Category Archives: Approaches to Learning

Once the gate to gradeless assessment was open, I couldn’t get through it fast enough. I immediately began planning how to introduce it to my students. Since New Year’s Day had just passed, that seemed like a logical exigence. “It’s a natural time for reflection,” I said. “So let’s reflect on our relationship to grades.”Continue reading “Crossing the Rubicon”

For most of my career until last year (January 2020), I tried and failed to shift the thinking in my classroom, and then in my school, around grades. I succeeded in making my students feel cared for. I also unintentionally succeeded in making my classroom a place where students knew they shouldn’t be anxious aboutContinue reading “The Gifts of Failure”

After 15 years of teaching, I still have those back-to-school nightmares. You know the ones. It would be the morning of the first day of school, and I wouldn’t know where my classroom was. Or what I would be teaching. The department office had been moved, and I couldn’t find the copy machine. I didn’tContinue reading “This Changes Everything”