Grade Me Not: Rubric for Love of Learning (LoL)

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Rubric for Love of Learning (LoL)

	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Exemplary 4	Score
Comprehension	Person shows little understanding of LoL	Person begins to understand LoL	Person understands LoL	Person deeply understands LoL
Enthusiasm and Commitment	- Person is learning to fake a smile for learning - At the thought of learning, person immediately has a headache	- Person is able to smile or fake some emotion for learning - Occasionally gets headaches but is committed	- Person feels vibrations in the body when learning - Practices enjoying learning and is committed	- Person is able to orgasm when learning - Person is deeply committed and thinks of learning with nothing but love
Spreading LoL	- Person, when able to learn, keeps LoL to themselves	- Person understands concept of sharing LoL but is not always able to do it	- Person shares LoL whenever possible	- Person goes out of their way to share and spread LoL - Person is likely a teacher

1 comment:

LarissaApril 17, 2014 at 6:58 AM
When expressing the negative impact of grading, I use the term "Love of Learning" a lot, so I wanted to break it down. I found it humorous to make a rubric of it, and thought this project had to go there. I had to apply what I don't understand to what I love.
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Abstract

At first, this project was about grades in general. As I started doing it, though, it became a research project-meets-memoir. I wanted to know the moment when grades started to feel wrong to me, when I registered the grading system as a disservice to my curiosity, and when I realized I had to be in the education system in order to change it.

I could have written more pieces, as a lot of memories and realizations surfaced, but I chose to keep it simple and with a few gaps. Grades left gaps in me, and my education often left me feeling like I couldn't voice my stories.

As one of my pieces tells, I was educated in a K-12 American School in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The school was called Graded, but as students we called it the "Bubble." It was an obscenely expensive school and housed the children of movie stars, presidents, and World Cup soccer players. Down the street from our palace of a campus was one of Sao Paulo's biggest slums, and as we drove home in our bulletproof cars, we were approached by starving children begging for money or, at times, angry teenagers with guns.

I never felt comfortable at Graded, and as I write this somewhat manifesto against the grading system, I realize it's rooted in my experiences there. I know other people have had different experiences, I know there are teachers who can make grades work to their students' benefit, and I know the kind of schools that would actually do away with grades would end up costing just as much as Graded.

I don't think that makes my story or my feelings any less real. I was a bright student with a lot of potential, and I was damaged by the grading system. As a teacher who believes education's primary responsibility is to instill curiosity, I feel I must share what I know, investigate what I feel, and question what we accept as just an aspect of teaching.

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As for how this is organized, it is designed as a blog since that's how I felt I could reach the most people should this become a manifesto one day. The posts are not in chronological order but rather in order of how they fit together in my mind.

Below each post is a comment I made explaining it. Click on comment to see the explanation. I recommend reading the entire blog first and then going back to read the comments.

Your comments are welcome here too. Please question and wonder. Share and come back.