Reflective Essay

Reflective Essay

When I was in high school, late work almost always received a point penalty, the exact de-crediting varying from teacher to teacher. It was a policy that never needed explicit voicing or justification. Not handing in an assignment was unthinkable for the very fact that it would result in a ZERO, a concept as unfathomable to my hyper-competitive classmates and I as it was to the Babylonians.

Even for the most entitled and/or lazy students at my high school, work had to be done. Bartering and pleading for more time aside, there was some code of honor about, or more likely general fear of not, handing in work. Zero denoted incomplete, roadblock, and stopping. But then the reality of this high school was that every student would find some college to attend, if not on merit, then through some combination of connections and family money.

Handing in work on time was an authentic task, because there was little to no environment outside of school. Time not spent at school was spent on homework, or as was the case senior year, homework and college apps.

These memories in hand, I took my presumptions about high school students with me to my student teaching assignment. As much as I thought I’d experienced an environment of unhealthy grade monitoring, I was amazed to see that Pennsville Memorial High School had implemented the Power School system. Power Grade and Power School are two related computer internet “grade books” that update themselves in real time, so that students and parents alike can, with a password access grades, write-ups, demerit points, and tardiness records at any time of the day. Conceivably, an Internet savvy parent could check their child’s grades every day from home or work, and have a message sent to their teacher before the school day was over. Besides the obvious parallels to big brother et al., I had further difficulties with the program, because I couldn’t understand why it was needed.

Originally designed to monitor truancy and tardiness, but moved quickly to incorporate the grade book feature in 1997, the Power School “School Interface System” is now used in over 7,300 schools across the united states (from their website). The program’s goal is to “provide students, parents, teachers, and administrators with real-time, web-based access to student data and enable them to make better instructional decisions.”

My initial problems with the system arose from imagining my high school experience if it had existed under the program’s surveillance. I was prepared though, to see its benefits, and imagine a school with little to no late work, if not with students constantly on the edge.

What I was greeted with though, was what appeared to be any other public high school. Even through the first weeks of school, assignments came in late, or, to my much greater surprise, not at all. I had access to the grades of students in the classes I was teaching/observing, and, while there were students who had no tardy or missing work, the majority had at least one, and there existed a large group of students with multiple missing assignments.

I didn’t spend enough time in the ivory tower to completely forget that somewhere in the world there were high schoolers that do not primarily concern themselves with schoolwork. As well, I had a vague knowledge of the school’s drop out rate before I started student teaching. The greatest confusion for me though, came with the disconnect between the Power School surveillance system, and the student’s attitude towards their work.

Of the three English classes I taught and observed (AP, 3 College Prep sections, and one General) all were made up of senior year students. Several interesting phenomena concerning the student’s interaction with Power School made themselves apparent to me over the course of the first few weeks.

First, the AP class was considerably tied up in the dissemination of grades by the system. More than once there was bargaining between the students and my cooperating teacher for why certain grades should be in put into the plan book at a certain time. Ignoring the end of the first marking period/beginning of the second marking period transcripts concerns, there was, at least in some of the AP students, a sort of an inter class balancing act. At homes where grades were important and checked often, tending the flow of less than desirable grades, or even perhaps scheduling the arrival of good grades, occupied much more strategy than I could have expected.

Second, the College Prep class seemed to be oblivious to Power School until a parent had given voice to a concern over a low or missing grade. While the ratio may seem higher because of the three different CP sections, the occurrences of students who had to make opportunities to make up work much after the fact was considerably higher with the cp classes than with either the AP or general. My cooperating teacher had a somewhat uneven rule concerning work missing from days when students were present in school. More often than not, students were not denied a chance to make up work even if they had been present during the time it was assigned or collected.

Third and final, many in the General class positioned themselves against the Power School Program; taking any opportunity they could to state that they and/or their parents didn’t check it. Starting towards the middle of the first marking period, my cooperating teacher and I took to handing out print outs of the individual student’s power grade profiles as reminders when the amount of unfinished work began to pile up. More often than not the situation would not be remedied with any great speed, if at all.

Effectively, power school had taken away any responsibility of the students for what the teacher assigned. It was not her wish or plan that they were acting against when not handing in work, but the program’s timely display of their grade. Handing in late work is done to erase the Zero at the crossroads of their name and assignment heading.

*****

The worst part of this system though, is that it relieves the teacher of assuming any role of responsibility in assigning grades. When a student completes a test, hands in homework, or submits a draft of an essay, the teacher takes the assignment, grades it, and then inputs the grade into the computer. The only follow up done by the students is to check their grade online. Graded assignments are available for review at any time in the students’ files or portfolios, but no class time is arranged for this type of review. In the improbable event that a student would come to review their work, they would have to do it on their own time, escaping a study hall or coming after school.

[Even if assignments are handed back in class for students to review, they already know their grades, and have no incentive to expect any new information.]

These scenarios are made worse by parental input. Parents email their child’s teacher about low or missing grades on assignments that they know by names such as “VocBk5B”, “ChaucTest”, and “OtlneAssgn.” Unless they inquire as to the exact nature of the assignments, their questions usually ask one of three things: Did my child hand in this assignment? Did they do the whole assignment? Why is this grade so much lower than their other grades?

The first two questions can easily and tersely be answered by the teacher in a quick email. The third question invites constructive criticism, but this instead often comes across more as suggestions that lack any type of reference points. Saying that a student did not as fully develop their ideas on an essay that received a 70, as compared to the previous essay that received an 83, explains neither the drop nor why the previous essay had received a 27 point reduction. If the parent only notices the drop, then the only feedback they get from the teacher is when the student isn’t performing up to task, but that task and previous performance level is a mystery to the parent.

The student in the worst place is the one who does not check or has parents who do not check the system. The teacher, assuming that students are aware of their standing because of the program, has no immediate need to address the student with missing work, other than token reminders in class. If the student is not handing in work, then immediate regard should be given to why they their assignments are not arriving on the teacher’s desk, not the question of after how many Zeroes in a row warrant an email home. Face to face conferences come between administrators, teachers, and parents when the work has reached the point where it cannot be made up, or the student has been failing for an extended period of time because of low assessment grades.

With this system in place, where students rely only on the Power School to monitor their standing in a class, the teacher, no matter how thoroughly they may consider each student’s writing or other assignments, has no incentive to draft comments on papers. As long as the paper bears a grade, then any questioning of the Power School grade can be directed to that original marking. In my experience at the school, the only times I saw a student question a teacher on a Power Grade grade ended after they saw the marking on the original assignment. The question is whether the grade has been reported accurately, not whether or not the teacher’s justification for the grade matches the student’s estimation of their performance.

*****

When I first encountered the Power School system, I was concerned that too much emphasis was placed on grades, and that students wouldn’t value teachers’ congratulations or recommendations unless the accompanying grade reflected that sentiment. Just as often as suggestions made on an A paper are ignored, compliments on a paper with a D or an F aren’t believed. As well, I was worried that students that only identified with achieving a certain letter grade would have this further reinforced by seeing it everyday right after they checked their email, somehow justifying wherever they saw themselves, rather than acting as an incentive to raise their grades.

Instead though, students and teachers alike treated the Power School system as a safety net that not only seemed to destroy ambition, but also the opportunity for continuity between classes. The Power School program would remind students of what they were missing as much as it would teachers who still owed work. It also encouraged short, easy to grade assignments, so that a clear picture of the student could be established within the first couple of weeks and then perpetuated as the marking period continued. Having more data points enabled both students and teachers to worry less about the class’s direction. A two-week unit that only produces one grade at the end is much more dangerous, to both parties, than a two-week unit that produces eight. An easy to digest section a day with accompanying task keeps the pace of the year predictable and provides the opportunity for students to make up work, even if they were in class. There is no need to consider absences or missing work and their effect on student learning.

*****

In the first few days of my student teaching, I developed some unhealthy preconceptions about the character of the various classes I saw during the day. Taking advanced courses in high school and being just out of college, I figured that I would have the most in common with the AP students. I looked to be friendlier and looser with that class, while expecting a higher level of work from the students. I expected the CP students to be average high school students, ones that I could impress enough with my knowledge of the books they were reading based solely on the fact that I’d already read them and so could “guide” them. Finally, I was determined to not have discipline issues with the General class, and approached the early days with a stony face and never cut slack in the fears of somehow giving them the advantage since I was just a student teacher (one step above a substitute teacher, if that).

For all the reasons that I know it was wrong to make those decisions before really knowing the students, the most relevant concerns come because of their reactions to Power School. If anyone, the stony face should have been reserved for the CP class which, save a few shining apples, is impossible to get to do work in a timely manner. They don’t do their homework nor expect me to expect them to. I taught my longest continuous unit with the CP class, and the biggest difficulty I had was finding some point from the previous day upon which we could begin the next. Class discussion stalled, and I interjected much more often than I should, out of the fear that nobody would say anything because they hadn’t done the reading. When I started assigning short homework to go along with the reading to “insure” that they would complete it, I was instead greeted with one or two completed homeworks at the beginning of class, the majority cobbled together or copied during class handed in at the end, and then a few stragglers that would come in over the course of the next couple of days. Still the majority of students seemed to not be doing to reading.

The short sections I taught with the AP led me into a false sense of security. Those classes were always punctuated by discussion and the promise of a short paper or test, but never in units that lasted longer than three days. Where I thought I had charmed the students with stories and insight, instead I had encountered a group of students that would have done the work even if no one had been there to “teach” them. None of my activities with them had any continuity or built on previous work. What were my first and worst units wound up being the most “successful”.

Where I eventually found some sort of stride was with the General class. After getting past the misconception that every student in the room would pose a discipline problem, I started teaching them mini units, while always revising plans based on what I assumed they would automatically do or know but did not. This forced me to be clear and explicit in my instructions and to spend most of class time working on skills rather than testing interpretation. Eventually teaching in the General classroom became the easiest, as each day I would know what specific writing or reading technique we would cover, and where it fit with the previous day’s assignment. Because of absences and homework being an all but reliable way to have students prepare for class, my plans eventually came to focus solely on class time as a time for very specific and concrete instruction, not review.

I now realize of course, that the way I eventually came to teach the General class was how I should have been teaching every section from the beginning. The AP class did their work, but I was never to certain that their understanding or appreciation of the material went beyond “having” to do it. It has now come to my attention in these last days that their formal essay structuring and writing skills are not where I would expect them to be for college level work, and frankly on the most basic level, their attention to structuring and formatting an argument for an essay is exceeded by the General class. While the AP class writes with more sophistication and depth, there is some assumption on their part that having all the information, while not necessarily in the right order, is enough for a formal essay. For the most part, the General class, after we dissected, structured, drafted, and redrafted essays over a two week period all in class, has a clearer idea of flow and logical ordering in their essays.

If, during my units, I had given the CP and AP class as clear instruction, or at the very least as clear a statement of expectations, as I had given to the General class along with class time for practice of these concepts then I think that they would have benefited from the continuity that would have been established. Instead of classes that were largely silent, having specific tasks to perform in class with each other and myself as models would have established what we were doing more firmly than assigning it for homework. Homework would then be to review these concepts. With class and homework time classified in this new way, the readings would not become the work, but an essential part of understanding whatever specific task we were exercising that day/week/unit. The power school grade they and their parents expect would then be based on class work (impossible to not hand in or copy), and would be linked directly to the direction of the class and teacher expectations.

For some students, I am sure power grade works. For most though, at least based on my observations, it is a tool to remove them from the class and teacher and vice versa. For the teacher, if it were used to report classroom activity and engagement instead of providing the final word on comprehension or completion, then the question would be not “Who has not done the homework,” but “as the teacher, if I am here in the classroom while they are working, and this is the level of work that the students are producing, what needs to change?” For the student then, even if their sole concern were still with erasing the Zero in the assignment cell, the question would be “what do I need to do differently in class,” not “what haven’t I handed in?”

The Zero as a motivator definitely works in most cases, the complete understanding of your students and how they work though, comes with knowing what it means to them. Whether it motivates out of fear of future consequences, representing an incomplete; or provides a contemporary empty space that it is their job to fill, I now understand that it is the teacher’s responsibility to make it difficult, if not impossible for students to “cheat” understanding the task at hand.