As I gathered resources for the upcoming semester, I had to address everyone’s least-favorite aspect of the educational experience: assessment. My dislike of our methods of assessment is not even centered around the stresses that scores induce in students, parents, and teachers, especially near the end of an instructional term; my main source of discomfort sits in the inauthentic representation that scores or letter grades present about a student’s knowledge or skills. Reading through students’ work has always brought me pleasure; assigning them a grade or score after doing so brings me much less enjoyment, if any at all. While a host of other grading systems than the traditional system exist, a work-intensive method does exist for teachers to discuss the developments of our students, and an argument can be made that this narrative manner should be considered as a way of assessment. Teachers at all levels should advocate for a written description of the progress a student makes under their instruction because it will help others understand the knowledge, skills, and development that the student has made in the content matter better than other systems of assessment.
And a wide range of assessment methods already exist! From standards-based grading to pass/fail configurations to grading contracts between teachers and students, no shortage of alternative methods persist to shaken the hold of a traditional numerical system. One of the most enjoyable classes I had in my doctoral program—the same class that previous candidates had warned us about—was my Assessments class, where we explored so many competing methods for assessing our students based on their learning. The content of the class itself was not the difficult part; the flexibility required of ourselves as educators caused us to revise our own beliefs about assessing our students on a nearly weekly basis. So many times I heard classmates and myself say that we had taken part in systems of assessment because we thought they were best-practice, but we had never thought about the implications and biases some of those practices brought with them. One example of this constant reinterpretation of my classroom that sticks with me even now is some of Asao Inoue’s work on antiracist pedagogies, specifically concerning the use of rubrics, which may unfairly disadvantage students from certain populations in our classrooms. Because I had grown up in a time rampant with rubrics and indeed used many of them with my students, the thought had never occurred to me that someone might not understand what a rubric asks them to include in their work. Even when I risk sounding redundant, silly, or unintelligent, I make sure to explain the rubric as a tool for both me and them. As teachers we can only do better in our work when we know a problem exists with one of our policies, yet so many times we never come across chances to question whether what we are doing is the best opportunity to deepen the learning of our students. Cultivating a reflective ideology definitely helps but also continuing to grow in your content through learning—however that looks for you—and continuing to be a student for the rest of your life. Teachers sometimes forget what it was like for them to be a student, and remembering those experiences can help make a method for assessment that opens many more possibilities much more authentic for everyone involved. Even though I lack a great name for this proposed manner, the name narrative method should suffice for now.
What, exactly, does this narrative method entail? It could take several forms, but the first idea and simplest idea that entered my mind was a letter detailing the journey of the student in question. Those of us who students have asked to write letters of recommendation for them over the years might liken these end-of-the-year assessment letters to something like this, although the purpose for this type of letter would only need to be description instead of persuasion. We can even use the opportunity to tell a story about the student in question. These narrative letters would only need to be a page or a few pages to describe the student’s position at the beginning of the semester or school year, their arrangement at the end, and how they managed to conduct themselves from the first point to the second. Along the way the teacher might address things like attendance, attention to the content, what worked, what did not work, or the student’s growth as a person in the course as details that help to elaborate on their development. Whatever form this narrative takes, it gives the teacher an opportunity to tell the full story of a student’s growth instead of assigning a numerical value to something that should be intensely persona and understood equally personally. While understanding the process of learning can sometimes take someone down abstract avenues, in the end every student forms a unique relationship with their understanding of something new, just like we all view the relationships we form with people in different ways. We connect with our teachers in ways that mystify us, too, but our teachers are often some of the best people who can comment upon our learning even if we ourselves do not have the vocabulary to describe it.
Yet I already know one of the arguments staged against this type of assessing. Teachers are already overburdened in a hundred different ways, and they do not need the added stress of trying to compose a letter for each of the 150 students they have. Even if these letters could be written during the period of instruction itself so that they would not be such a burden at the end of a term, the connected concern is that someone wanting to comprehend a student’s aptitude at something would not want to have to read dozens of letters from past teachers in order to form that picture. Is there any better way, though, to form a complex understanding about someone?
Another concern might be biases teachers bring into assessment that sometimes influence the decisions they make, both in positive and negative ways. It would be harder for a teacher to sustain any such bias in a longer narrative unless the entire description is a lie. A reader could compare descriptions across a few letters in order to notice if information does not appear to align with other descriptions of the student’s educational journey. Since these letters would be written independently of each other, any such discrepancy would become obvious to even a less-than-careful reader. Teachers may also seek to be less punitive in their assessments of their students when they have to write about them so much, because even with the most challenging of students, everyone does something well and everyone accomplishes something with their time in school. Those sparks of positivity might be the only bright moments you see from some students, but they should still be included in your discussion of their learning as they are a part of their reality that you experienced.
Finally, I must recognize that not everyone is a writer. While I might find the task of writing letters describing what my students have learned both daunting and thrilling, I know that others would view the task as nothing short of torture. Teachers may fear their own writing will be judged by whoever reads the account of their time with the student, but the only information someone would or should be reading the letter for is the piece of an educational journey the student has been through. This fact does not soothe the tired hands that writing or typing all of these written records at the end of a busy instructional period, but the argument could again be made for teachers writing a letter or drafting a series of shorter writing pieces that they revisit throughout the term, updating as they see the need to do so.
Maybe I have not make a convincing argument for this type of assessment method, but that truth does not keep me from wishing that I could complete one of these narrative letters for each of the students that I will have this semester instead of the numerical necessity that current grades are. Sharing the stories of their learning has always been a priority instead of assigning them a value from which someone else derives meaning and importance. Both teaching and learning are conversations, even if we do not always see both parts of the dialogue. These written manifestations represent another salvo towards communicating something that letter grades or numbers cannot quite express. As a teacher I only try to make sure that by the end of however much time with me a student spends, they not only learn something but they also leave with some sort of accurate representation of that learning. We may be shackled with whatever system your place of instruction allows you to use, but I like to think we can start discussions for change as part of any professional obligations we have with our students. Even if we do not choose a new method as part of some of these talks, we can at least recognize the need for a new system as we seek ways to accurately portray the learning journeys our students have taken.
To all my teachers and learners—and everyone who considers themselves somewhere in-between—I hope you have started this semester strong after all the chaos that has swamped us!
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