This is an excerpt from the essay “School Stories” from Liz’s forthcoming book Shape and Momentum: An Insomniac's Guide to a World in Constant Motion
I never enjoyed grading. I could do it. And I have done it, and I can do it. But it has never felt a useful or realistic view of the relationship the student in front of me had with themselves, the material, me, or the way the class went. It wasn’t until I was writing this book that I came to see the problem as a shape and momentum issue.
A grade is a shape. Most of the time, the person in front of me is in momentum. At least I hope they are. They are growing, changing, experimenting, iterating, thinking, and then not thinking, trying things out, and erasing. And hopefully the class itself is in momentum. Yes, there’s a syllabus, but we often wander away from the specifics if the students who are in the room need something different.
And then suddenly, the calendar says it’s time to end the class. I must give a shape for all of that as an assessment contained entirely in a number or a letter that carries weight and consequence. In some versions of this grading ritual, the grade itself has loomed over the class since the beginning. Some students focus on that outcome from the moment they step into the laboratory of our work together.
I have serious feelings about this, having lived most of my life in a world where critics gave me grades publicly. In this case, I might receive a grade for one aspect of work that has been under investigation for years. And their grade impacts who gets to see it later, if it will tour, and how those viewing will watch it.
I have learned over time it is better if I understand myself and my work without that grade. That if I give too much credence to one person’s assessment, I am likely to lose my way, or my confidence, or my dreams, or my momentum.
So it is with my students. I beg them. I coach them. I teach them to try to internalize the way they shape their knowledge and to understand that the motivation for doing the work has to come with more than the fear or delight in a final grade.
Am I suggesting that they stay in momentum the whole time? Not really. I am asking them to give themselves their own shape, and then to step out of it and try again, and then step into the new shape they would give themselves. This is why I think our capacity to move between shape and momentum is an act of creativity each time.
