Author: brian

My feeble attempt at SBG

This past week I attempted my first unit using standards based grading.

Letting SBG be the driving force of my class was one of my new year’s resolutions. I got much of my inspiration from Frank Noschese, Jonathon Claydon, Jason Buell, Shawn Cornally, Michael Ziloto and many other teachers I have met in person and virtually met online.

My motto the first time around was to keep it simple. So I did. Here’s my approach.

Before I thought about SBG, I always broke down my units into distinct concepts using standards. So nothing new here. Next, to help simplify things, I decided to give two smaller exams covering 3-4 concepts instead of one larger exam that would have covered 7 concepts.

For each exam question, I went with a four point scale. Each question is assigned a value between 1-4:

4 = mastery
3 = proficient
2 = developing
1 = needs improvement

For free response questions, this is pretty straight forward. For multiple choice questions, I decided to go with 1 for an incorrect response and 3 for a correct response. There will be at least two questions for each concept and I will average the scores earned. This will provide a final measure that determines their level of understanding for each concept.

My biggest issue was deciding how in the world I was going to keep track of all this. Whatever method I finally land on must be sustainable and practical. Well here’s my system as of now. As I grade the exams, I enter each student’s score for each question into a spreadsheet. (We luckily have a scanner that does this for multiple choice questions.) There’s only 3-4 free response questions, so its not terrible. I have the spreadsheet compute the averages and spit out a final score for every student on each concept. The spreadsheet will serve as my tracking system for each student towards mastery of all the concepts we learn.

Their cumulative score for the entire term will be given by:

SBG Fraction

Now for student ownership of their knowledge. When I hand an exam back, I’ve always provided each one of my students with an individualized report that summarizes their performance. Before, the report contained their overall score, the class average score, etc.

Score Report Old

Now the focus is on what they actually understand (or don’t understand). For SBG I use a simple mail merge to print out a report for each student stating which concept(s) they achieved proficiency/mastery on and which one(s) they need to reassess on.

Score Report New

My next step, which will be a doozy, will be to decide how to maintain and organize my reassessment system. I know I will assign Friday as the one day that will serve as a “Retake Day.” This will be the only day where students are permitted to retake the concepts they need. This will help me stay sane and keep organized. Also, I need to get in the habit of creating retake material for each concept.

Of course this is a work in progress. I’m just glad one of my resolutions is coming to fruition.

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An outside look

I just completed Tony Danza’s memoir I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had.

I’m not going to lie, part of me felt cheesy about reading a book by Tony Danza (of all people) about his one year as a teacher. But, as a teacher, I can certainly respect Tony for stepping into my shoes not for a week, a month, or even a semester, but an entire school year. Its one thing to talk about being empathetic to teachers, but its a completely different thing to have the courage to live out what it means to be a teacher in America. His experiences as a high school teacher were turned into a series on A&E, which I have yet to watch.

Reading his thoughts, struggles, euphoric highs, and emotional devotion to his students is something I, and most teachers, can absolutely relate to. On nearly every page, I couldn’t help but to say to my myself: “Oh yeah, yep, I know exactly what he’s going through.” In this respect, there was nothing really new or surprising in the book – especially since I have taught in an inner-city high school for nine years.

The first thing that struck me was how Tony vehemently opposed a staged, dramatized depiction of his experiences that was “good for T.V.” I’m with him. With everything that needs to happen for student success, the last thing my class needs is a camera crew filming our every move. We have work to do.

I found his stripped-down account of the school year a strong reminder of the immense work that I do. After all these years, I sometimes forget actually how much “work” I do on behalf of my students. I put the word work in quotations because I still don’t really consider what I do as work in terms of what others consider work to be. I’m helping students succeed – to me that’ll never really be work. Nonetheless, I take much of what I do for granted simply because I have been doing it for so long. Teaching (and teaching students that are classified as high need especially) is hard. Tony learned for himself. It was helpful to get Tony’s fresh point of view on my daily grind. This was where my first takeaway from the book comes from. It reminded me that my commitment to my students can be overwhelmingly extensive, but it is incredibly vital. I can tell you that this will make me even more vigilant and persistent with my students.

Bob DeBitetto, who was the head of A&E network at the time of filming, mentioned that he picked up Tony’s show because it was a “good cause, topical” and that he “might get lucky” with ratings. Tony pointed out that this attitude pretty much summarizes America’s perspective towards public education as a whole. I would say that there’s some truth in that sentiment. Tony had a production crew with him for a good part of the school year and struggled with this because he refused to make good television. Apparently, there wasn’t enough drama. That’s crazy. There’s too much drama in an inner city high school; thats the problem. But, because I’m inside the box, I’m inherently ignorant to how America views what I do. This was the second takeaway from Tony’s book. It helped to inform me exactly how my country views my profession. I now have a more holistic perspective on myself and my students, which isn’t all that reassuring.

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