Welcome to Field Reports!
Every two weeks, I share insights and updates from my classroom, reflecting on my pedagogical practices.
For creative writing and ELA activities to use in your class, check out Plug & Play!
It’s been a while since I’ve written a post. It’s the depths, I tell you. The depths of winter, the depths of the long-leg of the school year relay. It’s left me a little glum and overworked. I also haven’t had much to say, so I decided not to force half-hearted writing out of me and onto you.
But now: the sun showed its face for a few days, my mood has lifted, and I have a couple of ideas to share.
This is not a post about AI, but I want to start with the joke/nightmare of education reaching a point where teachers plan lessons using AI, students do the work using AI, and the work is graded by—you guessed it—AI. Teachers pretending to teach, students pretending to learn, and, all along the way, computers are just crunching probabilities. ‘Twould be a tragic farce and would spoil the whole point of education.
The charade of pretending to learn, however, even if we disregard AI, is already present. It’s habitual, widespread, and deeply rooted.
This critique is nothing new, but over the past few weeks I’ve been reminded and discouraged by it more than usual. I see students copy answers off a picture of their friend’s work. Students talk about the numerous ways they’ve cheated on tests. They intentionally write with worse handwriting when they aren’t confident in their answers because they know there’s a good chance their teacher is tired and won’t read that closely.
Students pretending to learn; teachers pretending to teach.
When you ask students about their school work, they often say, “I finally got it done.”
It’s a shame that the best part of school is the exit.
Grades—the main culprit for spoiling education—divert value.
I’m picturing a kid collecting pokémon cards and trading them with friends. He keeps one because it looks cool. It could be powerful/rare/common but the kid doesn’t know, and the kid doesn’t care. It’s just cool. You see those flames? And the fangs?? C’monnn now.
For the card trading moguls, however, the value of the card is the amount of dollar bills it garners. Who cares if it looks cool?
(I know I’m simplifying the trading card world for my own metaphoric purposes. Forgive me.)
Here’s the hypothesis: consistently diverting the value of a thing into something void of value (like money, or grades) will, over time, make the original thing feel void of value as well.
Regardless of the words people say, the message students actually absorb from everyone (peers, staff, society, parents, etc.) is that the grade is what matters. Compounding this is that fact that students are intimately aware of the subjectivity of grades: one teacher is strict, another is “chill” and “doesn’t care,” and every teacher is inconsistent on their expectations and follow-through. The meaning of a grade isn’t guaranteed or stable.
In this way, grades don’t just steal value, they erode a sense of value overall.
School doesn’t give students something worth caring about. The prize they seek (a grade) is hollow and unreliable. Replace the value of reading with something meaningless and of course the current we educators swim against is apathy.
The work of a teacher, then, is retrieval and restoration. Reading is amazing. Science is amazing. Art and photography and every other subject is amazing. But the vivacity of life and learning has been obscured by this thing we call “school.”
My hope is that students don’t long for the exit but wish that school would last a little longer.
A Note on Ungrading
My ungrading system seems to have restored some value to the things we do in class. The amount of genuine interest and true learning has increased. That said, I still can’t seem to shake my students loose from the reflexes induced by grades.
Students still ask me if their work will get enough points (we haven’t been using points in my class all year). They still ask me if the assignment will go on their grade. And take yesterday for example: students were asking me if the comic they were making had to have color. That’s a question that only school would fool them into asking.
Class as a Magazine Company
Lately I’ve been imagining what it would be like if I ran my English classes like a literary journal or a magazine. My thoughts:
We could have themed issues surrounding certain ideas that we read about/study.
Students could submit original work.
There could be a section on society and culture where students write reviews of albums, movies, and shows.
Students would rotate through roles: editor, designer, writer, creative lead, etc.
Would each class have it’s own magazine?
Could students get into groups and create their own magazines that they run throughout the year?
Students could practice every form of writing prescribed in state standards: narrative, informational, persuasive.
Could we get the magazines printed? Pass them around the school?
Real audience, real purpose, real value.
Maybe designing this will be my summer project.
Thank you for reading!! If you have insights to share related to the topics I’ve discussed, I’d love to hear from you.
📼 My collection of videos to start class.
🖋️ Poems I share with my students.
🎹 My playlist of gentle music.
📚 What I’m reading/highlighting.
Love the magazine idea!
Well said! You are speaking my language (Pokémon).
I think your magazine company approach is worth pursuing. Heck, I might actually try it next year too! I could see it working really well for my creative writing classes.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm sure the majority of teachers feel the same way you do about our current system. It is broken, but that doesn't mean it can never be fixed.