40
Spirituality
August 2015
www.GilbertSunNews.com
Drop grade system in schools BY TIM IHMS, FOUNDER, CHRIST OUR SAVIOUR ACADEMY
Spiritual Reflections Share your spiritual reflections The spiritual leaders of Gilbertarea churches, temples, mosques and other religious and spiritual gathering places are invited to contribute their Spiritual Reflections in essay format by sending their thoughts, enlightening insights and other writings of a spiritual nature to news@gilbertsunnews.com. Be certain to put “Spiritual Reflections submission” in the subject line. Include your first and last name, title and facility name, address, phone number and website. Spiritual Reflections are printed on a space-available basis, and submission does not guarantee print. The opinions represented in this column are those of the author and not that of the Gilbert Sun News.
The American Federation of Teachers reported in 1997 that a majority of teachers had promoted unprepared students in the previous year. Another pair of researchers (Jay Heubert and Robert Hauser) reported on their results of tracking 6- to 8-year-olds during the 1980s and 1990s. They found in their research that 31 percent of 12- to 14-year-old students were in the wrong grade for their age. Both of these research samples are meant highlight the problem of students moving from grade to grade before they are academically ready. If you look up “moving students from grade to grade” on Google, there really is not much there. Almost everything concerning grades refers to grading papers or skipping grades. There is really nothing about the practice of using grade placement as a management system. What is the purpose of having students placed in grades? My best guess for using the grade system is so students can be presented a hierarchy of skills and knowledge as they get older. Having students sharing the same age placed in a grade is the idea for each grade. Then the idea goes that the students will move along with the same skills to the next
grade. But very few students fit into this idea of one size fits all. All students enter school at different months of the 5-year-old spectrum. They all enter with varying degrees of experiences and skills already learned. Some have entered with varying ideas of whether school is an enjoyable place to be. A few are 6-years-old. On the first day of school, all students arrive as unique learning individuals. As students complete the first year, they all have different skill levels. The students may have been presented the same material, but it does not mean they all learned it. Larger class sizes of 24 to 30 mean those students who need extra attention academically or behaviorally will be pushed on to the next year with little to show for their first year, except knowing they are already behind. Many students will learn how to cope with large classes by ignoring the teacher when she talks, and just completing the work. Others will struggle. First grade advancement is hardly that. It is an advancement based on age, not on skills. This creates greater frustration, behavior problems and labeling.
None of this needs to happen. Drop the grade system of student management and base the student advancement on skills acquired, like we do at Christ Our Saviour Academy in Gilbert. All students at Christ Our Saviour Academy move onto new goals based on what was mastered the previous day. The teacher and student know exactly what skills are mastered because feedback is immediate each day. Teachers know where the student needs extra help because of that feedback. We do not look for students at Christ Our Saviour Academy to pass a class or earn a good grade. That is not the purpose of school. The school’s purpose is for our students to better their skills and understanding of the world around them. Reaching for high grades works against learning. It hinders progress and the desire to be in school. Students look forward to school at Christ Our Saviour Academy because they have clear goals and learn from teachers who care at a school where the focus is on the student, not on their grades or promotion. See more at: http://bit.ly/1K19Buk.
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