Here’s what I discovered when I experimented with a different approach.

The problem I had with late work

There seems to be an ongoing debate that teachers engage in — what to do about late work. Dealing with late assignments can range from moderately annoying to absolutely overwhelming, and there are many schools of thought about the right way to handle it.

There is the zero-tolerance crowd that insists this type of policy prepares kids for the real world. There are those who impose a grade penalty for each day an assignment is late to encourage accountability.

Then, there are those who count all late work for full credit because the goal is to assess mastery rather than speed. While I fell into the final category, I struggled for many years early in my career trying to find something that worked for my students and for me.

How I found a better late work process

In my quest to find this holy grail of late-work policies, I looked towards the “real world” argument, despite my opposing viewpoint. I determined that, in the “real world,” turning something in late, like a water bill payment, would not immediately result in one’s water being shut off. In my mind, this was the equivalent of a student earning a zero for a late assignment.

The truth is that companies do not want to shut off their clients’ water, they want the payment owed, just as I wanted my students’ work to be able to assess their level of mastery. So what happens in this scenario when the bill goes unpaid after a short grace period? There may be a fee placed on the account, and the failure to pay may be reported to the credit bureau. Thus, the idea of the classroom credit score was born.

The late work solution that I use in my classroom

I decided to input a grade into my grade book for a student’s “credit score.” I taught a mini-lesson on what a credit score is, what it does, and why it matters in the “real world.” I told my students that in the real world, they all start with a credit score of nothing because they have to prove themselves to be trustworthy, but for me, they had already completed this process by showing up for class, participating, and because I just liked them in general.

I started every student off with perfect credit or a 100% grade. From there, if they turned in their assignments on time, their “credit score” stayed at 100%. If an assignment was turned in late, I would grade it for full credit, because again, it was always my goal to assess student mastery, and I wanted their assignment grade to reflect that. However, their credit score would be reduced by a predetermined amount (see variations for options on this element).

At the end of the grading period, students had the opportunity to view their credit scores and “petition the credit bureau” to have something removed from their scores. If students showed improvement in their ability to turn in work on time over the course of the quarter, they could earn points back.

Why this late work system works for me and my students

This system accomplished multiple things:

• Students had an incentive to complete their work on time to keep their “gifted” 100% score in the grade book.
• Assignment grades reflected student mastery to both students and parents rather than a score that reflected when the assignment was turned in.
• 504 and IEP accommodations were easily adapted into this system.  Students could be exempted from the credit score altogether, and/or their “grace periods” could be longer to allow for extended deadlines.
• If I knew that a student was having a difficult time for any reason — family issues, mental health struggles, etc, I immediately suspended the credit score system for them and worked with them to help them get back on track.
• Even after turning in late work and having a reduction in their credit score, students had an incentive to improve, knowing that they could earn those points back at the end of the grading period.
• Late assignments could not “tank” a student’s overall grade. If a student was turning in “A” and “B” work consistently, even if every assignment was late, there were a finite number of points they could lose. Therefore, that student might be earning a low B due to the consistent late work, but they would not end up failing the course. This system provides accountability without being overly punitive.

Variations on this late work system you can try

Over the course of many years, I have utilized this system in several different ways, so my hope is that the following variations might help you to see how you might implement this system within your own classroom structure, regardless of grade level or content area.

• Primary students: I would not include this system as a grade because developmentally, students are still acclimating to school. I would include the idea of following directions and learning classroom norms and procedures as an element of being a reliable classmate. To reinforce this concept, I would compliment students often on their progress in this area.
• Intermediate students: I referred to this system as a “reliability score,” rather than a “credit score.”  The overall message was the same, but understanding what it means to be reliable and the benefits of displaying that character trait were a little more concrete and developmentally appropriate for this age group. The grace period and score reduction can also be adjusted
• Secondary students: When teaching middle school and high school students, I transitioned into the credit score system.
• Advanced students: Depending on my students’ needs, I would adjust the predetermined score reduction for late work. In a high-achieving honors class, the penalty may be heftier because of the expectations of an advanced course placement.
• Struggling students: For classes where many students struggled with executive functioning skills and confidence, I would make the reductions very small and give more opportunities to earn points back if students used their planners, used their binders correctly, etc, to build good habits and to help students realize their own agency.
• Differentiation: For the chance to “petition the credit bureau,” I have used many methods.  For stronger writers, I have asked them to write a formal business letter with argumentative strategies. For struggling writers, I have used fill-in-the-blank forms, Google Forms, an audio/video options where they could explain how they’ve improved, or just a quick one-on-one conference with any student who wished to make their case. As the head of the credit bureau, I gave points back as I saw fit based on effort and improvement.

Outcomes of this late work system

In the decade or so that I implemented and refined this credit score system, I witnessed several things. Students who were used to failing because they struggled to turn things in on time learned that I cared about their learning. I would continue to follow up with them about assignments because I wanted to see their progress.

For some, it took time to understand that they could pass my class even if they had a rough start to the quarter or semester, whereas, in the past, they would have given up because the hole they had dug was too deep to climb out of.  Because the emphasis was placed on completing the work, students who may have opted for the zero before were now completing important practice and assignments, meaning their overall scores went up because they better understood the content.

While I wish the credit score policy meant that I never received any late or missing assignments, it does not possess that kind of magic. It did, however, help me find a more balanced way to hold students accountable while also affording them the compassion they needed while trying to figure things out.

The post Ending the late work debate: try issuing students a “credit score” appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

There is no greater collective-sigh-inducing topic among teachers than professional development.

Whether you’re an electives teacher sitting through a mandatory training on math standardized testing or an ELA teacher being told how to raise reading scores using a brand new test prep booklet just purchased by the district (without any teacher input). Anyone who has spent any time in the classroom can create a list of this could have been an email meeting or I wish I were spending time in my classroom right now professional development trainings.

Most of these are well-intentioned. Creating a calendar of meaningful topics that apply to all teachers is a monumental task— which is why I think it must be more personalized to each teacher. Just as we know that individualized learning works for students, why would it be any different for teachers, if we are not all just perpetual learners? These one-size-fits-all developments fall into a trap that we see in the media all the time, which is that of the “motivational sound bite.” Most of what is important, in education and in life, cannot be reduced to a simple phrase, as we are all living in the gray area that is working in the business of human relationships.

Let’s take a look at the “Professional Development Platitude” of teaching bell to bell.  This is a lovely theory that comes via many names, but essentially, we have all heard the idea of making every minute in our classroom count.  The possibility of doing this; however, is a myth— or at least it is at face value.  For our purposes, I am using the term myth to refer to something that has been repeated over and over again so that many believe to be true in some form or fashion.  The mythology behind this particular idea is the belief that what “counts” looks the same to every teacher at every school to every student population, and it simply does not.

As a professional, I cannot recall ever utilizing every minute of an entire day dedicated only to what others might consider “work,” so how would I expect my middle schoolers to do so for all of their seven classes every day?  If sharing with my students the latest antics of my dog, Roger, is not considered making every minute count, then I want no part of it, to be honest.  The greatest issue with this being that, when I have students visit me the following year, or in many cases, several years later, they ask me about Roger, about my son, and about life in general, not just if I am still teaching research writing the same way. After coming to terms with the fact that this goal of teaching every moment of the day, or what that even looks like, is a myth, we now have the freedom to think about how to actually utilize some of those minutes to serve both us as teachers and our students as learners in the best way possible.

Today, I will challenge you to do that by rethinking the “bell ringer,” the “warm-up,” or the “bell work” (or whatever term works for you).  This is an oft-discussed component of making our minutes count, and I don’t even disagree with the theory that it helps students get into the mindset of your class and prepare for the day.  I do disagree with the sometimes busy-work feeling of its implementation when there are so many awesome things we can do with these ten(ish) minutes.  I want you to think about the skills you really value within your subject area.  The ones that, when you’re planning, you know you want to incorporate because you are passionate about them and they matter in the long term, and yet you sometimes find yourself struggling to implement them because of how full your plate is.

For me, when teaching ELA, that is the absolute joy of reading.  It may be hard to believe, but I did not become an ELA teacher to preach about the subjunctive mood, though I will do so when necessary. I truly love ELA because I truly love stories of all kinds, and I love seeing students find themselves in those stories.  Recommending books is my calling of the highest order.  And yet, choice reading, despite the research behind it, seems to fall by the wayside in lieu of things like types of pronouns that I simply must hit before state testing.

All of this, plus my need to be somewhat rebellious within the walls of my classroom, led me to institute a non-negotiable twelve minutes of choice reading every day, no matter what. I end choice reading however I want on a daily basis, and this might be a turn and talk, a ten work journal entry, a stick figure drawing— one never knows what I might as at the end of twelve minutes, but I never take it away for something more important.

Now, you might be asking how this fits in with teaching bell to bell, and that is because I think at the root of the “use every moment” philosophy is that of engagement, and I can promise you that once the standard has been set, the enthusiasm shared, and the white noise turned on, my students are engaged. Not only that, but I have twelve minutes to visit with my book browsers, my “I’m not really a reader”s, my “I’ve read everything”ers, and my “sometimes I pretend to read”ers.  All of those twelve minutes are used to engage and to build my relationships. There is nothing I like better during my day than those first twelve minutes.  Also?  This requires no grading and no copying (is there anything better?).

I understand that you may not teach ELA, so let’s really get to the heart of the matter.  When I taught math, this looked like logic puzzles of all kinds that students worked on together. When I taught elementary ed, this might have looked like a ‘mystery from history’ for students to discuss or a ‘What’s Going On In This Picture” from the NYTimes Ed Blog.  When I taught Home Economics, this looked like a “Game of Life” question each time they walked in to get them to think about their futures in “the real world” (whatever that means).  The underlying point to all of these options was that I used those ten or twelve minutes to just be a person with my students, and that proved more effective for my relationships, my classroom management, and my overall happiness in my career than any bell-ringer worksheet I ever used, and it also took less prep time.

Imagine what different classrooms could look like if we gave up this notion and just decided not to attempt teaching “bell to bell.” My hope for you is to find something that you can quite literally implement tomorrow, or this afternoon if you happen to be on prep right now, that speaks to that core value you know matters more than any teaching myth and is the reason you took this job, and that you create a new definition of making every minute count. I promise you will not regret it.

The post What if we DIDN’T teach bell-to-bell? appeared first on Truth For Teachers.