in the gradebook software (Guskey, 2013; Guskey & Jung, 2016). The 100-point scale is terrible, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on. The 100-point grading scale has become one of the most common scales for reporting students’ grades, but it is one of the most unreliable scales in use (Guskey, 2013).
The 100-point scale is inaccurate and inequitable because the scale is skewed toward failing grades (Feldman, 2019). Passing grades comprise only 40 points of the grading scale, spanning typically from 60 points to 100 points (or from 70-100 points in some systems!), while failing grades comprise the remaining points possible spanning from 0 to 59 (or even 0-69). Serious mathematical errors arise when teachers input zeros in the gradebook when students are missing work (Feldman, 2019). While this practice ostensibly holds students accountable for handing in work, it can make it impossible for students to recover academically (Feldman, 2019). The literature suggests that teachers may compensate for the 100-point scale’s mathematical errors by artificially raising grades in a number of ways (Schneider & Hutt, 2014), including grading formative assessments and executive function skills (Bowers, 2011; Brookhart et al., 2016; Townsley & Varga, 2018).
Unfortunately, a lot of educators perceive the 100-point grading scale to be more accurate (Brookhart & Guskey, 2019; Feldman, 2019). While using 100 points as opposed to four or five points may seem more accurate, it results in a probable error of five or six points; teachers find it difficult to distinguish levels of performance on a 100-point scale (Brookhart & Guskey, 2019). Some grading reformers advocate for the use of minimum grading, or inputting a minimum grade such as 50 percent, rather than inputting zeros for missing work; this practice reduces mathematical error (Carifio & Carey, 2013; Carifio & Carey, 2015; Feldman, 2019). Essentially what educators are doing when they use minimum grading, however, is compensating for the deficiencies of the 100-point scale by converting it to a rough approximation of the 4-point scale. In a four-point scale, failing grades span from 0-0.99 of a point, while passing grades span from 1-4 points (or 2-4 points in a system without a “D”).
Grades Reduce Bias
Variable and unreliable grading practices also introduce equity problems. Black students have less access to AP courses all over the United States (Francis & Darity, 2021). Schools that use gatekeeping methods (Francis & Darity, 2021), such as teacher recommendations and prerequisite grades, may be basing their decisions about students’ fitness for advanced coursework on subjective measures common in traditional grading (Feldman, 2019). Students of color are most impacted by teachers’ implicit bias (Feldman, 2019), especially if subjective, non-academic factors are included in assessment (Cvencek et al., 2018). Implicit bias may especially play a role in lower grades assigned to students of color when the criteria for proficiency are unclear or undefined (Quinn, 2020). Traditional grading’s subjectivity can harm all students, but students of color may be most impacted due to implicit bias (Feldman, 2019; Quinn, 2020).
However, proficiency-based grading can make grades more equitable and more reflective of students’ actual learning (Buckmiller et al., 2017). Proficiency-based grading may include using practices such as rubrics for evaluating student work and student-generated portfolios; however, it may also include traditional assessments such as tests (Baete & Hochbein, 2014; Buckmiller et al., 2017; Iamarino, 2014; Miller, 2013). Students’ grades are tied to their mastery of content, such as standards, knowledge, and skills, as opposed to an average of all the grades earned during a grading period or course (Iamarino, 2014; Miller, 2013). Teachers using proficiency-based grading typically provide students with feedback on formative assessments (Buckmiller et al., 2017). Students may revise and resubmit work in order to demonstrate their proficiency in learning (Buckmiller et al., 2017). Through revision, students demonstrate their learning of the content and skills. As a result, proficiency-based grades may more accurately reflect what students have learned rather than a snapshot of their performance on a single assessment.
We Have to Use Grades
Grades have actually not existed, at least not in the form we’re familiar with, for a very long period of time (Schneider & Hutt, 2014). One of the worst reasons to perpetuate any system is the notion that we’ve always done it that way, especially when it’s not even true that we have always done it this way. The A-F grading system gained popularity as late as the 1940s—as I mentioned before—as educators saw a need to establish more uniform methods for determining students’ proficiency (Schneider & Hutt, 2014). For many years preceding the establishment of “traditional grading,” we used all sorts of other systems (good and bad) for measuring learning. This system is entrenched, but it’s not as old as people might think, and if we decided, collectively, that it no longer worked for us, we could find a better system. The problem is, well, that it’s a system, and systems are notoriously hard to change.
I have heard many educators express anxiety that students will either not be prepared for college or will not get into college unless they are graded. Many schools, however, have successfully eliminated traditional grades. Colleges understand the transcripts these students send them, and these students are able to go to college. For example, the Watershed School, a member of the Mastery Transcript Consortium, does not issue traditional letter grades or test students through final exams and has a 100% college acceptance rate (Plaskov, 2019). A college counselor I worked with told me anecdotally that “colleges are fine with grading that’s ‘non-traditional.’ Parents usually get very concerned about going off the A-F standard, but college admissions folks are experts on grading scales, and what I’ve consistently heard from them is that the most-accurate/least-translated reporting is what they like.”
My own personal experience is that some schools’ grading practices are more entrenched, and while another system of evaluation would work, it wouldn’t be politically feasible. Proficiency-based grading shows additional promise here. Attaching grades to standards or competencies can make grades more accurate reflections of students’ proficiency in learning. Proficiency-based report cards have the potential to be more useful in understanding students’ learning than traditional report cards including only a letter grade (Blauth & Hajdian, 2016; Swan et al., 2014). Swan et al. (2014) found that parents and teachers generally find proficiency-based reports more helpful and easier to understand, in addition to having more and better information about students’ progress.
It’s worth noting that one study I examined indicated parents reported feeling less confidence in the standards-based grade reports because they were unfamiliar and felt the school had not taken their feelings as stakeholders into account before implementing standards-based grade reports (Franklin et al., 2016). These parents also reported finding the grade reports unclear (Franklin et al., 2016). Importantly, Franklin et al. (2016) indicate the parents in their study were all dissatisfied with standards-based report cards; these parents also described themselves as strong students who enjoyed school. Their study did not include parents who expressed satisfaction with the reports. (Franklin et al., 2016).
The Bottom Line?
I think it’s important for teachers to open dialogue with students and parents, read the research on grading and assessment, and work within the system they’re in to make grades more accurate and meaningful. I highly recommend the works referenced in this post, which is derived largely from my dissertation. For a good deep dive, Joe Feldman’s book Grading for Equity is excellent.
References
Baete, G. S. & Hochbein, C. (2014). Project proficiency: Assessing the independent effects of high school reform in an urban district. The Journal of Educational Research, 107(6), 493-511. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2013.823371
Bies-Hernandez, N. J. (2012). The effects of framing grades on student learning and preferences. Teaching of Psychology, 39(3), 176-180. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312450429
Blauth, E. & Hadjian, S. (2016). How selective colleges and universities evaluate proficiency-based high school transcripts: Insights for students and schools. New England Board of Higher Education. https://www.nebhe.org/info/pdf/policy/Policy_Spotlight_How_Colleges_Evaluate_PB_HS_Trans cripts_April_2016.pdf
Bloxham, S., den-Outer, B., Hudson, J., & Price, M. (2016). Let’s stop the pretence of consistent marking: Exploring the multiple limitations of assessment criteria. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(3), 466-481. https://doi.org/10.1080/020602938.2015.1024607
Bowers, A. J. (2011). What’s in a grade? The multidimensional nature of what teacher-assigned grades assess in high school. Educational Research and Evaluation, 17(3), 151-159. https://doi.org/10.1080/13803611.2011.597112
Brackett, M. A., Floman, J. L., Ashton-James, C., Cherkasskiy, L., & Salovey, P. (2013). The influence of teacher emotion on grading practices: A preliminary look at the evaluation of student writing. Teachers and Teaching, 19(6), 634-646. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2013.827453
Brimi, H. M. (2011). Reliability of grading high school work in English. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 16(7). http://pareonline.net/getvnasp?=16&n=17
Brookhart, S. M., & Guskey, T. R. (2019). Reliability in grading and grading scales. In T. R. Guskey & S. M. Brookhart (Eds.), What we know about grading: What works, what doesn’t, and what’s next (pp. 13-31). ASCD.
Brookhart, S., Guskey, T. R., Bowers, A. J., McMillan, J. H., Smith, J. K., Smith, L. F., Stevens, M. T., Welsh, M. E. (2016). A century of grading research: Meaning and value in the most common educational measure. Review of Educational Research, 86(4), 803-848. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654316672069
Buckmiller, T., Peters, R., & Kruse, J. (2017). Questioning points and percentages: Standards-based grading (SBG) in higher education. College Teaching, 65(4), 151-157. https://doi.org/10.1080.87567555.2017.1302919
Burleigh, T. J. & Meegan, D. V. (2018). Risky prospects and risk aversion tendencies: does competition in the classroom depend on grading practices and knowledge of peer-status? Social Psychology of Education, 21(2), 323-335. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11218-017-9414-x
Carifio, J. & Carey, T. (2013). The arguments and data in favor of minimum grading. Mid-Western Educational Researcher, 25(4), 19-30.
Carifio, J. & Carey, T. (2015). Further findings on the positive effects of minimum grading. Journal of Education and Social Policy, 2(4), 130-136.
Casillas, A., Robbins, S., Allen, J., Kuo, Y. L., Hanson, M. A., & Shmeiser, C. (2012). Predicting early academy failure in high school from prior academic achievement, psychosocial characteristics, and behavior. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(2), 407-420. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027180
Cvencek, D., Fryberg, S. A., Covarrubias, R., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2018). Self-concepts, self-esteem, and academic achievement of minority and majority North American elementary school children. Child Development, 89(4), 1099-1109. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12802
Edgeworth, F. Y. (1888). The statistics of examinations. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 51(3), 599-635.
Feldman, J. (2019). Grading for equity: What it is, why it matters, and how it can transform schools andclassrooms. Corwin.
Francis, D. V. & Darity, W. A., Jr. (2021). Separate and unequal under one roof: The legacy of racialized tracking perpetuates within-school segregation. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 7(1), 187-202. https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2021.7.1.11
Franklin, A., Buckmiller, T., & Kruse, J. (2016). Vocal and vehement: Understanding parents’ aversion to standards-based grading. International Journal of Social Science Studies, 4(11), 19-29.
Froiland, J. M. & Worrell, F. C. (2016). Intrinsic motivation, learning goals, engagement, and achievement in a diverse high school. Psychology in the Schools, 53(3), 321-336. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.21901
Guskey, T. R. (2007). Multiple sources of evidence: An analysis of stakeholders’ perceptions of various indicators of student learning. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 26(1), 19-27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.2007.00085.x
Guskey, T. R. (2013). The case against percentage grades. Educational Leadership, 71(1), 68-72.
Guskey, T. R. & Jung, L. A. (2016): Grading: Why you should trust your judgment. Educational Leadership, 73(7), 50-54.
Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
Hayek, A., Toma, C., Oberlé, D., & Butera, F. (2014). The effect of grades on the preference effect: Grading reduces consideration of disconfirming evidence. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 36(6), 544-552. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2014.969840
Iamarino, D. L. (2014). The benefits of standards-based grading: A critical evaluation of modern grading practices. Current Issues in Education, 17(2), 1-11.
Klapp, A., (2018). Does academic and social self-concept and motivation explain the effect of grading on students’ achievement? European Journal of Psychology of Education, 33(2), 355-376. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-017-0331-3
McMorran, C., Ragupathi, K., & Luo, S. (2017). Assessment and learning without grades? Motivations and concerns with implementing gradeless learning in higher education. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 42(3), 361-377. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1114584
Miller, J. J. (2013). A better grading system: Standards-based, student-centered assessment. English Journal, 103(1), 111-118.
Plaskov, J. C. (2019, October 23). Reimagining college admissions season. The Mastery Transcript Consortium. https://mastery.org/reimagining-college-admissions-season/
Pulfrey, C., Buchs, C., & Butera, F. (2011). Why grades engender performance-avoidance goals: The mediating role of autonomous motivation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(3), 683-700. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023911
Quinn, D. M. (2020). Experimental evidence on teachers’ racial bias in student evaluation: The role of grading scales. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(3), 375-392. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373720932188
Rinn, A. N., Boazman, J., Jackson, A., Barrio, B. (2014). Locus of control, academic self-concept, and academic dishonesty among high ability college students. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. 14(4), 88-114. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v14i4.12770
Schneider, J. & Hutt, E. (2014). Making the grade: A history of the A-F marking scheme. Journal ofCurriculum Studies, 46(2), 201-224. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2013.790480
Smith, J. K. & Smith, L. F. (2009). The impact of framing effect on student preferences for university grading systems. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 35, 160-167.
Starch, D. & Elliott, E. C. (1912). Reliability of the grading of high-school work in English. The School Review, 20(7), 442-457.
Starch, D. & Elliott, E. C. (1913). Reliability of grading work in mathematics. The School Review, 21(4), 254-259.
Swan, G., Guskey, T., & Jung, L. (2014). Parents’ and teachers’ perceptions of standards-based and traditional report cards. Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Accountability, 26(3), 289-299. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-01409191-4
Townsley, M. & Varga, M. (2018). Getting high school students ready for college: A quantitative study of standards-based grading practices. Journal of Research in Education, 28(1), 92-112.
Villeneuve, J. C., Conner, J. O., Selby, S., & Pope, D. C. (2019). Easing the stress at pressure-cooker schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 101(3), 15–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0031721719885910
First and foremost: From kindergarten on, students spend thousands of hours studying subjects irrelevant to the modern labor market. Why do English classes focus on literature and poetry instead of business and technical writing? Why do advanced-math classes bother with proofs almost no student can follow? When will the typical student use history? Trigonometry? Art? Music? Physics? Latin? The class clown who snarks “What does this have to do with real life?” is onto something.
One of the best compliments I ever received from a student (thank you, Tali!) was that my class was “relevant.” And she said it because we studied literature (poetry is, by the way, literature, so I’m unclear why the two were separated). We read The Bluest Eye, and Tali wrote an essay about how the novel reflected modern unrealistic notions about beauty standards. She researched the lengths people go to alter their appearance and the mental health effects of being unable to accept and love ourselves as we are. Don’t try to tell me literature isn’t relevant. It shows us who we are, and it shows us others who are not like us. It gives us an opportunity to understand our world. It is one thing for school to prepare us to make a living. It also needs to prepare us to make a life, which is a point Professor Caplan seems to have missed in his argument that the humanities, in particular, are irrelevant. I would challenge anyone in Professor Robin Bates’s English class to tell me what he teaches isn’t relevant.
I can’t understand anyone who would argue we don’t need to study history. A lack of understanding of history is precisely how we wound up in our current political situation. I suppose I want to know who the typical student is, also, because I would argue we should all be well-rounded. The content is not as important as wrestling with the ideas, developing critical thinking and communication skills, and having a greater understanding of our world and all the ways in which it works. It doesn’t make studying the content “useless.”
Caplan argues that “Every college student who does the least work required to get good grades silently endorses the theory [of educational signaling],” meaning that it doesn’t really matter what you study in college—you will exhibit certain traits employers are looking for just because you have done college work at a certain level. The first thing that’s wrong with the argument is doing work to get grades. People who are intrinsically interested in a topic will do the work regardless, but people who are doing the work for a grade are not intrinsically motivated. The work is a means to a different end. And that’s exactly what is wrong with school. Grades. We need to get rid of grading because it gets in the way of learning.
Caplan also mentions learning loss:
The conventional view—that education pays because students learn—assumes that the typical student acquires, and retains, a lot of knowledge. She doesn’t. Teachers often lament summer learning loss: Students know less at the end of summer than they did at the beginning.
What kind of learning are we talking about? Memorizing facts? Students will not forget what they apply and what they teach to others. Caplan adds that “Human beings have trouble retaining knowledge they rarely use.” True. What kind of knowledge are we talking about, though? If I can look it up or store it somewhere, I’m not going to stuff it in my brain somewhere because I have a lot going on, and I am not wasting space remembering what I can look up. That’s why, for example, if something I need to remember to do isn’t on my calendar, it doesn’t exist. We do need to make a compelling case for the relevance of what we teach students, or rather, what we ask students to learn. That does not mean college isn’t for everyone who wants to go.
Caplan truly reveals his hand when he remarks, “I’m cynical about students. The vast majority are philistines.”
Frankly, if this is your attitude, you should not be teaching because you do not love your students. It’s classist garbage.
Caplan maintains, “Those who believe that college is about learning how to learn should expect students who study science to absorb the scientific method, then habitually use it to analyze the world. This scarcely occurs.” Then the problem is the way college professors teach the scientific method (or whatever else you care to use as an example), right? It stands to reason we should at least examine that it is possible that college professors are not helping students apply what they are learning. After all, Caplan says, “Students who excel on exams frequently fail to apply their knowledge to the real world.” That’s because EXAMS ARE NOT APPLICATION. They are not good assessments if we want students to learn what we hope they will learn. They are easy to grade, but as I said before, grades don’t have a connection to learning. I haven’t given an exam in years, and I don’t anticipate ever giving an exam for the rest of my career. Why? Precisely because it teaches students to cram a lot of information into their heads, dump it out on the test, and then forget it. Just as Howard Gardner argues in a quote Caplan uses in the article:
Students who receive honor grades in college-level physics courses are frequently unable to solve basic problems and questions encountered in a form slightly different from that on which they have been formally instructed and tested.
Being “formally instructed and tested” on a topic doesn’t mean you’ve learned it. Are instructors asking students what they have learned? They might be surprised. So what is Caplan doing to change things? Not much. As he says, “I try to teach my students to connect lectures to the real world and daily life. My exams are designed to measure comprehension, not memorization.”
Caplan is expecting that because he lectures, students are learning. What is he asking his students to do to apply their understandings of economics? What research projects are they taking on? What sorts of research-based writing are they doing? What sorts of questions are they wrestling with in Socratic discussion?
Caplan adds, right after his remark about being cynical about students, that he’s “cynical about teachers. The vast majority are uninspiring.” I don’t disagree with Caplan here. I’m not sure if I think the vast majority are uninspiring, but I do think teachers who lecture and expect students will retain everything they say and then measure understanding with exams are probably uninspiring. And a large number of teachers do assess in this way.
Educators—at all levels, including and maybe especially college—need to take a hard look at themselves and understand how they teach affects the results they are hoping to achieve. They need to know who they are teaching. They need to stop shaming their students and blaming them for not learning, especially when the way they are teaching students results in the lack of learning and understanding that they decry in their students.
This picture shows three special groups of students. In the frame in the upper left is my last group of advisees at the Weber School before I moved away from Georgia to Massachusetts. They took this picture of themselves at the Winter Formal and framed it for me as a going-away gift. These students graduated two years after I left—Class of 2014. They were such a good group that my colleague Nicki Brite claimed them all for advisory before my last school year had ended. They are sophomores in this picture.
On the bottom are my first group of advisees at Worcester Academy. This crew graduated in 2016, and two of them were my advisees for all four years of high school. I picked up the rest in sophomore, junior, or senior year. They were a lively group. This is their senior picture, and they are wearing their college tee-shirts. My current advisees at Worcester Academy are sophomores this year.
The students on the right are standing in front of Walden Pond. Many of these students were in my class for as many as three years, and I think most of them had my class for at least two years. They are sophomores in this particular picture. At the Weber School, American Literature was a sophomore English class, and most of these students also took my Writing Seminar class as well. We knew each other well. They made this picture because we studied Thoreau in class, and I could not be there with them to experience Walden. They graduated in 2009. I was close to these students. Many of them connect with me on Facebook or Twitter. One of them tweeted this response to my last blog post.
His comment moved me incredibly, but if I’m honest, he didn’t have the teacher I describe in that blog post. I was in a different place when I taught him and his peers, and I learned a lot in the years that followed. Issues of conscience and social justice are much more important to me now. Student agency is far more important to me now. Students have more voice and more choices in my classroom in 2017 than they did in 2007. Yet this student’s comment is evidence of one of my core beliefs. Over time, we will probably forget the mechanics of how to format a paper according to MLA guidelines, what a participle is, or what the red hunting hat symbolizes. What we don’t forget is how our teachers make us feel. If we knew they loved us and we loved them back, we remember their classes fondly. And we certainly remember how they helped us grow in the most crucial ways: becoming critical readers and thinkers, effective communicators, and lifelong learners.
As department chairs at Worcester Academy, we recently read an article called “Four Predictions for Students’ Tomorrows” by Erik Palmer in the March 2016 issue of Educational Leadership. You need to be an ASCD member to view the article at the link. What Palmer argues in the article is that what we think about years after we graduate are the things we wish we had been taught. As Palmer reminds us in the article, we are preparing our students for their futures. It’s a moving target. However, we do know that students are going to need to be critical researchers (especially using the internet well), they will need to be media literate and make logical arguments, they will need to be able to speak and listen, and they will need to be good critical thinkers. None of this is new. As Palmer points out in his conclusion, “Argument, rhetoric, and oral communication have been important since ancient Greece” (22).
Thinking about how my approach to teaching has changed, I am curious: What do my students wish they had learned in my class?
Stay tuned. I just asked my students. I’ll let you know what they have to say.
What about you? What do you wish you’d learned in school?
Citation: Palmer, Erik. “Four Predictions for Students’ Tomorrows.” Educational Leadership, vol. 73, no. 6, Mar. 2016, pp. 18-22.
I had weekend duty at my school on Labor Day. For those of you who might teach in other settings, weekend duty is fairly common in boarding schools. When we have students living on campus, making sure their needs are taken care of takes many hands, and the faculty living on campus cannot always meet those needs on their own. We are often given choices about which types of duty we might prefer. Sometimes we are not able to have our first choice. I was lucky, however, and was able to monitor the school library during my four-hour shift. I like working in the library, as it’s quiet, and the only real travel is checking on students who might be working downstairs.
A small group of junior and senior girls came to the library and worked for most of the four hours I was there. As I prepared to close the library and they were packing up, I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. One girl was finishing up their summer reading text, The Scarlet Letter. She remarked that the book was “horrible,” and that she felt like she had to “translate almost every sentence.” A senior girl remarked, “Wait until you get to Huckleberry Finn.”
I happen to love both of those books. I didn’t read either one until I was in my 20’s, and perhaps I came to them at the right time. I don’t always think we teach books when students are ready for them, when the time is right. On the other hand, I have had some success teaching both of those texts, or at least it seemed from my perspective as if students were engaged. Every single student? Honestly, no, but it’s fairly difficult to achieve 100% from any class. Enough students that I could see value in teaching the texts? Sure.
I don’t necessarily think these texts have no place in high school. I also don’t think we should do entirely away with teaching the whole-class text in favor of all student-selected books. There are a lot of reasons to read, and the whole-class text can be taught successfully. I am curious about the approaches to these two novels, The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn, in the girls’ classes. These are both hard-working, bright girls who are invested in their education, so I don’t think it’s the girls here. I’m sure if you polled more of our students, mine included, they might have similar stories.
I do independent reading in my classes because students need to make time to read, and they need choices about what they read. They need to learn what they actually like to read, and like anything else, the more you read, the better you are at reading. Having said that, I remain convinced that the whole-class text study also still has a place in English classes.
So what do we do? If we see value in teaching a text, how do we engage the students? What choices do we offer about studying the text?
Stay tuned. I feel a blog series manifesto coming on.
Another good question: do you tell the students how much you enjoy having them in your school?
Students at my school are polite. They often hold doors, offer to help, and greet people politely when they meet others campus. One thing they often do as they pack up their things and leave class is say “Thank you.”
And I say “thank you,” too.
It’s important that students know that they are the reason you are there. And it’s important that parents feel you are happy their children are in school.
I worry sometimes that we send a different message. I know we have all had teachers or known teachers who inspire the question “Why are you teaching?” They seem to dislike students. They seem to dislike their colleagues. They don’t want to do the work of teaching. All of us have bad days, but I’m talking about people who spend years like this.
I will never forget this one guy I worked with in my first year. He taught history. We earned one sick/personal day per month, and he took his as soon as he earned it, like clockwork. He hated the school, he hated the kids, and he hated many of the people he worked with. I’m not sure why he was putting himself (and everyone else) through such a miserable experience.
If we are in a teaching situation in which we genuinely feel that level of unhappiness, we owe it to ourselves and to the students to get out and find something else. It may just be the school. I speak from the experience of having stayed in teaching jobs in which I was unhappy. There was always something I could find to enjoy about each of these jobs, but ultimately, if you are not happy, you won’t be able to make the students feel like you’re happy they’re in your class or your school.
Slice of Life is a daily writing challenge during the month of March hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
Teaching was the first career I ever considered, and I actually do remember making that decision. I was in first grade. My experience with education was not that expansive at that point. I couldn’t possibly have had any idea exactly what age group or which subjects I would teach when I grew up. I don’t think I had even considered high school. I’m not sure I even knew the subject of English existed. But I was pretty set on teaching. My teacher that year, Mrs. Jones, awakened my curiosity about dinosaurs and books. Aside from an incident when she embarrassed me in the midst of scolding me for talking with a neighbor, I remember her fondly and remember wanting to be like her.
I remember putting my stuffed animals and dolls in circles and lines and giving them assignments to complete. I remember reading to my sister. My best friend in elementary school swears that I used to go over the material we were studying in school with her. I wish I could remember that.
I thought briefly about being a lawyer in seventh grade after doing a project in which I played the role of a lawyer, but I think my understanding of what lawyers did was quite narrow. I assumed, based on what I had seen in TV and movies and read in books that all lawyers were trial lawyers, and being a trial lawyer didn’t appeal to me. It wasn’t long before I was back to my original plan.
In middle school, I fell in love with French class. I thought I might teach French. I took French in high school, where my teachers were admittedly a lot less inspiring than my middle school teachers (with the exception of one teacher in my upper level French classes). I thought I might one day teach French. I can’t remember if I was told I should also study Spanish, or if I assumed I should, because many of the world language teachers I knew taught both languages, and I just didn’t have any interest in teaching Spanish.
I honestly don’t remember exactly when I decided to teach English. My middle school English teachers were good. I loved reading and writing in their classes, and I have fond memories of projects I did. That changed once I was in high school. I started out in Honors English classes, which were fine, but not all that interesting. I found the ideas shared by the other students intriguing, but I felt they were smarter than me. I understand now that they were just faster and more extroverted. I took regular-level English classes the rest of high school. My tenth grade English teacher was probably one of the worst teachers I ever had. I learned so little in her class, and it was incredibly boring. All I really remember was doing exercises out of Warriner’s grammar books at my desk.
I had a decent first semester eleventh grade teacher, but I remember feeling desperate at that stage that I was missing something. I asked her for a reading list, and she brought me a box of books. I don’t think anyone had ever asked for such a thing from her before. At any rate, I wasn’t in her class long before I moved, and my new English teacher in Georgia was my favorite. The class quickly became my favorite class. I absolutely loved her. I still do, as a matter of fact, because we have remained friends. I was lucky enough to be in her class again senior year, too, though not for first semester. I had a miserable experience in that class with a teacher who did not reward my hard and honest work on a research paper and gave my then boyfriend a good grade on a paper on which he had made up sources and which didn’t meet the assignment requirements. It was so unfair. It still rankles. I am not saying my paper was amazing. It probably wasn’t. But it was the honest work of weeks spent in the library reading Robert Frost’s poems and conducting research.
If not for my second semester junior/senior English teacher, it’s tough to say if I would be teaching English. In some ways, I learned what kind of teacher I didn’t want to be from the other teachers. It is a shame when a kid who loved to read and write as much as I did couldn’t enjoy high school English classes, though. I have tried to do better with my own teaching. I believe I have.
In some ways, I think the fact that I decided to teach long before I decided on who and what to teach contributed to the way I teach. I could easily have taken a different path in terms of subject matter or age group. As a matter of fact, I have taught pre-K and every grade from 6-12. In my role as a tech integrator, I’ve also taught adults. As a result, I don’t have ideas that work of literature X simply must be read at a certain age, but I do believe we should scaffold and build skills in reading and writing.
I was always going to be a teacher, even if I didn’t know the particulars in first grade when decided on that path. There was a period of time about four years into my career when I thought perhaps I shouldn’t be teaching. It lasted a few months before I was back in a classroom again. Being a teacher is such a part of my identity that I can’t imagine doing something else.
Slice of Life is a daily writing challenge during the month of March hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
I have an American lit class that meets after a half hour period we’ve designated for collaborative learning and talking and working with peers and teachers. Many of my students came to class quite early today. Some of the students were discussing a quiz in history, sharing strategies they’d used to study and lamenting faulty memory when reading their history textbooks. I shared with them that my 8th grade math teacher had taught us the SQ3R method for reading textbooks, and since they hadn’t heard of it, I explained it to them. I mentioned I found it helpful for reading history textbooks in particular, but that I thought it also worked well for science. Maybe not so much for English, and I never used it in math. One student mentioned it was kind of strange that a math teacher taught it to us as it might not have been directly helpful in studying math. I said she was the kind of teacher who shared general success tips, such as study hints and note-taking methods, with us, even if it wasn’t necessarily going to help us in her class. She also taught us how to take cluster or web notes. I have never found that technique useful myself, but I’ve taught it to students who have found it quite helpful. My teacher—I still remember her name, Mrs. Sands—cared about our success and not just in her class. I knew she cared about us.
What I like best about teaching is not necessarily teaching the subject, but helping kids learn, whatever it is. I love sharing ideas and hearing from students. The conversation I described was a five-minute conversation before class, but it was a lot of fun for me, and I felt like we shared a bond over the study tips. Will they give SQ3R a try? I don’t know. But it only took a few minutes to show, and it didn’t take a lot of effort either, that I cared about my students’ success, and not just in my class.
I was in a colleague’s classroom either late last week or early this week (I forget which), and he had a small stack of writing taken up from his seniors. I noticed the names of former students, so I peeked (my colleague didn’t mind). I pulled the second paper out of the stack and started reading. It was good. I felt so proud of the student who wrote it. He had spent two years in my English classes, and he didn’t have a lot of confidence when he came in, but he worked very hard. He came in to work with me. He revised. He volunteered to have his writing workshopped. He is reaping the rewards of the effort he put into improving his writing. Of course, writing is an integral part of the English classroom, and we should be teaching students to write for a variety of audiences and purposes. It’s such an important skill to take forward, and I loved helping this student learn how to improve his writing. But make no mistake: he did the work that resulted in that improvement. He’s carrying that success forward in his English classes this year, and I don’t doubt he’ll carry it forward to future writing he does.
It doesn’t take a lot of work, I don’t think, for us to show our students that we are interested in their lives and struggles beyond our classroom walls. They will remember how we cared for them many years after they no longer remember content. Relationships are important. I remember most of my favorite teachers because of a combination of how interesting their classes were and now much we connected as people beyond the subject. I can clearly remember having teachers who made me feel invisible in the classroom, and I knew they didn’t really care about any of their students, or at least I didn’t feel it. In fact, I have had teachers who really seemed to dislike their students. I am not sure why they were teaching. Students are what I like best about teaching. More importantly, students are why I teach. And perhaps most importantly of all, I really like my students.
I’ve been thinking quite a lot lately about how important it is to meet students where they are. I am not saying we should not have standards, but we are going to have students in our classes, and they are going to be all over the map when it comes to backgrounds, experiences, interests, and ability (for lack of a better word).
I know sometimes I am frustrated that my students don’t know something I would have expected them to know. Granted, I also teach in a private school. Just like any other school, however, we have students from a variety of backgrounds. With those caveats in mind, I would venture to guess that all of us have heard teachers we have worked with who complain about students not knowing something. It might be nice if we didn’t have to fill in what we perceive as gaps, but it’s not realistic, given the different places from which students arrive in our classes.
It took me some time, but I have come to the conclusion that we really need to meet students where they are. I know that many teachers are stressed about high-stakes tests, and yes, that’s not something I need to worry about, so maybe it’s easy for me to talk. Bottom line, I think students need to feel we like them and care about them. Otherwise, it can be hard for them to invest in our classes. Did you invest in classes in which you felt the teacher didn’t like you? I remember I didn’t. Oh, I did my assigned work, but I wouldn’t ever put myself out for a teacher who didn’t care.
I try to see to it that all of my students make some progress while they are in my classroom. For some students, that means feeling more confident. For others, it means turning work in on time. For others, it means reaching for AP classes. Maybe I will feel differently about this issue next year (though I suspect I won’t), when I am teaching an AP class myself, but I am going to try to have the attitude “How can I help this student be successful on the AP exam given where they are now?” rather than “Why is this student in AP?”
Right about this time of year, teachers everywhere (particularly secondary school teachers) are looking at the calendar and freaking out about what they haven’t covered.
I, like many teachers, have fallen into the trap of thinking that certain content has to be covered, even at the expense of engaging in deeper learning, because of time constraints. I should have known better. Because my family moved around quite a bit, I went to three different high schools. I had what I perceived as “gaps” in my education. I didn’t read The Great Gatsby. I didn’t learn much about history after World War II. I could think of other examples of things everyone is supposed to learn in high school, but you get the general idea. I’m not sure if I realized I had gaps when I was in school. I did have a sense that I missed things because the school I left hadn’t covered them yet, and the school I moved to had already covered them.
At some point I started to worry I wasn’t ready for college and asked my English teacher for a reading list. Just to cover my bases, I found a library book that had a list of books every student should read before they went to college. I’m not sure, but I think the list was about 100 years old. It was a great, long list alphabetized by title. I stalled out in the middle of Agamemnon. I managed to make it through college without reading Agamemnon, and given I graduated magna cum laude, I suppose I did okay. In fact, I managed to make it all the way to last summer before finally reading Agamemnon, and though I enjoyed it just fine, I think I could have lived my whole life without reading Agamemnon and nothing dire would have happened.
The longer I teach, the more convinced I become that the most important thing we do is help students learn how to learn. If you can learn how to learn, you can teach yourself anything, and if you need help, you can generally figure out who can help you learn it.
I have loved reading since before I could read by myself. I taught myself all about dinosaurs when I was little. I found all sorts of books about dinosaurs. As I grew older, I turned to books to learn about ancient Egypt, the Middle Ages, and making soap. Books are a great way to teach yourself.
If we English teachers can cultivate a love of reading and help students learn to think and learn, the content we use can take a variety of forms. Students don’t have to read Agamemnon in particular in order to be prepared for college or the world. But they do have to learn to read critically, identify themes, analyze ideas. The particular content we use doesn’t matter as much as what we do with it. Just because I covered material doesn’t mean students learned it. I have learned over time that if I really want students to learn content, then I need to let them wrestle with it. That takes time. If I rush it, students will not learn it. Oh, they might know it long enough to do some assessment, but they don’t really learn it. Are they going to be able to apply the information? Who decides what information is critical and what isn’t? And why?
When I first started teaching, the textbook was my crutch, and I covered it. It’s liberating not to have a textbook. It forced me to think about broad themes and ideas and create units of study based on those big ideas. Unless I completely misread my students, I think it’s more engaging, too.
In Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe urge teachers to ask, “What should [the students] walk out the door able to understand, regardless of what activities or texts we use?” and “What is evidence of such ability?” (17). Only after those questions are answered should teachers ask, “What texts, activities, and methods will best enable such a result?” (17). Much of the time, the texts come first. After first reading Understanding by Design, I realized my problem as a teacher was that I relied on covering material, and then I was upset when students didn’t learn. As Wiggins and McTighe state, “When our teaching merely covers content without subjecting it to inquiry, we may well be perpetrating the very misunderstanding and amnesia we decry” (132).
We don’t have all the time in the world to teach everything worth knowing. There isn’t enough time in a lifetime, or even in several lifetimes, to do that job. As teachers, we do have the ability to ignite curiosity. We should be figuring out how to create curious learners instead of worrying about covering material.
I came across these resources that might be of interest:
