December Staff Dev. Newsletter
A newsletter for the Seward Staff by Dr. Dominy
December Note From Matt
There are lessons here for all of us regarding the Seward Way. How do we create memories for our students? What magic can we bring into the classroom to keep our students engaged? What always works and will work forever? What is something new I could try that could end up being a new tradition?
I hope each of you have opportunities to enjoy the wonder of the holidays!
Matt
Jon Gordon
THE KEY TO AN EXCITING LIFE
I believe I have found the key to happiness and success and it can be observed first hand in millions of homes and children's hearts this holiday season. The key is to be like a kid on Christmas morning - Thankful for the gifts you have received and optimistic and excited about the new gifts that are coming your way.
It starts with being grateful. When you are grateful for the gifts in your life, big and small, you always seem to find more things to be grateful about. That's why abundance will flow into our life when gratitude flows out of our heart.
We become a gratitude magnet and experience more joy, love, peace, and happiness. (Note: I'm not talking about material gifts. I’m talking about the gifts of the heart.)
But what about my desire for a promotion, a better job, more money, more friends, better health, more success you might ask? Isn't it important to strive for more? Doesn't gratitude breed contentment and stagnation? How can I be thankful when I know my life can be so much better?
That's why it's important to also be optimistic and excited about the new gifts that are coming your way.
Sure you are thankful for what you have but you also look forward to more gifts in the future. You believe that your best days are ahead of you, not behind you. When people ask you how things are going you say, "Getting better every day."
This was something I learned a number of years ago. At the peak of my misery, struggles and failures I realized I had to stop being disappointed about where I was and needed to start looking forward to where I was going. Once I started being thankful for the simple gifts in my life and became excited about the road ahead I experienced a completely different journey.
When you change your heart and mind you change the direction of your life.
So what are you thankful for? What is right about your life? Be sincerely grateful. Then think about what your brighter and better future looks like. What do you hope for? Trust it is possible. Get excited.
We often think that we'll get excited about life when we have a life that is exciting but actually it works just the opposite.
When we get excited about life, we get a life that is exciting.
In this spirit may you experience amazing gifts this holiday season and may your 2023 bring you even greater gifts than you could imagine.
Thomas Guskey on Grading
Thomas Guskey on Appropriate Uses of Grades
“Grades are portrayed as a villain by many in education today,” says Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) in this Kappan article. Grading is accused of stifling students’ creativity, fostering a fear of failure, and weakening interest and engagement in learning. But would going gradeless, as some advocate, or changing the label (to marks, proficiency scales, or progress indicators) make any difference? Guskey is doubtful. “A difficult but more-productive approach,” he says, “would be for educators to clarify the meaning of grades and then radically alter the consequences attached to grades for students.”
What are grades? They are letters, numbers, words, labels, symbols, or emojis describing a student’s level of attainment on a particular task or learning goal. They are part of helpful feedback to the student answering three questions:
- Where am I going? What the student is expected to know or be able to do;
- How am I doing? The student’s progress toward the learning goal;
- Where to next? What the student should do to improve.
Grades answer the second question by telling how close the student is to the goal – based on the first (clear and appropriate learning goals) and pointing toward the third (next steps). Guskey believes grades can provide helpful feedback – and lose their negative baggage – if they have four characteristics:
• They describe performance, not innate ability. “From the earliest levels,” he says, “teachers must help students and their families understand that grades do not reflect who you are as a learner, but where you are in your learning journey.” In other words, grades are not about talent, skill, or capability, but information on how near or far the student is from a learning goal. This is very helpful to students and families, especially when it’s accompanied by a good description of the goal and guidance on how to get there.
• Grades should be based on standards, now how other students are doing. With norm-referenced grading, a C means you’re in the middle of the class, average. With criterion-referenced grading, a C means you are on step three in a five-step progression toward mastery. Using grades to compare kids’ performance within a class creates unhealthy competition, discourages collaboration, and tells students nothing about learning. Students with high grades may actually not be doing that well compared to a rigorous standard; they just did better than their classmates. One more problem with norm-referenced grading, says Guskey: “It diminishes student-teacher relationships, since teachers who offer individualized assistance to students are interfering in the competition.”
• Grades must be seen as malleable. They should describe a student’s current performance level, which can be changed by effort, strategy, and practice. “Teachers must emphasize to their students,” says Guskey, “that achieving less than mastery doesn’t mean you can’t make it, but only that you haven’t made it yet, and there’s more to do.” This approach to grading also means that grades shouldn’t be averaged; instead, current performance should always replace past evidence.
• Grades must be accompanied by guidance for improvement. During-the-semester grades are shorthand, necessary but not sufficient. The key is treating them as diagnostic information and, if there’s a need for improvement, providing corrective feedback and different prescriptions (since initial instruction wasn’t effective) for getting to mastery. Used this way, says Guskey, grades are an important component of teaching and learning.
“Can Grades Be an Effective Form of Feedback?” by Thomas Guskey in Kappan, November 2022 (Vol. 104, #3, pp 36-41); Guskey can be reached at guskey@uky.edu.
Reading Article