It is entirely possible that your school or state or country is making dangerous assumptions about what should be measured (and therefore improved) and what shouldn’t. Kirabo Jackson is an economist at Northwestern University. He used a database of North Carolina students — 464,502 students, according to Paul Tough’s Helping Children Succeed — to examine the long-term impact […]
Better and Saner Grading Tip: Start with the End
Grading is not fun. I do not like grading. Therefore, my goal in grading is always this: do it as efficiently as possible. For the sake of really zeroing in here, let’s be clear on the meaning of efficient — see Figure 1. I like a lot of things about this “define efficient” Google result. When […]
Better and Saner Grading Tip: Stop “Relaxing” While Grading
I think it would be painful to survey how many teachers make a habit of “relaxing” at night with a stack of student writing in their laps and a show they’ve been wanting to watch on Netflix. I’ve done this plenty of times myself. But here is the problem: grading and/or giving feedback on student […]
Better and Saner Grading Tip: Get Out the Stopwatch
I don’t have all the answers when it comes to taming the beast that is grading student writing, but here’s something that I have found to help this year: using a stopwatch. Step One: Sit down with a stack of papers, a stack of rubrics, and a beverage. (Based on personal experimentation, stimulants tend to […]
Boiling Down Argument: Five Approaches to Teaching Argument
Note: I expanded the arguments in the article below and provided practical teaching applications into a full chapter of my book These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on the Work that Matters Most. When you buy a copy, you directly support my work as a thinker and writer. -DSJR Last time, we examined the […]