My Journey Towards "Ungrading"

 I stopped being able to grade students this fall. The realization fell upon me quickly, like a cardinal alighting upon October snow: a flash of red, a surprise. 

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It happened while typing out the class syllabus— a strange classroom genre— which coolly spells out all the ways that we can fail students. We teachers, encouraged to evaluate the people we learn alongside, often come up with complicated formulas for grading, thinking/hoping/believing that the more complex, the more capable they are of being fair?

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I looked down at my emerging grading scheme, which had grown into a cacophony of frantic notes, contingencies, and question marks: 

Grading
10% participation should I decrease this, given that there’s a pandemic, that this summer has been inherently traumatic for people of color?. Maybe 5%? Should I take off points for lateness? How? It doesn’t seem fair to grade on attendance, but I always have...I could take away two grade points for every class someone misses, but give two free passes? How does that work?

20% assignments what is included under this category? All work, including class work? Should it be graded simply for completion?

20% quizzes/tests is it necessary to give actual quizzes and tests in a writing class? Isn’t this needlessly stressful?

????

????

I stopped when the percentages added up to 50%, finding myself unable to finish what I had started, feeling like 50% felt somehow like what I was operating at myself these days. There was an ongoing global pandemic and what we may come to acknowledge as the largest mass movement in American history simmering in the streets and inside of ourselves. I deleted the entire grading scheme and closed my computer. And I knew that I had reached a place of meeting my own softness, which  was not some flimsy membrane, but an embrace to stop hard, unthinking things from getting past; that soft place I met was the firm kind of hug that only certain people know how to give, when bodies actually stop and meet, like an entirely different language in a world populated by the fluttery, everyday hug which leaves its participants with just a memory of closeness. I met that soft place that I have talked and written about for years but rarely met: this firm, gentle swollen landscape, like the bouncy marshlands across which I used to leap like some wayward gazelle in Northern Minnesota. 

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And though I realized this in one red- instant, of course it didn’t come from nowhere, just like the cardinal itself, who is red from the berries it eats, who stays north to meet the winter. 

Not from nowhere. 

Remembering, of course, those days in late May and early June: the way the helicopter thrumming scraped like rough sand and the acrid, hopeful taste of the air; the fear; and my body as a tenderly mortal vessel. During those weeks, I was taking a graduate course online that had an open and spacious writing assignment with flexible deadlines; I came home from marching in the streets and typed out luscious run-ons about the connections I was finding between the murder of George Floyd and the way that white teachers like me teach writing: the enclosures of prisons and cages in our classrooms, the way that we limit, truncate, and demand some stripped and neutralized version of students and ourselves. The way we control bodies and movement; how we police learning. Another white face doling out rules and dogma. I wrote those weeks, like some careening thing on fire, the sentences coming like the recoil from a gun, an engine backfiring, a city teetering on the edge of freedom.

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We emerged in late summer, and still we emerge. Emerge, not arrive, because still, we move and come into view, still we become known, we start to know. And, our heartbeats having slowed down as the autumn whispers quieter things to us, we still feel that early summer, we feel the whole summer inside of us. Unpeeled, we are the naked flesh of oranges. We are soft and filled with a different kind of knowledge. 

And this summer wasn’t new, of course. But for many of us white people, we are feeling new in the world. Our gaze settles upon all the old things: a syllabus, a grading policy, a hospital, front-line workers, a prison, a police car, and our vision blurs, we see double, triple, we see many things we haven’t before. It is this place of softness that met me, as I sat in my hard chair planning out the details around how to evaluate and rank the students I work with; students who have largely migrated under difficult and dangerous circumstances to a new country, who live in brown and black skin every day, whose teachers are white, whose teachers are white, whose white teachers wield complex and unyielding formulas for new trauma. 

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The world was opening in grief, and so were we, finding the softness that had been hidden before, finding more reasons not to return to normal, re-membering that we have been lost to each other. Arundhati Roy called the coronavirus pandemic a portal, a way to imagine and move beyond; what else could we call this new, tender place we found ourselves in but an opening to a new way of being with each other? I let the softness hold me, knowing that when I did move, we would move together, even through uncertainty, even through not knowing.

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There has been talk about how characteristics of White Supremacy Culture have seeped into, and to a certain extent, defined workplaces. I believe it’s harder to identify these in human services fields, where generally kind people work to ‘help’ others, whether through teaching, social work, non-profits, etc. I work as a white woman in a field dominated by white women teaching immigrants, refugees, and people of color. We may see ourselves as doing good, compassionate work, and because the field is largely feminized, the work may feel soft, forgiving, and human (another issue!). But, I’ve come to see the sharp edges, the unthinking pushing, the dotted outlines we follow that draw and invite all the old violent systems into our classrooms. 

In a year characterized by acts of overt and covert white supremacy that in many ways is the logical continuation of the decades and centuries of white supremacy (notwithstanding emancipation, civil rights, Barack Obama), it’s no longer really even a possibility for white teachers like me to ignore reality, the reality that has largely been hidden or erased for those with the choice to look away. 

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So, I follow the lead of generations of others, because there were (and are) fantastic antiracist white people who have always done the work, entering these social movements that were breathed into life and being from the spirit, work, and love of generations of black, brown, and indigenous people. We can start where we are. We can look, really look, at the classes we teach and the documents that we use. We can learn to identify the sentences that come not from ourselves but from the violent culture humming in the background. We can live in reality and actively practice antiracist principles. 

Asao Inoue, and others, have clearly drawn the connections between White language supremacy and traditional grading systems. In a recent key note address, Inoue explains, “Again, let me compassionately urge you to sit in discomfort: If you use a single standard to grade your students’ languaging, you engage in racism. You actively promote White language supremacy, which is the handmaiden to White bias in the world, the kind that kills Black men on the streets by the hands of the police through profiling and good ol’ fashion prejudice.” 

As a fellow writing teacher in higher ed, his perspective is even more relevant for my context. I draw deeply from his wisdom, words, and critique of how teachers continue systems of violence and power in our classrooms. I also draw from the work of Tema Okun and others who have taken the time to lay out what makes White Supremacy Culture a culture. We can use their identified characteristics as a sort of un-map; a set of directions that we can only unfollow once we know the destination. We can walk the other way, put down our batons, and pick up bouquets of wildflowers. 

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White Supremacy Culture has been defined with the following characteristics: Perfectionism, urgency, quantity (over quality), defensiveness, worship of the written word, only one right way, paternalism, either/or thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, progress is bigger/more, objectivity, and right to comfort. This assemblage of white swords keeps workplaces tense, stressful, and violent; it keeps classrooms guarded, punitive, and closed off to dialogue. And, lest we forget, whiteness is good for no one; white supremacy has less obviously damaged and limited the humanity of white people, keeping us locked into behavior patterns that are psychologically and spiritually damaging and that harm our relationships with people of all races. Even as a white person, I can only benefit from unfollowing these mandates, in and out of the classroom. Below, I take from Tema Okun and others’ antidotes given for each characteristic, thinking specifically of teaching and grading. 

Perfectionism: Recognize that mistakes are a sign of learning and can lead to positive work. Separate the person from the mistake. Consider the subjectivity of ‘perfection.’ 

Urgency: Give less work; take away urgency by being realistic in what you assign. Make more spacious (or optional!) deadlines. Learning doesn’t happen under stress and pressure. 

 Quantity (over quality): Emphasize process over product. For example: the creativity and strategy of a students’ writing process over how long their final written product is.

Defensiveness: See the link between defensiveness and fear of losing power/privilege/comfort as a teacher. You don’t need to have all the answers. 

Worship of the written word: Erase the academic binary between written communication and other modes (visual, audio, gestural, etc). Make time for talking in class, especially in writing classes. Recognize that writing emerges from conversation. Prioritize and honor multimedia/multimodal ways of composing. 

Only one right way: Notice and acknowledge the different routes that students take to complete their work. It’s all valid. Understand that you don’t know the best or only way to learn or teach. 

Paternalism: Give away power in the classroom and be clear about what power you still do have, so that it’s visible. Involve students in all points of decision making. 

Either/or thinking: Slow down, give breathing room, avoid doling out extreme pressure to students or to yourself. Binaries thrive off of urgency and constriction. There’s room for it all in your classroom. 

Power hoarding: Include power sharing as a core tenet in your classroom and syllabus. Understand that challenges to your leadership can really only be a good thing. 

Fear of open conflict: Don’t police how students raise issues or concerns. Any way that they raise a concern is valid and brave. Once conflict is resolved, debrief and allow for reflection. 

Individualism: Include group work and projects. Learning isn’t a solo journey. 

I’m the only one: Work with other teachers and with your students; don’t see yourself as a lone ‘hero’ or victim in your work. Make it a collective struggle. Solidarity can inform your teaching, research, and how you are in the outside world. 

Progress is bigger/more: Take a long view of what education and learning actually means in someone’s life (and in your life!). Make assignments be lower-stakes and involve more openness and creativity. Don’t simply give harder and longer assignments unless you have a very good reason. Emphasize practice over perfection. 

Objectivity: Acknowledge that I am influenced by my worldview. Assume that everyone has a valid point and that it’s my job to understand what that point is. 

Right to comfort: See that discomfort is at the root of growth and learning, for students and for teachers. Don’t take everything personally. 

Adapted from : https://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/White_Supremacy_Culture_Okun.pdf 

To actively unfollow this map of White Supremacy involves a deliberate turning towards compassionate policies and teaching. It involves rooting out all manifestations of this illness from how we teach. For me, the most obvious place to start was with how I evaluate students. I knew I needed to immediately stop ranking students. I knew that the absolute hardest (and most tedious) part of my job has always been assigning points, percentages, and grades. It has always felt fraught, arbitrary and outrageously complicated. This summer, I did research on alternatives to grading (often called “ungrading.” See a great bibliography here). Turns out, like most things in life, alternatives are multifarious, encompassing ideas and strategies that range from more to less structured. If you are the kind of person who finds solace in spreadsheets and formulas, there are options for you. You can also simply choose to stop grading and see what happens as things unfold, an approach which itself actively unfollows many of the characteristics of White Supremacy. As the type of person who wanted to get further away from formulas yet provide myself with a sort of ‘scaffold’ this first time, I ended up trying out “Labor-based” grading, which has been written about and practiced by many, including Peter Elbow and Asao Inoue, etc. 

One alternative of “Ungrading”: Labor-Based Contracts

Labor-based grading assigns all students a default grade (usually a “B”), which they can then maintain by completing all course work. This system works well for contexts in which grades are required at the end of the term or year. Student work is evaluated solely through effort as required in classwork; in short, they follow a ‘contract’ that requires a certain amount of labor from them for their work. Did the student complete the assignment fully, following the instructions? In this question, we ask not about quality (a squishy idea, that!), but whether more objective, stated requirements were followed, such as page length, amount of sources, etc. Some teachers may also keep track of whether assignments are turned in on time, but I find that by shifting to labor-based contracts, this becomes less of an issue anyway. What really becomes important is the learning. By using such a system, my attention is allowed to move to providing thoughtful feedback on work rather than going through the complex process of assigning grades. Feedback and the learning cycle take center stage when using labor-based grading; evaluation shifts from being punitive to being constructive and dialogic. Students have unlimited attempts to revise their work and are encouraged, rather than penalized, for doing so. In such a way, perfectionism is unfollowed. Because students know that they won’t be graded for ‘quality’ and ‘perfection,’ there is more space for them to be creative and to experiment. Writing classes can be about writing, imagining, creating, experimenting, discovering, rather than following a formula. Although I had tried to create such a playful, creative atmosphere in previous classes, because my grading system maintained all the old hierarchies and pressures, students didn’t actually feel free or even encouraged to take risks with their work. If our evaluation philosophies don’t match the rest of our teaching, then we need to thoughtfully align the two. 

A really illuminating chapter by Inoue about what this can look like can be found here. Labor-based grading is, in itself, a diverse approach. Some instructors lay out expectations for how to receive certain grades, like this teacher. Others follow Inoue’s more detailed and structured system, including the grading components chart, like this teacher. In this first semester of experimentation, I used a highly simplified version of Inoue’s system, starting all students off at a “B.” Although I have created a multi-page and thorough grading contract (based off of Inoue’s), I created the following graphics to provide a visual way for both my students and I to start to understand what it means and why we were trying it. 

    Because I found that I needed a really simple system to keep track of students’ contracts AND a way to see class progress of individual assignments (have students submitted it? If necessary, did they revise it?), I rely on two documents to do all my grading. I no longer use the LMS grading systems at all. There are exactly 0 formulas. 

The first document is individual to the student and shows me where the student is at in their contract. Only the student and I see this. I usually highlight where they currently land and then write notes below. For some students, I basically never have to change anything on their contract, since they do all the assignments and show up to most classes. For those students, I wouldn’t write any notes below, and they would just stay at a “B” for the entire course. For other students, the contract might change on a week to week basis, especially if they often forget to turn in or revise their work. For those students, I would keep ongoing notes to reflect what I’m missing from them (and then delete them once it is resolved). For example: 

Phillipa Montgomery’s Grading Contract

Final Grade	Incomplete Work
B	0
C	1
D	2
F	3

Notes:

• Phillipa has not turned in her synthesis yet as of 11/23/20 (Once this has been resolved, I would delete this note or otherwise mark it complete)

I include the following note in students’ labor contracts and try to emphasize it throughout the course: 

*Your work is considered 'complete' once it has been done according to the instructions  and revised according to feedback. Work that is missing, incomplete, or that hasn't been revised and resubmitted is 'incomplete.' Please always make sure to check feedback after turning in any work. 

The second document gives me quick information about the class as a whole to see who has turned in what or who needs to revise what. This document is just for me, but I could see this being a helpful visual for individual students if I were to break it into separate student-only docs. I use ‘green’ to show that the assignment was completed according to instructions and has been successfully revised (if necessary). In other words, there is nothing left for the student or I to do about this assignment. Yellow shows that the student completed the assignment but needs to revise it. Red either means that the assignment is missing entirely or it was not completed according to instructions.  It’s helpful to be able to see, at a glance, who is missing what. 

Assignment Status in Class EAPP 0900-23

Student	Assignment #1	Assignment #2	Assignment #3
Amy
Ciara
Mohammed

Halfway through the semester this fall, I decided to change the class default grade to “A.” I did this because it seemed that I wasn’t being intentional about providing opportunities to raise grades with extra work. And, it seemed unfair, since lots of students were doing all their work completely and with the utmost care and creativity. It seemed complicated to have the ceiling be at a “B” for students who may really care about and be affected by the difference between that and an “A”. I also decided to remove the “Days Absent” column, because it wasn’t clear to me how that would influence students’ contracts; also, many students were absent for more than usual this last term due to covid-19. 

Updated Grading Contract

Final Grade	Incomplete Work
A	0
B	1
C	2
D	3
F	4

I think this mid-semester shift, although uncomfortable for me, felt like a good example of how learning and teaching are generative practices. Setting syllabi, schedules, and grading policies into stone before having even met any students always felt odd to me. As teachers, we aren’t supposed to show our mistakes or hesitations, and because of that, we also don’t get the opportunity to show our growth as fellow learners in the course. It goes without saying that such shifts should also be discussed in class with opportunities for everyone to weigh in. As a general rule, any mid-course shifts I make towards assessment/evaluation are in the direction of more generous and flexible rather than more restrictive and punitive. Such a shift as shown above is positive for everyone. 

I don’t think my system is perfect. In fact, it has caused a fair amount of flailing around and confusion for me this term as my usual system has been totally disequilibrated. Then, I remember that traditional grading would have caused even more flailing along with the familiar cognitive dissonance that usually descends upon me as I teach in a way that doesn’t align with my values. 

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That dissonance, that numbness or disconnection, is a wise response from our deeper selves. It is a sign that something is wrong, that we are being led by a system rather than pushing against it. It is an alarm system, a clear indication that we are prioritizing our comfort over clear vision, over seeing. It usually means we are choosing, whether consciously or not, to follow the sign-posts of White Supremacy, all the same old paths cut through the woods by many feet, the same map that leads to the blithe extraction of resources and people and cultures that keeps things humming along nicely for some of us. And actually, there’s no forests on this map, just depleted farmland, destroyed marshes, and the raw aching wounds of the earth; and there’s just one language and a people who are both unseeing and smiling, walking in one long, snaking line that winds far from the rattling cages and prisons and the the endless clanging of excavators and cranes. For them, it’s quiet. 

It’s not quiet for me. Upgrading has been one small way to walk away from the destroyed, exhausted land to enter a forest that is unmapped and confusing. The territory is uncharted, but there’s life here. 

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