When our work produces less than desirable results, common sense tells us to find fault in others or even ourselves. This leads to frustration in our work. Using Profound Knowledge changes our point of view by looking at processes and systems producing the results. In this blog post, Shawna Queen shares her story of using Profound Knowledge to transform a process producing better learning experiences for her students and a new found joy in her work.

By Shawna Queen

The 4 questions every teacher should be able to answer:

What do we want our students to know? How will we know if they know it? What do we do with the ones who don’t? What do we do with the ones who do?



In theory, I had all bases covered. I was hitting all the check marks. I had a good relationship with my students, and my kids were learning. Sounds perfect. Except it wasn’t. I found myself becoming frustrated and discouraged, but couldn’t pinpoint why. The “aha” moment came when, after telling a young lady I needed her to redo a homework assignment, because I couldn’t read her work or find her answers, resulted in her having a panic attack. When we talked through it, she told me “I just don’t want this assignment to ruin my class rank.” I was stunned. I have had countless conversations with students saying they are more than a number and don’t stress over the grade. Their response was always “but that is how we are measured.” This young lady’s comment hit home. I realized that my classroom practices (instruct, practice, test, and reteach) did not reflect my words to my kids. Because of this, my students were memorizing and not learning. I was starting to dread going to school because it was stressful and I was resentful of the amount of time I was spending at home grading. I no longer enjoyed my job. It also bothered me that students just saw a grade. When they leave my class, I want them to be better at math. I want them to know how to keep pushing to improve, how to advocate for themselves, and how to learn. Frustrated, I went to my principal to vent. Like any good administrator he listened. Then said “Ok. Do something about it. Make a change and let me know.”

Conferencing

I knew a change was needed. I had permission to make adjustments to how I run my classroom. But how? I couldn’t just forgo grades completely, because, like it or not, they are a unit of measurement and colleges look at them. I also had this stubborn notion that when a student gets a grade, I want it to be an accurate reflection of what they know. At this point I started having conversations with kids about what they needed to learn the material, how to reduce the dreaded test anxiety, and how to take the emphasis off of the numerical grade. They admitted they memorized material in order to score well and would find themselves frustrated later in the year when they had to “re-memorize.” Several students suggested conferencing over the material for points back. At first I was resistant. I didn’t feel that just having a conversation was a justified way to raise grades. The old school teacher in me felt like the student needed to do some work and then show me they could do it correctly without my help. I shared this fear and they offered suggestions. After talking with several students, we agreed on the following process. Following an assessment, each student would be given an assignment based on what they missed. They would also be asked to do quiz corrections. Additionally, they scheduled a conference with me where we would look at the corrections, I would ask questions about their work, and they would have the opportunity to clarify any misunderstanding they had. They would have about a week to week and a half window to complete everything, and then they could receive half of their missed points back (yes, it’s a bribe, but I felt like both the students and myself were getting what we wanted). We decided to pilot it with my Calculus class for one grading cycle. I was excited but terrified at the same time. It turned out to be the best decision I could have made. My kids attitude changed. My attitude changed. My grading load decreased. Most importantly, my classroom became a place I wanted to be again.

As I described the process to my students they said they still felt like there was an underlying emphasis on grades. However, I believe a shift toward learning happened with the change in terminology.

Assessments Focused on Growth

My classroom no longer has quizzes and tests. We now have assessments (they can earn points back on all but the final assessment in a unit). When a student comes in saying they are nervous, my response is “it’s ok. This is just an assessment of what you know. When we see what is missing we will keep working on that.” Just that one little phrase reduced anxiety for most of my students. The next part was improvement points. I did want to make sure students were learning the material so all assessments became cumulative. If a student improved on material from assessment 1 to assessment 2, they received an improvement point in the grade book (basically an extra credit point). If a student made a 100 initially and maintained that grade as the material increased in difficulty, they also received an improvement point. This took the pressure off of my weaker kids by allowing them to focus on growth and reminded the stronger kids that even though they made a perfect score they could still grow.

About 60-70% of my students take advantage of this process, even though it is more work for them and conferencing has to be done outside of class. I found kids who had never come in to retest, coming in to talk to me. When I asked for feedback, I heard comments like

“I enjoy getting to ask exactly what I need.” “Its worth the time to talk to you because we are guaranteed to get points back. With re-quizzing we weren’t.” “I worry less about making mistakes this way.”



What I found interesting is that many students would conference without doing the assignments. These students never argued with me about not getting points. When I asked them why they continued with the conference, they told me, “we just like knowing so we can do better next time.”

Natural Differentiation

As I conferenced with students, differentiation began to occur naturally. My stronger students had the opportunity to have discussions about why processes worked, while my weaker students were able to focus on the step by step process. I also found it was easier for me to identify common misconceptions that I could then address to the class as a whole. And, as a bonus, it was nice to sit down individually with kids and just talk.

During the pilot period, there were some challenges that I had to work through.

Students would procrastinate and not conference until the last day. This was fixed with a sign up sheet and they had to approve the time with me before they signed up. That way I could control the number of kids at one time. An unexpected benefit here is many kids learned to be proactive! Students would try to conference before they had done the assignments. This was fixed by having students correct and practice before they could conference. Additionally, students could not have any missing homework (this was not required for students conferencing with no interest in regaining points). Students would try and fake their knowledge when we conferenced because they were at the deadline. This was rough for me. I had to learn to say, “I do not think you know this quite well enough yet. Let’s use today for learning and reschedule.” Every time it happened, the student would be in agreement.



All Students Need Support

I often hear the argument, “of course it works for you. You teach advanced students.” And while that is true, advanced students are still kids. They face challenges and obstacles to learning like any other kid in school. They need guidance in learning how to learn. They need support as they process and learn how to communicate what they are thinking. The focus on grades and class rank can be a barrier to learning for these students as well. This change in process moved the focus from grades to learning. It also provided more support for students as they process and practice communicating mathematically. After trying this method with my students, we moved the process into our Algebra 1 class consisting of the “Approaches” kids. This teacher found the same results and plans to implement the process with the entire Algebra 1 and 2 team this coming school year.

Will I continue this process? Absolutely. My students have asked me to. They say they feel more confident because they can talk through problems. They say they feel less anxious, because they know they can show growth over time. They say that by talking to me they have learned to talk math to their peers. By the end of the year I rarely heard “I received such and such grade” instead I heard “Ms. Queen…I got an improvement point!” That attitude is all I need to continue.

Shawna Queen is the Math Department Head at Leander High School in Leander, Texas. She also teaches AP Calculus and AP Statistics. You can follow her on Twitter @shawnaq.

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