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By: Kendra McPheeters, English teacher
Crown Point High School
Crown Point, IN
@kmcpheets
I began working for a high school in 2012 that would later begin doing PBL, and I can’t think about that time without thinking about Mary. She was the matriarch of our department and each morning would line up six coffee filters on top of the microwave, scooping into each a perfected ratio of regular Folgers to hazelnut coffee. Each hour, Mary would dump whatever coffee remained in the carafe and start a fresh pot. Soon after the school year started, Mary caught me putting my half-full coffee mug into the microwave and blanched. “Oh, no, honey,” she said, grabbing my hand, “make fresh, make fresh.” She poured me a new cup of coffee and sent me on my way. While Mary worked there, I was not allowed to microwave my coffee. What if we all had that mentality–make fresh? Rather than reheating stale coffee, what if we poured a fresh, new cup? Rather than allowing work to remain stagnant or to simply edit, what if we tried to make our work fresh through revision? What if we allowed students to do the same?
In the same year that Mary made our coffee, the buzz word was “j curve”–the curve in which students’ learning is a process that, through revision, would perhaps take a dip as new skills were attempted but would rise with additional opportunities for practice. While some of my colleagues pooh-poohed the idea of allowing for major revisions on all assignments with questions of “but then when does the grading end?” and “won’t this make students lazy if they don’t have to get it right the first time?” others were immediately on board and saw the value of allowing for revisions. We found that our grade distributions began to resemble j curves, as well. While there might be one or two students who for whatever intrinsic or extrinsic reason wouldn’t do their work, the number of Cs dropped sharply and the number of As and Bs rose as students dug into being able to reattempt work.
This initial foray into revision improved as our school began its journey to becoming a PBL school. During this transition, we looked more intentionally at how to develop a culture of revision instead of merely allowing revisions to occur. Rather than students being allowed to do test corrections or to rewrite a paper, we held conferences with students and worked together to discuss revisions of essays and even presentations. The revision process became collaborative and led to increased transparency in grading practices between teachers and students.
So what does this culture of revision look like in my classroom? First I plant the seed. At the very beginning of the year, I tell my students how important learning is and how our work builds. I draw a pyramid for them with the culminating products of our PBL unit at the top, with a middle tier of benchmarks, and a foundation of scaffolding. I say to my classes, “Each assignment has a purpose, and our steps lead us to a fully-formed culminating product. When we skip scaffolding activities or benchmarks, we weaken the pyramid.” Then I tell them that I also know that life happens–sometimes we can’t do our best because we were called into work unexpectedly or had a family emergency or became ill or even just forgot–and that in those cases, or in cases where we thought we had the right idea but later figured out something even better, we have the opportunity to revise in our class. Typically my students are grateful, and typically they then forget this information in the bustle of a new school year until our first major task. We get our rubrics back and I remind them that for anyone who is dissatisfied with their score or would like to try again, we can revise anything in our class. I remind them again after our first presentation. Soon I hear students talking about these opportunities, asking if I can score their benchmark on the rubric during class so they can see what needs to be revised and coming to me without my having to remind them that the opportunity exists. During work time, students can also conference with me about revisions, or we can conference through email or a Google Doc, or we can meet during our delayed start mornings or during our advisory class’s help session period. I try to be flexible with my students, especially with regard to revision, as I think it is important to reward students when they take the initiative to continue engaging in the learning process.
Since this school as a whole does less PBL after numerous administrative changes in the last few years, my revision practice became a bit of a novelty in the building–but it’s also a safety net. To the anxious student I say, “Let’s just try, and if we don’t like how it turns out we can talk through it and revise it together.” To the perfectionist, “Yes, you can absolutely revise this even though you scored 98%. Let’s talk about where on the rubric we have an area for growth.” To the student who is underperforming for whatever reason, “Let’s do our best and see what we can do the first time around, and then if we need to, we can make revisions together in chunks so it’s less overwhelming.” I can think of a number of individuals to whom I have said these statements over the years. For L, one of my sophomores, the last of these was how I finally got him to turn in assignments at all. For S in my honors 10 class, we looked at probably five iterations of her paper every time an essay was due. She wanted me to scrutinize everything. I spent so much time that year conferencing with her on her phrasing and analysis of evidence. That was three years ago. She has since moved on to take AP Seminar and now AP Research with me. She just submitted a 5,000 word essay to the College Board to earn her AP Research score. I can’t give individual feedback on the paper that is submitted as part of her official score, but we built a foundation in that honors 10 class that I know has helped her through our most challenging course together.
Despite my example of S as a sophomore–my perfectionist, my mini-me–I see less stress in my students since they know they can revise materials. In fact, I have the perfect case study to demonstrate this. Two of the courses I teach are AP Seminar and a dual credit college freshman composition course in partnership with a university in my state. My students that take AP Seminar also take the dual credit course during a separate class period. In AP Seminar, I have free pedagogical rein to set up our course in a PBL format and allow for a culture of revision. In my dual credit course, once a paper is submitted, that is the final submission per university guidelines. I allow students to conference with me before the paper is due and we can look at drafts and talk about revision steps together, but the finality of a submission with no hope of revision creates more stress than I see in them during our AP Seminar course. At times the anxiety is palpable, especially if their drafts happen a little too close to the deadline to allow for me to look over them before their final submissions.
Simply allowing for revisions, making the process of revision a part of everyday conversation, and providing time for conferencing and assistance during the revision process enables students to take risks in their work. I see students make bolder choices in papers, presentations, and products than I would if they were too focused on meeting the criteria on an assignment sheet. I also make revision an individual decision, even on collaborative products, which helps to build student autonomy. If a group presentation doesn’t go quite as well as a group might hope, they have the opportunity to work with me to revise and re-present together. If an individual is unhappy with a presentation performance and their group members are fine with it, that individual also gets an opportunity to revise without having to attempt to drag their group members into participating in that process. The individual can meet with me, discuss what part of the presentation needed the most work, and revise that portion of the task to present to me for a new grade. I do this so members within a group can feel empowered to try again even if the rest of the group decides they are satisfied. There is no pressure to conform to the group’s opinion of “best effort” or “finished.”
My hope with this blog is to give a glimpse into what revision can do for a classroom. My students can all breathe a little easier, and I see fewer cookie-cutter, lockstep versions of products since students can make courageous leaps in their efforts with a net of revision to catch them if that leap doesn’t quite work out the way students hope it will. To answer my colleague’s questions from all those years ago–but when does the grading end? It ends when you and your students decide it does. I do impose a couple of hard deadlines for revisions to be submitted–3:00pm on the last student day of each semester. The beauty of culture is that we get to make it together, so talking with students about what sort of calendar will work best for them–and for us as teachers–when it comes to how long we’ll give ourselves to make revisions can help to increase buy-in with regard to the practice. Won’t this make students lazy? The opposite has been true for my students. They give the effort they have the time and talent to make in the first place and they work to make revisions if those efforts don’t go as planned. As teachers, we have the luxury of reteaching if a lesson doesn’t turn out the way we intended or if students haven’t grasped a concept. We can offer the same flexibility and grace with student work and reap the benefits of a happier and more engaged classroom.
Kendra McPheeters is an English teacher at Crown Point High School in Crown Point, Indiana, but at the time of this blog writing she was an English facilitator at Lowell High School in Lowell, Indiana. She has facilitated using Project Based Learning since 2013 to sophomores through seniors ranging in levels from remediation to Advanced Placement courses. Before becoming a PBL facilitator, Kendra was a student of PBL in middle and high school, and the unforgettable experiences from this time are some of the reasons why she wanted to become a teacher in the first place. Kendra is also a facilitator and certification reviewer for Magnify Learning and loves seeing the amazing work being done across the country in PBL by teachers learning the process. Outside of education, Kendra is mom to an amazing little boy, bonus mom to four fantastic kids, wife to her best friend and former co-teacher, and coach to a very cool group of teenage fencers who let her share her love of the sport she’s participated in since 2006. You can follow Kendra on Twitter (X) @kmcpheets.
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