Exit Slip: October 19 (Accuracy of grades and competition)

One thing I took away from today's class is the importance of the context of grading. This is because I had a hard time reconciling the idea of teaching students the curriculum and also teaching students mathematics in a broader sense. 

I personally find designing assessments stressful, because there's no way to measure everything a student absorbs from the classroom and pair that with their personal circumstances to create a concise grade. If the grades have implications for educational progression, there's more at stake and it can be difficult to ignore a student's plea for passion and potential. 

After today's conversation, my perspective shifted though. Accuracy vs precision is a relatively STEM related concept that is very present in the scientific method. The toughest part about grading practices in schools in general is the fact that there are a significant number of variables that impact what percentage grades capture. By putting these two ideas together, if assessments have really clear objectives and teachers are able to format it in such a way that avoids as many external variables as possible, then the assessments would be an accurate data point of information about a student's understanding at a given time. I think that this is where having a detailed proficiency rubric really comes in handy, because the clarity of goals increases their autonomy and metacognition. By adding passion projects, reflections, games, presentations, and so forth, we are able to tap into different ways of learning expression which would be more helpful for students to view assessment as a tool for their learning, vs a tool for learning. At the end, assessments are as personalized as our delivery of content, and with enough exposure and attention to detail for students, we will become better at diagnosing their strengths and weaknesses. 

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Alfie Kohn had some interesting takes about competition, most of which I ended up validating but not agreeing with. As someone who generally isn't competitive, I can still see lots of value in "healthy competition", even in team or individuals bases. I think he could have addressed the mindsets of competition better and clarified, for example, how selfish competition is objectively more unhealthy than growth-based competition. There's still quite some merit to his points, but hearing more perspectives about how competition has helped or hindered students would be necessary. 

The way I picture my future classroom does not involve harmful competition, and has instead been inspired by ways I've seen some great teachers weave it into their classrooms. My 10th grade socials studies teacher was Mr. Regan Ross, creator of the Civic Mirror, and that class was structured around healthy game based competition. Every one of us absolutely loved his course, so I've seen competition be a very effective pedagogy.