Author: brian

“Mister, I’ll get that 90 for you. I got you.”

I was in conversation with a former student turned mentee. I asked about her grades and encouraged her to work harder to bring them up, especially in math.

“Don’t do it for me. Get that 90 for yourself,” I said assuredly.

She pushed back. “But, mister, you have to understand. I don’t really like school. I’m not going to get good grades for myself. But I will do it for someone else. It’s my motivation.”

Her reply made me uncomfortable. My goal as a teacher is to help young people be intrinsically motivated. I don’t want them to work hard for me. They should be doing it for themselves.

We chatted some more. She mentioned her parents and how she has jumped through so many hoops because of them. She doesn’t see this as a bad thing. She’s smarter and knows the value of hard work because of their high expectations. She’s grateful that they asked her to do things she wouldn’t have done on her own.

As I listened, I thought of my own kids and the expectations I have for them. My son would watch TV and eat junk food all day if he were allowed to. He isn’t always self-motivated to do the right thing (and often doesn’t know how). He does it so that I will be proud of him — or at least not disappointed. I am his chief motivator.

Our conversation lasted all of 10 minutes, but by the end, my outlook on motivation was more nuanced and complete, I think. My job as a teacher is to foster self-motivation in students, but for those who aren’t there yet, it’s alright to embrace their willingness to please me. At this stage in life, that’s what they need.

Time will tell if she earns that 90. But knowing her, I’ll bet she does. And when it happens, I’ll be proud of her improvement. I’ll also know she did it not for herself, but for me. I’ll be ok with that.

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There’s a part of assessment that’s not discussed enough amongst teachers. It lurks behind every task, assignment, and deliverable we ask of our students. We often neglect it in our pursuit of robust, thorough, and creative assessment strategies. School leaders, with their eyes set on outcomes, also do a great job of blinding us to it.

What am I talking about? There’s probably a fancier name I could come up with, but I’ll keep it simple: grading time.

I think part of the reason we don’t talk about grading time enough is that we’re not “supposed” to. School leaders expect teachers, at least in my experience, to find the most comprehensive methods to gauge what students know. Nothing should go unassessed. Huge, sweeping projects are the name of the game. It’s progress monitoring above all. As for the time it takes to sift through and process all the information we gather from student learning? Totally negligible. There’s an unwritten rule in the world of teaching that teachers make time for all that needs to happen post-assessment, including grading. It’s up to us to navigate assessment’s dark side.

This ignores the very human element that comes with being a teacher. In case it’s not obvious, I’m not a robot! That stack of exams on my desk is going to remain a stack of exams on my desk unless I build in time to grade them, which doesn’t interfere with personal time or time spent with family.

I absolutely accept a modest level of work outside of the official school day. Every respectable teacher I know does. But grading, because of its routine appearance in my work, should be planned for. When designing an assessment, whether it be a project, quiz, exam, or whatever, I should factor in the time it will take for me to make sense of student thinking and decide on a way forward. Not doing that is a recipe for inefficient grading practices and creates loads of stress. It’s not sustainable.

Strangely, teachers know this. We just don’t honor it enough when designing assessments. Generally, time spent grading is inversely proportional to years of teaching. Newer teachers are the most susceptible to getting lost in assessment’s dark side; they often enter the profession with wide eyes, eager to collect every assignment they can get their hands on.

Personally, I don’t have a lot of time to grade during the school day. I also know that I can’t take grading home. It just won’t get done. Consequently, I stay away from lengthy assessments. Instead, I opt for smaller, bite-sized ways of gauging student understanding. I use a lot of whiteboarding and student conferencing for on-the-go, in-the-moment assessing. Also, all of my quizzes are one problem, which I give a few times a week. These are quick to grade and provide me needed insights into student thinking. Similarly, my unit exams are small but frequent (they happen every two weeks). I believe these routines are good for students (less information to remember + constant stream of feedback), but they also align with my needs (less time needed to grade in one sitting + more frequent check-ins to inform my instruction).

In the midst of bloated requests to monitor everything students do and say, it is challenging to find assessment routines that are lean, but impactful. What do I need to collect? What don’t I need to collect? What will give me insight into student thinking and yield a quick turnaround for feedback, but not bury me with paperwork? How do I build efficient grading practices into my teaching? These are questions I wrestle with every day. They’ve gotten easier to answer the longer I teach, but they still catch me off guard.

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A month into the school year, a lot has happened. There are new students, new colleagues, new goals. Exciting instructional routines are finding their way into my practice. My curriculum is getting a facelift. There is a familiar and hopeful energy throughout the school.

Despite all that the new year has brought with it, there is one thing that is noticeably absent for me: remote learning. Yes, remote learning. This might seem strange to say, but hear me out.

Despite being two years removed from teaching from my laptop during the 2020-21 school year, remote learning haunted me for a long time. At first, it was the occasional Zoom call after in-person learning resumed. Forgetting to unmute myself or open up breakout rooms while facilitating PD were flashbacks to dark times. Then there was the fear that the school was going to shut down again every time someone coughed. And something in me also flinched every time the whole school got rapid COVID tests.

Interestingly, the more lasting and more prominent reminder of remote learning came from students. Up until this past June, I would see students from the 2020-21 school year everywhere. They’d be in the hallways, at after-school events, and even in my classroom. They were all around me, forcing me to remember a time I wanted to forget.

None of them were my students anymore, but the flashbacks still flooded back to me. I recalled distant interactions we had during office hours and breakout rooms that left me aching for more. It felt silly, but I still called out virtual handshakes to many of these students when we passed in the hallway at school. Sadly, there were others who I still didn’t recognize because I never saw them before.

Rarely would I approach these students about our time together during that dreadful year on Zoom. It didn’t feel right to dig up the past with them. I personally relived it most times I saw them, but that was my cross to bear. Although my former students were always friendly when we crossed paths, my flashbacks were not. Remote learning mocked me through their smiling faces.

But in June, I gained closure. These students graduated. With their moving on to bigger and better things, the most potent remnant of remote learning could finally be put to rest. During their ceremony, while I looked out at all of their beaming faces in their caps and gowns, I remember thinking that two commencements were happening that day. The first was my students’ graduation from high school. The other was my moving on from remote learning.

In the years ahead, there will always be something that crops up to remind me of that horrible time in my career, but at least now it’s not everywhere I turn. I miss many of those students. They were great kids whose education was turned upside down by a pandemic. They personified resilience. While I will miss them, I’m grateful not to have those unwanted reminders surrounding me anymore. I am carrying less baggage this year and I am enjoying it.

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Each school year, I push myself to change or improve one thing about my practice. There’s a lot to be better at each year, and I’m always tinkering with small parts of my teaching, but I try to make my “one thing” something broad with high-impact. A couple years ago, for example, I focused on implementing weekly cogenerative dialogues. And last year, I put considerable effort into changing my classroom environment.

This year, my one thing is to hold one-on-one conferences with students during class.

To type that sentence gives me pause. In the past, planning instruction to build in time to meet with 25 individual students regularly seemed wild. Impossible even. Like any teacher, I know the value of connecting with my students one-on-one when it comes to student attitudes and outcomes. But fitting in time for 1-1 conferences is a huge mountain to climb. Every other teacher I speak to understands this.

While conferencing with students still seems aggressive, it doesn’t feel far-fetched to me this year. I’ve aged enough that the classroom blitz has slowed down enough to enable me to make time for this practice. It also helps that a few years ago an amazing colleague modeled 1-1 conferences for me. She wasn’t teaching math, but we shared a room, and I witnessed her magic. It blew my mind how she shared all these quiet moments with every student right in the middle of class. She made me a believer that these types of check-ins were possible.

I’m talking a big game, but there’s still a lot I’m unsure about with how my conferences will look. I don’t know! Some ideas:

• Each conference would occur during class and last no longer than five minutes. Because things happen, I need to be open to fitting in an occasional conference during a student’s lunch or free period.
• I will conference with every student, not just those who are struggling.
• I hope to meet with each student at least twice a marking period (our marking periods are six weeks long).
• I want to post the conference schedule in the room. Each student will be assigned a day of the week so they know their meeting time.
• Scribble a few notes during and after each conference to help document what we discuss and any next steps we agree upon.
• Come up with a catchy name for the conferences. “Pausing with Palacios” comes to mind.

My dream is that over time these conferences become essential to my classroom culture, similar to how cogens have. I hope they can support my students and help them build momentum throughout the year.

With any change, there will be sacrifices. By holding 1-1 conferences, I will undoubtedly be less present during whole class and small group instruction. I’ll somehow have to adjust my pedagogy to make up for that. Providing more scaffolds and relying more on students to lead will be a huge part of the work.

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