Success, Growth, and Goals
The student is always more important than the system.
Last week, I finished conferencing with each of my students’ families. My spring conferences are student-led. The week prior, students prepare a slide deck reflecting on their second trimester, including their strengths, challenges, and goals for the final trimester of fifth-grade. They pick which assignments, tests, or writing they would like to show their families. With 27 students, I spent most of the week conferencing after school until late. I’ve known some teachers to run multiple student-led conferences simultaneously. I prefer giving each student my full attention. I want my students to see that my job is form a partnership that supports them as learners. No matter the marks on their report cards, what matters most is their growth, as students and as human beings. Conferences are a chance for everyone to reset and make a plan for finishing the school year strong. It’s an exhausting week, but well worth the effort.
With any class of students, there are conferences that are easy and straightforward, and there are those that involve more challenging conversations. In these moments, I deemphasize grades1 and instead focus on my students’ success, growth, and goals.
Definitions of Success
For most students, when I ask them to define academic success, they say grades. They think success means receiving As and Bs, and failure means receiving Cs and Ds.2 When I have a student who is not growing as much as I’d like academically, focusing on a letter or a number does not serve the purpose of our conference. Conferencing with students allows me to have a cogenerative dialogue with them about how they can redefine success so that they can make academic growth. I want students to focus more on the process of learning, rather than the final product. This is why, throughout the school year, I embed so much student reflection. Yes, I want students mastering academic standards, but more importantly, I want them to understand the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and habits of mind that allow them to be a successful learner.
Skills such as curiosity, openness, persistence, responsibility, and flexibility allow students to actively engage with their learning instead of seeing it as a means to a grade. My students are used to answering reflective questions before moving to the next learning experience or concept. I find that questions such as Do you notice a point in learning where you tend to get stuck?; What helps you get started again?; What learning strategies do you plan to use in future lessons to help you understand the material better?; and How can you better manage your time or stay organized in future lessons/projects? are a better indicators of my students’ growth (and overall success) than a single number.
Student Growth
Growth is a central part of my classroom. Each week, we gather to discuss our learning environment, and how we can make it better. We use a simple cogenerative Plus and Delta format to evaluate and improve our learning experiences. I’ve learned from Chris Emdin that when I shift the power dynamic, I create a space for students to critique what is or isn’t working in the classroom. Sometimes this means giving my students a space to vent. Other times, it means changing the seating arrangement or adjusting our shared agreements. No matter the feedback, I incorporate it into my teaching and our learning experiences. I want students to see that their voice matters.
By the time students get to my fifth-grade classroom, they are well-versed in knowing the differences between having a growth and a fixed mindset. They can parrot the importance of having a growth mindset, but many still have internalized deficit thinking. My job then is to help students deepen their understanding of the word growth and apply it to more than just numbers and letter grades.
What does it mean for my students to model an understanding of their growth? Throughout the school year, I invest in their development by showing them how much I care about them as individuals, not just as fifth-grade students. I center love first. I love my students toughly. I have high expectations for them both inside and outside of the classroom. I help them seek opportunities to improve themselves in all areas of their lives. I coach them to embrace challenge and ambiguity as opportunities to grow and learn. When they encounter failure and setbacks, I push them to persist, pivot, and keep learning. I want to use our time together to prepare them to continue to learn for their entire lives. School is temporary. Learning and growth are forever. I help them find solutions to the things in life that are challenging because these same challenges may one day become their strengths as adults.
During our conferences, I interrupt students when I hear deficit thinking. I encourage them to acknowledge all the areas where they are growing, and together, we brainstorm actionable steps for them to keep growing, even after the last day of school.
Setting Goals
During conferences, when students are presenting to their families, I push them to think about how they are currently defining success, and how they can redefine it for the rest of the school year. This inevitably leads to setting some realistic goals.
Goals need to be meaningful and authentic to each of my students. SMART goals are too generic and oftentimes rigid, not allowing for the very real and messy ways we learn and grow. As Simon Sinek says, metrics help us measure speed and distance, but we have to remember that when we don’t hit a metric, the game has not been won or lost. School, like life, is an infinite game. There is no winning or losing like with finite games such as chess and football. When I’m sitting with my students, asking them about their Trimester 3 goals, I want to help them achieve, but also realize that if they don’t hit a goal, that information is important. Nothing horrible will happen if they do not get a B on their next math test. School doesn’t stop. Learning doesn’t stop. This information is just as important to a student’s overall academic growth as a student. Instead of becoming obsessed with metrics, I want them to keep things in perspective.
My students are very accustomed to setting goals in my class. We do so often. One of my favorite goal-setting activities is to use John Spencer’s SLIME Method when we return to school after the new year. Instead of resolutions, we create multiple goals: something to start, abandon, improve, maintain, and experiment in the new year.
In class, I often have my students journal their intentions for the day/week to help them get into the right mindset before learning. These positive intentions foster my students’ efficacy and responsibility, and help them notice patterns in their behavior.
So, students are not surprised that I have a Trimester 3 Goal Setting and Action Steps slide for their conference. Many still say that they want better grades. Fine. I let them set a specific academic goal with clear, actionable steps. However, I always end the conference having students share a personal well-being goal for the spring. How do you plan to take care of yourself so that you can come to school and be successful every day?
Parents love this part of the conference because I shift into more of a parental role, questioning my students’ habits. Are you getting enough sleep? What time is bedtime? Do you have a winding-down routine before bed? How much screen time do you have throughout the day? Are you watching a screen before bed? What type of social media are you consuming? Are you eating well? Drinking enough water? How are you moving your body? I want students ending their conference setting both personal and academic goals and having their parents involved with their action plans. I want my students to know that, no matter their grades, we are a united team, all of us invested in their well-being.
Early in my career, I ran 10-minute, teacher-led, report card-driven conferences. I would go through the report card, justifying each of the grades I marked with samples of students’ work, and anecdotal observations. Sometimes students would attend, sitting there passively while I either spoke positively or critically about their performance and behavior. At the end of the conference, parents would praise or chastise accordingly, and I would usher them out for my next 10-minute conference.
The following week, students would come to school cheerful or sullen depending on their conference. I could always tell which students had privileges taken away over the weekend. The cheerful students would sit down and continue as they had before their conference. The sullen students would drag themselves to class and try their best to improve their grades or behavior in an attempt to ameliorate their consequences. Rarely, did behaviors change long-term. Sure, students may act more agreeable and complying, but over time, old habits resurfaced, and grades didn’t improved much.
I never liked how I felt after conference week. My most challenging students continued to struggle with their behavior. My low-scoring students continued to underachieve. I kept trying to help. They kept struggling. Then the year would end.
When I lead the conference and focus on academic performance, I communicate to my students that the school system dictates their success and failure. The system sees my job is as training them to successfully pass each grade level by scoring well on standardized tests, turning in meaningless assignments, and compliantly obeying.
At no time during those conferences, did I feel I was creating a partnership with my students and their families. I would encourage and try to motivate students to jump through the various hoops the system told us they needed to in order to be a success.
Even though, deep down, I knew this was wrong, I continued to follow the mold. It was many years before I could look myself in the mirror and choose to harm the system instead of the student. The student is always more important than the system. Conferencing with my students is a cogenerative dialogue, a reflective conversation, where they are in the lead role because it is their life; their success is theirs to own.
My students are more than just one-dimensional people. Their successes and failures are part of what make them dynamic human beings. Focusing on a single metric like grades or behavior, fails to recognize my students’ full individuality and humanity.
Even though I’m exhausted after a week of late-night conferences, I feel good about the conversations I had with my students and their families. Will misbehaviors magically disappear? Probably not. Will my disengaged students suddenly come to class ready to learn? Perhaps. Will my most struggling students stop struggling? No, because that is the nature of learning. We all struggle. The struggle is the most important part of the experience because it reminds us that we are all more than our metrics. In a system that values the status quo, I’d rather value the messiness and complexity of teaching and learning; not the grade on the report card.
Have a great week!
— Adrian
Resources
The Problem with Grading | Harvard Graduate School of Education
If you are rethinking your grading practices, this article is a good place to start. I also recommend Jesse Stommel’s Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop.
I always love hearing students’ voices in conversations about schooling. Eva Ren does a wonderful job of explaining how grades have been used to measure a student’s potential for success instead of using grades as feedback on learning.
Where did grades even come from? I love PBS Digital Studios and often use their videos with my students. In this Origin of Everything episode, Danielle Bainbridge explains the history of grades from Yale President, Ezra Stiles in 1785, to today.
In her most recent episode, Sara Candela from The Optimalist interviews High School English teacher, Marcus Luther, about the metacognitive and reflective practices he uses with his students. I’ve incorporated many of Luther’s reflective practices in my own classroom.
Growth Mindset is Great But Children Need Affirmation | John Spencer
John Spencer explains the difference between having a growth and fixed mindset. What I love best about this post and video, is that Spencer includes a very important part of helping students develop a growth mindset: using affirmation to increase a students self-efficacy. Students need to believe they can do something and that requires affirmation from a trusted adult.
The Warm Demander: An Equity Approach | Matt Alexander | edutopia
Educational scholar Judith Kleinfeld coined the term warm demander in 1975 describing teachers who were effective with Alaska's Native American and Eskimo students. Since then, it has been used most frequently by author, Lisa Delpit. She describes warm demanders as teachers who expect a great deal of their students, convince them of their own brilliance, and help them to reach their potential in a disciplined and structured environment.
Here is great graphic by Teaching Channel describing the different types of teachers by using demandingness versus leniency on one axis, and warmth versus distance on the other axis.
It’s no secret that I admire Dr. Emdin’s philosophy of education and his pedagogical practice. I’ve worked to incorporate much of his scholarship into how I teach my fifth-graders. If you are looking to implement cogenerative dialogues, I highly recommend you read For White Folks. Here is a wonderful planning document and protocol that you can use in your practice tomorrow.
Simon Sinek has a way of explaining concepts that always leaves me feeling motivated and inspired. In this Big Change video, Sinek discusses his view of the future of teaching and learning and education.
Last year, I experimented with ungrading. This practice better aligns with my pedagogical values, and I have had a lot of success. There are a ton of great Substackers who have more expertise in ungrading at varying levels. Check out Emily Pitts Donahoe, Josh Eyler, andGrading for Growth.
In our school district, we use a standards-based grading system. A student’s achievement status is measured on a scale from 1 (Student is not yet or is minimally progressing toward grade level benchmarks for college and career readiness) to 4 (Student consistently and independently exceeds grade level benchmarks for college and career readiness with agility and adaptability). Many parents incorrectly equate a marking of 4 with an A, 3 with a B, etc).
Your decision to hold individual, student-led conferences—even if there are only 27 students—is a testament to your commitment https://googledoodlebaseball.io/. That dedicated time is essential to creating the kind of partnership you describe and to truly shift the focus from the “end product” to the learning process.
Thank you, Adrian, for sharing your insightful thoughts on student growth and success. Organizing student-led conferences truly creates a positive and supportive learning environment. To help students manage their time more effectively while preparing for their goals, I’d like to recommend a useful time calculator tool at https://timecalculators.io/ . This tool can assist them in calculating time and planning their learning activities. I look forward to hearing more about your experiences in the future!