...thoughts

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.