Week 2: Response to JeVaughn Jones Week 2 Reading Blog

Wonderful way to turn it around and put a positive spin on the idea. I think the technique would be best used at college level, but can also see it working with AP or gifted students who expect more out of themselves and could validate their "A" effectively. This method could be lost on lower grades who just couldn't comprehend why we were changing the game plan at this point. It's almost like an application to join a club or activity. I think that is why rubrics are so successful. The tell you how you can achieve success, and what is expected, the rest is up to the student.

Original Post by JeVaughn: MAC wk2 reading – Another day, another A"Give them an A", or so says the authors of the Art of Possibility by Roz and Benjamin Zander.  As a High School English teacher, I'm sure my students would surely welcome this chapter!  At first, the notion seems unrealistic.  Zander gives excellent examples of how his music students set personal goals of what that "A" would require of them.  I then thought of doing the same with my students, but then something came to my mind that the chapter didn't quite address.  I mentally walked through the process.  Tell the students to write a letter of what it would require of them to get the "A".  They could list study habits, strengths, and measurable objectives.  Time would pass.  No homework turned in.  Student fails the reading tests.  Time to bring out the letter they wrote, so long ago.  I sit with them and remind them of the commitment they had made.  More time passes.  Still, no improvement.  Don't they feel guilty for not measuring up to the letter they wrote?  Then I took this scenario and multiplied it times 75, which would be the average number of students who would need "the talk".  Mission failure.  See, I believed that this "give an A" method would only work with highly motivated gifted students, such as those musical geniuses under Zander's tutelage.

And then it hit me.  I finally got it.

 In fact, as Chapter 1 illustrates, everything was just a matter o perspective.  The reason the "A" wouldn't work is because I was stuck in the old behaviorist paradigm, where a system of punishments and rewards was the only way to measure and to motivate students.  I needed to look at things from a fresh perspective.  I began to understand that the "A" represented the best that students had to offer of themselves.  It represented not a system of measurement, but rather, a celebration of ability.  In that regard, I thought about project-based learning.  I thought about the stories my students were writing and how each story was a reflection of their own minds and spirits.  To me, that is differentiation.  That is celebration.  And in fact, most students earned that "A", because what it stood for had changed.