As the semester is
getting further along, I am enjoying SBG more and more. I truly do not remember what it was like to
be on the other side of the grading fence. I know my first two years of
teaching I spent my days “grading” endless stacks of paper. Usually I ended up
putting “+”, “+-“, or “-“ on the papers which had nothing to do with the actual
content mastery. If they finished the entire assignment they got a “+”. If they
finished more than half but not all of it they got a “+-“. And if they finished
less than half (but at least turned something in) they got a “-“. I had so many
papers to grade that I never really gave any one paper a good review. I was
basically grading participation—behavior.
I was the teacher at the parent conference that scrambled to defend my
grades when a parent asked, “Why is my student failing if they keep getting
100s on all the homework and classwork? Doesn’t that mean they should know it
for the test?” And then I would say something like, “well, um…yea…anyone else
wanna talk?” Embarrassing. I knew it wasn’t a good practice, but I didn’t know
how to really fix it. I am so thankful that I finally decided to jump into SBG
this year. This system makes sense. I am still embarrassed at parent-teacher
conferences, but the difference is that I am embarrassed for my colleagues that
haven’t figured it out yet. I watch them scramble to justify silly grading
practices just like I used to. I really want to help them, but this is a philosophy that you kind of have to adopt on your own before you are willing to listen to others ideas on the "how to do it" side of things.
One of the principals at my school said, "If you just change the grading system but nothing else, it won't be any better than it ever has been. In fact, it might be worse." I agree with that statement. SBG is more than just a way to grade papers. It is an entire philosophy. It has changed the way I teach and assess. I truly believe it is making me a better teacher.
