Thread by @jessicazeller

I’ve been tinkering with the relationship between #Ungrading, pedagogic ego, and student dependence. And bodies, of course, which are never far from my thinking.

Just rolling it all around a bit. 🧵

1/

Grades infantilize. They keep students dependent on us to assess *for them—stunting their potential maturation.

Students remain immature/dependent in top-down grading paradigms because we need them to. Their dependence satisfies our pedagogic ego. It benefits and centers us.

2/

When we build paradigms to satisfy our need to be depended upon as sole arbiters, students who take unsanctioned autonomy in those spaces feel like a threat.

Their attempts to assert agency feel like a personal affront.

3/

If you’ve ever been challenged on a grade by a student and felt a surge go through your body, you know. You were being attacked, and you responded as humans do.

Sometimes we have to soften into the discomfort to get through it.

4/

My pedagogy has taken root in the void where my overblown ego used to be.

5/

#Ungrading dismantled the structural barrier so I could see more clearly what I was doing and how/why I needed to change.

In my case the method—the doing of it—came first, after some unspecified ethical uncertainty. The depth of my philosophical understanding came later.

6/

Reining in my ego meant reflecting on why I was gatekeeping and why I felt I could take ownership of student learning.

It meant softening.

7/

I tell students I want to help them not need me anymore. I'm there for support, but eventually I hope they move on, taking whatever I’ve offered that's relevant and meaningful to them.

If the goal is to enable student autonomy—for them to outgrow us—we have to let (them) go.

/X