I was nervous that going gradeless just wouldn’t work and I would have a revolt from the students and parents. None of these things happened. In fact, in all of my years of teaching, I don’t think that I have enjoyed myself more than this past year.

When each new assessor and every new rubric category introduces more discrepancies and more variance, what does a grade even mean anymore?

Alfie Kohn has suggested learning should be something teachers do WITH students rather than TO them. Strict deadlines and an expectation to complete our assignments is a doing TO education.

I made a simple but effective change to my explanation of the system: I started referring to these courses as averageless instead of gradeless.

By continually training our eyes on a horizon “beyond the walls of the school”—whether that be achievement, authentic audiences, the real world, the future, even buzz or fame—have we drained school of its meaning, turning it into a wind-swept platform where we do nothing but gaze into another world or brace ourselves for the inevitable?

We are famous, as educators, for asking others to take risks. Teachers do this to students, and administrators do it to teachers. We see risk taking as a key element of learning and growth. The problem is that we often assume that the conditions for risk are optimal.

While I had grown accustomed to standards-based grading in my old school, going gradeless was a split-second decision I made at the beginning of the school year, without really knowing what it meant. Luckily, the shoe fit.

The process of building a portfolio and reflecting on one’s work teaches students important metacognitive skills needed to improve self-regulation. The conference allows students to demonstrate their best work and participate in the evaluation process...

It’s generally assumed that we have to provide consistency for students so that everything is fair, and students are consistently evaluated with regard to their achievements, no matter what school they attend. The fact is that this is pretend. Consistency is illusory.

This little tweak has led to profound changes in the way I talk to students about their writing and the way they respond to my feedback.

Grades undergird nearly everything we do in education. By threatening late penalties and administering one-shot assessments, we focus our famously distracted students on the task at hand.

Finding ways to save time and practice self-care are important as we move away from grades. But community care is where we move beyond self-care into caring for each other.