Stop Telling Students to Get an A
TLDR:
Moving away from being externally motivated by outcomes and toward being internally invested in your own process can only be of benefit.
In my experience in the classroom as a teacher, students measuring their success by an external, relatively subjective, grade, all seem to fall short of actual knowledge acquisition, or learning.
Instead of having our students pine over how to get an A, we need to have them figure out what do they need to do in order to not get a B. In flipping the question to what do I need to do to get a B, even if the student does not walk away with the A they wanted, they have raised their own standard of expectations while lowering the pressure of success: if that does not make sense to you how or why, this article may be worth your time because, in inverting the question, every student has a stronger chance of actually achieving an A.
If you are interested in helping your students all get an A, your team-members to exceed all their goals, your children to be ready to enter the world by themselves, or see just about anyone succeed in their endeavors, the five minute reflection provided in this article can easily be applied to your situation.
Every sports-team wants to win but most end up losing.
Imagine a team trailing by 2 points, 1 goal, or 1 run with 1 minutes left in the state-championship game: every player on the losing team is focused on how to win the game. Logically, the answer is to shoot a three and pray for a steal, score a goal as fast as possible, or blast a home run. With time expiring, the eyes of fans looking on, and the self-applied pressure all coming to a head, to win the game, something drastic must be done.
The issues is when you do something drastic, often, you take a rushed, contested three, a shot from 20+ yards, or swing at a pitch way outside of the strike-zone. It is amazing when the three goes in at the buzzer, the shot hits the back of the goal, or the ball sails far beyond the wall. However, for as many number ones plays on Sports Center, there are an overwhelmingly higher number of air-balls, off target shots, and swings of the bat that contort the spine that go unnoticed.
But what happens if the players on the losing team stop thinking “what do we need to do to win” and instead think “what do we need to do to not lose”?
Does the rushed, contested three, become a pass to an open three or a quick two because no matter how much time is on the clock, if you do not score something, you cannot put yourself in a position to win?
Does the 20+ yard shot become a give and go or draw and dump for the game winner or tying goal to send it into extra time? With the clarity of not losing, it is easier to recognize the defense is going to be overly aggressive in their own desire to win thus leaving someone open.
Does the swing on the first pitch become a longer at-bat that forces the pitcher to show their entire hand because baseball is just as much a mental game as a physical game?
In this simple switch from I must win to, I must not lose, the options seem a bit more plentiful. Sure, the outcome may still be the same, but the opportunities for an alternative way to achieving the goal seems plentiful.
In a similar manner, when students only ask the question, what do I need to do to get an A, they put themselves in all or nothing situation.
The thought process is not what do I need to do consistently or what do I need to takeaway from this assignment, but, instead, students are focused on how do I achieve the maximum amount of points on this singular assignment or what assignments can I ignore as they weigh little on my final grade . The focus on how do I get an A, a relatively trivial letter once stepping beyond academia, draws students away from actually engaging with information in order to understand and acquire new knowledge. Instead, when the focus is on achieving the highest number of points, and not on the skill or information, students fail to retain the information that would in fact help them receive the desired A.
I have seen this phenomena with deep clarity this school year.
In an effort to shift focus from extrinsic motivation in the form of grades to an intrinsic desire to acquire knowledge, I have made many assignments ungraded. The same assignments I have given in the past for homework or classwork points, this year I have impressed upon students that some assignments are purely to give them the background for, the insight to, and the practice with concepts and skills they may or may not have already encountered. Clearly communicating their final grade in the course is not a sum-total of points achieved for completing assignments, and, instead, a representation of their ability to achieve the curriculum standards, some students have been able to understand why completion grades, seemingly, trivialize the hard-work they actually do.
Taking a step away from every assignment being graded has allowed students who have a test or project in one of their, more than likely, advanced or college level courses, the opportunity to focus on more pressing stressors and put aside a worksheet that can easily be discussed in class through a context setting bell ringer or quick pair and share. For many, it has seemed helpful to make the ever tedious, less than loved English class a bit more manageable. For others, it has highlighted the focus on outcomes of a grade and not on the process of learning.
When you remove a grade, for the student who only cares about the A, doing homework does not seem important.
If the reading, the questions, or the worksheets now bare no direct affect on the percentage they see reflected back to them every five minutes they check their grade, for a saddening majority of students, there is no drive nor desire to complete the work. The focus on getting an A draws attention away from the process needed to get an A and toward the outcome of getting an A.
Students do not think, how can I continually get an A, in this class and beyond, but, instead, students focus on how do I get an A on this assignment. I will concede to the claim, if students keep getting A’s on assignments they will get an A. Yes, this is true, but what it ignores is that while looking for the A on the assignment, empirically, students fail to understand this assignment does not exist in a vacuum: that every assignment in some way is connected to the last.
Though an A comes from answering basic plot questions that one can easily Google or search with Chat GPT, an A also comes from coming to realize essay prompts very rarely deal with the plot exclusively and require an extensive knowledge of the text that comes from bell ringer questions, small group discussion, class notes, and exit tickets. Answers to the quiz, or reading questions may get an A, but an A also comes from taking the time to find your own meaning with the ideas presented in the text and not limit yourself to a certain set of understandings.
Some students naturally are gifted and getting an A is nothing more than taking good notes. For others it is doing every single assignment with deep focus. Others, a different process with all students getting different results. Students compare their grades to one another, but never stop to compare their process: would that student’s study habits and learning strategies even work for them? Students fail to understand that, just like every sports team wants to win, every student wants an A, so every student is going to do what they themselves need to do to get an A. Unlike sports though, there do not need to be have and have nots: everyone can leave with an A.
So how do we get every student to have an A.
The first step is to be reasonable with expectations. Every student is capable of an A, yes, yet there are circumstances well beyond the control of teachers, administration, students, and families, that will impair a students ability. Telling a student they must get an A perpetuates the already abundant issue of pressure placed on students. See Muller and Abrutyn’s 2016 Adolescents under Pressure or Baker and Riodran’s 1998 The “Eliting” of the Common American Catholic School and the National Education Crisis.
The second step is a pretty simple activity.
1.) Have your students create a T-Chart.
2.) On the Left Side of the Chart , have students write “Higher”
3.) On the Right Side of the Chart, have students write “Lower”
4.) Ask you students to consider the question, “what do I need to do to not get B”
5.) On each side of the T-Chart, have students write down what they would need to do in order to get higher than a B and lower than a B on the respective sides of the chart.
- Students should then take the time to consider the habits, routines, practices, and behaviors, inside and outside of the classroom, that would lead them to achieving an A and the habits that would lead them to getting a C or lower.
Returning back to step one, you can personalize this! Maybe an A is a bit out of range: what do you need to do to not get a C, D, or F? The marker can move, but the focus is the same.
The beauty here is even if students do not get an A, what they are creating are ways to, subtly, at least get a B. For many students, when they feed into the A or nothing mindset, it is not A or B, or even A or C: it is A or D or A or F. Students are so locked in on the finals, essays, and projects, that they are blind to the compounding effect of smaller assignments they dismiss as insignificant and the situation quickly becomes dire.
However, in flipping the question to what do I need to do to get a B, even if the student does not walk away with the A they wanted, they have raised their own standard of expectations while lowering the pressure of success.
Moving away from the outcome and to the process can only be of benefit.
No longer are students measuring their success by an external, relatively subjective marker, but how well they committed to their process: the process they believe is best for them. Instead of only fixating on the comments and feedback on the assignment, students have the ability to reflect on their habits, routines, practices, and behaviors, and how these impacted their performance.
This process should be fluid.
Making students focus on their process begs them to be creative and forces them to each face the fact that at any moment in time a habit, routine, or ritual may only be successful in that exact moment. Students in education, and people in the world, are ever changing and the contexts they exist in are as well. As we mature and grow, what has worked in the past may not work in the future. Moreover, what makes this so special is that no ones process is better than another’s: it is just the process that works for them in a given moment.
The process is unique to the individual.
Take for instance an encounter I had with a student. I teach students to write their thesis, move to their body, and then complete the introduction. With the thesis as a guide, students can build out the analysis in the body to support the thesis and then move to the introduction to contextualize the information they have given in the body. In helping a student with his essay, he started with his introduction. In his process, he believes that in spending ample time on the introduction, and getting all his ideas to paper, he has a road map for every other part of the essay: he is able to plan the essay in advance. Ultimately, the end goal is the same. His paragraph, and thesis, were stellar, yet his process to getting there was different. Will he get an A? He could, but he is on his way due in part to his process: a process he has clearly refined over time to fit his needs.
The takeaway here is that when students shift from the grade, and to a process, they are able to evaluate their own habits, routines, practices, and behaviors against the grade they received to figure out what works for them and what does not. Subsequently, they are able to tweak the process to better suit their needs and see marked, measurable progress throughout their academic journey. No longer is each assignment the focus, but how they approached the assignment and what the result of that approach was. By the end of the year, they have a clear track record of proven habits, routines, practices, and behaviors that work and do not work that they can test, and re-test, every single. day.
