13: Could You Teach Without Grades?
The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast
Jennifer Gonzalez
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2015
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year, Starr Sackstein made a drastic change in her high school English and journalism classes: After years of feeling as if students cared more about their grades than they did about learning, she decided to stop giving grades altogether. In this interview, Starr talks to me about how she runs a no-grades classroom in a school that still requires traditional grading. She shares her strategies for helping students learn to self-reflect, describes how her teaching workload has changed, and talks about how throwing out grades has improved students' learning.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Jennifer Gonzalez welcoming you to episode 13 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast. |
| 0:05.3 | In this episode, we'll talk about how to teach without giving grades. |
| 0:21.2 | Hi, I'm so glad to have you listening. |
| 0:23.2 | This is still a new podcast with a small audience and every time I see that another person has |
| 0:27.8 | downloaded an episode, it really just gives me a thrill. |
| 0:31.8 | If you want to support this podcast and help it reach more people, go on over to iTunes |
| 0:35.6 | and give it a rating and a review. |
| 0:37.9 | This makes a big difference in terms of how many people see it in iTunes. |
| 0:42.0 | And to see more of the work I do, come on over to my website, Cult of Pedagogy.com, |
| 0:46.5 | where I share teaching strategies, great books on teaching, and resources on classroom management, |
| 0:51.7 | edtech, and how to make your teaching way more effective and satisfying. |
| 0:55.8 | While you're there, click on the About button and scroll down to where it says subscribe. |
| 1:00.2 | From there, you can get yourself on my mailing list so we can stay in touch. |
| 1:04.2 | My guest in this episode is Star Sistine. |
| 1:07.1 | Star teaches high school English and journalism in New York, and she blogs about her work at starsacstine.com |
| 1:13.6 | and on a new education week blog called Work in Progress. |
| 1:17.3 | She's also the author of two books, Teaching Mythology Exposed, Helping Teachers Create Visionary Classroom Perspective, |
| 1:25.2 | and a brand new one called Blogging for Educators. |
| 1:28.2 | I'll put a link to her blogs and books in the show notes for this podcast. |
| 1:32.0 | Just go to Cult of Pedagogy.com and click Podcast to find them. |
| 1:37.4 | I have always enjoyed the honest, informal way Star writes about her teaching, |
| 1:41.2 | but lately she's been doing something that really peaked my interest. |
... |
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