The Radical Magic of Gradeless Classrooms, Part I
We’re now into at least the first two weeks of the conventional school year. In honor of a fresh starts, I’d like to kick off a new series with a couple of posts exploring a forever-hot-topic: gradeless classrooms.
From my conversations with families, I’ve found that it can be difficult for most to wrap their minds around a strength-based, humanistic pedagogy that doesn’t rely on grades or standards to know if their child is “succeeding.” For many people who grew up in the conventional system, the pass/fail, good grade/bad grade system is very difficult to see around.
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A great example of this is Joey—a ten-year-old girl who joined a micro-school of mine after a disastrous few years in conventional school—and her family. [Check out past posts about Joey here and here.] Her grandmother had been a career classroom teacher and a beloved one at that. For her, my suggestion that we do education differently was an accusation that she was educating incorrectly—but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. While I have my own views on how education should work for the niche population I serve, I don’t claim to be an expert in education for all! I know many people have felt contributed to by the current way of doing things. I love the idea of offering a range of options to people that align with a range of brain designs, and I can’t help but think that this right/wrong thinking results from the same pass/fail structure we are indoctrinated into at school. Suppose we’re going to “fix” education. In that case, we will have to embrace nuanced points of view and understand that problems can be solved using multiple strategies and that a healthy system includes variety.
I typically have to spend a lot of time explaining to families that what we do works. They need convincing that how we do things at my micro-schools isn’t an admonishment of past decisions, but a new hope for a better future. Why punish ourselves for not knowing what we didn’t know? This is true generally in life, and for education options as well.
The fact that the micro-schools I design don’t track grades does not mean that we won’t notice if a child isn’t experiencing academic growth or acquiring new skills. Nor does it mean there’s no emphasis placed on reflection or iteration as a means for improvement. Rather, we rely on natural, holistic, and observational methods for determining progress, in accordance with the student’s unique trajectory of development. This includes regular self-reflection through the use of rubrics and other frameworks to help foster self-awareness and inspire motivation—all of which help students develop ownership over their learning and process.
Moreover, this type of documentation captures what can’t be measured. A moment of compassion or kindness offered from one student to another. A turning point in the child’s willingness to try something new or a small step toward building resilience in the face of an everyday adversity. These moments build on one another, creating a virtuous cycle of progress that grades don’t capture.
At my last micro-school, for example, each Sunnyside student had a dedicated Google Drive folder shared with each authorized caregiver. The document inside this folder was updated almost in real time. In it, caregivers could find the following:
pictures and videos of projects that were in-progress or completed by their child
written or created work samples
regular updates on their child’s personal education goals
copies of learning plans or agreements created in collaboration with caregivers and students
student-created reflections on completed tasks or experiences at Sunnyside
Other physical work samples were sent home as they were created and completed by each child.
Soon, I will share example documents like the ones I described above with paid subscribers. Join the paid tier today for access to those and ongoing discussions about micro-schools and cognitive diversity.
In my next post I’ll dive more into how gradeless classrooms complement a project-based curriculum and the asynchronous development of twice-exceptional children. For now, I’m curious: how many of you have worked within or experienced a gradeless classroom—and how did it work for you, and your students?
More soon,
Jade