Fun in the Classroom

Introduction

Homework and rigor chafe me like a pair of 40-grit sandpaper underwear. While homework has been around since I was in school it is now a conscript in the war on children. In response to a perceived everyone-gets-a-trophy culture the educational world has responded with rigor and grit. Terms that are better suited to describing corpses and crime dramas than education.

A few years ago I started referring to homework as homefun, but my resolve soon wilted in the face of the pervasive work worship of the American educational system. When our district was trying to adopt a learning management system, the administration kept touting the gamification aspects. I was intrigued. How could we make school more like a game? Unfortunately the instruction consisted mostly of the tech guy standing at the front of the room with a SmartBoard saying, “badges and leaderboards” on an infinite loop. The idea has also been the topic of breakout sessions at the Midwest Educational Technology Conference, but every time it was presented I kept hearing the same thing, and that was not how I viewed gaming or fun. My idea of fun involved solving puzzles, discovering treasure, and hiking to a mountain overlook. I decided to research gaming and see if there was a way to integrate their design framework into project based learning.

During my research I came across references to the fourteen types of fun and realized that on every curriculum document and lesson plan that I have ever read there was not a box for fun. There was a box for the alphanumeric stew of standards. There was a box for homework. And that is about as far as I got because I usually started to doze off. Inside every board game box, often printed on the underside of the lid is a set of instructions. Every game from Axis & Allies to Candyland have similar sections called the object, contents, setup, and gameplay all of which have obvious parallels to unit plans, so why are games fun and schools rigorous and gritty?

Methodology

One possible answer is that educators, students and the school system value different types of fun. In order to collect some data on this question I developed a ridiculously unscientific and informal survey in which I asked teachers and students to pick their top types of fun. Basically if science was health food, it would be a kale and quinoa salad and this survey would be a bowl of ice cream topped with Cap’n Crunch. I thought of the idea on the drive to work and without much forethought immediately sat down at my computer to create a Google Form full of typos to send out. It was sent to educators through all school email, Twitter, and Facebook. The student survey was given to my students in class who were offered extra credit to complete it (more on this later) and passed along by other educators. I did not collect email addresses or demographic data because I did not want to broach privacy concerns or make it difficult for people to answer. Again, this was not science and did not meet any standards of ethics for using human test subjects. I am working under the assumption that participants willingly took the right survey and only responded once. In total eighty-nine educators and ninety-four students responded.

Below is a list of the fourteen types of fun as described in the survey.

Fourteen Types of Fun

• Beauty - That which pleases the senses. You enjoy art galleries, scenic overlooks, concerts, and dining out.
• Immersion - You enjoy role playing or escapist literature. You like getting lost in another world.
• Intellectual Problem Solving - You enjoy finding solutions to challenging problems and situations that require thought.
• Competition - You enjoy proving your superiority in. It is good to be first.
• Social Interaction - You like doing things with other human beings. You like social media and hanging with friends.
• Comedy - You like to laugh. You enjoy stand-up comedy and funny movies.
• Thrill of Danger - Activities are inherently more fun if the stakes are high. You are an adrenaline junkie.
• Physical Activity - This is kind of self-explanatory. You like to play sports.
• Love - Deep meaningful relationships and affection towards others. Romantic.
• Creation - You like to make things, build things, write things, and paint things that have not existed before.
• Power - You enjoy have a strong effect on others. You are an influencer.
• Discovery - You enjoy finding out what wasn't know before. It can be exploring the physical world or uncovering secrets.
• Advancement and Completion - You like achieving levels and finishing tasks. You were an excellent scout earning many badges and ranks. Eventually you earned the top rank.
• Application of a Skill - Using one’s physical abilities in a difficult situation. You take pride in your skills such as hand eye coordination or reflexes.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/227531/fourteen_forms_of_fun.php

Predictions

My assumption going into this was that there would be a disparity in the types of fun that students and teachers reported liking. My students were quite adamant that I had no idea what fun was, and I assumed that this relationship was similar to what other teachers experienced. It also seemed intuitively obvious that the school system valued competition, advancement, and completion by awarding class rank, letters for athletics and extracurriculars, grades, and diplomas. It is my belief that emphasizing these types of fun over the twelve other types can have a negative impact on students’ and teachers’ enjoyment of education.



Table 1: My predictions of responses Predictions

Teachers	Students
Intellectual Problem Solving	Social Interaction
Creation	Competition
Discovery	Comedy
Advancement & Completion	Thrill of Danger
Beauty	Advancement and Completion

. Obviously, this reflects my bias about teachers and students. I invite you to make your own predictions prior to reading the results.

Results (Too late. If you didn’t make your own predictions it is too late now.)

Table 2

Educator (89)		Students (94)
Beauty	65.2	Comedy	71.9
Social Interaction	61.8	Creation	48.3
Comedy	57.3	Social Interaction	44.9
Love	42.7	Phys. Activity	43.8
Creation	40.4	Competition	40.4
Int. Problem Solving	37.1	Beauty	39
Discovery	36	Power	38.2
Immersion	34.8	Application of Skill	36
Phys. Activity	32.6	Discovery	36
Application of Skill	19.1	Love	32.6
Adv. Completion	18	Int. Problem Solving	31.5
Competition	14.6	Immersion	29.2
Thrill of Danger	12.4	Thrill of Danger	27
Power	8	Adv. Completion	21.3

Table 3: Similarity Score (smaller number = more similar. Positive numbers indicate a teacher preference; negative numbers indicate a student preference.)

Table 2

Type of Fun	Difference in percent
Power	-30.2
Beauty	26.2
Competition	-25.8
Application of Skill	16.9
Social Interaction	16.9
Comedy	-14.6
Thrill of Danger	-14.6
Phys. Activity	-11.2
Love	10.1
Creation	-7.9
Int. Problem Solving	5.6
Immersion	5.6
Adv. and Completion	-2.2
Discovery	---

Observations (or the point in the report when you say to yourself, “Does this guy have a life?”)

At first I was only looking for similarities in ranking and was surprised to find out that teachers and students share three of the top five; Social Interaction, Comedy, and Creation. They also share two of the bottom five; Advancement and Completion and Thrill of Danger.

I was going to compare relative rank to see which types of the fun show the most disparity between teachers and students, but then I noticed that the students were a more heterogeneous group. This makes sense because all students are required to go to school, but teachers are a self-selected group that would likely have similar characteristics, or as popular opinion would have it a group of those that “can’t.” With the exception of Comedy which is a clear favorite with 71.9% of the students choosing it, all of the types of fun fell between 21% and 48 % selection showing a fairly even distribution amongst students. Teachers show a steep decline after Physical Activity which was chosen by 32% of the teachers. Next on the list was Application of Skill at 19%.

Comparing percentages between students and teachers, Discovery shows the most similarity with both groups coming in at 36%. The biggest disparity is in the realm of Competition with 40% percent student approval and only 15% of the teachers expressing an affinity for competing.

What I find most interesting is that Advancement and Completion were ranked near the bottom for both groups with only about one out of every five participants selecting it as part of their top five. Yet the school system is entirely constructed on advancement and completion. Students literally collect credits like on an old school upright Pac Man machine at Aladdin's Castle in the mall in order to complete a level and power up. After completing the twelfth level, education designers create a secret leaderboard and anoint the top point earner the valedictorian. We might as well give the kids a trackball and have them enter their monogram for posterity. Any student earning a perfect score is enshrined as an educational deity to whom all other students are compared. There is an obvious disconnect between education design and human concepts of fun.

Conclusions (The part most of you skipped to after looking at the tables)

Schools and education have not been designed by students and teachers. Somehow the one-fifth of the population that ranks Advancement and Completion as one of their favorites has taken over the system. Perhaps one reason is because this is one of the easiest types to quantify. Subjective data driven design for Love, Discovery, or Comedy is virtually impossible unless you install arcade style love testers and laugh-o-meters in the classroom. We often describe students who enjoy the hard to measure qualities as being intrinsically motivated and we consider this somehow better than the other types.

There is room for all types of fun in the classroom. It seems as if almost everyone values so called intrinsic motivation while at the same time demanding numbers to justify pedagogical choices. We should compromise and make room in our planning to consider how fun factors into our design. Obviously, given the heterogeneity of the student population we cannot please all of the students all of the time. One hundred percent engagement is a mythological beast worshipped by a small cult of wide-eyed sycophants intent on punishing non-believers, but we should analyze our own view of fun and recognize that it does not always match our audience’s expectations.

For example, it seems that most teachers, including myself, are not fans of competition. This may be because we are a bunch of nerds that were emotionally scarred by a particularly bruising bout of dodgeball, but the fact remains that students value it significantly more. We should examine our preconceived notions of the harm it might do the losers. Recently, while having a discussion with students about how to improve my lessons, a student suggested using Kahoot. I was familiar with the word from different conferences but mostly as something that I dismissed as too juvenile to use with my students. Many of the students agreed that Kahoot would be a great idea. I even asked my son, a sophomore at another school, and he said that his Spanish teachers use it. I went to the website and analyzed it in terms of the types of fun.

It is a quiz site with no more capabilities than Google Forms or Quizlet, but it does appeal to at least four types of fun. First of all it has colors and music which appeals to the students desire for beauty (This of course is in the eye of the beholder). It also incorporates a thrill of danger by having a time limit for answers, and the competitive aspect of a leader board allows students to rank themselves with their peers. Finally, it includes the application of skill and the minimal physical activity of tapping a button on their device as quickly as possible. The challenge for teachers is how to use Kahoot in way that actually promotes higher order thinking and not just recall.

I attempted to create a “serious” game for my mythology unit. One of the highlights of this school year was when I beta tested this text-based game I made about Joseph Campbell’s heroic cycle (Here is a link). Students that had not engaged in the texts, Gilgamesh and Star Wars, excitedly leapt from their chairs to make decisions about which characters to “speak to” and what objects to “pick up” for their inventory. I had assumed that the students would not be interested and offered it as an one day extra credit opportunity, I was surprised when they came back two days later asking if we were going to keep playing.

Fun is not a cure all. Those students asking to keep playing the game did not go home that night and login. They didn’t all of a sudden develop the chimeric love of learning we so desperately desire. Obviously teachers can’t be expected to be game designers or required to use websites like Kahoot. We can start to question the role that fun plays in our lessons and incorporate elements of the game design framework into our own plans. How can we structure our lessons so that students can gracefully fail? Can we effectively balance difficulty and win conditions? Can we incorporate other types of fun that cushion the blow of failure and encourage repetitive play? I don’t know all of the answers, but I am going to have fun trying.

Works Cite (Where I don’t use MLA or APA because it is fascist pitfall meant to check a box on a scoring guide.)

Heeter, Carrie & Chunhui, Kaitlan & , Chu & Maniar, Apar & Winn, Brian & Mishra, Punya & Egidio, Rhonda & Portwood-Stacer, Laura. (2004). Comparing 14 Plus 2 Forms of Fun in Commercial Versus Educational Space Exploration Digital Games. (Download the PDF here)

Matching Computer Game Genres to Educational Outcomes

MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek

The Design, Play, and Experience Framework Brian M. Winn

Mitgutsch, Konstantin & Alvarado, Narda. (2012). Purposeful by design?: A serious game design assessment framework. Foundations of Digital Games 2012, FDG 2012 - Conference Program. 12. 10.1145/2282338.2282364. (Download the PDF here)

Foundations of Game-Based Learning Jan L. Plass CREATE Lab New York University Bruce D. Homer Program in Educational Psychology The Graduate Center, City University of New York Charles K. Kinzer Department of Computing, Communication and Technology in Education Teachers College, Columbia University

Fourteen Types of Fun by Pierre-Alexandre Garneau [Design]

Rules for Axis and Allies

Rules for Candy Land

Something for Nothing

Yesterday I was talking to my students about taking pride in their work. As we were going over a quiz some the students claimed that others had cheated off of them and received a higher score. From personal experience I know that strategic cheating can lead to just such an occurrence, but it is rare. In fact, I take a certain amount of pride in being able to game the system. It is my Kobyashi Moru. However, since I teach sweathogs my references to James Kirk settled into a holding pattern just above their heads and the conversation quickly devolved into students complaining about grades. Somehow we got to the point where students just wanted grades handed to them.

I have succeeded where Kirstie Alley has failed.

Two things we can learn from this picture. 1. All of my cultural touchstones are  at least 20 years old. 2. Gabe Kaplan could rock the stache. 

I facetiously agreed with them and asked each student what grade they wanted. Most of them of course chose an "A". One of the more criminally minded student asked for a "C" because it was more believable. Only one student gave the answer right when she said that she didn't want to play my game. The answer I really wanted to hear was, "I want the grade that I earned."

Since I did not get that answer, it was time to break out the sports analogies. One of the students played football so I asked if he would take credit for stats that were not his. He responded with a rambling amorphously mumbled, "maybe," that stunned me into silence. I couldn't believe that students are okay with, and even take pride in, numbers that don't truly represent them. They were equally stunned that I would not take advantage of false statistics.

In order to prove their point they hauled out the steamer-trunk of improbable hypotheticals and a boat-load of cliches. "If you think about it, it would be like if somebody just came up to you and handed you $1000, you know what I'm saying?"

I conceded that if the financial incentive was large enough I might understand some claiming numbers that aren't theirs, but no such financial incentive exists when it comes to high school grades. Perhaps if there was a scholarship on the line or you were 1/1000th of a  point behind the valedictorian, I could understand a little scheming.

You know when I was talking about scheming students, this was the picture you had in mind you racist.

Enough of my students were familiar with golf that I was able analogize the heck out this agrument. In golf you keep your own score, and unless there is a large financial reward at the end of the tournament, I could not think of a decent reason to alter my score. The modest increase in respect from my fellow players would be squashed by the amount of respect I lose for myself.

I hope that beer is worth it Tim.

So when politicians and society create high-stakes tests and try to motivate students with high paying J-O-Bs all it does is create a damp dark fecund environment for the fungus of fraud. If a society wants highly educated students, then we should stop incentivizing the masquerade, and if students want respect from teachers and employers, they have to respect themselves enough to not participate in these self-delusions of grandeur.

My Life With the Turtles

My wife and I have been fighting about the best way to educate our son. In Kindergarten he came home with less than stellar grades in reading. We have since decided that the teacher did not clearly communicate her expectations to our son or us. We also realized that she probably doesn’t know how to teach. Until these recent revelations, the conversation around the dinner table had been getting rather tense.

In this corner we have a verbal sparing champion and eventual victor, my wife. In the other corner, weighing in at a mere twelve pounds, we have the eternally defeated, me.

“We need to get him caught up to the rest of the class. I don’t care if we have to drill every word with a flash card,” my wife said.

“But . . .” I weakly countered.

“But nothing. This is not acceptable. He has to give the teachers what they want.”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t that I had given up, though I kind of did, but I had finally realized why I opposed academic capitulation. Unlike most of my physical scars, I actively strive to hide my emotional ones. Throughout my educational career, I have had to constantly prove to others that I am an above average reader and writer. In math I was a prodigy, but it bored me to death. With writing I was able to express my bizarre thoughts, lame jokes and insightful wisdom, but these gifts are always under appreciated.

This resentment buried deep inside was rising to the surface again, and if I didn’t learn to confront my issues with literacy, it would eventually affect my son.

I became intensely aware of my issues in the second grade when I was placed in the turtle group. In order to understand the turtle group you must know that the other groups were named eagle, cheetah, gazelle, stallion and porpoise. Not really, but you get the idea. I could tell by looking at the slack jaws and lazy eyes that it was the wrong group. I don’t remember exactly how I got out of that group, but I eventually did. I vaguely recall directing my fellow turtles in a ridiculously elaborate dramatic interpretation of a story in which we had to play elves, trees, and some distant cousin of Little Red Riding Hood. We spent weeks designing scenery (cutting trees out of butcher paper) and rehearsing (me yelling at the turtle to hurry up and finish cutting the butcher paper). I don’t know if it was the play that did it or U.N. sanctions against my dictatorial treatment of the turtles, but I was moved up not long after. It would not be the last time that I would be relegated to turtle status.

The slow and steady tortoises crept up on me again in the fourth grade. I am competitive by nature, so when the teachers devised a monthly reading contest, I was determined to win. For several months I would consistently come in second. The winners were invariably girls, and each month it was a different one. I began suspecting that they all belonged to the same reading coven and had conspired to have each member win an award. I also became convinced that they were doing so by reading the easiest books possible. While I was reading intricate mysteries involving Encyclopedia Brown and the Three Investigators, these girls were delving into the adventures of Smurfett and the Smurfiest Smurf.

I had my fill by February. The night before that months deadline I pulled every Mickey Mouse (I mean that literally) Golden Book that I could find. I had already padded my stats by reading a twenty-five page book about each of the fifty states. I also read the entire natural disaster series: Tornadoes, Floods, Earthquakes, Fires, Hurricanes and Tsunamis (I’m pretty sure they were called tidal waves back then). In all I read nearly eighty books in one month. At the time I thought I was cheating, but since I still remember the books and now consider myself an expert on useless geography and climatic catastrophes, I guess it was worth it.

So, I was back in the lead. However, as is probably obvious by now, I had a little attitude whenever anyone questioned me and would suffer from bouts of anger whenever I was not entirely successful at writing essays, answering questions or hitting a baseball. Luckily for adult me this is no longer a problem since I no longer fail, but unfortunately for my son, it must have been a trait encoded in my DNA. And unfortunately for my wife, I am reliving my tragic literary career through him.

As my fellow scholars and I matriculated to the seventh grade, a clerical error most likely perpetrated by a former turtle resulted in my name being left off the list of those recommended for honors English. At least I hope it was a clerical error and not based on the fact that I was a regular visitor to the principal’s office because of my penchant for adversarial and defiant behavior when it came to teacher regulations. Whatever the case, I immediately embarked on a “shock and awe” campaign to topple the dictators that so cruelly imprisoned me in a regular English class. By the end of the semester I had a solid A that demanded their immediate attention, and in January I was back with the intellectual elite where I stayed until the end of my junior year.

For five years I soared with the eagles, leapt with the porpoises, sprinted with the cheetahs, glided with the gazelles, galloped with the stallions and left the turtles behind. My talents, or at least my test scores, indicated that I was more inclined to success in math and science, but I was doing well all around. That was until a bout of hormones awakened the defiant snapping turtle that had lain relatively dormant all those years. The teachers weren’t the ones that held me back. It was the menagerie. Apparently, there was a jungle animal council in which they all got together (Except for the porpoises who lost a contentious motion to meet under the sea) and decided that my latent turtle ways were holding them back.

Mrs. Dunnington, my English teacher and role model for most of what I do now in the classroom, called me in and delivered the speech. In it she told me that she was sorry, but she had to ask me to leave the class. At that time testosterone was doing most of my thinking, so I was able to see this as a badge of honor. In retrospect and in light of my son’s struggles, I now wish that I had been more diligent in my efforts to remain in the class.

I have been carrying around this bitterness for quite some time, and now that my son is in school, it has come to the surface like a wart on a toad. The arguments that I have with my wife are projections of the dinner table conversations that I had with my mother. Both of them implore me to look at the situation logically. My mother would constantly tell me to give the teachers what they want, and my wife says that Evan needs to do the same, or he too may be placed in a terrarium with other turtles.

Absolutely Flipping Brilliant

Today, a 55 degree afternoon (it's relevant trust me), I went to pick up my son from school. I was stopped by the teacher.

She said, " I just wanted to let you know that on days when it is cold if Evan doesn't have a coat I won't be able to let him go outside. He (my son) says that on some days you are just walking from the car." (This is a blatant lie since we walk to school.)

"Oh I'm sorry. I usually let him decide," I replied.

"But you're the parent," she stabbed.

At this point I had to suppress the gamma radiation that was boiling in my blood. I try to reserve that stuff for lifting cars off of people and pounding through walls of burning buildings.

She continued, "With the flu we are trying to keep the children healthy."

"Okay, I'll put it in his backpack," I said ending the conversation.

I knew that I was dealing with someone who most likely believed in witchcraft and easily confused co-occurrence with causation. I'm sure she has already blamed the neighbor lady for the death of her goats and the fact that her DVR didn't record last weeks episode of House. I mean she did give her the stink-eye last week.

Keeping my son inside would actually increase his likelihood of contract a viral infection. Flu season begins in the fall because we all are inside more often and in contact with infected individuals. Outdoors is the least likely place to get sick. That is not entirely true. A clean room at the CDC may be safer. So would a bubble suit like the one John Travolta wore.

Can I go outside now?

I also take exception to the "you're the parent" comment. Apparently as the parent I should impose some sort of draconian coat wearing regime. It gets worse. She went on to say, "I can't let him out if I wouldn't let my own children go out."

You may spot the logical fallacy. First she states that I am the parent and then supersedes the authority that she gave me. Apparently she is the parent.

Fear over Free

I just read a sentence in the prologue of Free The Future Of A Radical Price by Chris Anderson that made me angry. Of course I'm not angry about things that are free. Hell this blog is free. I am angry about the same thing that always gets my dander up. (My dander has been down lately.) Education.

The sentence in question describes the web as "the greatest accumulation of human knowledge, experience, and expression the world has ever seen." I agree it is. And the wonderful thing about it is that so much of it is free. So riddle me this. Why would cash starved schools decide that they should not take full advantage of its wonders.

Answer, schools are afraid. Fear trumps free every time. Even in districts that are relatively lax in their internet policing fear of social networking, fear of predators, fear of cyberbullies, and a dash of ignorance leads to some of the most useful tools of the web being blocked from student access.

Sites such as Blogger, YouTube, Goodreads, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and about anything else that might lead to productivity have a various times been blocked in my district. For the most part we will let students access knowledge, unless of course it is a video, or happens to be on a Facebook page, or is a tweet, or a game.

That is the good news. The bad news is that they can not "experience" or "express" much. We are much to worried about getting sued and not about teaching.

Damn it Jim, I'm a teacher not a record keeper.

So I figured out why I don't like data driven decisions. Actually it is not the data, the driving, or the decisions that bother me. I hate the collecting and recording. Whenever you deal with data you have to get it first. If I was any good at this, then I would have been a researcher. I am good at teaching.

I enjoy baseball stats, but if I had to wade through the piles of data created every game, I would go insane. I let the statisticians and sabermatricians compile all of that for me. Then I make a decision about who should be on my fantasy team. If we are going to do this then districts should hire researchers and statisticians instead of conscripting TEACHERS to do it.

I was recently written up because I failed to record a reason for each and every D and F. I honestly believed that the ones that I left blank was because I didn't have adequate data to determine a cause. Perhaps if I had a research assistant I would have been better able to fulfill this duty.

Oh well!

DDD - Data Driven Decisions

I love science. I know that science is often counter-intuitive. But I can't shake the feeling in my gut (and my gut knows) that the current obsession over data driven decisions is ludicrous. Other than the alliterative value the data driving my decisions seems intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

The data seems to be nothing more than elaborately ornate and shiny ass-shielding. Certain aspects of science are just given. For example, "shit falls." For a deeper understanding of the universe an Einsteinian understanding may be necessary, but for the rest of us a nice little Newtonian concept such as "shit falls" is perfectly acceptable.

When I spill coffee on my new pants on the way to work, I really don't care that gravity is actually a curvature in space. I don't need to perform a pre-assessment to find out the proper speed I need to drive in order to not spill a half full cup of java. I just scream, "SON OF A BITCH" and hit the nearest Quik-Trip for a refill.

In the same way I can read any students essay and be able to tell you what I need to teach. Is it because I have the Newtonian laws etched into my brain. Probably. I don't, however, have to quantify what is obvious. I dropped out of Physics for this very reason.

I am not a detail person. I see the big picture. If other people what to collect and analyze data, then I would be more than happy to read it. I don't want to conduct experiments on my students. If you are ever surprised by what the kids can and can't do, then you are not paying attention.

I am probably now considered the education equivalent of a creationist, but all of this data just seems too much like work.

Damning Evidence #6

Whenever I assign research papers I expecte a little cheating and inadvertent plagiarism, but the following case is particularly interesting. Now to fully appreciate this you must understand that I am teaching in a high school in St. Louis, MO, U.S.A.

A student was writing about the use of new technology in the game of football. I was suspicous that he hadn't written parts of it but was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until I came across this sentence: "People feel as though they are playing the same game as the blokes they see on the TV."

The student didn't even know that the paper he had copied was about soccer and not American football as he had intended. The truly damning evidence however comes when I confronted the student and he adamantly denied that he had cheated even after I showed him and the rest of the class the page on the SmartBoard.

School is Left in the Dark Ages

State evaluators were shocked last week when they visited a school that was literally in the dark ages.

Last Thursday, as part of the states accreditation process, a team of educators visited North Hamptonshire Elementary. After they scurried over a rickety bridge spanning what can only be described as a moat state officials were greeted by Dr. Cooper, principal and industrial arts teacher.

“I was surprised by the roughness of his hands,” stated head evaluator Janet Crandle, “but he explained that he had just been making barrels with his students when a page told him that we were here.”

As is the case in schools around Missouri officials were given open access to all of the classrooms and facilities. Schools are rated in several areas including teacher preparation, technology, physical facilities, and curricular materials.

“I immediately asked about the textbooks, and I was told that the school scribe had only finished copying approximately 50% of the books needed. The science department was still waiting on the delivery of the Alchemy text,” said Crandle.

“In one classroom there was only one working candle even though the school employs its own chandler,” exclaimed Robert Early, another state evaluator. “Even if the students had books they would not be able to see them.”

“I am very proud of how we have integrated technology into the curriculum,” said Cooper. “Mary Lynn has most of the students proficient in using the Astrolabe, and we just got a shipment of compasses so I imagine that students will start exploring on their own fairly soon.”

Officials state that North Hamptonshire Elementary will likely be closed within a week over concerns about The Plague and alarmingly high levels of lead found in blood samples from students in the Alchemy class.

Cooper responded disappointedly, “In our day we were the premier school in the area, but budget cuts and No Serf Left Behind cripple our ability to be innovative.”

Unfortunately for students North Hamptonshires’s “day” was over 600 years ago.

Steep Grade: Use Caution

As I have written before I am already concerned that "high standards" will initiate an avalanche of homework to coming pouring down on my son. Since he frequently trips over imaginary objects on the sidewalk, performs dance routines that make Elaine Benes look like Josephine Baker, and thinks that his zombie-robot impression is the funniest thing in the world, the chances of him avoiding a snowball let alone an avalanche seems highly unlikely. Besides, the teacher or principal that shouted "high standards" and caused the cavalcade of monotony should be to blame.

Now it seems that there is an even larger disaster perched on the 4th grade horizon. I just attended an informational meeting for my sons first year of kindergarten. Luckily, there does not seem to be a grading scale for students in grades K-3, but in the fourth grade it lunges at the children with the ferocity of a rabid tiger with a borderline personality that woke up on the wrong side of the bed and didn't eat a well balanced breakfast. The scale is rife with lunacy, but suffice it to say that a 69% is an F. If the weatherman told you that there was a 69% chance for rain, would you take an umbrella? Though you would question his adamant refusal to round numbers, you would most definitely take the umbrella. If you had a 69% chance of winning at a casino, wouldn't you empty the bank account and wager it all on red 29. (This may not be the best comparison. I have to admit, I don't know craps.) If the doctor told you that there was a 69% chance of you dying from complications during surgery, wouldn't you call your lawyer to make sure that the will you made during the unfortunate "drinking period" didn't bequeath your life savings to a cat that died fifteen years ago? Perhaps, but only if nobody more significant had surfaced in intervening time.

So I guess what I am saying is that a 69% should be passing. Anything over 60% should be passing. Arbitrarily raising the grading scale will have absolutely no effect on student performance. It is like a high jumper flopping a foot over the bar and expecting to get credit for it. Changing the metric after the event alters the reality. Proponents will say that a scoring guide given before the event will encourage the students to work harder. That is like saying that our high jumper will only put forth the minimum amount of effort to clear the bar, and hence the higher bar will create a higher jump. This type of reasoning seems to denigrate our students.

Teacher: You are obviously lazy and have no internal sense of motivation therefore I will create a ridiculous standard to measure your grade and provide the motivation you so desperately need.

Student: Gee you're right I feel like working now. Your oppressive demeanor and lack of respect for me seems to have done the trick.

We as parents and educators should have high standards for our children, but those standards should be exemplified by the rigor of the assignments not the lunacy of the grading scale. Expect students to know more and they will. So, set the bar for the high jumper, chant his name as he is about to attempt the jump, cheer him as he clears the hurdle, or slow clap as he stands to do it again, but don't move the bar up and down while he is in the middle of an Olympic competition.

I would like to add that since most teachers are compassionate people and 4th-graders are cuter than puppies wearing tutus, students' grades will be adjusted to fit the scale. In effect this actually lowers the standards. Either teachers will create assignments that the students will be successful on, or the grades will be adjusted through extra credit and magic.

The district that I work in just adjusted the grading scale. A 64% was the cut-off for a D. We lowered it to the traditional 60%. As far as I know there has not been a drastic reduction in standards as many had predicted. Everything is as it should be.

And finally, because you can never have too many analogies I would like to point out that claiming students at a certain school are better than others because of the grading scale is like saying the employees at Wal-Mart are better than those at Target because of the pay scale.

Summer School

Tomorrow we start blogging. I am going to try to do the assignments in the 9th grade writing book. At the end of each section they give a journal idea. I will use these as the prompts for the blogs. In addition I will also assign writing about the Lit. and some reflections on the learning going on in the class