Brace yourself. This is a long one.
I wanted, actually, to say in my title that Making Middle Grades Work is
“stupid,” but I thought that went a bit too far. And I’m sure you can Google it right now and
find countless reports of how great MMGW is, but I’m here to tell you that they
are wrong. Are there elements of MMGW
that are great? Sure. But as a whole, it’s a problematic model and
I’m writing this to talk about why.
In my last post, I mentioned my frustrations with the
tendency for blanket policies within the education world. While this is true for nearly everything (“all-call” emails reminding an entire
faculty about appropriate seasonal dress, hoping to reach one particular
offender, come to mind as one egregious example – and yes, this has happened
more than once at more than one school where I taught, believe it or not),
it is particularly true when someone in a position of authority happens upon a
technique a teacher has used successfully.
Call out the troops!
Mrs. Dayplanner teaches quadratics this way! We must all now use her method! Mr. Havenport
is doing this really great tool for discipline!
We must now all use his technique!
It’s awful, and it defeats the purpose. And there is no mention of the fact that neither of those methods might have worked with any of Mrs. Dayplanner's previous classes, and Mr. Havenport uses that technique with only half of his classes, and it's usually not his first choice.
If there is anything true in education (well, there’s a lot true in education, but this in particular),
it’s that we are constantly reminded to teach the individual students. We all
have individual people in our rooms, who all come from different home
experiences, with different stories and different environments making them into
exactly who they are as they sit in our classrooms. Differentiate, differentiate, differentiate,
is the battle cry. And then we’re given
blanket mandates that we must teach these lessons in these ways, marching in
lock-step, disregarding the specific and particular needs of the individual
people in our rooms.
Making Middle Grades Work is a giant example of this.
If you’re not familiar with MMGW, its essential tenet is
that you can not, and will not, allow students to fail. They can not, and will not, be allowed to
make choices to fail. They can’t “not
turn in” assignments; they can’t turn in poorly-done assignments. Or rather, they can, and the teacher will
give repeated opportunities to fix whatever is wrong and to complete whatever
is missing. Envision a teacher telling a
student who’s choosing to give up, “I won’t let you make this choice,” and
pushing them to succeed. This is a great
teacher, right? Now, turn the tables
just a bit. The teacher no longer has to
pull that student aside to say that or offer that assistance; it’s
mandated. There is no choice to be made.
Trouble is, students have a right to make a choice. More importantly, we have a duty as teachers
to let them exercise that right.
You read that right.
We have a duty as teachers to let our students choose to fail.
Now I know there are people who are thinking, with so many
kids already in so much trouble, can she really be sitting here telling me it’s
a teacher’s duty to let these kids choose to be unsuccessful?
Yes. I can, and I am.
Because here’s the problem:
Any good teacher already does these things for his or her students. Any good teacher already notices who is
giving up and who needs another shot, and who needs an exception made to allow
them to re-do poor assignments or turn in missing ones. Any good teacher already uses his or her
discretion and professional judgment based on infinitely many factors to do all
of these things, and more, for his or her students. I can’t tell you how many times I did it, or
how many times I saw it done. And it’s
not just for the students on the brink of failure: it’s also for students who need a nudge from
a B+ to an A-, or a C to a C+, or anything else. The key difference is that students used to
have to engage with that teacher or otherwise earn the opportunity.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
There are certainly bad teachers in the world. But let’s talk about the majority of
teachers, who are good, who entered teaching for all the right reasons, and
who, day in and day out, bust their tails to do the best they can. And yes, that’s most teachers.
Well, those good teachers already do what MMGW
mandates. They do it on their own
scales, in ways that fit their classrooms, their schools, their students, their
courses, their rubrics, and so forth.
Moreover, there are mechanisms in place to work around the teachers who
are not already doing this. For students
slipping by, there are guidance counselors and administrators who theoretically
pull grade reports; there are interventionists, and if it’s the student who
wants an opportunity but is up against an unreasonable teacher, there are
certainly appeals to the administration and higher. So in that sense, MMGW is not only
unnecessary, but it’s also redundant. A
good teacher already does it; a bad teacher can be overridden.
But we have MMGW, and so what happens? Students are not dumb; they understand how to
game this system within a few seconds of hearing it. “I can turn it in however late I want? And do it over ‘til I pass?” “You can’t fail me?”
And so, what used to be a teacher working individually with
students to help them succeed is now a blanket policy robbed of its
effectiveness. (“You will help your students succeed” is not what I mean. Of course that should be policy.) The teacher isn’t working with any student,
or making any special accommodation to help the student along to success. There
is no discretion to make different accommodations for different students based
on their unique circumstances. (And as an aside, I am adamantly opposed to
the “if I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone” nonsense. No, you don’t. You have to do it for everyone with this
exact set of circumstances in this exact situation. What is wrong with exercising discretion
these days, and making distinctions?
Again, a phenomenon of blanket-policy-thinking failing us.) The student feels no small victories along the
way, no reward for an unexpected opportunity to re-do the assignment. There is no personal sense of satisfaction or
accomplishment in bringing up a grade – because MMGW removes the ability for it
to feel in any way special. Now it’s mundane. Didn’t get a C? Do over.
And do over. And do over
again.
Think of being this struggling student. Wouldn’t it mean more to you if your teacher
noticed you, sought you ought, and made a gesture to help you? Isn’t it necessarily less meaningful when the
teacher does all of those same things as a matter of course and has no choice
but to do it?
That sounds terrible.
I sound as though I advocate telling teachers they don’t have to
care. That’s not the case at all. What I am trying to say is that by making all
of these accommodations entitlements, they lose their effectiveness because
students don’t feel any ownership of them, or any sense of having earned
them.
There is a lesson to be learned in failing, just as there is
a lesson to be learned in losing a game.
It’s a matter of learning how it feels and deciding if you want to be in
that position again, and then figuring out what to do to avoid it. These are important life lessons and
important life skills, and MMGW takes away the opportunity for students to authentically
learn them. There are consequences for
one’s actions (or inactions), and sometimes the consequences include failing an
assignment or a class, or losing a game. And where better to suffer these consequences
than a middle school, sheltered from the real world and long before high school
and all that “matters” academically for post-high-school plans?
So yes, it is our duty as teachers to let students learn
these lessons, in order to grow as people and to understand what it means to
take responsibility for oneself. By disallowing an opportunity to fail, we fail
our students – and society -- in a greater, more damaging way: we fail to teach the next generation that
there are consequences to one’s actions, and how to be responsible for one’s
choices.
Years ago, when I first started teaching, I had a colleague
who wanted to make every assignment he gave “extra credit.” He was frustrated by the phenomenon wherein
students will do more of, and a better job at, what they perceive to be a
reward compared to what they perceive to be the expectation. I can’t say it enough: MMGW takes this away; there are no
opportunities for teachers to say, “I know you can do better. I’m giving you an opportunity to do
better. Let’s fix this.” There is no extra credit. And thus, there is no reward. Worse, there is no opportunity for teachers
to take a moment to know a student and interact on a personal level: “ I want
you to succeed, and we are going to get you through this class because you are
going to redo this assignment.” Nope.
It’s mandated. Sure, a teacher can still
nurture and nudge, but the student had the same ability to turn in the
assignment repeatedly without that. It’s
not special, and that personal touch, and the significance of it, is forever
lost. Go a step further, and there’s not
even motivation to do the work to begin with.
The good kids will do it because “it’s what you do,” but there is a very
quick slippery slope until even the best kids will take advantage of the “no
deadline, no bad grades” policy.
MMGW is, quite simply, a mess.
If you give a kid $5 every time they come to your window,
and all they have to do is come to the window to get it, eventually they’ll
stop coming. It’s not special. It’s too easy. It is, in effect, rendered meaningless to get
that $5. And yet if one day you’re not
at the window to give out the $5, you’ve robbed the kid of what has become an
entitlement.
MMGW robs our kids of the opportunities to feel
special. To feel as though someone has
taken special note of them to give them an opportunity to succeed. It robs our teachers of autonomy. It takes the very students we’re most worried
about, who perhaps don’t have support at home or a sense of self-worth, students
who already think no one cares or thinks they’re special, and takes away one
last opportunity for teachers to help provide it. Don’t do well? A good teacher would likely let you try
again. And again. And again.
But more than likely, these extra chances would be under
pre-estsablished conditions, and with the teacher’s guidance, and the knowledge
that you were working as a team. MMGW
makes it a mandate, and conveys the message that there’s nothing special about
you or anyone else.
It’s not how the world works. Okay, who cares how the world works,
right? We’re here to teach our kids, but
also to coddle when they need coddling.
Good. Well, MMGW took
away the opportunity to coddle.
It teaches our kids that there’s no need to have a work
ethic, because you can do it over and over again whenever you finally feel like
doing it to begin with.
I can’t stand MMGW, because it takes what good teachers
already do, strips the acts of feeling personal or special, strips the teacher
of the authority to fix consequences, and steals from our students the
opportunity to learn about responsibility and life.
Are there modified versions of MMGW? Sure there are. Are there books out there that tout it as the
next greatest thing? Well of course
there are, silly. It “worked” somewhere,
so it must now be done everywhere!
I don’t believe in it.
I believe in giving autonomy to our teachers.
Because once again, what works for one won’t always work for
the many, and by forcing it on the many, we are forcing some classrooms to go
from effective to ineffective – not because they were struggling before, but
because someone decided we must all, once again, march in lockstep.
Here’s an idea for a blanket policy: get rid of MMGW. That
just might work.
