Another Look at the Honour Roll
We have come a long way from rows of docile students routinely chanting multiplication tables in a one-room schoolhouse. Today's classroom is full of inquiry and activity, bright with posters and artwork, noisy with voices, music and the hum of computers, printers and scanners.
The curriculum has travelled a long way, too. Education's focus has shifted from simply teaching the subject to teaching the child, developing not only academic skills and knowledge but also personal and interpersonal skills, a love of learning and self-confidence in the whole child.
Yet the methods for assessing students' success in this new environment sometimes seem to hark back to that one-room schoolhouse. Marks are still the first thing students, parents and potential employers look at when measuring student success.
"Marks are useful," says Marie Hockley, an English and history teacher from Ridgeway-Crystal Beach High School in Ridgeway, Ontario, "but a 92 percent average isn't the only thing a student needs." A mark only measures one part of the learning process, she says. Marks cannot necessarily prove anything useful about a student's ability to solve a new problem, work in a team or learn independently.
"Marks are only one snapshot of a student's ability, not a panoramic indication of their personal worth," comments Mike Hussey, who teaches English at Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute in Toronto. He suggests that marks survive as a means of measuring student progress and success because they are easy to manipulate and codify, not because they give the best indication of a student's overall capabilities.
Marks do not even accurately portray a student's academic knowledge. Every teacher uses different criteria — a B+ assignment to one teacher is an A to another — and every student has different capabilities. Elementary students will have different abilities from secondary students, and English as a Second Language students will have different benchmarks of success from those of native-born Canadians.
In addition, when we focus on marks and "teach to the exam," we are overlooking important aspects of education, and potentially run the risk of limiting our children's futures, warns Kelly Brownrigg, a Grade 6 teacher at Guardian Angels Catholic School in Stittsville, Ontario.
Mark-based education does not accommodate different learning styles or academic abilities and tends to select and reward one type of student over others, Brownrigg points out. And teaching to the exam neglects important lessons about character development, work habits and personal growth. Students can graduate with good marks and still be incapable of succeeding in the workplace.
Goals and Student Success
"A better indication of success than marks," suggests Mary Lou Mastromonaco, "is to look at a student's self-awareness. Are they aware of their academic strengths and weaknesses? Do they know how to address them?" Mastromonaco, who brings both skill and calm confidence to her teaching of English as a Second Language (ESL) at Bishop Grandin High School in Calgary, adds that for her students another sign of success is making a good adjustment to life in Canada and the busy social atmosphere of a large, multicultural high school. (To learn more, see Language Challenges for ESL Students.)
Students who know their abilities and apply them positively to improve themselves have a big advantage in all learning, agrees Jean-Daniel Roy, a Grade 5 teacher at École Sainte-Anne in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Not only do they develop self-confidence and a love of learning, they are the ones who easily absorb and assimilate new information and get the good marks!
A better evaluation of students' progress can be made by looking at their goal-setting skills, suggests Brownrigg. Students who can set a reasonable, attainable goal for themselves and then plan how to reach it are students who are developing the skills and knowledge they will need for success now and in later life.
Brownrigg encourages her elementary students to set their sights on developing and improving their skills. Her students make specific and detailed goals for themselves — for example, "I want to increase the vivid detail in my writing" — and set out criteria to measure whether they meet the goal — for example, "I've used at least one adjective in each sentence."
"Then we follow up with continuous assessment to make sure each student is meeting the goals they've set for themselves," Brownrigg explains. Even at the elementary level, students can become quite skilled at developing criteria for rubrics and assessing their own progress and success, she affirms. (For more about Brownrigg's goal-setting exercises, see OGIM: Oh Good, It's Monday!)
"Students can learn to determine and measure their own success," agrees Marie Hockley. She supplies her high school students with templates focussed on writing skills and rubrics to evaluate their written and oral presentations. In addition, fellow students review oral presentations, offering constructive feedback and strategies for improvement. Hockley's clear expectations coupled with these rubrics and review procedures rapidly develop skilled and confident writers.
Hockley also uses cooperative teaching strategies in her class to teach academic material and personal development at the same time. "Home groups" of four or five students work together after school on an assignment and develop a question on the material. The next day in class, expert groups, comprised of one member from each home group, answer all five questions. These answers are the students' only notes on the material. Students are accountable to each other and evaluate each other's work, with the expert group sometimes writing the unit test.
All the teachers see goal-based success as more rewarding, involved and detailed than success gained through an exam and mark-based system. "Students learn what success feels like as they achieve their personal short-term goals. And they learn what they need to do to achieve their next success," says Brownrigg.
And it is ultimately more satisfying and permanent, adds Mastromonaco. "My ESL students literally and figuratively have no voice when they arrive at our school," she says. "They know this. It can be a crushing thing for them."
But as they learn to express themselves in English, begin to work with other students, learn to express their own opinions and dreams (something they may have never been allowed to do before) and learn to respect the opinions and feelings of others, they begin to find their voice.
To promote this process of finding both their voice and achieving success in their new country, Mastromonaco has developed a number of activities that act as multicultural awareness-building exercises, as well as language lessons for her students. For example, teams of students — all from different countries — create display cases highlighting one student's country of origin with artwork, maps, traditional clothing and headdresses, artifacts and written descriptions. "Often, I'll try to put students from countries with a history of conflict together on one team," says Mastromonaco. "As they work together, they gain an understanding and respect for each other's culture."
The Honour Roll
As well as developing academic knowledge, students need to develop the strengths and qualities of a trustworthy, reliable, honest, respectful person, Brownrigg, Hockley and Mastromonaco agree. We all need to learn how to be a good leader, a responsible team member, a careful, conscientious worker, and to build positive attitudes, critical examination skills and good team skills. None of these attributes is developed while memorizing the capitals of the world or chemical formulae.
The honour roll should refer to both academic success and success in character development. "We need good people as much as we need smart people, maybe more," comments Brownrigg. And school is the best place to develop these attributes, says Hockley. "We provide a gentler and more controlled way to learn than the School of Hard Knocks."
Teachers can lead the way towards this new version of the Honour Roll by acting as role models for their students.
In her classroom, Brownrigg's teaching style centres around education's new Three Rs: responsible, respectful and resourceful. She encourages her students to develop good manners, accountability, respect and a positive attitude — all vital to learning — by demonstrating these behaviours herself. High school teachers deal with young people at a time of rapid personal growth, comment Hockley and Mastromonaco. "There's lots of opportunity to make a positive impact on a student's life," says Hockley.
"I think I've succeeded as a teacher," says Hockley, "when my students realize that I'm teaching them more than the curriculum."