Tagged: student responsibility


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Seeing the Light: Opening Dialogue for Stronger Grading Practice

It’s 5:00 p.m. on a Friday night, and my phone rings. It’s a close colleague, Bryan, who is a middle school assistant principal. Uh-oh, I think. Given the time of day, I don’t anticipate this to be good news. He starts in, “Ang, I’ve got a good one for ya…” And so the story begins.

Over the past year, Bryan and I had been engaged in some productive dialogue around current grading practices at his site. He was new to his school—just in his second year—and hadn’t been too comfortable with some of his observations of teacher practice. Coupled with complaints from students and parents, he had been trying to determine the reasons for the dissonance between the school’s grading policy—as it lives on paper—and what was actually practiced in classrooms. Read more


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Never Mistake Unmotivated for Unsure

As I write this, I’m looking out my window to see green grass and flowers everywhere. It’s the time of year when we are enjoying final concerts, awards ceremonies, and the other typical end-of-year events. If you ask teachers about this time of year, they talk about trying to keep students engaged when the warmer weather and other distractions are competing for students’ attention. Thinking about my own efforts as both a teacher and a principal to keep the focus on learning until the very last minute made me think about student investment. Read more