410. Why Grades Matter

What you can see above is a contextless image of part of my online gradebook. Even if you knew the kids in my classroom and the assignments correlated with these scores, the numbers are still relatively meaningless. I wrote a post more than six years ago about why I don't put students' grades on their writing. (You can click the word "post" above to read it, but please come back here once you've read that piece.)

I still believe that the students motivated by curiosity and the fun of connecting ideas will do better on their work, remember more of it in the long run, and enjoy their time more than kids with other motivations. When kids can find or make themselves interested in aspects of what we're teaching them, they get better grades. That's all still true.

That said, I recently had a conversation with a student that made me reassess my stance. He's from China, the first person in his family to get to come to an American boarding school. If all goes according to plan, he will be the first in his family to attend an American college, the first to have a white-collar job rather than an agricultural one. He feels a responsibility to earn the best grades he can, so he can attend the best university to make the most of this opportunity for himself and for his family. He said that every point matters since he's trying to distinguish himself from millions of other international students who'd like to follow the same path.

While I don't think scrounging for every point is the most fun way to go through life, I understand that he is in competition with many other students for a place at a top school. Is my belief that students should focus on enjoying the process rather than accumulating points naive, outdated, and privileged? I don't want to think that my only role in teaching is transactional, but is it? What do you think? Please share your responses in the comments.