At the school where I work, we are continuously attempting to balance high standards with helping all kids to succeed. Yet, try as we may, we will occasionally compromise by either lowering our standards or by allowing some students to slip through the cracks. These compromises may have the effect of lowering learning expectations and morale. Teachers stop assigning homework, since “most students don’t do it anyway” and students stop trying to produce quality work since good enough will do. In more extreme cases, some students completely check out of school. These students may occupy seats but repeated failures have led them towards seemingly irreversible apathy. In short, I believe that student motivation comes from the opportunity to truly succeed at meaningful tasks and student motivation leads to teacher invigoration. Failure, even at the fringes, can lead to student apathy and student apathy can drain the lifeblood out of a teacher.
At the moment we are attempting to solve this problem so that not even a small minority of students are allowed to fail. We have formed an intervention deep dive committee. We are investigating the factors that lead students towards failure and experimenting with interventions to avoid this from happening. One intervention that we are currently trying is an online behavior management system, Yooply. Yooply allows us to monitor assignment completion and give students lunch detention in the event of missing work. We have named our lunch detention ZAP, which is an acronym for Zeroes Aren’t Permitted. We have also based our grading philosophy on Effort, Growth, and Mastery. We believe that any student who is at the very least putting forth effort should not fail a class. As we move more towards competency based learning, we’ve decided that an A student should be able to demonstrate effort, growth and mastery. Whereas a student who can only demonstrate effort, and who in spite of his or her best intentions can’t quite reach growth or mastery, should not fail but at least receive a C to recognize their work. Still, as aforementioned, students have found the failure option. Students may produce substandard writing or leave after their eighth grade year reading at the 5th grade reading level. They may also leave my school with plenty of Fs on their transcripts. So we have recognized the need to do a better job at keeping students engaged with school and with the skills necessary for them to be successful in high school. As a school leader, I would ask teachers to be prepared to provide clear rationales for why they chose to assign either F or A grades. I would also ask that there be documentation of interventions attempted prior to giving an F grade. I would also encourage teachers to give incompletes rather than Fs with students required to attend an after/before/during vacation school in order convert that incomplete grade into a passing grade. In my present position, I will continue to support the use of our online behavior management system so that students can receive the additional help that they need in order to pass their classes. I will also continue to seek out colleagues who can provide this support either during lunch or before/after school. Students need to be able to find personalized help from a teacher outside of the classroom setting. I will continue to advocate for a system that provides this. I am also advancing competency based learning wherein students are graded not on the basis of how well they can jump through hoops but rather their demonstration of subject/skill based mastery. Five things that I am willing to do this semester that will make my school increase learning opportunities are:
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