Pointlessly Biting My Tongue

 I am biting my tongue.

It is not my place to interfere, to pull rank, to fight my kids' battles.

But everything I know about teenage development and about teaching with equity and about decent human behavior tells me that something fundamentally is broken with so much of our school system.

I get that I'm weird: I include students' own self-assessment as part of their final grade. I allow late work and rewrites right up until the end of the semester, as long as the work is authentic and not just grade-grubbing. I don't mark down for late work. I don't give traditional tests. I think that grades should ultimately represent the students' engagement with the material and mastery of the content, not their behavior.

I've done a lot of reading, research, and contemplation. I've read a lot of what Ken O'Connor has put out there. I've read Pointless. I think about grading with equity in mind all. the. time. Every 504 and IEP requirement? Those are universal accommodations in my room. Extended time? You betcha. Need the audio? Here's the link. 

So I get that I'm weird.

But right now, my daughter is in tears because she doesn't understand her chemistry homework and she has a test tomorrow. She's had a cold all week (that I caught from my own students and then gave to her) and she's missed a couple of days of school. I kept her home because she was coughing, and even though we know it's a cold and not COVID, the stigma is there, and she doesn't want to get anyone else sick. She is exhausted and under the weather and she should have been in bed an hour ago, but she has to finish her chemistry and then read and thoughtfully annotate a 17th century passage for her American Lit class. It's her fault for procrastinating. Everything was posted online, so she should have kept up at home, and she only gets two late work passes per semester, so she has to get this done.

WHY? Why are we doing this to our kids?

What is she learning right now--long after she should be in bed--about chemistry? About American Lit? About responsibility? About humanity?

She is 15. Any metaphorical rebuttal you can give about accruing late fees on credit card payments and getting fired from a job when you didn't do your work by deadline is --frankly-- irrelevant. Because we are not teaching them about paying their bills on time or about the requirements of entry-level hourly jobs. We are teaching them chemistry. We are teaching them American Lit. We are teaching them Algebra. But we are grading them on compliance in a "gotcha" system that nails them if they are unable to pay attention one day, no matter what was going on in their lives.

I am really trying to bite my tongue. 

But this is my kid.

These are my kids. 

Quit punishing them for being human.

Grades should reflect understanding and mastery of content. And every damn kid in the room deserves the chance to truly understand the content, no matter what baggage they bring with them.

Are our policies in place because they make our lives easier? Or because they truly teach our students something meaningful?

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

Are our grading procedures punitive? Or are they meant to acknowledge mastery?

Are we truly trying to reach and teach each kid in the room? Or are we demanding that they conform to a system that works best for us?

My daughter needs to go to bed. She has a chemistry test tomorrow.

I am officially two weeks behind in grading.

And so, I am biting my tongue.