"Will this be graded?" // A Critical Look At Student MOtivation
Amy is a student in my advanced English 10 class, which consists of 33 sophomores hailing from various socio-economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. As a non-magnet class, many of my students did not know each other going into the school year, nor do they have much interaction with each other outside of our class. One thing that many of the students do seem to have in common is their relationship with grades; with the exception of some students who, for various reasons, appear to have "checked out," grades seem to be the primary motivating factor in getting students to complete assignments. Invariably, upon explaining a new assignment to the class, the first question I will field is, "Will this be graded?", or "How much is this worth?", or "Are you going to collect this?" My knee-jerk reaction to such questions is to want to grade everything and thus force students to take assigned work seriously. However, this feels punitive, which assessment ought not be. Furthermore, even though I have set and maintained strict standards in my grading procedures, this approach has sometimes resulted in students who “complete” work nonsensically or plagiarize. I have received graphic organizers filled in with words strung together in ways that look like sentences but in reality don’t mean anything, as well as essays that include easy-to-find sentences -- sometimes entire paragraphs -- lifted from the Internet.
Looking back on my classroom observations, I began to wonder: How have my lesson plans and methodology thus far reinforced Amy's and other students' preoccupation with grades? I see it as a failure on my part to get the class to see some sort of inherent value in learning the material that goes beyond a meritocratic approach to education. Clearly, grading everything is in itself an ineffective tool to get students invested in their work. In a follow-up essay on the above paper, I reflected:
Looking back on my classroom observations, I began to wonder: How have my lesson plans and methodology thus far reinforced Amy's and other students' preoccupation with grades? I see it as a failure on my part to get the class to see some sort of inherent value in learning the material that goes beyond a meritocratic approach to education. Clearly, grading everything is in itself an ineffective tool to get students invested in their work. In a follow-up essay on the above paper, I reflected:
I recently taught a unit on Of Mice and Men, one of the few assigned books that I read in its entirety in high school (my teaching it now was a coincidence). I did not have a particularly strong grasp on American history (thanks, in part, to a disappointing advanced placement U.S. history teacher); thus, my engagement with Of Mice and Men was based on a personal connection I felt with the characters (an aesthetic experience of the story), rather than a detached understanding of their perspective based on knowledge of the Great Depression (an efferent reading). In my opinion, the success of the book as a work of literature transcends the historical context. Aren’t George’s and Lennie’s loneliness and the deep emptiness of their lost dream just as palpable without knowing what life was like for migrant workers at the time?
One of my mistakes in teaching this book, I feel, was being too heavy-handed in trying to guide my students to consider social justice issues (the sexism faced by Curley’s wife, the racism that Crooks must deal with). While such issues are undeniably present and worth pointing out, it seems that if the questions do not come from the students, their answers will not be as powerful. In retrospect, I wonder how students like Amy might have responded differently to the book had I framed lessons around more of an aesthetic, rather than an efferent, stance. For example, instead of telling students what to be interested in, I might ask them what interested them about the book, and build from there.
Though I think the conversations about social justice issues that I attempted to have with my students surrounding Of Mice and Men are important, it seems that my approach to such conversations has left students unprepared to have them. In order for such conversations to be meaningful, there must be a personal connection to both the issues and the text. Adolescents who have never been asked to consciously confront topics such as racism or gender inequality (either in an academic setting or in their day-to-day lives) may not realize the ways in which these topics affect them personally. Likewise, having students discuss characters and stories they do not care about seems a doomed endeavor.
As Rosenblatt postures, "The notion that first the child must 'understand' the text cognitively, efferently, before it can be responded to aesthetically is a rationalization that must be rejected" (1982, p. 273). An aesthetic stance is not something that ought to happen after a text has been read efferently, but rather must play into the initial reading event in order to contribute to the meaning-making process. Students may understand both the issues and the book on a literal level, but if I want them to choose to read and discuss the word and the world outside the classroom, there needs to be more of a personal connection to both. My hope is that by selecting activities that promote an aesthetic stance toward literature, I will be able to scaffold my students away from their dependence on grades.
As Rosenblatt postures, "The notion that first the child must 'understand' the text cognitively, efferently, before it can be responded to aesthetically is a rationalization that must be rejected" (1982, p. 273). An aesthetic stance is not something that ought to happen after a text has been read efferently, but rather must play into the initial reading event in order to contribute to the meaning-making process. Students may understand both the issues and the book on a literal level, but if I want them to choose to read and discuss the word and the world outside the classroom, there needs to be more of a personal connection to both. My hope is that by selecting activities that promote an aesthetic stance toward literature, I will be able to scaffold my students away from their dependence on grades.