The Joys of Grading

During my last visit to Beacon Academy, I had the pleasure of being introduced to what I am told teachers love best: grading.

Well, okay, I am actually told that this is one of the least favorite of all activities required of teachers. I am starting to see why.

The students are currently working on the concept of rational discourse - analyzing arguments that they are presented with and responding in a logical, justifiable way. They are reading a book about the aftermath of September 11, which includes articles and papers that discuss the validity and implications of our nation's response to September 11th. The students are required to read and respond to each chapter. They must post a response which includes their inital response to the arguments presented within the chapter and then post in response to at least one other student's original post. Mrs. Walsh told me that I could grade their posts and quickly told me some of the requirements she had for them, included a minimum length of 250 words, correct grammar and punctiation usage, and at least one properly cited reference to the text. She showed me an example of a rubric she had used for a Socratic Circle that the students were required to participate in, and she also showed me a diagram with "Bloom's Taxonomy" to explain the standards to which the students are held. I was told to make my own rubric for the blog posts, but Mrs. Walsh encouraged me to go ahead and start reading and grading them so that I could get a better idea of what I wanted to include in the rubric.

It proved to be much harder than I thought. First of all, I was told to delete posts which did not fulfill the requirements, after explaining to the students what they needed to change. It was very difficult to summarize and clearly explain to the students what they had done wrong and how they could improve. Most of them seemed to listen and respond well to my suggestions, but one student blantantly told me he didn't care about his grade. The other hard thing was the fact that the students range in age from 14 to 18, and yet they all seem to be held to the same standards, at least as far as this assignment was concerned. That did not seem quite right to me.

This made me think a lot about what I will do in my future teaching when it comes to grading. Will I make a rubric for every assignment, and what happens if there are loopholes in my rubric? I tried to think through the different possibilities, based on my initial readings of the blog posts, as I put my own rubric together. I had to think about what kinds of things I saw the students doing well and what things I saw as weaknesses.

Another question I have is will I hold all of my students to the same standard, even if I teach in a traditional classroom where all of the students are roughly the same age? What happens if I have students who are struggling or are non-native English speakers? In one of my teaching observations, I had a conversation with one of my teachers about it. She had several Hispanic students in her class, and she explained to me how she had to look for things in their writing other than strictly following proper grammar rules. When I teach, I want to learn how to look at the content before I look at the mistakes. It was hard to do that with these blog posts because so many of them had such glaring mistakes.

I'd like to ask Mrs. Walsh next time about her justification in having all of the students complete the same assignment and grading them according to a single standard. I'd also like to ask her how and why the students are expected to know the concepts behind correct grammar usage, since, as far as I can see, there is no formal instruction. It reminds me of my homeschooling experience in which my mother required all of my siblings and me to write at least a one-page essay every day. She would mainly check for spelling and grammar errors when she graded them, and I had a vague concept of how to write but no formal instruction on grammar rules. When I attended a Christian school in 7th and 8th grade, I felt like I was behind the other students when it came to knowing about the mechanics of sentence structure. I could write a proper sentence, but I did not necessarily know why it was considered correct.

This charter school is proving to be even more different than I thought! I look forward to future visits and hope I can have the opportunity to attend for at least one full day, to get a broader idea of how the school works.

First Charter School Encounter

I had my first visit to Beacon Academy on Monday. Though I wasn't feeling particularly nervous about the visit, I wasn't sure what to expect. The only thing I really knew was that it was a charter school, which meant that the students were integrated instead of being separated by grade, and their school included project-based learning.

I pulled up to the school, which meets in a Jewish center, and a policeman pulled up just as I was walking up to the door. The door was locked, but a woman opened it from inside and said, "Who are you?" I told her my name and that I was looking for Kimberly. "That's me," she replied, "And this is my husband." She nodded to the policeman who walked up behind me. Kimberly showed me into her classroom and left me in there while she talked to her husband in the hallway.

The students weren't currently in the classroom, and I looked around at colorful beanbag chairs, a leather couch, several swivel chairs, and laptops strewn about the room. I tried to imagine what it would be like with the students there. It reminded me a bit of homeschooling, as the setting seemed much more casual than a public school classroom.

The door opened, and a few students started to walk in, acknowledging my presence but not really saying much. One girl eagerly introduced herself as Anna, shook my hand, and asked me who I was. I explained that I was from Purdue and quickly found that none of the students had been expecting me. The first things that stood out to me about each student were the amount of leather, metal, piercings, and multi-colored hair. Again, I hadn't known at all what to expect, so I wasn't exactly surprised, but I also wasn't sure what to think.

Kimberly came back in and told the students to sit down and properly introduce themselves. There were about eight students, and Kimberly said she had five missing. They all told me their names and ages and grade levels - ranging from an 8th grader to a couple of seniors. Two of the guys introduced themselves as "Bear" and "Wolf." Kimberly told them to stop being ridiculous and give me their real names. It was so interested to watch her interact with the students. There was a familiarity in their relationship. The students weren't disrespectful, but they were certainly very comfortable with her. And she, in her jeans and t-shirt, seemed completely comfortable with them.

The students got to work, in different parts of the room, while Kimberly explained to me some of the set up of their school. I was amazed to hear about the level of responsibility that the students have. They go to school Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and they have a certain amount of school that they must accomplish each week, but they are responsible to complete it without being told every minute of the day which subject they are supposed to work on and for how long (which again reminds me of homeschooling). On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they each go to different internships, based on their areas of interest. They are required to call the places at which they wish to be placed and do a certain amount of planning and arranging their visits. Kimberly follows up with all of that, along with the mentor that each students has. They are also responsible to come up with a proposal for a semester-long project that they would like to accomplish. Kimberly told me about a past student's project in rebuilding a car and giving it away to a single mom.

Another thing that amazed me was to hear Kimberly talk about how well she knew her students. She really invests her life in them by having them over to her house, interacting with their families, and taking them along on trips she takes. A lot of the students have pretty rough home lives, and it seems like Kimberly is involved in a lot of what goes on in their lives. That was what intriguied and excited me the most about the whole charter school idea. For a teacher to have the opportunity to share her life with students in that kind of way, without the "professional boundaries" enforced in many public schools, seems amazing to me.

Of course, I really still have very little idea how a charter school works, having only experienced it for a little over two hours. But I am really looking forward to learning more about it, talking with Kimberly and the other teachers about their experiences, and perhaps looking into it for my future teaching career.