A Grading Odyssey
My Journey into Assessment
The Teacher Inquiry and Writing Institute (TIWI) was brought to my attention by an esteemed colleague, so I decided to make this two year commitment because I love GMWP and all it has offered me, and I also feel excited to be a part of it and to share with other teachers all of my frustrations, hopes, dreams, annoyances, questions, ponderings, and ideas about assessment. Sometimes it feels like we’re all just muddling through, and in trying to do what’s best for kids, we keep experimenting. I liken myself to Odysseus navigating through grading and assessment perils and pitfalls as I try to move ever forward on my teaching path.
It is my distinct pleasure, a great honor, indeed, to be starting on my thirtieth year of teaching students English & Language Arts. I have spent the past twenty-nine years basking in the glory of those in the middle. Most of those years were spent with 7th graders. During the past four years, my district adopted Lucy Calkins Reading and Writing Units of Study. I taught one year of Writing Workshop to 7th graders, then moved to Reading Workshop with 5th graders for two years, and last year I taught 6th graders Writing Workshop. This current school year I will have four classes of Writing Workshop and one class of Reading Workshop with 6th graders.
For my entire life, I never considered any other career than teaching. I used to teach my dolls and my friends at parties when I was very little. My dad even made me my own double-sided easel chalkboard which I used frequently to teach my “lessons.” However, I never considered assessment at all in my tender years.
My journey into assessment began in my junior high and high school years as a student, where I wandered aimlessly searching for the elusive “A” that I didn’t always know how to achieve. I came to believe that the people who were in forensics and had parts in the school play were often the same ones in National Honor Society and also received A’s from the English teachers. It was a rough ride, and at times I’d hitchhike on their successes. Sometimes it felt as though it was a cult I was shut out of. However, I loved writing, and I often excelled at it. One extremely proud moment was when my high school English teacher read aloud one of my essays to the class as an example of work to emulate.
At the end of my senior year in high school, I tested out of the college Freshman level English. Then at UW-Platteville I was thrown into an English class with upper classmen where I discovered that I had to rewrite my papers to fit the views of the professor in order to pass. At the time I felt like a passenger on the Titanic, so excited to be on this voyage, but scared that I was sinking. I was not allowed to express my own viewpoints. He made me write them over to match his beliefs before he would allow me to pass his class. I was irate at the time. However, when I look back now, I realize that my views of the world today coincide directly with his. It makes me laugh to think how angry I was and how unfair I felt his grading system was. I believe he was actually just trying to teach me to have an open mind.
During sophomore year, I transferred to UW-Madison. When I started my first practicum at Memorial High School, a freshman English teacher gave me a stack of essays to grade. I had a hard time. I had never been taught to evaluate or grade an essay. I chugged slowly along like a steam boat — hemming and hawing over what grades to give these kids. When I handed them back to the teacher, he was disappointed in my grading and the work of his students. He told me they were “crap” and that I had graded them too easy. However, it was all very subjective, and he wasn’t using a rubric. Deep confusion set in as I got on a cable car and tried to climb that steep hill.
So, then I moved on to student teaching at Verona Middle School, and still didn’t learn anything new about grading or assessment. My cooperating teacher rarely even let me look at his grade book although I snuck peeks here and there when he wasn’t in the room. He told me that I’d definitely need to develop my own style of grading when I got my first job.
Unfortunately, I graduated in December and was forced to sub for a semester until full time teaching positions opened up. No grading or assessment involved. My first official teaching job was at Fontana Elementary School, a K-8 school where I taught 6th, 7th, and 8th grade English and reading. Since it was an extremely small school, I was the whole English department. So then, I become a steam engine and plodded along trying to figure out what grades to give. I felt like I had so much power, and I could go much faster, but I stayed on a slower course because I didn’t want to do anything wrong. I graded using a total points system. I added and readded all the scores in my gradebook so many times I felt motion sick. I’m quite sure there were many human calculation errors involved in my first few years on the job.
In my early years of teaching, I adopted Nancie Atwell’s reading and writing workshop. I was fortunate enough to have had a cooperating teacher who was very into Reading workshop, so I modified what he had done and mixed it up with Nancie and put my own spin on it. I became a pony express rider, faithful to my duties delivering mini-lessons and grading with a passion everything my kids wrote.
After two years of teaching, I decided I needed a Master’s Degree so I enrolled in UW-Whitewater and jumped on a wagon train where my fellow education colleagues and I banded together. We grappled with OBE and Mastery Learning. We followed trails of grading effort and participation. We ventured into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. We were proud of how our multiple choice questions on tests were worded in ways that didn’t make it easy for “just anyone” to answer.
When I graduated with a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction, I took a fast car up the highway to join the staff at DeForest Middle School. (We didn’t become DeForest Area Middle School until much later.) However, I got caught in a grading traffic jam. I found myself still grading on a total points system and made up all kinds of assessments from multiple choice, T/F, short answer, essays, and observations. I kept track of student participation and even gave that a grade. I was using the DPI Standards books to lead my instruction and assessment at that time. I used English textbooks and Literature books. I included lots of creative writing activities, and kept tweaking my Reading and Writing Workshop as I attended conferences and seminars. I was a member of NCTE and WSRA. I created my very first rubrics. I felt empowered, as if my grading were no longer entirely subjective. I began to experiment with weighted grades. Somehow it always seemed that no matter how often I changed the wording on the rubrics, there were still students who wrote in a way that my rubric didn’t fit.
In the very beginning of my assessment journey, I did not use a computer and there was no internet or online grade books. I was probably one of the very last teachers to switch over to computer grade books and start using the internet. I am one of those teachers who still misses the card catalog in the library. I am what one refers to as “old school,” but my quest for knowledge never ends. I am still striving to be a better teacher than I was the year before. I am never satisfied. I have seen many grading/assessment ideas come and go in the last 30 years, and I am still evolving.
Although I have read books, taken classes, and attended many grading workshops with and by grading gurus, the best professional development that I ever encountered is The Greater Madison Writing Project. I am fortunate enough to have a close friend and colleague who pointed me in the right direction. Now I am excited to be a part of the TIWI because I can continue to explore some burning questions about assessment.
How can I encourage my writers to take the advice I give them to improve their writing? How can I make my conferences even more effective and efficient? My kids are used to not getting letter grades for their writing, but they seem to have become complacent with just getting a “2” rather than striving to improve their writing. How can I push them past this? And I still struggle with the student who won’t write anything. I have gotten in heated arguments with fellow educators who do not believe a zero should ever be put in the grade book. I use zeros as a placeholder. It is not permanent. I never have a cut off date. I am the teacher who is still at school at 7 P.M. on the last day in June because I am still grading. I am the teacher who takes until midnight to post all of my grades if that is the cut off time. I am the teacher who will go back into by grade book, without permission, and change a first quarter grade when it is already third quarter. I believe that all kids can learn and succeed in their own time. I have come to believe that “fair isn’t always equal,” but I still struggle with who gets to decide what is “fair.”
I look forward to discussing these questions with my TIWI colleagues, reading more books, and working with my current group of students to improve as a teacher. I have certainly learned that my journey into Assessment will continue as long as I continue to teach, no matter what vehicle or method with which I use to travel.
