86%

That’s an ‘A’ for us here in my district. But what does it mean? As a Math teacher I’ve boosted an 84% up two points to hand out the often elusive ‘A’, and I’ve also adamantly refused to move an 85% up to that plateau. Because to me the mark should represent a level of comprehension that ‘points’ on a test don’t always represent well. Perhaps that’s because my tests were flawed, as the results on them didn’t always represent how much the concepts were understood. 

But why to ‘WE’, educators and students, put so much weight on ‘the grade’ in the first place? How much do they matter?

On his blog, “A Boundless World: Connecting Humanity Unleashing Potential”, Bud answers that question on behalf of himself and many of his graduating friends of the class of ‘09:

Why Our Current Education System Is Failing

The post is lengthy, but well worth the time to read it… go on now, I’ll wait right here… 

Here was my comment response:

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What a thoughtful post!
As Chris Lehman says in this video, “What happens in school is real life, not preparation for real life.” 
I think that the ‘missing piece’ when it comes to education today, is that it tries to fill us with important things rather than make us feel important and valued… it feeds us content, but doesn’t leave us contented in any meaningful way.
I wrote a post a while back about the ‘Square Peg’ students that we try to fit into the ‘Round Holes’ of education. It seems both you and I have had an education that feels that way. I didn’t fit, but I didn’t care. I did assignments my way, not the teacher’s way and wore my C+ badge with honour.
I had some amazing teachers along the way, and I had some that weren’t… and the main difference was that the good ones inspired me to care and do my best.
But I think you hit the issue at the core, it is the system itself that seems to suck the life out of students at a young age. As you eloquently said,

“Education is about unleashing one’s confidence. Education is learning from failure. Education is growing from experience. Education is discovering your passions then pursuing them.

Education is not rote memorization. Education is not analyzing books that have no meaning to you. Education is not wasting your time on subjects you hate. Education is not being paralyzed because your afraid to fail.”

There is an old proverb that says, “When one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the Way” (Found in Zen in the Martial Arts by Joe Hyams.)

Marks seem to take our attention away from what matters. I find it funny that we can assess young kids without grades and then around Grade 3 we suddenly start indoctrinating students into the paradigm of good marks = success…. and the really important things we learn in Kindergarden about sharing, respecting and loving one another, as well as communicating how we feel and getting along with each other, suddenly takes a back seat to achieving some sort of success beyond these things that really matter.

—

Looking back on his post, I really like what Bud says here:

In no way am I suggesting getting good grades is a bad thing; that would be foolish. Getting good grades is not the problem. Allowing grades to dictate one’s life is.

Grades don’t guarantee success.

Passion + Determination + Positive Attitude = Success

I’ll give you an A if you transform the world  

I’m not sure what others think, but I think that it is very likely Bud, and many of the other misfits and square pegs, will indeed transform the world.

A+ to you Bud… not that it matters! 

If you haven’t joined Classroom2.0 yet, do so. It is a great network of teachers, of many different technological competencies, all sharing and contributing questions and ideas. I went there this morning to find a link to a Mathcast that was happening, but I ended up reading a discussion thread started by John McCullough, which took most of my attention away from the Mathcast.

In John’s discussion, Pre-service Education… Social Networking, not., he states:

I’m a college professor that teaches future teachers how to integrate technology. For a couple years, I’ve been teaching my students the awesome world of Blogs, Wikis, and other 2.0-related technologies, not just how to use them, but how to integrate them effectively as a teacher. However, even though they are digital natives of social networking, my students don’t seem to recognize the educational implications. They don’t see it, and the effective integration typically has never been modeled for them, (and I’m pretty sure I’m not helping very much). In addition, trying to take “I’m a student” thinking individuals and convert them into “I’m a teacher” thinking individuals in regards to social networking in education has been a battle that I seem to lose more often than I win.

And John asks:

What do you think about pre-service teachers’ skills and knowledge regarding social networking, as well as pre-service education on the same topic? I would love to read your comments, suggestions, and experiences.

This was my response, that I thought I’d also add here on Pairadimes:

Hi John,
I’d like to share a few ideas here although I’ve never taught pre-service teachers.
1. First I’ll share. I have presented to pre-service teachers before and I have some links I’d like to share.
This includes my ‘The Rant, I Can’t, the Elephant and the Ant‘ presentation I did to pre-service teachers and my newest addition to these links, Cindy Quach’s look at effectively using collaboration tools.
2. On the topic of collaboration, I think most of these ‘digital natives’ we talk about are very good at connecting to socialize and communicate with their peers, but not to collaborate and learn.
3. Digital collaboration is not intuitive and collaboration roles are context and purpose driven, not general in nature. Thus, learning intentions, purpose and expectations for collaboration need to be explicit or the contributor’s role in sharing and contributing isn’t clear. If these things aren’t clear, then how do I as a contributor add meaningful value?
4. ‘Ownership’ is key. I had a Ning network for Grade 10 Planning and it was teacher-driven until I opened up the forum for them to generate some topics, suddenly the site came alive. The topics varied from important issues, to favourite hockey teams, to a lively debate on whether ‘boys are better than girls’… but what happened after that was that the students started sharing more on each other’s blogs and class discussions.
With student teachers, I would think that generating the content of the site would be as important, or perhaps more important than with any other group since, as mentioned here many times, you want them to see themselves as teachers.
Hope this helps!

Reflecting now, I think my last point is incorrect:

We want ALL learners to see themselves as teachers and contributors to the learning… content creators.

A google document is a collaborative tool, but I’ve been a contributor to many such documents where others have not, and I have also been a non-contributor on a few. Putting a class on a google document does not necessarily make the process collaborative: It can create a group of contributors, participants, editors, and lurkers, but should we call that collaboration in any meaningful way, just because there is the potential for collaboration? What is the intent, purpose and expectations for the learners and contributors?How are they accountable for their contributions?

Things have changed and we need to change too. As I said in my comment on Cindy Quach’s post:

You said it well, “Most writing that is published electronically is, by nature, works in progress.”…A work in progress that can be collaborated on, linked to, added to, and elaborated on. What I really like about the differences in your three examples is that the roles of the contributors vary, and inadvertently you are teaching your students to understand that they can meaningfully contribute with and to others in different ways. A necessary skill in a new world of literacy and technology.

On a related topic, how important is the process in collaboration? I think the quality of the collaboration can be just as important as the quality of the finished product of that collaboration… but often the expectations for how to meaningfully participate/contribute/collaborate aren’t clearly defined, and seldom assessed. If we want to see, and teach, meaningful collaboration then we have to know what it is that we want to see, and clearly define that for our students.

If you know of any assignments or projects that clearly define the collaboration process, and/or assess that process, then please share them with me.

Sometimes you can’t just take baby steps, and you’ve got to commit fully to experience something…

I’m leaving my job, my home, and my country.

I have just accepted a Principal’s position in Dalian China for September. My wife will be teaching at the school and my daughters will be attending it. We weren’t actually looking for different jobs, they found us several years after my wife and I had applied to a number of International Schools for teaching positions. A path opened up before us… it wasn’t the planned path, but it was certainly worth investigating.

I can’t describe the turmoil my wife and I went through deciding whether or not we should uproot our family, and leave great jobs, friends and colleagues that we care about. Then finally we asked ourselves a simple question, “If we don’t do this, will we regret it later?” The answer was ‘Yes’.

And now that the decision is made, I am so excited about the new adventure!