My experiences with first-year and upper-level writing instruction have further confirmed that if you are grading, you may not be teaching.
Specifically, teaching citation and scholarly writing has revealed a problem that directly exposes why grading often works against our instructional goals.
First, let me stress again that the essential problems with grading include how traditional practices (such as assigning grades that are averaged for quarter and/or semester grades that are then averaged for course grades) tend to blur the distinction between summative and formative grades, inhibiting often the important role of feedback and student revision of assignments.
The blurring of formative and summative grades that occurs in averaging, as I have confronted often, deforms teaching and learning because students are being held accountable during the learning process (and thus discouraged from taking risks).
To briefly review the problems with grades and averaging, let me offer again what my major professor argued: Doctors do not take a patient’s temperature readings over a four-day stay in the hospital in order to average them, but does consider the trajectory of those readings, drawing a final diagnosis on the last reading (or readings). Thus, averaging is a statistical move that distorts student growth, deforms the value of reaching a state of greater understanding.
I struggle to break through students resisting the drafting, feedback, revision process because they have been taught to submit instantly perfect work; that their identifiable flaws are the loss of points-not necessary areas to learn, grow, and excel.
As I end my thirty-fourth year teaching, I cannot stress hard enough that if you are grading, you may not be teaching, and your students likely are not learning the very things you value enough to assess.
Source: If You Are Grading, You May Not Be Teaching | radical eyes for equity
Tag: writing
Through my own work I’ve come to believe the most important thing we can do to help students develop as writers is to allow them to write on subjects of interest and write for audiences that matter.
It’s not surprising this is de-motivating when it comes to writing. As I have said and will continue to say until everyone agrees with me, writing is thinking, and it is significantly more engaging to spend your time thinking about things you’re interested in.
Auto-Scoring of writing assignments should be abandoned if we are genuinely interested in students learning to write, rather than training them to pass assessments.
Source: No One Cares What You Think, And What You Feel | Just Visiting
A notebook is essential because if we really want our kids to engage in meaningful writing, we have to give them space to explore that process. And all the looseleaf, graphic organizers, and handouts in the world just can’t do that.
Notebooks allow for play, mess, and creativity. If a student writes a paragraph that ends up getting scrapped, it’s not such a big deal. They move on to the next page. They draw an arrow. They write in margins. But if that happens on a handout with fill-in-the blanks, the implication is that it’s somehow wrong. My own notebook is a holy mess of lists, arrows, scribbles, and eventually, through that process of sorting through the mess, my thinking is shaped into writing. By allowing our students to engage in this mess, we are encouraging students to make mistakes, to grow their thinking, and to take on the hard work of thinking and writing.
“Writing is thinking” is my favorite expression for how to work in a company.
The biggest thing about writing down strategic choices is that they serve to build a corporate history (over a year or two, not really thinking about decades). Why decisions are made is rather important because companies, like people, can make the same mistakes over time without history.
Plus writing something for an audience is a way of making you consult representatives of that audience before publishing. What will marketing think? Will sales people be able to sell? Whether you consider those perspectives before or not does not change that they will react. This isn’t “buy-in” or “heads-up” but actually consulting the real stakeholders of a decision.
The act of writing forces a team of experts to share the details of goals-not just the what, but the why, what else was considered, the history, context.But what is missing from that logic is that the process of writing and sharing thoughts is clarifying AND collaborating itself. Execution actually speeds up when you spend the up front time to write.
Writing is more inclusive. It is easier to contribute, doesn’t reward bullies and bullshitters, and allows for contemplation.
Are you creating a writing culture? Said in a way that I think makes more sense, is writing a core value of the company (team)? I hope so because I think it really matters and can help.
The first people to stop writing in a company are often those that were there the longest or the execs. Writing is important for everyone. Execs need to write, and do their own writing. Don’t farm out to others to fill in the details from an outline. Having others do your writing for you is for when you’re a head of state making speeches every day and for when every word matters, not for business writing even for the largest of companies.
Source: “Writing is Thinking”—an annotated twitter thread – Learning By Shipping
My experiences with first-year and upper-level writing instruction have further confirmed that if you are grading, you may not be teaching.
Specifically, teaching citation and scholarly writing has revealed a problem that directly exposes why grading often works against our instructional goals.
First, let me stress again that the essential problems with grading include how traditional practices (such as assigning grades that are averaged for quarter and/or semester grades that are then averaged for course grades) tend to blur the distinction between summative and formative grades, inhibiting often the important role of feedback and student revision of assignments.
The blurring of formative and summative grades that occurs in averaging, as I have confronted often, deforms teaching and learning because students are being held accountable during the learning process (and thus discouraged from taking risks).
To briefly review the problems with grades and averaging, let me offer again what my major professor argued: Doctors do not take a patient’s temperature readings over a four-day stay in the hospital in order to average them, but does consider the trajectory of those readings, drawing a final diagnosis on the last reading (or readings). Thus, averaging is a statistical move that distorts student growth, deforms the value of reaching a state of greater understanding.
I struggle to break through students resisting the drafting, feedback, revision process because they have been taught to submit instantly perfect work; that their identifiable flaws are the loss of points-not necessary areas to learn, grow, and excel.
As I end my thirty-fourth year teaching, I cannot stress hard enough that if you are grading, you may not be teaching, and your students likely are not learning the very things you value enough to assess.
Source: If You Are Grading, You May Not Be Teaching | radical eyes for equity
I updated “Bring the backchannel forward. Written communication is the great social equalizer.” with a selection from “Microsoft’s Radical Bet On A New Type Of Design Thinking”.
One day someone will write a history of the Internet, in which that great series of tubes will emerge as one long chain of inventions not just geared to helping people connect in more ways, but rather, to help more and more types of people communicate just as nimbly as anyone else. But for the story here, the most crucial piece in the puzzle is this: Disability is an engine of innovation simply because no matter what their limitations, humans have such a relentless drive to communicate that they’ll invent new ways to do so, in spite of everything.
You could describe this in that old cliche that necessity breeds invention. But a more accurate interpretation is that in empathizing with others, we create things that we might never have created ourselves. We see past the specifics of what we know, to experiences that might actually be universal.
I updated “Bring the backchannel forward. Written communication is the great social equalizer.” and “I’m Autistic. Here’s what I’d like you to know.” with a selection from “THINKING PERSON’S GUIDE TO AUTISM: On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies” on written communication as a means of avoiding bias.
Thin slice studies showed that people prejudge us harshly in just micro-seconds of seeing or hearing us (though we fare better than neurotypical subjects when people only see our written words).
“It’s almost as if my teachers set me up to fail and take pleasure in that failure.” These quotes from first-semester college writers demonstrate how the “red pen of death” shapes the student experience of an academic culture of humiliation.
We noticed three dominant motifs emerge, in which mocking and shaming work together to undergird a capitalistic hierarchy that dehumanizes and commodifies students.
Source: Student Shaming and the Need for Academic Empathy – Hybrid Pedagogy
It’s a tall order, I realize. But that’s why student blogs are awesome. It gives students a chance to practice writing in a virtually fail free zone, and they learn important lessons not just about reading and writing, but themselves as writers and what it takes to craft engaging, effective writing. But the freedom of blogging is what makes this type of self-evaluation and practice possible.
Think of blogging as the anti in-class essay.
Of course, you can focus student blogs on any topic, theme, or style to meet any academic purpose, but for me, blogging frees my students from the constraints of what they believe assigned essays should sound like.
For starters, there’s no official rubric or handbook, the style is incredibly familiar, and the pressure of page length is off. Because blogs offer students creative control of layout and themes, it’s this same ownership that encourages not just a unique layout but a considered style and voice in their writing.
My students are discovering over time that who you are on paper is who you are, so they strive to show how interesting and intelligent they are with the voice and style of their writing.
In our blogging project, students have taken cues from mentor texts we’ve studied in class, but just as importantly, they’ve paid attention to the writing of others, both professional and non. They’ve assessed what works, what doesn’t work, and what makes for an interesting and engaging post. And blogging provides them a safe space to play with different craft moves they might not try in class.
Source: 5 Things Your Students Can Learn From Blogging | Moving Writers
“This year, I introduced reflective blogging with my students to slowly release control. They write, everyone reads, and everyone comments. Here’s how it’s made them more independent:”
Instead of me answering questions, my students write through their confusion.
Instead of waiting for my judgement, they look to one another.
rnbn 