An Email Exchange: September, 2018
The email from a student:
Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 3:06 PM
To: Marcus Eure <meure@brewsterschools.org>Mr. Eure I remember you said on the first day of school that there’s not really a “grade” put on assignments but in a lot of your posts and resources it talks about growth and improvement. I’m just confused as to how, objectively, I’ll know if my writing has improved without any grade. Like how can I gauge if I’m getting better because I don’t know if I’ll be able to just self evaluate that. I don’t have a problem with no grade (haha) but I’m just curious as to how you’ve explained this growth process in previous years to students. Thank you
My reply:
Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 7:20 AM
To: [REDACTED]@brewsterschools.orgThank you for the email. The short answer is that you never have to just self-evaluate; you always need expert feedback, and it needs to be clear and actionable. Grades don’t convey how to improve. (They convey a general sense of good/bad performance, but even that is so subjectively rendered that it often isn’t helpful.) Feedback does tell you how to improve, but there are issues to getting the right amount of feedback to all students at all stages of the writing process. The solution is to reimagine what feedback looks like and the role each student plays in creating that feedback.
Your initiative in sending an email lets me illustrate this through you. You have the opportunity now, because you’ve taken that initiative, to teach others. Start here:
Be especially certain that you read the “Better Form of Feedback” essay linked in that post:
If you read all of that, two things will absolutely happen:
1) You’ll understand more — if not all — about how you can improve without a grade.
2) You’ll have read a lot of writing designed to show you how to write well.Talk to me in class about how you might be able to take this and use it to teach your peers the answer to your original question. Teaching others, online or in class, is the best way for you to strengthen your own knowledge, and it generates evidence of the best kind of learning — i.e., the highest profiles.
Thank you again,
Mr. Eure
And a PDF version of the exchange:
What’s Next?
This is closest to a style of makerspace learning called an atelier, in which an expert trains others to create art. The teaching is centralized, but it spreads out from that central point. As you become skilled, you teach those skills to others. As you gain knowledge, you spread that knowledge to others.
It works because of student initiative — the kind shown in that email. Initiative invites feedback. That builds knowledge and skill. Then the student can decide whether or not to help others by sharing what they’ve learned.
Two phenomena helps us here. The first is the protégé effect. The second is herd immunity:
You are as strong individually as you are together. That is the way of the world, which is why it is the way of our classroom.