Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Welcome to our brand new advice column! Over the years we’ve received a wide range of questions from fellow educators. So we decided to ask some of our writers to respond. Today we’re helping a teacher who feels like […]
grades
Teaching During A Pandemic: Where The Grades Don’t Count, And Everything Is Made Up
Teachers on social media are posting inspirational videos. School districts are compassionately giving students food, paper packets, Chrome Books, internet connectivity, and yard signs for seniors. Educators are doing the best they can to make a monumental shift–that may become the norm for the 2020-2021 school year. There is a critical component of school that […]
Dear Principal: Cancel That Honor Roll Assembly!
Remember those bumper stickers that seemed all the rage in the nineties: “My son is an Honor Roll Student at Pleasant Valley Middle School?” Or, maybe you chuckled at the inappropriate bumper sticker that read: “My kid can beat up your honor roll student?” Or, perhaps you have seen posts on social media by proud […]
Grades: Is There a Better Way to Measure Learning?
If I ran a school, I’d give the average grade to the ones who gave me all the right answers, for being good parrots. I’d give the top grades to those who made a lot of mistakes and told me about them, and then told me what they learned from them. – R. Buckminster Fuller. […]
Curbing Student Failure
Students facing failure is one aspect of teaching that we are familiar with. The term “failure” can take on many meanings depending upon the age of the student, course, and whether we mean earning a poor grade or not making satisfactory progress required to meet the class expectations. There are many signs that a teacher […]
The Struggles of Grading Writing: It’s the Process That Matters
I absolutely hate assigning a letter grade to student writing; it’s depressing. Not because my students are bad writers because they aren’t. It’s that I hate to see all the mini-lessons, and drafting, revising, editing, conversations, and growing as writers reduced to one letter. A percentage in the grade book. As soon as that grade is […]
A Seventeen-Year Veteran Teacher’s Regrets:Â The Grade Game
In the many years I’ve been teaching, I’ve often wished that I could just have a group of students who smilingly followed my every instruction.  But beyond instruction, one of my biggest goals as a teacher was to get my students to think for themselves. However, it was difficult to reflect that goal in my grading […]
Student Teaching Diaries: Is This For a Grade?
When students enter preschool and kindergarten they are excited by learning. Â They explore and engage in activities for the sake of what is happening. Â Teachers set up experiences and lessons that develop skills and provide learning for students. Â As students progress through elementary school, however, they begin to see the association of work for “a […]