Grades

After talking with the administrators on Monday and the class on Wednesday I still do not understand what the big deal is with getting rid of grades. I see where the research challenges the idea behind grades and sees it as a punishment but I think grades still play an important role in schools. The research says that teaching for self motivation instead of for getting a good grade will help improve test scores and that in turn this will help with NCLB. This is the part where I get lost because I don't see how high school kids working for their own self satisfaction is better than for a grade. I think a more effective way to go about it would be to find a way to motivate them through the grades, not that this would be easy but I think we're jumping at a radical idea if we say we should just get rid of grades all around because they're nothing but a big punishment.

I'm not saying that this is a terrible idea I'm just not totally convinced yet. I understand that part of teaching is being open to new things/tactics similar to this and that teachers need to e flexible but I would just like to see this researched a bit more before I walk around backing it up.

Role Play

I found the role play to be very interesting, it was fun to hear from all sides on this specific topic. It got rather heated and that is always fun! I thought each group brought up many good points and I do think the overal goal of this plan had good intentions but things like this scare me. They mainly get to me because I feel like we are no longer teaching to encourage kids to learn, we are teching them to learn enough to meet standards and pass tests. Which I don't think it is a bad thing that we are having these standards I just wish there was another way to go about getting the children to reach them. I think it sad that most children now days hate to read for fun, and that if it wasn't something assigned for their class then why would they take time to sit and read. Reading use to be fun along with many other subjucts. Take science for example, most kids are memorizing everything they can the night before a test, just to pass the test. What happened to doing hands on things and letting them learn at their own pace so they really get it when they are ready. Not that I think America should do this but I think it is interesting how some countries don't have individual grade levels, they are more clumped together into 3 year groupings. I think this has some advantage because some kids learn some things early and some things late where another kid might be just the opposite on what they learn first.

Ok I went off on a small rampage there but basically I think I plan like what was shown to us in the role play has some good things to bring to the floor but don't think it should be something we jump on to put right into place.