Oct 9th, entrance slip

 The student bird makes me approach this from the most skeptical point of view. I, as a student, saw school and grading as a competition, because that is how I was told to think about it. My parents always focused on the grade, so I would focus on that as well, because I felt that my grades were tied with how others felt about me. I was not excited to learn, and learning for learning's sake was not something I was familiar with. Once I got out of school, and was more proactive about the things I wanted to study, I realized that learning was not about marks and meeting expectations but trying to reach an ideal that you wanted to become. When you learn things that you are passionate about, I found it to be the most rewarding experience and became the things that I looked most forward to. I have some skepticism that students will feel this way about all school material, but I am hoping to work into my assessment more low stakes learning, and hopefully be able to make learning for learning's sake, and not drive them with the threat of grades.

 From the teacher's point of view, I think Kevin's course on assessment really spoke to me about how I should approach this. He encourages us to keep things low stakes, and assess them numerically once we feel that they are ready. Even from the survey in the reading, it was clear that students feel much more engaged and ready to learn without the threat of being labelled a certain grade hanging over their head, and knowing from experience how that feels, I want to avoid running a classroom in that manner. I see the value in learning for its own sake, and I want to promote that type of learning as much as possible.