This post is a modified excerpt of Chapter 9 from Jess' book Planning to Stay: Burnout, Demoralization, Exploitation, and How to Reclaim Self-Care, Your Classroom, and Your Life... Anyway
Educators Are Neural Engineers
Because you are reading this blog, I assume that you are already an excellent educator. I’m assuming this because you are trying to stay in the classroom so much that, even though you’re in pain, you are taking time to read this towards finding a solution.
For that same reason, I am also assuming that a component of your excellence is a commitment to perpetual reflection-driven improvement. Unfortunately, these assumptions don’t apply to all educators. Because of the way our profession has been systematically and intentionally devalued, educators are seen—and exist— on a spectrum:
Even as I write it, “glorified” doesn’t seem right. I can’t recall a single example of an educator bathed in glory. Perhaps I mean we are perceived as “salaried babysitters.” “Glorified” points to how our helper natures are preyed upon; we know we’re way more than babysitters, but rather than demand to be treated in accordance with our value, we allow the perspective to persist in exchange for empty rewards like “teacher appreciation week.”
Glorified babysitters need only to show up and ensure that no physical harm occurs while a kid’s primary caregiver is away. It’s precisely this educator-as-babysitter view that leads to phenomena like bullying parents and minimally accountable administrators. The glorified babysitter view neither expects nor supports excellence for students. This view lowers educators’ social status, justifying low pay and scripted curriculum mandates. This view drives burnout, demoralization, and exploitation (BD&E).
Sadly, teacher-as-glorified-babysitter is also affirmed by the teachers who behave as if babysitting accurately describes their role due to their own burnout, demoralization, and exploitation. Neural Engineers, on the other hand, understand that their task is to intentionally alter the shape and chemical makeup of their students’ brains in order to construct enduring learning to serve that student over a lifetime.
Teaching is engineering because we operate within a system driven by goals and limited by constraints in which we have agency to change conditions towards impacting outcomes based on our experience and expertise. I have been assuming, and will continue to assume, that you either already are or strive to be closer to the “neural engineer” side of the educator spectrum as we explore grading, assessment, and evaluation.
Wait—you thought this book was about preventing BD&E, not working harder, right? Yes. You’re right.
If we commit to our roles as neural engineers, working smarter instead of harder becomes a professional mandate instead of a way to “skip out” on what, it turns out, is a ton of ineffectual busywork commonly referred to as “grading.” Glorified babysitters grade out of habit, a perfunctory acknowledgement of student activity, and a felt sense of obligation to do something with the assignments students submit.
Neural engineers empower students to self-assess towards owning and investing in their own learning process. Neural engineers work smarter, not harder—and their students learn more. Meanwhile, neural engineers grade way, way, way less stuff.
This chapter is written for present-day educators serving in systems resistant to meaningful reform. There are many gorgeous, powerfully worthy visions of what teaching and learning could be if there was visionary administrative and structural support (for a shining example, check out Street Data).
This chapter, heck, this whole book, is written for the educator who doesn’t have a visionary administrator and who lacks structural support. This is for the educator who needs to function as they implement transformative ideas amidst a recalcitrant culture.
Learning Requires Cognitive Heavy Lifting
Basic learning science confirms that the one who is talking (or drawing, writing, or gesturing) is the one who is learning.
The one evaluating the learner is also learning.
When I collect and score a bunch of student work, I get to go through the process of evaluating how close a student was to the ideal answer I had envisioned. If it’s a well-designed assignment, I get to see where a student went wrong and what they need to do to course correct. I get to learn what unasked questions could have gotten them to the correct
answer sooner, what initial information could have more directly supported their learning adventure. I benefit from all of that. For that reason, I will always advocate that
you stay closely connected to student work.
And... if I'm the only one learning about what the student is learning, I'm not engineering maximum neural movement for the student. The student misses out.
Even when we don’t mean to, this teacher-as-grader approach to grading can confirm a student’s fixed mindset (you’re born with a set amount of “smarts,” it’s unchangeable,and showing struggle is admitting you’re dumb) vs. encouraging a growth mindset (intelligence is plastic; learning requires productive struggle).
Consider the way I used to "grade" lab reports; I'd spend hours writing evaluative comments, but because I presented them as static evaluative statements, I accidentally only demonstrated how wrong my students were rather than offering them concrete next steps towards understanding what they missed and how they could improve. I told them they were
wrong without offering a chance to get right.
Students deserve access to all of that great information we get
about their learning
when we grade their assignment.
Because they are students, and humans, they need to be supported to know how to use it and incentivized to care.
Self and Peer Evaluation: Improve Learning and Prevent BD&E
The surest way to engage students in self and peer evaluation is to build it into the structure of your class.
If you’re uncomfortable with this idea (anything from “they’ll cheat” to “they’ll just confirm each other’s wrong answers”), rest assured; you can address those problems. What’s more, you can trust that any time you trust your students to support each other in learning, even if they’re discussing something incorrectly, their likelihood of constructing enduring learning is actually improving.
For students to trust the room enough to evaluate themselves and each other, we have to incentivize honesty more than they’ve already been incentivized to seek points at all costs. For example, let’s take a quiz. If I just ask students to swap papers and grade each other as I read out answers, I’ve created a whole bunch of opportunities for bummer things to happen. Not only have I invited a power dynamic primed for bullying, I’ve incentivized
being right (instead of incentivizing courageous failure towards learning).
In the usual mark-your-answers-wrong-if-they’re-wrong-andlose- points-if-they’re-wrong approach, students can choose between being honest or earning points. And neither choice addresses learning.
If I want students to utilize feedback for enduring dendritic motion, I need to incentivize students to interpret and respond to feedback. Peer grading incentivizes learning when it emphasizes and rewards acknowledging and correcting our mistakes and misunderstandings.
For example, my classes utilized peer grading of quizzes (a classroom practice that I noted in my course disclosure and syllabus to manage parent expectations). Students had important roles as evaluators and feedback recipients. Both roles were explicitly acknowledged and reciprocal. Students would trade papers and put their own writing utensils under their seats. They’d use a class set of feedback pens (I liked purple) to mark their peers' papers; feedback pens were necessary for the first two or three rounds of peer grading, as students didn’t yet trust that they wouldn’t be penalized for wrong answers, and needed some evidence that this process was "official." Together as a class, we’d walk through the questions and review answers.
True, the feedback pens minimized cheating. The goal wasn’t so much to prevent cheating, however, but rather to offer behavioral support for students as they learned a new approach. At the top of their peer’s paper, they’d write “feedback from (their name).” The evaluating student marked the answers that required correction, then they’d return each other’s
quizzes.
Each student would then write a brief reflection about what they’d missed, why, and what they need to do to answer correctly, and then they’d put their own PROCESS grade at the top (ex: four questions missed, four reflection statements written = 100%). This is the grade that gets recorded. In this way, the benefit of cheating is minimized. This is particularly true if
your assignments relate to your assessment such that cheating on a quiz by saying you understood something that you didn’t understand reliably leads to a lower score on a final PRODUCT exam.
Did you catch the part where, because we took class time to evaluate an assignment together, I didn’t have to grade...anything???
Students engaged in the assignment as I would want any excellent, self-motivated, culturally savvy student to do, but I didn’t have to depend on any student’s pre-built sense of excellence, self-motivation, or cultural savviness to ensure that they did. Nor did I have to rely on them having these things outside of class, or the addition of a U.S.-educated, English-speaking parent around with enough free time to “help” with homework.
I am addressing opportunity gaps by ensuring that our time in class together is opportunity enough to excel. And I can enter the whole class as scoring 100%, flip through the pile
in approximately three minutes (for a class of 40), and adjust any grades that didn’t earn full credit. Maximum impact on student learning, minimum time I spend writing check marks and circling proportions at the tops of pages.
Want to know how many of those types of assignments I’ve found in the recycling bin? I’d be lying if I told you zero, but I can confidently say that it’s less than 2% (compared to the 80% that would wind up in the bin covered by my thoughtful pre-peer/self grading revolution).
More importantly, student outcomes improved I started sharing evaluative processes instead of martyring myself to grading. Because, as an educator, I wasn't a martyr, but rather a neural engineer.
For concrete exercises and strategies, see Planning to Stay: Burnout, Demoralization, Exploitation, and How to Reclaim Self-Care, Your Classroom, and Your Life... Anyway