I'm a second semester senior

As I enter my 7th year teaching second semester seniors, I am strongly considering a drastic change to my classroom structure to engage students through the remainder of the academic year. The decision and subsequent changes for my students may cause discomfort initially and a desire to go back to the way things were. However, as with most important things, if an action is worth taking it most likely is going to be difficult.

My AP Environmental Science students will be going from a more traditional course with grades determined by points earned on summative assessments to a class where no points are earned and all grades will be earned via the accumulation of evidence of learning and making a grade claim based on that evidence. The first semester of this 2017-2018 school year saw students succeed in a classroom where grades were earned on based on summative assessment scores. Students could retake those assessments to earn more points to increase their percentage and accompanying grade.

This was a change from previous years where students could earn back points through a test correction protocol that saw grades raise, but learning stagnate. The new policy of retakes saw some students flourish while others flounder due to delaying retakes until the end of the marking period. At the end of the day, I was still not getting the results I wanted with regards to student engagement and motivation to learn and master concepts. That desire led to my current decision.

All teachers want students to be intrinsically motivated while in their classroom. We want students who value learning and understand the work necessary to master the content and/or skills of the course. It does not always happen like this, though. We, as teachers, convince ourselves that some students do not know enough about the course to appreciate its intrinsic beauty and therefore we need to extrinsically motivate them. The "carrot" of points is meant to bring reluctant students into the fold and, once engaged, those students will gain the aforementioned appreciation we desire and start to learn just for the sake of learning. Sounds great, right?

Somewhere along the way, though, we get lost. We may not draw in all of our learners so we continue to offer up more extrinsic motivators (i.e. points) to keep them coming back. The catch is the students make a game out of our system. They play the game so well, in fact, it is at the expense of learning. When the goal of a class is the accumulation of points, it ceases to prioritize learning and incentivizes an "any means necessary" approach to grades. Students will start to do the mental arithmetic to determine what needs to be done to earn a certain percentage to earn a certain grade. They will weigh that against the other classes they are taking and the points necessary to earn a certain grade. Based on all these variables, they will make choices as to what is absolutely necessary to do and what can be put aside. All the while we wonder why students do not work to learn, but instead work to earn.

I am breaking that cycle in my class. I am taking the mindset that if I cannot beat 'em, might as well join 'em. If my second semester seniors are going to ask why they should care about grades if they are already admitted into the college of their choice, I am going tell them I do not care about their grades, either. I never really cared about their grades. I cared about their learning. That is why I am taking points off the table. We have to ask ourselves if students are doing work without learning content, what's the point?