Learning from your students
Grading…not most teachers’ favourite component of the job. Lessons have been given, engaging discussions from the unit have ceased, and sparkles in students’ eyes as they learn new ideas have long since faded. Now the class sits passively, staring at the pile of papers sitting on the teacher’s desk, simply waiting to find out their grade.
That was my life for fifteen years as a classroom teacher, and my guess is that’s still the reality for many educators today.
Now, I love to grade.
I’ve been through a renaissance in my teaching over the last five years and now I’m in a position where I LOVE TO GRADE! I look forward to grading because that is when my students teach me more than I ever thought possible.
It’s the result of my recent dive into giving my students digital learning experiences. I’ve been able to use online tools to transform learning into an organic and student driven experience, and the result is I learn while I grade assessments. Rather than deciding what knowledge is important, imparting said knowledge to students, and expecting students to regurgitate the information (I provided) back to me, I now facilitate a learning journey for students. Rather than controlling students’ learning, I empower them to learn and explore. The incredible student work I get back is all the affirmation I need to recognise the power of digital learning.
I now face a stack of papers (yes, they are still physical papers) at the end of a unit, and I simply don’t know all of the information that the students have used to demonstrate mastery in the class. In the same stack I’ll have statistics about how many tonnes of goods pass through the Panama Canal, the Richter scale of a Japanese earthquake, and the average winter temperature for a remote Canadian province. I google and google for hours to look up the facts and figures that my students have used to demonstrate their knowledge and analytical skills.
The initial surge of enjoyment comes from the fact that I am learning while I am grading. The more enduring sensation however, comes from the overwhelming feeling that I am giving my students a great gift–the gift of choice and ownership over their learning.
At the core of all of this is who I want my students to be as learners. I want them to be curious, energetic and resourceful owners of a learning experience that was organic and true. I couldn’t be happier with the fact that I get confirmation that that is who they are becoming… when I google each and every time I grade.