{"id":6185,"date":"2014-04-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/learning-my-lesson\/"},"modified":"2020-02-27T14:46:19","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T19:46:19","slug":"learning-my-lesson","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/learning-my-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning My Lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>I had asked my ninth grade students to write a \u201clast\u201d chapter to the novel Seedfolks by Paul Fleischmann we had finished reading as a class. I knew they had read the entire novel and even annotated it because we did all of our reading in this room. Sometimes we did it in a literature circle. Sometimes we did it by ourselves. Sometimes we used a form of Socratic Seminar to ask questions of each other and dig deeper into the author\u2019s intended meaning.<\/p>\n

But I knew all my students had read the novel and understood its metaphors, allusions and themes because we did the work together.<\/i> And because of that, I knew they would be able to creatively adapt what they knew and believed.<\/p>\n

I knew they\u2019d be able to do it because I would be there to help them, guide them and monitor their progress because their work would be completed in class and during after school workshop sessions.<\/p>\n

I knew <\/i>their levels of competency because I assessed it every single day.<\/p>\n

The pattern here isn\u2019t new. Rick Wormeli<\/a> suggests rethinking how we assign work to students and how we penalize them for not doing it. Both Wormeli and Doug Reeves<\/a> make powerful arguments against \u201cthe zero\u201d in the teacher grade book.<\/p>\n

But my question: How do I hold students accountable for the work they don\u2019t do?<\/p>\n

For years I wielded my grade book like a weapon. Don\u2019t want to complete that organizer on Romeo and Juliet<\/i>? Zero. Oh, talking in class instead of completing that worksheet? Zero. That\u2019ll show you, right?<\/p>\n

All I had were students with long lines of zeroes, poor or failing grades and, I am sure, resentment. I also had students who were exceling on state standardized testing. More than 90% of my kids were proficient or higher. Yet more than 90% of my kids were not receiving As and Bs in my class.<\/p>\n

How could they do so poorly in class and so well on state tests?<\/p>\n

Maybe, I shuddered, the answer was more about me than them.<\/p>\n

When I started collecting data, I began to understand my results. More than 90% of my students completed less than 43% of assigned homework. I asked my colleagues what they thought the issue was. Laziness was the top contender. Apathy was another. Some told me kids just don\u2019t care anymore.<\/p>\n

So then I asked my students why they didn\u2019t complete their homework. Less than 10% blamed laziness or apathy. The rest gave me these reasons:<\/p>\n