The Michigan Reading Association conference is next weekend. I may be partial to my state PD, but we are fortunate to always bring in the top edu-gurus.
Years ago at MRA, I had my first chance to hear Kelly Gallagher speak. Among other inspiring and informative words of wisdom—that I still have captured in one of my PD notebooks—, Kelly said,
“Students should write 4x the amount that we can actually grade.”
Early in my career, this gave me a twisted mix of
1) unrestrained freedom and
2) throat-closing anxiety.
I’m a weirdo. I know. The voices in my head debated Kelly’s statement like this:
Why This Statement is Freeing
Immediately, these words released me from a “should” stronghold. This particular “should” manipulated me into thinking I had to grade every word my students wrote. I worried that if my kids took some academic action, their parents would expect a grade and the kids would need some reward.
This is one of those myths we create about “good teachers.”
We convince ourselves that if we don’t meet all the ridiculous, self-created criteria that it takes to be a “good teacher,” then we must be awful and bound to get fired.
Thankfully, many of you go-getters can see that perfectionism as self-sabotage. Perfect is the enemy of good. We get behind on giving meaningful feedback or engaging with our content in new ways because we’re suffocating beneath a stack of grading.
Before hearing this statement, I created a laughable myth that my students appreciated gobs of feedback on their essays. I convinced myself that they wanted me to measure their writing against Rubric XYZ. I mean, how else would they know if it was good or not? :: insert eye roll here ::
Seriously, grading everything is insane. {You can read more about giving appropriate feedback here.}
Why This Statement Is Frightening
Moments after I came back from my reverie about all the papers I could chuck into the recycling bin, I understood Kelly’s bigger message.
He wasn’t simply giving us grace from this most arduous task. He was urging teachers to dramatically increase the volume of student writing.
This should shake up a lot of teachers and departments because students need to write more. Straight up.
In his post “Moving Beyond the 4 x 4 Classroom,” he makes the claim that many students “do not read and write enough over the course of the school year to significantly improve.”
No, this does not mean the length of their 3 assigned essays for the year need to be longer; instead, students should be writing beyond those assigned essays. Volume is what matters here.
He explains:
“When I first started teaching, I ran a ‘4 x 4 classroom.’ My students read four ‘big’ books a year (one per quarter), and they wrote four ‘big’ papers a year (one per quarter). Four big books and four big papers—a 4 x 4 classroom.”
Many departments, even English and Social Studies, fall victim to this lack of literacy volume.
Students may only write end-of-unit essays in World History. In Brit Lit, kids probably just write a literary analysis, rhetorical analysis, research essay, and personal narrative.
We’ve got to figure out how to shake up this stale system.
And, I’m with you, this is scary biznass!
I think about my own classes, and most assignments fall under what Kelly deems as “no choice” or “limited choice.” Timing is sporadic—to say the least—for my kids to generate “wide-open choice” in writer’s notebooks and blogs. This is something I’m working on, but the timing of all of the other “shoulds” gets to be quite cumbersome. I know that I can’t do it all, so I’m working to figure out what to release.
“Grading does not turn students into better writers.”
Coming back to that initial freedom I felt upon hearing Kelly’s statement about grading, let’s consider its impact on our students’ sense of freedom. How will they feel if we follow through on this call to action?
I’ve talked about it before; grading slows us down. Look at what it does to our students. It clogs up their risk-taking and experimentation in writing. They begin to think that writing is only one formatted scripted or another. They have forgotten how to play with words.
We have to show them it’s more than what our SAT-prototypes, yet we still must practice essentialism. We can’t add more unless we let go of something else. (It’s like we’re applying the Konmari tidying-up approach to our lesson plans). Kelly reminds us, “Modeling, conferring, and choice are critical to growth, but if my students are not writing a lot, these factors become irrelevant.”
Friends, I don’t have the answer. Like Kelly, I’m still working through this question within my curriculum. I do know, however, that this anxiety is important to tackle. This conversation about increasing volume can be potentially difficult, but it is worth having in our departments.
There may be freedom for some teachers knowing they don’t have to grade everything, but it is going to take time for us to figure out how to make significant growth happen for our students.
Your Turn . . .
How does your class compare to the “4 x 4 classroom” concept?
What might be getting in the way of increasing the volume of writing your students do?
Midwest Readers . . . if you’re attending the MRA conference this weekend, stop by my session on Saturday at 12:30. We’ll be talking about “Disciplinary Literacy.” I’d love to connect face-to-face.
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