Standards Based Grading Consensus

I teach in a department of 5 people.

We are a strong department: forward thinkers, risk takers, academic, fun, humorous, independent, good faculty members for the school, take a lot of time for students.....the list could go on.

Last year when I showed up with some new toys and said, "Hey, I'm flipping my biology class and doing standards based grades!"

They looked, watched, asked questions, provided skepticism, provided encouragement, wondered what the heck I was doing. As the year went along, the department asked more questions and each tested the waters of both flipping lessons and SBG.

By the end of the year, we had really hammered out some really good thoughts about how to use learning targets for students. To be sure, there were long conversations about 1-4 grading schemes and how did that translate into F to A. How does that show up on a transcript? What did mastery look like? How do you measure that? How did you set up your grade book? How did students react? What if I don't do it the same way you do? How do you explain this to students and parents?

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We pulled up the Smartboard and looked at my grade book from last school year. Questions were asked about why did I use that as a summative assessment or that as a formative assessment? How did I come to final grades for students? How did I show student growth? How do you easily communicate that?

To say that having people peer into the bowels of a grade book and ask me to defend the how and why, brought an uneasy feeling. It was kind of like pulling back the curtain on the Great Oz. I have to admit as the year went along, the clarity and management of grading became better. The grades 3rd trimester were better aligned with what SBG should be......first trimester???? Back to true confessions, not as clear at the start of the process.

The questions generated truly forced a lot of quick introspection. Thoughts caught in the eddies of my

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brain, abruptly thrown into the stream of conscious work and out it comes. "There, I've said it. Now we can work with that idea, because it is finally out in the open."

Yesterday, when the group of us sat down, I didn't realize it would be a growth opportunity. I wound up entertaining an exercise that I had not really planned on engaging. It transcended into a unfolding  that caused learning and reinforcement about what I think, believe and understand about what has been done in the steps along the SBG trek. The 90 minutes of conversation certainly allowed these colleagues a clear look at what and why in grading in room 103 in 2012-2013.

That points to a journey started last year in SBG.

First trimester I was trying to put together material for my flipped classroom and be coherent with the scheme of SBG. Second trimester, closer to clarity in the grade book and journeying on. Third trimester, precision was in sight, but still I felt that the goal was near-at-hand.

As we stood yaking, it was a moment of true collaboration with these friends on the journey. I know the queries and challenges to be faced are but the "tip of the iceberg", but now the odyssey of one has a crew of five.

I'm looking forward to the exploration and work in SBG this year.