Morning, all. Sorry I missed last week. Been a busy, stressful last couple of weeks both professionally and personally. Technically, this is week 10, but I am just going to call it week 9. Thank you for understanding.

It’s the end of term one for us. Our school went to a different schedule this year: 4 period days and a half year equals one year of credit. It’s been an adjustment for sure, but we are getting/doing better as we go.

One major adjustment is kids’ having to select-and-support their grades only nine weeks in. A quarter now equals a semester, so here at the quarter mark, kids are selecting and supporting a final, official grade for their transcripts. Ready or not.

And regardless the schedule, I am not sure we are ever fully ready to reconcile the wreck where grading and learning meet. But I have discovered, I am less unready with select-and-support grading. The wreck is less-messy when I ask the kids to help me make sense of their learning, their stories. Here’s how we capture it at the ends.

And in the end, it’s really nothing fancy. It is simply an opportunity for kids to consider and capture their learning. And though it’s not as easy or natural as I’d like it to be (they are not accustomed to such agency), they constantly amaze and humble me with their honesty and integrity. One of the “raised concerns” for this approach is that kids will take advantage of it. But that has not been the case in my four years of experience with this. If anything, kids are too hard on themselves, not trusting that there’s more to their story than the “record” in Skyward. And so, when they are too hard on themselves, when the evidence suggests otherwise, I exercise my option to “upgrade” them, as I did here with Adam.

Of course, we don’t really arm wrestle, and usually–eventually–kids find ways to “live with it.” And, of course, some might think it unprofessional to engage with kids in such ways about something as serious as grades, but I have found that when we take such a serious tack with grades, we make the meaning of the grade less-authentic for it creates the “this-is-something-that-is-being-done-to-me” context rather than “with-me.”

And that is what I want for my kids: with me. As in, I am with them. They are the me in this. And even when it’s a little less-silly, and I have to disagree and “down-grade” on the basis of an imbalance between the select and the support (a rather-rare occurrence), I want my kids to feel that I am still with them. As such, I peddle possibility, giving them opportunities to demonstrate their learning, so we can “balance the books.” I also take it as an opportunity for “reachable moments,” as I try to reach them where they are currently so that we may move forward with building a better for next quarter with sentiments as such.

“Let’s both commit to staying on top of things a little better next quarter. We share in this responsibility, so let’s make sure we are consistently committed to helping you get to your learning goals.”

In end, I just want them to make sense of their learning, and I have found when they find themselves in this place (holding the pen), it makes more sense than it ever has, for it becomes our sense in common, something we found with each other.

Happy Sunday, all. See ya here next week.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.