Friday, December 2, 2011
Week 2 Reading Post- Hester Prynne and the Letter A
After reading the third chapter of the book The Art of Possibility by Ben and Roz Zander, I asked myself why do I give grades. Grades are a way to measure students and how you think they will do in future courses. However, they are also labels we place on people. Stop and think about it, what if we put an oreo package on a package of store brand cookies. How does our expectations change and will that pack of cookies live up to those expectations? Probably, if we didn't know about the earlier change.
What if students came into our classroom wearing the letter "A" on their chest, but not given the class roll? Our expectations would be great for the group. We would expect great in-depth conversations, well thought-out papers, splendid projects. After the first two weeks and all of our students are meeting the goal, then we are given our rolls. We see one Hester Prynne. Do we expect the same from this student or do we expect less from her since she was cast out of her former community after committing adultery with the pastor? The past didn't matter before given a roll, does really matter after the fact. By truly giving students an "A" as Zander suggests, we also help eliminate self-fulfilling prophecy by giving value to all students. It is truly an amazing concept to consider.
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Well summarized and explored. It is part of our intelligence to try to anticipate what's going to happen around us so that we're not caught unprepared. It's in our DNA and helped our ancestors not become some predator's lunch, but it doesn't generally serve us in the classroom when we are trying to build the potential in our students. It's too easy to diminish and assume the worse from "them," and too many teachers play that card because it's easier than holding out possibility and risk having things not turn out well.
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