You Don’t HAVE To Give an F if You Don’t Want To

By Bill PagecloseAuthor: Bill Page Name: Bill Page
Site: http://www.billpageteacher.com
About: About Bill Page ... Bill Page, a farm boy, graduated from a one-room school. He forged a career in the classroom teaching middle school “troublemakers.” For the past 26 years, in addition to his classroom duties, he has taught teachers across the nation to teach the lowest achieving students successfully with his proven premise, “Failure is the choice and fault of schools, not the students.” http://www.amazon.com/Risk-Students-Understanding-Accepting-Defensive/dp/0977386309 Bill Page is a classroom teacher. For 46 years, he has patrolled the halls, responded to the bells, and struggled with innovations. He has had his share of lunchroom duty, bus duty, and playground duty. For the past four years, Bill, who is now in his 50th year as a teacher, is also a full time writer. His book, At-Risk Students on Amazon.com and on Bill’s web site: http://www.billpageteacher.com In At-Risk Students, Page discusses problems facing failing students, “who can’t, don’t and won’t learn or cooperate.” “The solution,” he states, “is for teachers to recognize and accept student misbehavior as defense mechanisms used to hide embarrassment and incompetence, and to deal with causes rather than symptoms. By entering into a democratic, participatory relationship, where students assume responsibility for their own learning.” Through 30 vignettes, the book helps teachers see failing students through his eyes as a fellow teacher, whose classroom success with at-risk students made him a premier teacher-speaker in school districts across America.See Authors Posts (69)

www.At-RiskStudents.com

The greatest single deterrent to individualization is the grading system. Schools have generally been willing to provide for some student differences in the areas of materials, curriculum, differentiation, grouping, assignments and scheduling, but are reluctant to allow for differences in determining grades and reporting school progress to parents.

While reporting systems are likely to be mandated and standardized by the top level of a given school system, teachers control the testing procedures, the testing conditions, and personal decisions. It is the teacher who decides whether a percentage of the report card grade will be based on “class participation,” “a quarterly project,” “homework,” or “conduct.” The teacher has the power to affect report card grades by these kinds of decisions:

• This will not count on your grade.
• You can still make “that” up.
• I will extend the deadline until Friday.
• You may do it “this way” or “that way.”
• You may turn in an extra project to raise your grade.
• We will not count that test.
• With the bonus questions you can make more than 100 percent.
• Missing Assignments must be made up or cannot be made up.

Given that teachers always control most of the grading procedures it should then be possible in their own little closed-door classroom for a teacher, who so desires, to incorporate ideas that can reduce and even eliminate F’s on a report card. S/he can do this within the policy and constraints of even the most autocratic and rigid school system.

Some of the following suggestions would not be acceptable to many teachers, but flunking kids should not be acceptable to them either.