In Praise of Awkward Practice or Why I Hate Grading

I’ve been grading photo projects, and this makes me think about the aspect of teaching I like least: grading.

If I am teaching in the sweet-spot of learning, my students’ photography (or writing, or

reading, or speaking…) will be messy, awkward, far from perfect.

And that’s good. We need to stumble around in Awkward on our way to Skillful, on our

way to Integrated mastery of new skills.

My mother-in-law and I have been learning to play the accordion for almost two years.

We practice about five times a week. It is joyful learning and I do think we are improving--incrementally.

What would it have felt like to learn the accordion during an Accordion Unit in a

classroom? I suppose there would have been a quiz over what chords matched which

buttons. I would have gotten a C on that (though now, two years later, I’d get an A).

On the first test (“Wait for the Wagon”), my mother-in-law and I could only make it sound

like a song if she played the bass on her instrument and I played the keyboard on mine.

We were thrilled that we could create something that sounded like a song, but had this

been classroom learning, our joint effort would be compared to the student who could

play both hands at once. We might have been given zeros for cheating.

So for two years, we’ve been creating mostly Awkward music that we push into Skillful

and then play at a nursing home. We then select new songs and dive back into Awkward.

If we were striving for A’s, we would only play the songs we already know. (“Wait for the

Wagon” is now fully integrated, by the way.) But real learning--the best, messy, uninhibited

and exuberant  learning--happens in judgement-free arenas.

I love watching my students learn, experimenting with photo composition, caption writing,

camera settings. I try to build lots of Awkward Practice into my teaching, when students

can learn without performance pressure. The photo projects I am grading today are my

students’ evidence of that practice.

And I resent putting grades on that glorious, learningful effort.