"Ungrading" means a lot more than just NOT grading

I've written before, agreeing with Jesse Stommel and others, that the term "ungrading" has in some ways become a barrier to doing the work it's meant to convey. In some cases it's been listed as  practice that is a checklist, divorced from the context and intent.

Ungrading to me is about creating the best environment for students to learn and this encompasses a lot of things not explicitly about a grade on an assignment. For me this is about not having an attendance policy so students can make their own, adult decisions about class, and not punishing them (especially during a pandemic, but all the time) for things beyond their control like family issues, illness, work hours, commute, no money for gas. For me it is about no deadlines, no penalty for late work, telling students I trust them to get the work in when they can, while explaining when and where deadlines can help, and what they can help with.  It also means building in space for students to share and present work in the way that works for them, whether that's an in-person conference or emailing work with a reflection.

It's about letting students revise work if they want to master a concept or fix something they missed, or revise something they felt rushed about but it also means telling them that it's fine if they don't, to prioritize other things, to choose not to. It's about scanning my notes and making them available to them, as well as hyperlinking all the resources I use on our live Google Doc syllabus. It's about building classes that I am transparent about why we're doing what we're doing, why I did things this way, and admitting when something isn't working and course correcting. It means letting students choose their own topics for assignments and projects. It means creating a space where they can work, ask questions, have time, reflect. 

It's about showing students from day one, with every part of my class, that I value them, the work they do, and the content we'll cover. It also means that I tell students why I don't use rubrics, why I care more about what they learn, the growth they make in class, not measuring every student against the same ruller when none of them come in with the same skills or interests. It means seeing my students as individuals. 

There are no gotchas in my class, I don't say one thing and do another. One of the first things my students do is annotate my Google Doc syllabus, make comments, ask questions. The course policies are clear and students say again and again that the syllabus/guidelines ensure they know exactly what the course is.

It means being very clear with my students about the long list of policing nonsense I just don't care about. For me it also means doing check ins with my students, seeing how they are, what they need help with, both in exit tickets and every 3-4 weeks in surveys.

When I talk to others about this I've encountered the same reaction. The first is, I never thought about how course policies and approaches do the work of ungrading. The second is usually a recognition that they're probably already doing a lot of this. This in turn usually turns into realizing that "ungrading" is not some huge monolith project that you either have to jump off a cliff for or not. Ungrading can start with class policies, conversations with students, and honestly, for those starting, this is my recommendation. Once you've established that environment and laid the groundwork, the other stuff is easier. You can start with one assignment. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can, and I encourage you to, tell students it's an experiment, you want to try X to address Y, come up with some goals together. I think a lot of the "proof is in the pudding" is in assignment design and student choice.

After this you can work ungrading into your classes in lots of smaller ways. Grade things as complete or incomplete, and emphasize feedback. Especially in online classes I always have a doc called "assignment starters" where I have general feedback for assignments- what I was looking for, what the assignment emphasized, common errors, then I can copy and paste this, then add specific feedback.

I teach mostly General Education classes of 20-35, online classes of 40. I've done all this at one point or another with them all. For the face to face classes one of the biggest things is making time for students to work in class. They have time to work, I walk around. I look at screens, correct if I see them applying something wrong, praise cool things, ask them how they are. I'm like a freaking shark circling my room, again, and again, and again. The whole 50 or 70 minutes. It's not excited. But it is good pedagogy. It means that students don't have to ask questions out loud to a whole class, they just have to wait for my circling to reach them. It means they get real comfortable real quick with showing me work, asking for feedback. Because they sit at conference tables, they learn to work with their seatmates, even if they weren't friends at the start of class, asking them to look at things, asking questions. For me this in class time is key because if they're working at home and need something, have questions, there's no help. I not only answer content questions but show them how to use computer tools, choose a program, take screenshots, hyperlink, find citation information. It's one-on-one time. It means that every student gets the help they need for where they are. Students listen to music, watch videos, whatever they like as they work as long as it's not disruptive to others. This means too that I have time to notice when students seem tired, not focused, and I can ask them how they are. Tell them to go home to sleep. It means putting students above the content.

This setup is also an accurate reflection of my class. I don't lecture much. I provide guidelines for assignments, the minimum requirements, but the rest is all them. Even for my themed classes, I tell them that just means that the models, the readings will be themed, they can choose whatever topic they want for their work. I tell them to choose something they'll be interested in, use programs they feel good about. Because I spend so much time walking around, listening and watching, I can see what students do, what one student went above and beyond on, what one struggled with but made real progress. The feedback they get, the encouragement, is then based on that. Each student on their own growth and learning.

Try grade conferencing where students present their work, reflect on the process, tell you what they learned and how it fits the genre, topic, guidelines. If you have course SLOs, talk with students about what each piece means, looks like, at the end of modules talk about what you all did that would be artifacts of that. Think about a final portfolio students build to all semester, a collection of assignments, artifacts, projects that show this.

Over the last six years I've done a bunch of different variations of "ungrading." Some things I keep like the surveys, check-ins, conferences. Some classes I've just done a final portfolio, students determine grade. Others I've done "practice" assignments as INC/COM with a focus on feedback, and bigger projects with grade conferencing. Online only classes tend to not do as well (based on emails, evals, surveys) with the just one portfolio at the end. Face to face classes go back and forth about grade based on fewer assignments, even if they're the ones determining/arguing/conferencing for the grade. Based on student input of changed back and forth during the pandemic based on what they tell me created stress or anxiety and what helped.

"Ungrading" isn't just not assigning grades. It is about designing your general class environment so the majority of students can succeed. It means building in space and time for students to learn that you do not control. It means trusting students to make their own decisions. It means creating policies that counter ableist, racist, classist structures. It means leaving your ego out of it. It means asking your students questions, listening to their answers, and creating space to make changes based on what they say. Ungrading is an approach to creating a more equitable learning environment, and that is a lot of things.

Instructional Environment *UPDATED*

In K-12 there is a lot of talk about the instructional environment, how a print rich environment helps students learn, the benefits of anchor charts. Part of this conversation is that students do better when there are supplies freely available, they don't have to beg for materials. Other research focuses on desk and table set up, separate library space, station rotations, groups, etc.

Yet these conversations disappear when we get to higher education. There is little to no talk about how the instructional environment affects college students, or how the issues of forgetting materials, needing materials, feeling comfortable in a space, affects how students learn. IF there are conversations about the environment of a college classroom it generally focuses on technology, how space-age a place looks, all glass and steel. Top of the line computers, projectors, the ability to stream.

College professors rarely have an assigned classroom and many don't figure classroom layout in their lessons. Some college classrooms have broken desks, decades old, totally inappropriate for holding a laptop, notebook, allowing a student to work. Some have longer tables, rolling chairs, better for working space but still often designed in rows. But our instructional space affects how students learn, we should consider it as we design lessons, consider how we teach. If we value students learning to work collaboratively, in pairs or groups, then our classroom set ups should be conducive to that. If we want to decenter ourselfs as "sage on the stage" and not focus on lecture then we should move our classroom furniture to reflect this.

This week I opened my Capstone class with a history of universities, education, as background for our class running as a seminar. I always like to show them the search results for "medieval classroom" as a way to show how a classroom's physical space can influence how a class runs, how students learn, what is valued, what the roles of teacher/professor and student are. In the same way I tell them that "The word university is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars."

Viewing the people as scholars and not students is not just a perspective shift but requires a shift in pedagogy.

I have always rearranged my college classrooms. I have "borrowed" conference tables and made them predominant in composition classrooms so students have room to work and spread out. I have organized them in seminar squares, facing each other, groups, as a way of reflecting how our class will run, the work we'll do. Even if/when I've been assigned classrooms with desks I've put them into groups, facing each other, a wide open space, conducive to students easily turning and talking and working together.

It makes a difference.

Considering the learning environment does not mean you create a Pinterest Classroom. Those images are about the teacher performing, they're almost never about what is best for the students.

This semester I am in a classroom by myself so I can arrange it how I want and "not piss off others by constantly moving furniture." I have taken full advantage of this opportunity and hope to be able to stay in this classroom. I have put pens, pencils, rulers, looseleaf, colored paper, glue sticks, scissors, markers, Post-Its on shelves in the classroom. 

During this first week of class, the first day, students used cardstock and markers to make name plates (and I always make one too) so I can learn their names and they can learn each others. I had students who didn't have masks, forgot their notebook, didn't have a pen, all of which I either handed them or walked over and told them supplies were on the shelves and they went and got and then got to work.

I have a large Post-It pad to make anchor charts I'm putting around the room. I have conference tables and rolling chairs. One of my classes is a horror themed composition, so all the tables do face front for movie watching, but the tables fit two and people work with who they sit with as well as people behind and in front of. 

For my seminar class I sit up front to lead discussion, and do my elaborate board notes.

For my composition class I do set up/set down my stuff on the front desk, but once class starts, students are working, reading, and I spend almost all of class walking around through the desks, seeing what they're doing, looking at the work, their computer screens. Walking around, circling like a shark some students have said, means that it's not a big deal for students to stop me to ask questions or have me look at something. It means if I see students on the wrong page, making a mistake, I can gently correct them. This is not about policing their screens, I don't do that and honestly it doesn't happen really in my classes. This is about seeing where they are.

This classroom layout is good for students to have space to work and good for me to walk around the room and be able to monitor. The easy access materials means that students aren't punished or belittled if they forgot something or aren't prepared, they just can go grab stuff. I learn their names the first couple of weeks. My classrooms always smell like the apple-cinnamon plug ins I have in my office and room. All of these things tell students what kind of class this is before I ever open my mouth, ever start talking about content. It means that my instructional spaces are comfortable spaces for students, places they can work, and learn, and ask questions.

I plan on buying corkboard strips to put up so I can display student work, anchor charts, resources. I made sure that the tables are spaced enough to be accessible. I took my drill in the other day to dismantle a broken desk that was in the back and put it out of the way. 

Each semester I spend as much time thinking about what the space will look like, how it will work as I do putting together my content. I really do hope I can stay in this classroom, build on what I have. I know a lot of professors aren't in the same room for all their classes. But they should be. They should be able to make classrooms their own, put up resources, be comfortable, set up their classrooms in a way that fits their teaching style AND in a way that supports their students learning styles. What if in addition to making sure classrooms had working technology we also made sure that they had working desks, comfortable chairs, materials/supplies, things that all contribute to the learning environment? What if "environment" was less about the fancy furniture that matched the new carpet and more about creating an environment that is what is best for the students?

It's impossible to talk about teaching/learning environment without also addressing the health environment. From what I've seen many K-12 and higher education doubled down and have not walked back the plexiglass screwed onto lecterns, the hygiene theatre, and have not made any changes or improvements to air filtration. Everyone has had two years to make big moves and few have. Schools and workplaces are still very much clinging to the decisions made the first few months of the pandemic. There are lots of reasons for this. That doesn't mean that the reasons are good. It does not seem like any of that is going to change any time soon. So many people are in a place of accept where we are, or do something about it.

As someone vaxxed and then boosted I felt comfortable wearing cloth masks the last two years in a county that spent most of that time with an under 5% positivity, and until Omicron, only saw a high og 16% positivity with holiday spikes, kids returning to school. I found that teaching all day the cloth masks were easiest. I don't wear a mask in my office, and that's just the risk math. I have to eat. I have to drink water, try and make up the dehydration I have from teaching and not removing my mask. I upgraded to KN-95s this semester.  But I still don't wear one in my office, for the same reasons. I do put one on if a student comes in. I do HATE the moist (and man do I hate THAT word) lower face at the end of the day, or after a three hour seminar, but it's a small price to pay for not killing people or getting them sick. I've told my seminar students that if/when test positivity goes down, we can have a conversation about whether people feel comfrotable being vaxxed/boosted, and spacing out for a mid-seminar snack. 5-8p is a weird time to not eat. I have some students in my 11-1220 class who can ask if they can eat for various issues, and I say yes to that too.

My work has been good about making sure all classrooms have packets of KN-95s, replaced when empty, as well as surgical masks, wipes for desks, sanitizer. About 60% of our students are vaccinated. They all wear masks in class, although how well the masks fit is a spectrum. As it has been for a while it is the combination of mitigation efforts. I still make sure I go to work, home, Guardian visits (although not the last month), weekly grocery shopping. I don't go anywhere else. I share these things with my students so they can make their own decisions, do their own risk math. These things are also part of our teaching/learning environment these days.

With Omicron, a state wide test positivity rate of 33%, a county rate of 25%, and having face to face classes, I prepared for the semester in other ways. After doing some research I spent the money on MERV-13 filters and with the two box fans I already owned I created Corsi-Rosenthal boxes.  K-12 teachers started using them out west to keep smoke out of classrooms. There are a lot of different versions. Some just put filters straight on a box fan, some create a triangle of filters on the back of the box fan, the most popular form seems to be what I did, and is shown below, a cardboard bottom, filters on the sides, then a box fan. Some show the box fan on the side, some on top. 

The filters are a bit pricey, roughly $60 for a pack of 4 (needed for one unit) but from what I've read are good for 3-6 months, a semester. I used the cardboard from the box the filters came in, and then duct tape to seal it all, put it together.

I also read that one is good, two is better, and if you have two, put them on a diagonal from each other, which I did.

I will be the first to admit that I don't really understand the numbers of particles per whatever. I have read that some scientists report an 85% reduction of Covid. All that I've read show a significant reduction. And that's good enough for me. It's another mitigation effort.

It took me about 20 minutes to do the first one, the second one went faster. It would have gone faster with two people, having someone else to hold stuff together while I taped would have been good.

I set the fans to a 2 setting (medium) since some of what I read said not to put them on high, it can place stress on the fan. Because one of the fans has the switch on the back, inside the filter box, so not accessible, I just plug them in before class and then unplug them after class. On Tuesday, Thursdays I teach 11-1220, 2-320, but get to campus around 10a, so go upstairs, plug in, then let them run until after class. On Wednesday I have office hours 3-5p so plug in when I get there, and unplug when seminar ends at 8p.

I've always worked hard on my classroom's environment. I think it matters, a lot. I think too especially with the pandemic continuing, trauma being cumulative, everyone being exhausted, anxious, stressed, that it matters even more. If unicorn pens, coloring with markers, a good smelling room, makes the space a little nicer, more comfortable, makes it a little easier, better, for students, than all for the good. It certainly can't hurt, and if nothing else provides a better, more supportive learning environment.

UPDATED

I realized first night of seminar that everyone was looking at me and it influenced the conversation.

So I moved things around to this. The interior square seats 16, my seminar is 12, my Comp classes are 20-25 this semester. It took some fiddling to make sure the outside square tables had enough space for me to walk, look at work, talk to students, but it's working well. I also put up cork strips for student work, and as the semester goes on you can see more anchor charts go up. Students have also asked for things, like a pencil sharpener, so I'm working on that.

The room is still a million degrees, but this set up works well.

The Student "Experience"

Those of us of a certain age can all remember professors who handed out a 2 page type written syllabus that was really just a list of readings for class dates. The same professors who showed up, lectured, left. Who you probably never saw outside of class unless you overcame your feel to attend office hours AND were able to find their office in a warren of buildings on campus. With only an office phone for contact. Even once professors started having email some refused to use it. Hell, I remember an older PhD student asking me a few years ago why they couldn't refuse to answer emails, that if their students wanted to speak to them they could come see them during office hours.

When I was in undergrad 25 years ago the norm was that most students attended school full time. Few worked, and the people who did have to work to stay in school were easily marked as lower class, often first generation. The experience and knowledge students had of college created a divide, between those that felt comfortable enough to ask for help, speak to professors, navigate a college world, and those who had no clue. Thinking back now, I think one of the reasons I ended up in theatre and not history was because in the theatre department the professors were "normal" folks, accessible, not pretentious, okay, well no more pretentious than other theatre people.

A lot gets made of the student "experience" these days whether it's coverage of a water park or redesigning library spaces there's been a focus on schools knowing, anticipating, catering to what students want form their student "experience." Most educators will point out that very little of what gets mentioned about the experience has to do with learning. These arguments have a lot in common with the more recent debates on who knows best about what gets taught and how. When I was a student I totally would have liked a non-closet dorm, a tricked out suite, although I never could have afforded it. I'm sure I would have loved a water park. Or a tricked out library that wasn't really a library. But none of these things would have given me a better education. They would not have taught me how to read and interact with texts. They would not have taught me how to evaluate information, or take a convincing stance, or write with clarity. 

There is a fine and often debated line about who gets to be the authority in a classroom. Students come into our classrooms with a variety of experiences, expertise, and knowledge that we, as professors, should make space for, acknowledge, and build on. We should also build our classrooms so our students have the space to choose topics that interest them, engage them, a place to explore and expand their interests. Where I always diverge from some education experts though is that while I believe in all that, and build my classes around these concepts, I am also an expert in my field, in teaching, in designing classes. This doesn't mean that I am the end all be all, but it does mean that my experience and knowledge makes me qualified to make pedagogical decisions about class design, class readings, to build a class that guides students to the above, to know the resources and readings that I can suggest to my students for further exploration. 

One thing that has long been known, but perhaps only recently revealed to the public at large, is how many students have not been successful, happy in current educational structures, specifically in K-12 institutions and how many of these students have thrived in the odd, awkward, pivots of the last couple of years. Children of Color, LGBTQIA children, neurodivergent children, have done better at home without judgment, bullying, racism, prejudice, from other students and teachers and administrations. These students are safer, less anxious, less stressed in these environments. It remains to be seen whether education at large will learn from these lessons, but sadly, it does not seem like they will based on the last couple of years.

Parents of these children have been told for years, decades, what is best for their children, often at the expense of their children, often in the service of a "canon" and an Anglo centered system. Schools do not listen to their communities, their stakeholders enough. Never have. The past few decades have seen community schools closed, changed, gentrified, neglected, and the communities have suffered. School systems would be better if they revitalized their community schools, listened to and worked with their communities, formed partnerships, hired local teachers, create conditions where they stayed, made lifelong contributions.

It's a both/and situation.

All of the above can be true AND we should all be terrified that ignorant, petty, racist, white supremacists, motivated, funded, and directed by larger groups, are storming school board meetings, banning books that feature and celebrate Children of Color, LGBTQIA, and neurodivergent children. That these hateful, ignorant people are enacting laws that punish, sometimes with legal action, teachers and professors who teach truth. People who hold workshops for students on how to entrap and record teachers and professors in order to get them fired at best and legally prosecuted and worst. It is a terrifying time to be an educator. There seems to be little concern for this growing wave of hate, ignorance, and what kind of "experience" this makes for our students.

There are lots of resources and pieces written about how this is a reflection of the neoliberal university, how education in the United States has been devalued and defunded for decades, how education is still very much a gendered professor, and its majority female workforce makes it easy to dismiss labor issues, and concerns.

All of this is the context for the world we inhabit, the world we're trying to teach in, the world our students are attending college in. 

Not all my students are first year students, but a lot of them are. Many of the students in my first year composition class are 18, 19. This means that until recently, they have never lived in a world without war. Never lived in a world that did not create politically convenient bogeymen, constructing entire religions as threats to personal safety. Their only memory of politics is one of extremes, starting with elections decided by the Supreme Court, built on politicians lying to enable their war mongering, doing what's right made into radicalism, standing up for principles labelled as fringe. Mediocrity presented as the only sensible compromise. They are a generation of No Child Left Behind. Taught to take tests, answer prompts, not used to being asked what they think and why. Not a digital generation, because that's garbage and too dependent on privilege and access but a generation impacted by how technology has forever twisted and altered how we perceive facts, access information, determine truth. 

They are a traumatized generation. Traumatized by the stress and anxiety of constant testing, yearly reports on how they measure up (or not), where attendance and seat time are privileged over mental and physical health. How county, city, state, benchmarks are prioritized over learning and growth. They are traumatized by decades of active shooter drills. They are traumatized by the day to day grind of wathcing the world burn and none of the individual people or institutions that they've been told work for their best interests doing a fucking thing about it. 

They are students who finished high school during hte pandemic, not served and often harmed by the educational and governmental systems that should have supported them, listened, softened the blows and impacts. They started their college careers in uncertainty- of loss, sickness, modality of learning, how people would judge them, support them, react. How they would cope. Not just unclear on whether and how they'll get through tomorrow but what the world even looks like tomorrow. 

We're still in the middle of cascading failures of every single institution that should have helped. Education. Government. Healthcare. Not a single one has helped up, done what they should have, made things better. Add the burning world and social injustices, the exposed rot, I don't know if students have anything to believe in. I worry that we collectively have broken any trust our students might have. Students have watched professors continue to punish them for absences, require copies of death certificates, dump more work on them, not listen, not explained. Decisions have been made based on profit not safety, and no one is fooled by the platitudes and statements of "we're all in this together" and "we're all family." 

In the middle of all of this I understand that the idea, the promise, that we can return to normal, is tempting, easier to believe, but it's a mirage. It's not based in reality. I would love to cram my students around circled seminar classes again. I would love to see my students' faces. I would love to throw out, or better yet, burn in effigy, every fucking mask I own. I would love to not be terrified every time I shop for groceries. I would love to stop thinking the majority of the population is evil because they refuse to mask, choose shopping at Target and going out to eat over people's lives. I would love the chance to stop, pause, rest, grieve, recover. Because people have chosen their selfish wants over collective good, because institutions have abdicated responsibility, and corporations have chosen profits over people, we're actually going backwards.

This winter cases are higher, test positivity rates are higher, than last year before the vaccine. Yet the mask mandates, the social distancing, the encouragement to stay home if you can, the financial help, eviction moritoriums, that helped some people get through that winter, are all gone. Things are WORSE and yet because people want to believe the fiction, want to not feel bad about doing what they want, want certain "experiences" they are unwilling to do what is best for the greater good. It's a selfishness and evil I don't know if I will ever recover from. And I don't know how our students will feel about these institutions and individuals that enabled all this, told them this, in the future. I don't know what effect this has on their voting, their involvement in their communities, their activism, their contributions to these systems. 

Even if the pandemic ended today, *poof* gone, there is so much loss, grief, death, debt, hurt, distrust, I don't know when or if we as a society ever recover.

So what is the student "experience" our students have to look forward to this semester in our classrooms? Will they be taught, or rather not taught, our racist, rotten history or will they be taught a literally whitewashed version? Will they be centered in practice, cared for, listened to, accommodated or will they be held to a set of standards that was cruel before the pandemic and exponentially so now? Will we make space for them to be human, build in grace into our classrooms for this humanity, or will we actively harm them in our quest to ignore reality and "return to normal."

I worry about the trauma that is being inflicted on our students from all sides, all institutions, with no respite, no break. I wonder how long they can take all of this before we're broken them beyond all repair. I wonder what our institutions that to a great extent depend on the belief in them, look like if everyone stops having any faith in them, contibuting to them, in large part because they believe they're putting in for the greater good.

What happens to these institutions, to education, to healthcare, when there is no one to work?

What "experiences" can we consciously build for our students? What do we value? How can we show it? At what point do we realize that our individual actions cannot overcome the institutional and structural failures? If we've already realized that what do we do with that knowledge? What is life like, our experiences when every awful thing circling us falls down on our heads at once, never ending, forever?

I remember in elementary and middle school thinking that the world was going end in the fiery mushroom cloud we kept seeing in movies. A brief, white flash and then done. We were still taught ridiculous versions of "duck and cover." Taught that hiding in gyms would somehow protect us. About as much as telling six year olds to grab textbooks as weapons to fight an active shooter. It turns out the apocalypse is the boiling frog. I just never thought we'd KNOW we were the boiling frog and not care.

I have no answers for these huge, almost inconceivable in scope, impossible to affect, problems. I keep coming back again and again to my classroom. It is all I can control, and even that only in limited ways. I can reflect, and read, and listen, and try to build an environment that does not actively harm my students. I can try to create a small pocket of an experience where they are cared for, supported, listened to. It's not enough. It cannot counter all the awful darknesses edging closer every day. And I don't have an answer for that. I've tried, as the pandemic has dragged on, as people have actively chosen not to care, to act, I've tried to rationalize, understand, think of things to do. I come back to Contact, as I often do when teaching, thinking about what I want education to be, know it could be, and is not. 

"Small moves, Ellie. Small moves."