Four Reasons why i don’t like letter grades
Until I expanded everyone’s understanding of performance to include classroom achievements and outside-the-classroom contributions, letter grades threatened to undermine our tribal cohesion.
Ellie stormed into my office, fuming.
“How is it possible?” she asked, “How is it possible that Brian got an A?”
Ellie and Brian were students in my second La Ceiba class that I ever taught.
While Ellie’s work was meticulous and on time, Brian’s work was haphazard and late. So, in a traditional class, Ellie would have been justified in her frustrations.
However, La Ceiba was not a traditional class, far from it.
And Brian was not your everyday wide-eyed undergraduate student. He was a two-tours-in-Iraq Army veteran who prioritized learning over letter grades. Upon meeting him for the first time in my Comparative Economics course, he shook my hand and said, “I’ll show up. I’ll participate. But I’m here for a gentleman’s C.”
True to his word, he showed up, made insightful contributions to class discussions, turned in most (if not all) of his work late, and got a C. I loved his irreverence. When inviting students to join La Ceiba, I welcomed him without hesitation.
As expected, Brian’s performance in La Ceiba over the semester was subpar. However, in Honduras, he thrived. He seamlessly moved from one project team to another whenever there was an opportunity to help. He was an island of calm whose steadiness and unflappable focus were a source of stability for those around him. Indeed, the best part of working with Brian was that I never needed to check in on him. I knew I could trust him to get any job done.
As a teacher leading a group of young people abroad, this was invaluable. Moreover, every night, without my request, he led a gathering of his classmates to set out the next day’s objectives, work out logistics, and make a “materials needed” list. He also co-led late-night discussions into the why and how of what we were doing in Honduras.
For all those reasons (and more), Brian earned an A in La Ceiba. As did Ellie.
Ellie was awesome (and still is). But at the time, she was still under the sway of the traditional classroom’s overly narrow understanding of student performance.
Ellie and Brian’s experience in La Ceiba informs the first of four reasons why I am not a fan of the puppet master sitting at the heart of the traditional classroom. I mean the practice of doling out letter grades.
1. Letter grades undermine classroom cohesion
As a vestige of the traditional classroom, letter grades narrowed Ellie’s understanding of performance to taking tests, writing papers, presenting, showing up on time, and participating.
These traditional dimensions of student performance are valuable. We did all these things in La Ceiba, minus the tests, and we needed students who excelled at these things—students like Ellie.
However, we also needed students who excelled at leading others while immersed in a chaotic outside-the-classroom context, thinking creatively during a crisis, and leading consciousness-raising conversations—students like Brian.
Ellie and other high-achieving students in the traditional classroom setting were accustomed to outshining their peers like Brian and receiving higher letter grades for their efforts. To attract these students, I needed to show them how non-traditional contributions like Brian’s were just as valuable.
Meanwhile, students like Brian were used to receiving lower grades than students like Ellie, effectively conveying that they were not “good enough” by traditional education standards. To attract students like Brian, I had to demonstrate that La Ceiba valued unconventional strengths, especially outside-of-the-classroom strengths, and abilities beyond submitting a progress report on time.
Until I expanded everyone’s understanding of performance to include classroom achievements and outside-the-classroom contributions, letter grades threatened to undermine our tribal cohesion.
The other three reasons why I don’t like letter grades can be found in my upcoming book, “Rewild School.”
It arrives on May 1.
However, you don’t have to wait – start reading now by downloading Three Free Chapters.
Thanks for reading! – shawn
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Other Posts from the Rewild School Blog Series:
The Chase
You feel rewilding.
When it is working, this is how it feels. Be warned, though, for the following description holds more than just reality—it’s a world of fantastical beasts and imagery—a realm where…
I have trouble articulating rewilding in traditional pedagogical terms.
I do not see it as project-based learning, service-learning, or experiential-learning, although it is all of these things. I see it as a quest, journey, or an odyssey.
I do not think of it in terms of “learning outcomes.”
I think of it in terms of an “awakening.”
You feel rewilding.
When it is working, this is how it feels. Be warned, though, for the following description holds more than just reality—it’s a world of fantastical beasts and imagery—a realm where…
We are on the move.
We are leaping, running, and flying.
We are swinging, swimming, and climbing.
We have shaken off our human forms. We have assumed our natural forms – the bugs, beasts, and bird-like creatures we incarnate in our dreams.
We are together. We are wild. We are free. We are on the loose.
We are on the move.
We are leaping, running, and flying.
We are swinging, swimming, and climbing.
We dig holes in the dirt. We dive into the depths of the streams. We wade through the thickets. We sniff the air. And when one of us catches the scent of something good, we all come running.
We gather around. We jostle for position. We paw at it. We scratch at it. We peck at it. We hoot. We grunt. We whoop. We stomp. We trumpet. We haw. But then there’s a caw from above.
There’s something worth investigating in the distance. So, we are off. And once again, we are vaulting, springing, and bounding over the landscape.
What are we looking for?
It does not matter.
Why do we do this?
To be together.
But we don’t stay together forever. When the time comes, some of us spin off and go in our own direction. But others always appear to take our place. When they do, we approach and extend them an invitation to join us.
Some say “no.”
We leave them behind.
Others say “yes.”
We leave them behind as well.
One of them gives chase.
That’s good.
They struggle to keep pace with us.
That’s expected. They’re still a bi-pedal. Bi-pedals are slow.
But they don’t give up.
They keep running.
Their brow perspires. Their body aches. And, their breathing grows thick with phlegm.
Their mind screams “Give up! Give up! Give up!”
Their heart whispers “Keep up. Keep up. Keep up.”
And, in their effort to stay abreast, something ignites deep inside the caverns of their heart.
It’s called commitment.
They commit to us. We commit to them.
They commit to the chase that we’re already taking. And when they do, they transform.
They shed their submissiveness and cast off their epidermis.
They shake their mane.
They roar.
They pick up speed. Catch up. Keep stride with us and feel that feeling that draws us together, binds us together and keeps us together.
What does that feeling feel like?
It feels like the rush and riot of possibility.
The freedom to take and hold and be any shape of a shape we were destined to be.
It feels like this Nike commercial from 2002 (especially the last 32 seconds):
The Pedagogy of the Wild
I do know that we teachers must become critically wary of our education system’s excessive zeal to comfort our students, a zeal that fosters a competitive environment where teachers...engage in a convenience and caring arms race.
Recently, while hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains and looking up from the trail to check my direction, I noticed a brush mark of blue paint on a tree just ahead of me.
It assured me, “This is the way.”
As I continued my hike, with brush marks of blue encouraging me along the way, I thought to myself, how did the park rangers decide on which color to use for those marks?
They were not hot pink.
Nor fluorescent green.
The blue was not that bright.
Indeed, there was barely any contrast between the blue paint and the trees’ bark.
How did the park rangers decide on the distance between marks?
How did they decide how many marks were just enough to keep hikers on the right path without crowding out their sense of direction?
“Oh,” I thought, “this is the pedagogy of the wild.”
Like the park rangers of Shenandoah National Forest, when rewilding your students, you must strike the right balance between independence and guidance.
You will have to decide on the number and type of check-ins you will have with your students to strike a balance between ensuring they stay true to the journey and giving them enough space to fail and discover the journey on their own.
You must decide how often you will ask your students, “Are you okay?” While this question is comforting, asking it too often can tilt into gaslighting. Think about it: How often can someone be asked, “Are you okay?” before they begin answering that question with “Am I okay?”
For each of your students, you will have to ask yourself repeatedly, “Am I pushing them too far beyond or keeping them too much within their edge of growth?”
Whenever we were in Honduras and our classroom community was reframing a rookie’s choice from “resist or flee their fears” into “us versus them (the student’s fears),” I stared at our rookies with admiration and worry. Was the experience too much? Too intense? Was it too soon for them? In a moment their loved ones back home may have readily rescued them from, I suppressed my instinct to step in and assist them.
“Be patient,” I admonished myself, “this experience is a gift.”
It was. It still is.
Just as the forces of industrialized education relentlessly strive to keep our students from becoming who they were born to be, an equal and opposite force of the same strength and intensity must be counterpoised against them.
That counterpoising force was our classroom community. Our eyes on them. Our only persistent question: Are they one of us? Our collective judgment regarding whether they were or not.
Yet, knowing that too intense of an experience can hinder their growth, I was ethically obligated to ask if the experience was too much, too soon for them.
However, at the same time, if I lowered the intensity of the experience too much, by stepping in, then the experience my students needed to experience would not have been experienced.
You too will be obligated to distinguish between experiences that expand possibilities from those that diminish.
You too will have to calibrate and recalibrate and recalibrate again the intensity of the experience your students experience.
You will have to do this for each of your students in real time.
You are training your students in the ways of the wild. And, that right there is the fundamental paradox of rewilding: the more training you give them the less wild they become.
Teaching your students to embrace their inner wildness while still providing the structure they need to learn and grow requires a deep understanding of oneself, one’s students, and the ecosystem of relationships that make up your classroom community.
Will you allow your students the benefits of getting lost, of trying different routes and having to backtrack, of encountering dead ends but still pressing onward?
Will you put a blue paint mark on every tree? Or, will you put one on every other tree, every third tree, or more?
I don’t have any answers for how to square this circle. I learned to live into this tension.
I do know that we teachers must become critically wary of our education system’s excessive zeal to comfort our students, a zeal that fosters a competitive environment where teachers, in an effort to fulfill their professional obligations, engage in a convenience and caring arms race.
This race pushes us educators to prioritize making our classes more convenient and demonstrating more care for our students than our colleagues; we do this by making our lecture notes readily available, providing helpful guides, clearly articulating what constitutes an A, B, C, D or F, and other ways – at the expense of transformative learning experiences.
I do know that rewilding, as a pedagogy, if practiced with a deep humility and a love for curiosity, has gifts to give our students—and us.
Thanks for reading! – shawn
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Other Posts from the Rewild School Series:
Photo by Clark Wilson on Unsplash
Our Most beloved teachers
These teachers stepped forward into my life year after year as lighthouses, icons, beacons, fires on the ridgeline, burning high and bright, leading me home.
Think about your most beloved teachers.
No matter the grade level. No matter the subject. Go back in time.
Sit once again in their classrooms.
Whisper their names.
Feel once again what it felt like to be in their presence.
Let me tell you about mine:
Looking into the eyes of my most beloved teachers, I saw wide-open vistas, acres and acres of golden light stretching out endlessly in front of me. I saw a frontier deep in the distance pulling me into all imaginable futures. With those teachers, surrounded by them, I felt belief—belief in myself. I felt the beginning again—my beginning. A beginning that predated the story I was born into, the one that told me who I was supposed to be, who others were supposed to be, and the nature of my relationships with them and the world around me.
These teachers stepped forward into my life year after year as lighthouses, icons, beacons, fires on the ridgeline, burning high and bright, leading me home.
Leading me to who I was born to be.
With words and no words, they told me that it was not too late. I could become anyone. Even though they knew that I would face darkened forests. Even though they knew that life was fanged in loss and failure. Even though they knew that I never felt quite ready for the world, the lesson within their lesson plans, the one they wrote in invisible ink on graded homework and exams was always the same:
No matter the wounds, there will be many.
No matter the shame, they will be varied.
No matter the thresholds you meet—climb, cross, leap.
Step into and through. Pursue:
Your why. Your purpose. Both can be yours—
shimmering and radiant—if you chase them.
So, chase.
These teachers loved me into possibility.
What was possible for me?
Anything I could imagine.
We are human beings.
We are born to dream. We are born to disrupt. We are born to create.
With the purpose-driven collaborative assistance of our fellows, some of us have left lasting footprints in moon dust, pulled down despotic regimes in color revolutions, and developed a vaccine against COVID-19 in less than twelve months.
With the same purpose-driven collaborative assistance of our fellows, some of us have realized that our background, path, history, family, community, and crazy relatives, the whole tangled tapestry of our upbringing, is a gift.
The love we received and the hurt we suffered. The care we were given and the pain we endured. The peace we enjoyed and the volatility we survived. We have learned that these experiences make us who we are, no matter how easy or hard. These moments give us unique stories, ideas, angles, perspectives, and interpretations. And, once we own the complicated knot of our experience, I mean all of it, that acceptance deepens our humanity and gives us a voice that is ours and ours alone.
No one can see what we see, imagine what we imagine, and create what we are going to create because no one has ever been and will ever be us. We are a one-time-only cosmic event.
Right now, honest to goodness—right now—our collective tomorrow needs to hear our singular voices today.
So, what if leading our students on an inner odyssey into mystery and challenging them at the deepest levels took precedence over summing up, offering answers, and disseminating theories?
What if, instead of defining “being gifted” as some exclusive, perfect score on your SAT, self-congratulatory “I went to Harvard” measure-of-genius, we described it as self-narration?
That is, our students living their story, not someone else’s.
What if the valedictory speech at graduation wasn’t delivered by the student with the highest GPA but by the student who dared to step into the cave of their whispering fears to meet their Vader?
What if we told our students that who they are is more important than what they know?
What if we told them that they are precisely what is needed to solve their problems and the problems of our world?
That they don’t have to be wealthier or more educated. That they don’t have to be from or in a dominant social group.
How do you think they would respond?
How do you think they would live knowing they are the ones we have been waiting for?
And how would we professors reimagine our classes?
I have an answer, and this is not speculative fiction: rewilding – an instinctive, ancient pedagogy that my students and I created, really remembered when we created our La Ceiba class.
Three things:
1. This blog is a chapter from my upcoming book Rewild School: A Pedagogy of Possibility
2. Here are some memories of my most beloved teachers: Ms. Schloos (her hugs), Mrs. George (her encouragement), Ms. Swigart (her everything but especially her crying, all of our crying, while she read the conclusion of “Where the Red Ferns Grows”), Mrs. Todorov (her anchoring), Mr. Ault (his enthusiasm), Mr. Hershner (his love of trees), Mrs. Wray (her smile), Mrs. Hoar (her love of art and me), Mr. Haag (not only a great football coach but a great teacher), Mrs. Bartley (her welcoming warmth), Mr. Sherman (his easy solidity), Ms. Harlow (her giddiness), Mrs. Cheeseman (her joy, her pure joy), Mr. Cheeseman (his bigger than life laughter), Mr. Garrett (his asking for a response), Mr. Tuertscher (his belief in me), and Mrs. Hennessey (her gentle yet forceful preparation of me into a young man).
3. Before going on with your day, I encourage you to reach out to one or two or three of your most beloved teachers to say “Thank you” for the love and care and attention and guidance they gave you. Tell them thank you from me – thank you for shaping you into the kind of human that makes this world a better place.
Thanks for reading. – shawn