Learning Together Conference 2017

Failure is a natural part of the learning process and a healthy classroom should have a lot of it.

How many communications have you received from parents and/or students in the past 48 hours? How many of those communications have focused purely on your content area and class objectives? How many of those communications have focused on dissatisfaction with GRADES? How often do you find yourself problem-solving the 9 weeks average with a student rather than the student's skill development?

I will present a theory that failure has become pathologized and that we sometimes add to the pathology, even while trying to assist struggling or frustrated students.

I will present an alternate model of what it means to be a successful student and share some strategies that I use to assess within my model while still working within a traditional 0-100 grading scale.