My Favorite Thing: Talking to Students About Their Learning
I love seeing evidence of students' learning. There are many ways to observe it, especially from seeing the work they produce and listening to their conversations in class.
But one of my favorite things is to hear them talk about their learning. (I also love reading what they say about it.)
Since 2016 in every class, when I decided to give up conventional grading entirely, I've had five-minute meetings with every student. (Thank you again to Starr Sackstein for showing this practical solution to the problem of scale.) From 2016 to 2019 the meetings were in person. In 2020 they went remote. In 2021-22 I was so excited to be back in person; I brought snacks and made it an occasion. (All masks, all the time, still. I take Covid very seriously.)
In the latest version I allowed my 51 students (20 + 31) to choose their modality, after I surveyed them and they were split between preferring meeting in person or via Zoom. It seems mostly to have had to do with their proximity to my building, which is seen as on the edge of campus. There's no point in controlling things that don't have to be controlled. But no matter what the medium, I love it.
Written reflection students complete prior to conference
I show up curious about the students' experiences, asking what they learned, how they felt about their work, how I can help. The written document—a reflection that they complete ideally prior to our meeting—asks what they'll remember, what stood out, what new questions they have. I ask what work they're proud of, what has been challenging. (I also ask what grade they would give themselves, and on what basis, but that is the least interesting part. It's a global, holistic measure of learning.) Some are performing for me, conscious that they will, in the end, get a grade and I'll be the one ultimately determining it.
I love it when students tell me things like, "You said it would be really hard but I didn't think it would be this hard but it was actually really fun." That's about something called Conversation Analysis in my linguistic anthropology class. Or they say, "I can't stop looking at conversations and turntaking all the time around me, just like you said I would." Or they say, "I love this class and I love my team; we get along so well." Or they say, "I love the atmosphere in the class because I feel safe saying things." Or they say, "I really had no idea what this class was and now I see how it connects to everything else in school and out of school." Or they say, "I'm really enjoying learning for myself and not for the grade." Or I even like, or at least I'm glad, when they say, "I'm suffocating because I can't write papers for school," and we can work together to try to come up with a solution and the student cries with gratitude for not being forced to power through something that has clearly traumatized them for years. I love the honesty, even if it is a performance of honesty for me because there will still be a grade at the end. I love when we joke about things and I love that I am finally comfortable with all my students, even the ones who have been challenging for me, for reasons that may have only to do with me and not with them.
These meetings are exhausting and exhilarating. This year in particular it took me time to recover, although the year I did them fully virtually I couldn't turn my head for a week because I had been focused so intently on my screen for hours and hours in a row with no breaks. Now I schedule breaks.
Having two modes, sometimes alternating, took a little bit more time to switch between meetings (I left 1 minute between them), so I got a little bit more behind and didn't get to take advantage of the breaks because I had to use them to catch up. But it made sense to give people the choice. Each mode had advantages and disadvantages. Because I still insist on masks, in person we were comfortable and had all the bodily action, but with masks. On Zoom we could be unmasked and I could see their faces and their rooms which was really fun.
I hear them take a breath and tell me they've changed their mind about how the world works, about their perfectionism, their family's conversational styles and childrearing practices and cooking, the nature of college. They tell me they love their team, or that they had no idea that teaching was so hard (after they led a class session). I see their faces light up as they talk with pride about their Conversation Analysis—so hard, so time-consuming, so fun! I see pain, as they talk about their anxiety, or their need to get certain grades for their futures. I see a few, behind in things, admit that they have been paralyzed by perfectionism. I love watching them notice the applicability of semiotics in their lives. Some tell me that they've shared the class learning with parents, friends. In one class several students told me that their friends wanted to know, after every class, what we'd talked about. One told me that our class "doesn't feel like a class," but that despite the lack of pressure, feels challenged. "UnEssays don't feel like assignments." Students have reported that because the class is ungraded, they are not as stressed, and thus learned more.
Students mention things we did the first day of class, or a concept that has been resonating all semester (the idea of the WEIRD problem in psychology, in one class). They have learned cultural relativism from the Babies movie and from the book A World of Babies. They've asked questions about their own lives. They've written letters to their future selves.
I hear them bring prior teachers' judgment about their shyness and reticence to speak up in a big group; many "grade themselves down" for failing to participate. (I never told them to.) Some devalue their grade because one assignment was late. Most who don't give themselves an A say "there's room for improvement" or "it wasn't perfect." I try to warn them against perfectionism. I tell them that women and people of color often suggest lower grades (just as they may suggest lower salaries when getting a job). I keep a list of things that I'll bring into the second half of the semester.
In their written reflections—both those accompanying their work and the mid-semester and semester-final reflections—I hear about the things that they couldn't stop thinking about, about an exchange that was meaningful in class, about their relationships with their classmates, about their rekindling a love of learning that had pretty much been beaten out of them by prior schooling and the fixation on grades. (Some, not all.) I learn about all the ways their time is demanded and I get honest responses about not being able to put enough time into a certain topic. I learn about the factors shaping their choice to try a podcast, or a movie script, or why they decided to analyze two friends whose relationship feels uneven. I learn that they ran out of time and just did the first convenient thing. Some years I learn that they have made resolutions to eat differently, or talk differently. They look differently at linguistic variation, less in judgment and more in fascination.
I could go on. The conversations, spoken and written, that I have about my students' learning shows their awareness of how school works, or fails to work, for them. It shows in every single case without exception that they want to learn and to learn well, though sometimes factors prevent them from reaching this goal. They are self-aware and observant. They notice little things, and they are attentive to big structures. They welcome a chance to change their views of the world through all the dimensions of learning: experiential, from reading, from talking, from writing, from participating, from playing games, from generating questions. I'm often surprised by the things that they care about.
I understand that the scale of my teaching affords me the chance to have these meaningful conversations. Some faculty who practice ungrading make the conferences mandatory only for students in trouble and optional for others. I recognize that my decision to tire myself may not be possible for people with Long Covid, or for those teaching gigs at multiple institutions, or the many colleagues with huge classes, or those with care responsibilities.
But sometimes we also need to note what is going well, even if it isn't possible everywhere. The world of ought sometimes beckons to the world of is, and change toward practices that work requires a vision of what that would be.
So, my vision of what works, and of what should be, is consulting learners, in their full humanity (as much as they choose to share it), to learn about their learning and what it means in their lives. In the end, there's only learning and being. All the rest is only an approximation of what might help.
Susan D. Blum is a cultural, linguistic, and psychological anthropologist specializing in the study of China and the United States at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author or editor of nine books and dozens of articles. Her latest book, titled Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) was published in December 2020 by the West Virginia University Press. You can follow her on Twitter @SusanDebraBlum.