Zero Cubed

Grade 10 math.  I think this cube is approaching its limit.  If you can't figure out what it means you get zero.  If you can figure out what it means you are not limited to zero.

But no matter what zero cubed is still zero.

I listened to this being discussed this morning on The Current by three Alberta based educators.  They offered some differing perspectives in a pretty reasoned and collegial manner, and I thought it did away with some of the noise on the suject while offering a fair bit of light.

What the discussion did do, IMHO was discuss differing and perhaps more effective way of measuring outcomes and approaching educational metrics, not just the false dichotomy of either having standards or not having standards.

I just listened to that piece. Excellent discussion.  I note that none of the three guests jumped in to say they shared Lynden Dorval's view that giving zeros is a necessary part of teaching.  Even the person arguing on the side of grading as a good clarified that zeros should really be the same as an Incomplete.

Joe Bower's views most closely align with my own and I also thought that Sherry Bennett made a lot of sense.  John Long was consistent in that he seems to believe that the purpose of education is to socialize our youth into the dominant hierarchy and that grades are a useful tool in that goal.  I must say I agree with him but I don't consider it a good but rather the underlying problem with our education system.  The girls interviewed highlighted that they get Mr. Long's message about school loud and clear.

I laughed when Joe described the rational student always picking assignments on the basis of the least amount of work not any real interest in a project.  He was describing my son and his buddies to a tee. Low hanging fruit for research and the bare minimum of  effort got them either C+ or a B-.  To get the B+ or an A meant work and they had better things to do with their time.

I thrived on grades as a kid.  I had very good reading and comprehension skills and a mathematical mind. In elementary school I stood in the top 3 in every subject and class I was in.  I saw my report cards from every school I went to at one time and I was astounded at how every year the comments were the same.  "______ is doing well in all subjects but he asks too many questions." The other comment in most but not all years was, " _____ could do so much better if he tried harder."  I laughed when I realized that two of the teachers that said that were in years when I had the best overall marks in the class.  Funny though they were right that I coasted because I could read three times as fast as any of my classmates and I understood most of what I read. Despite my "success" I hated rote learning and endless tests and teachers who taught to outcomes and had no time for questions.

The first thing that needs to happen is a conversation, supportive and non-judgemental in tone with the emphasis on the listening side, to find out what's going on in the kid's life.  All else flows from that.

I'm not really sure a "zero" drives home the message sufficiently.

Students who don't complete assignments should be suspended from school until they cough it up. That way, either their parents will make them shape up just to get them out of the house, or at worst, they'll make room for more diligent kids who really want to fit in to the system.

[ETA: I guess I should mention that I was being sarcastic, in case anyone was inadvertently convinced by my "logic".]

Yes, the fundamental logic of the no-zero policy strikes me as inassailable -- which doesn't mean necessarily that zeroes shouldn't be permitted (although I don't think they should be). That logic is this: giving zeroes for incomplete assignments gives an academic penalty to a behavioural problem. It sends mixed messages and doesn't address the actual issue at play.

For Dorval to dismiss this logic as the result of "overzealous principals" is deeply disingenuous or misguided. It also plays into Ro-Ford-type reactionary rhetoric against bloated bureaucracies, etc.

Here is an excerpt from a letter sent to him.  This total disregard for his students is offensive and destroys any point he was trying to make about the system being bad for students.

Quote:

On June. 5, 2012, the Department Head was advised by the supply teacher that the Unit Exams for two of your Physics 30 classes were missing. Apparently, students had been complaining about not getting back these exams, which had been written on May 11, 2012. Students had also been voicing their complaints that they would need to rewrite the Unit exam because the original exam was missing. Their concerns were somehow picked up by an intern with CHED radio and a reporter for the Edmonton Joumal. The intern emailed an assistant principal of the school on June 6, 2012, advising that she had interviewed you and that you had admitted that you had student exams and other work at your home. I therefore wrote to you on June 6, 2012. I pointed out that the Superintendent, in his May 18, 2012 letter of suspension, had directed you to retum all District property in your possession immediately. Clearly you had ignored his directive. I directed you to retum all District property in your possession immediately by COD courier.

On June 6, 2012, I received some marked Unit exams for your Block 2 Physics 30 class, plus 18 unmarked Unit exams for the written component and one unmarked scantron answer sheet for the multiple choice component for your Block 4 Physics 30 class. This was shocking to me, given that the students had written the exam on May ll, and you therefore had sat on them for almost a month. These are students who within a very short time would be writing their Diploma exam, and I would have thought that the important feedback from a Unit exam would have been provided to them as soon as possible.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/373970-rosssheppardletter.html

He was expected to return all the property of the school when suspended.  He got that letter in mid May.  His replacement could then have done the work. If he wanted to hang onto the students work assignments then he should have marked them and sent them in.  He did nothing to fulfill his obligation to the students let alone his employer. The May and early June period are the critical months for students trying to graduate. This is clearly inappropriate behaviour and deserves discipline. This adds a strange irony to the story. Talk about clay feet on the hero of teaching students responsibility.

Good riddance to this narcissist, who spent more time bathing in the media spotlight than he did trying to educate students.

To see the "quality" of support for this individual, just check the right-wing outpouring of support for his silly little philosophy of education. We should stop "coddling" kids. They have to "take responsibility". They need to be prepared for the "real world", where if they do no work, they get no pay cheque. And on and on.

None of these piling-on geniuses seems to recognize that the school has no directive to pass students even if they produce failing work. The "no-zero" policy, whether it's well thought out or not and well implemented or not, is to determine why a student fails to hand in an assignment and help solve the problem.

Dorval should go teach in some private school where he can hand out all the zeroes he wants. But if he can't follow directives from management, he'll get fired there too. That's the "real world" of employment. I'm thrilled that they've stopped coddling Dorval and prepared him to "take responsibility" for insubordination and contempt for colleagues and students.

First let me say it is my personal experience from dealing with hundreds of employers that the vast majority of the ones I meet displayed inappropriate behaviour towards the rights of their employees.  That is reality.

No matter that the School Board seems to fit the norm of an employer not taking their employees' rights fully into account, I must say this guy deserved to be fired,  That is what I would be telling his union as well as advising them not to pursue a grievance because he was clearly insubordinate and still unrepentant.  No labour arbitrator would ever return an employee back to work under those circumstances.

Unionist, clairvoyant as always wrote:

Dorval should go teach in some private school where he can hand out all the zeroes he wants. But if he can't follow directives from management, he'll get fired there too.

I wish him well at Tempo School. And I especially wish his students well.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Piling on, Unionist?

Yup.

Quote:

Speaking of that, it's nice to see this round of support for good old by the book following orders, even if I do think it is coloured a bit by the principle we are discussing. I remember once being told in here to cease and desist for daring to point out that one could be both a worker sibling and a slum landlord (in a company truck on company time). So it's good to know we can get into these grey areas without cracking the foundation of labour solidarity.

Hey Winston, we defend our fellow workers who get into trouble for speaking their minds, being insubordinate, etc. But we don't defend their [b]"right"[/b] to be insubordinate, with three exceptions: Where following a managerial order would 1. threaten health and safety; 2. require violation of a law; or 3. Cause irreparable harm to workers, the union, etc., while causing at worst symbolic damage to managerial authority. (This third criterion is obviously much tougher to argue and rarely succeeds for that reason.)

A worker who persists in refusing to abide by lawful employer policy, with the above exceptions, gets fired and stays fired. That's the real world. "Solidarity" doesn't mean patting our fellow workers on the back and telling them it's ok to walk over that cliff because "the union is behind you".

One may agree with a "no zero" policy or not. But the proper way to argue the point is (surprise) to argue the point. It is not to become a one-person media magnet practising some caricature of civil disobedience, and then expressing shock and horror when the employer turfs your butt.

I think Mr. Dorval will fit in well at Tempo:

Quote:

Tempo School was founded upon the idea that the education of children is the responsibility of parents. The name of the school is an acronym of its Latin motto: Tota Edocenda Maxime Parentum Officium (“all teaching is pre-eminently the duty of parents”).

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Unionist wrote:

Hey Winston, we defend our fellow workers who get into trouble for speaking their minds, being insubordinate, etc. But we don't defend their [b]"right"[/b] to be insubordinate.

I don't disagree, and I'm glad we can talk about it. I do think there wouldn't be quite the same zeal about the process and his fate were it not for our respective positions on this issue. As a matter of fact, if the issue was the dress code we probably wouldn't be talking about this at all.

Agreed - because a dress code might (or might not) involve a [i]prima facie[/i] violation of Section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Our union (and many others) have fought and won disputes where employer rules re dress, personal appearance, etc. have been deemed arbitrary, or discriminatory, or otherwise unlawful, or not rationally related to a bona-fide requirement of the business. Those cases involve very different considerations from this one.

Quote:

We don't really know what he was fired for, ...

Sure we do, in great detail: [url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/105947367/Lynden-Dorval-s-termination-letter]Sept. 14, 2012 termination letter.[/url]

ETA: [url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/95458205/Recommendation-letter-for-suspension-... 3, 2012 recommendation letter for suspension[/url]

[url=http://www.scribd.com/doc/95460985/EPSB-letter-suspending-teacher-Lynden... 18, 2012 letter of suspension[/url]

I haven't yet found two letters of reprimand from April 2012, but I think the substance of those actions is adequately summarized in the subsequent correspondence.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

The only thing going on here is that he refused to follow board policy and made a big stink about it. And teachers can wear white before easter all they want so long as they aren't humiliating students with their bizarre personal grading systems.

I agree.

@ CF

Well yes, I think the writing was on the wall, and once it was public I can't see how they could have done it differently. I also think, aside from the question of teaching models, that a personal politics may have played a role in it. And I take that assumption both from the way Dorval dealt with this, and some of the allusions that there was more to it than just this issue.

I have certainly seen enough cases of personal politics and double standards in schools - as with most institutions.

But again, I don't see Dorval's firing as the central issue. It really comes down to the question of whether his model is regressive or progressive - whether that grade has a punitive or judgmental quality attached to it, or not. Clearly we see that from very different perspectives, and I'd say it has been talked entirely out. I don't see any point in running around the bush again.

So zeroing him out of a job ended up being wrong too.

Thanks. It was kind of unclear, and other articles (including the globe) just refered to school policy, and other schools doing the same.

I found nothing on the board website either. The Edmonton Journal was more clear, saying that they passed a policy which specifically included zero grades. That doesn't mean they originally had a policy to the contrary, nor that there was any reversal, as the Post reported.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/zeros+teacher+unfairly+dismissed+Edmonton...

Kind of odd that we missed that; and all of us, including me, did.

 In any case, from that appeal ruling, it seems like there was something else going on quite independent of the question of whether zero grading is valid.