How are you students doing?

For context, like many schools, our district closed their doors in mid-March. The board, in conjunction with our local union, developed a grading policy based on two pillars. One, students should be held harmless. Admittedly, the board was very vague about what harmless meant. One interpretation of California education code means that the teacher can define harmless for their classroom. Two, grades for the fourth quarter/second semester were set at pass (P) and a no mark (NM). Neither grade affects a student’s GPA whereas an F would. I wrote this in response to some issues that arose at my school with assignments and grading.

tl;dr

I implore you to practice grace and restraint when thinking of assignments for students during this time. Please focus on the essentials with the understanding that not everything in your curriculum is essential. Also, for centuries, students have been ignoring curriculum and have survived.

Dear Colleagues,

Disclaimers: I am not speaking as a union representative. No one has put me up to this. This is wholly based on my beliefs and research as a mathematics educator. I’m not going to change everyone’s mind. I can show you an annotated bibliography of how hard it is to do that with teachers. There is a possibility some of you will think I am attacking you. I assure you I am not. I am trying to perturb your thinking and that perturbation causes stress. I hear in my head the counterarguments that some colleagues will make, and I am sympathetic, but I humbly suggest during this time, those arguments do not hold much sway.

Half of the respondents in a recent poll by NPR say they have been economically impacted by the pandemic. Our community is not immune. For those who like pictures, like me, here’s a graph of unemployment claims from today’s Washington Post. Please pay attention to the lower fifth of the graphic, comparing claims from 1970 through today.

And now the anecdotes. A good friend was furloughed by Gap until November. Two days ago, he learned that ⅔ of his team was let go. I have spoken with a parent who is trying to do her job from home while helping her child navigate their teachers’ overwhelming flood of assignments. Yesterday, I listened to my partner navigate a four-hour video call, take a ten-minute lunch, and navigate another four-hour call. I tried to imagine what it would be like if we had one child who needed help with schooling. I cannot imagine two or more children. Lastly, I had a conversation with a student where that student asked: “Do you believe that it is compulsory for mental health to be compromised at times in order to achieve higher levels of success?” (By the way, my answer is an emphatic “NO.”)

I ask you to take a moment of self-reflection and truly reflect with yourself if what you’ve assigned is essential. To steal a phrase from our special education colleagues, is what you’re doing free and appropriate? I have friends and relatives with children asking me why their teachers are asking students to purchase supplies. I tell them that I do not know. For my geometry class, it’s appropriate that I teach them right triangle trigonometry as best as I can. It’s not appropriate to require them to find string, a protractor, a straw, a weight, and a tape measure to make a clinometer. Nor is it essential, during this time, to teach them about the relationship of chords, secants, and tangents. I ask you to reexamine what you assigned and ask these questions.

Is your assignment appropriate? This answer is harder. How much time and effort do you think it will take? Does your student have easy access to materials? Do they now have the responsibility of watching younger siblings? Or older adults? Are you expecting parents to help your student? If so, consider that parents may be dealing with 8 hours of video calls, long hospital shifts, or sudden unemployment. Michael and I are grateful that, while our jobs have changed somewhat, we still have them. That’s not true of all the families in our community.

You might argue that no student has complained. They might have and you did not recognize it as a concern. Or they already know that you have the reputation of not listening to students at all and don’t make the effort because it didn’t work in the classroom, so why should it work now? Or they’re the student who’s willing to compromise their mental health because they would do that anyway. “But I have high standards,” you might say. Maybe. Have you asked a colleague to review your high standards? What about an administrator? How are you helping students reach these high standards now that their lives are possibly completely uprooted?

If there was any time in the last 50 years when letting go of some teacher beliefs was warranted, now is the time. I implore you, as a colleague, to examine what you’re doing and ask yourself if it’s appropriate. I implore you, as a colleague, to show amazing grace during this (and I hate this next word) unprecedented time. I am asking you to reconsider the NM you’re giving a student and have faith the student will do just as well the next year.

Again, this is my opinion, and if you’ve read this far, thank you. I ask you to be mindful of the “Reply All” function on email. If you would like to have a discussion, then we can create a google doc to continue. Counterarguments are always welcome. I would not be as good of a teacher as I am without them.

Sincerely,

Bob