Hi! this week, the undergrad students in the course I teach at brooklyn college will choose their final grade (and I won't spend a minute grading this semester yay!). i am doing a thread to celebrate!

Many of us are used to the professors grading all the quizzes, exams, and other assignments and calculating the final grades at the end of the semester by adding the points. I used to do this as well, but not anymore.

my students won't receive any grades throughout the semester. Instead, on week 1, they fill an online form to indicate the final grade they will get.

If you sign up for grade A, you will have to do 11 weekly posts on the course site, and submit your "take-home" midterms and finals before the due dates. For grade B, 9 posts are required, plus the mid-term and final. (the course is fully asynchronous)

If something happens, and a student misses a due date, we check-in by email or zoom and the student and I re-write an ad-hoc "contract". Sometimes we postpone the due date, or we invent a make-up assignment, sometimes we just decide to get rid of some requirements.

Does it mean that I don't care about the "quality" of their work? No, of course I do. I am ditching traditional grading because it was getting in the way of me doing a good job at providing substantive actionable feedback. It was stressful, and time consuming (at least for me!)

this means that I am okay giving As to students who post thought-provoking fun comments on the discussion board, and also to the students who post shallow-ish or just boring comments. that's ok! (it was counter-intuitive at first bc i have been v brainwashed in meritocratia)

with their veneer of neutrality grades are powerful tools for enforcing racism, ableism and many kinds of oppressions (i did not know this when I started teaching. I used to be concerned with making grades more equitable and "fair", kind of the reformist approach i guess?)

if anything, grades capture the inequalities between the students with money, food, a stable housing situation and the students writing their essay on their phone, between shifts, those who were never taught how to "read" 100 pages a week, or how to write in College English.

I am sharing this here because of the feedback I received from students last semester, when i asked them to reflect on our labor based grading contract. One wrote: "I loved this idea because it kept me on my toes and I knew what was expected in order to achieve my grade."

someone else: "I wish every professor did this. It was super helpful, especially during a pandemic, to understand upfront what would be required of me to get the grade I wanted."

someone else: "I wish it was used in more courses...it considerably improved my mental state. Instead of worrying obsessively throughout the semester about grades... Professors oftentimes, despite their good intentions, say not to worry about grades, which is quite unhelpful."

(someone also wrote back: "Not a fan." so there is that...)

in my dream classroom, there ll be no grades at all (also: no tuition, IDs and cops). grading contracts are not solving all what s wrong at CUNY, and I am still new to the counter-grading game.. but they're a reminder that our job is not to assess and rank the worth of students.

i also share this because many profs who are reticent to adopt #A4All are nonetheless interested in student-faculty solidarity against the surveillance logics of the admins and trustees. to you my friends: consider switching to labor-based grading contracts!!