High Scores: A Classroom Model

When I am not writing or out fighting crime dressed as a large marsupial (I'm Koalaman,) I spend my days working in the field of education, and I am fascinated by the way education has changed and how it hasn't. (I have written about it before.) The more I have observed and the more I have researched I have become convinced that if there is a way to fix an broken classroom system it is through the use of video games. Now, I know that sounds crazier than anthropomorphic animal starfighter pilots, but bear with me, because video games and the systems upon which they are built offers a look inside the minds of how students expect reward and advancement.

Most video games, but especially RPGs, are often based around a leveling system. The higher you advance the more skills you acquire and the more perks you get to choose from. It's how a Level 1 character who swings a sword becomes a BA knight dressed in Dark Archaic Armor and wields the +2 Sword of Blighted Indifference. This system of work and reward makes a certain amount of logical sense, and it offers a tangible feeling of accomplishment. All of this is important for a generation of students that have grown up as graphic learners, who are better multi-taskers, and have a high degree of skill and expectation for customized experiences, (through phones, computers, etc.) What most students get instead, is a stagnant linear model of expectations and punishment (not reward,) built upon an ailing factory model. Students who feel more excitement over getting a new badge in Call of Duty rather than getting a passing Calculus grade, feel that way because only one offers them a tangible feeling of accomplishment. Both (could be argued) are just as useless to the student in the long run, but why does unlocking a few digital pixels feel more rewarding than learning a new way of mathematical thinking? Most people tend to blame that on the students, but what if we instead blame the way students are graded.

Grades are one of the most basic concepts of running a classroom, but they are also one of the most detrimental. In America, students are graded on a scale of A, B, C, D, and F (or E), with various "+" and "-" gradients thrown in. Each grade corresponds to a percentage. A = 90% - 100%, B = 80% - 89%, etc..  An E/F is a failure, an A is an outstanding grade, and a C is meant to be average, but that's not really what they mean to modern students. Maybe in the happy days of Fonzie a C was considered acceptably average, but what you see in modern times is that that has stopped being the case. A student who now gets a C, sees that grade as a failure. A grade of A has become the new standard for average, the new measure of success, but it is unreasonable. A and B are meant to be above average for a reason. They cannot and should not be attained by the majority of the class. However, this means that the majority of the class no longer thinks they are doing well if they get a C or even sometimes a B, which leads to frustration, anxiety, and even grade inflation on the part of the teacher. So a modern C student no longer sees himself as succeeding. He or she, see themselves as a failure, unable to achieve some inflated standard. So, of course, they go home and play Xbox, because at least there they can achieve that new badge or that new camo-skin. That is where their feeling of reward comes from. Put in enough work and they can achieve what they want. So why can't they see that in the classroom?

I will put points in Homework Passes,
Pizza Parties, and my Ice Spells.

The first thing that needs to change in this new model of learning and classroom management is the grading system. The A - F scale is not working. (I will give you a moment to get your head around that idea... good?) What we need is an advancement system, like the ones found in a video game. With a percentage system, students automatically see 100% as normal, which makes a certain amount of sense. (I need my health bar at 100%. I have to fill my stamina bar up 100% to be ready to go on the next mission, etc.) Anything less than 100% is a subtraction from normal. You lose health. You lose mana. You lose grades. We need a system that builds students up from lower levels, like experience points. So instead of a test being graded on 100% scale where you lose points for incorrect answer, what if tests were graded on an experience scale where you were awarded points for correct answers. A student who completes their homework might get 312 experience points, and 600 experience points for that science project they turned in, or 420 points for that quiz they did yesterday. The best part is, for the teacher, the current system would not even have to be revamped that much. Make each correct quiz answer, homework, project, paper, etc, worth a certain amount of points that adds to an overall total. If at the end of the year a student needs to achieve 10,000 points to get the equivalent of an A in the class, than you don't even need to radically adjust current numbers for assignments. As long as you get the student to see that their accomplishments are earning points, instead of the fact that their mistakes are decreasing his or her percentage.

Secondly, a teacher should try to use those points to mean something more than grades. I am talking about an actual leveling system with perks and rewards. If the overall points needed in a class is 10,000, what if a teacher were to go further, and divide that number up into actual levels, say 1,000 points for each level. When a student reaches Level 1, maybe they then get a choice between receiving one of three perks, like choices on an RPG skill tree. The perks could include anything from a one-time pass to get out of a homework assignment, to additional time to take a quiz, to even a one time chance to get double XP on a test of their choice. Teachers could even break this down further into an actual tree-system where you need to attain lower-level perks first to really get at the good stuff on certain skill branches.

This would not only give students road markers for achievement as they move through the year, but small and tangible goals to keep them motivated. A lot of times it is easier to think ahead to the next level rather than to the overall goal of the end of the year grade. "I can't wait till I hit Level 3 in Mrs. Smith's class. I'm going to get the perk that lets me move my seat." Most sixteen year old students don't understand the value of the education they are getting, so telling them that they need to take math because it will get them into college or be useful "someday in the real world" does not always work. Giving them small incremental perks, however, is something they understand well. It will give them the motivation they need to get to the next plateau, and this system also gives teachers a more effective tool of discipline. They could deduct experience points or even award negative modifiers, causing students to take less experience for a day or on an assignment, thus denying them their sense of accomplishment and delaying their next level a little while longer. After all, the experience points would not be just grades, but could be used as a gauge of general progress in the class as a whole.

There is a teacher with the right idea.

Lastly, let's talk about "grinding." Anyone who has played WoW or any other MMORPG fully understands the tedium and necessity of grinding. It means standing in a field killing spiders or rabbits for four hours as you watch your experience bar slowly increase, and I don't see why there is no reason it shouldn't be allowed in the classroom. After all, grinding in a classroom setting is basically doing extra math problems or working on some tedious assignment to get a little extra credit. Obviously the "Grind Assignments" would be worth less experience points than regular assignments, but if a student accomplishes enough of them, they will slowly work their way up to the next level. It will also help reinforce the lessons that have already been learned. The essence of grinding is to take on a challenge you know you can easily beat and then repeat that over and over again. Why can't a student grab a basics skills sheet and do that for a small amount of experience points? A teacher can add more advanced skill sheets to the "Grind Pile" with older ones being worth less and less XP as the school year goes on and with newer ones becoming worth more. These would not be assignments, just extra tasks students could accomplish to keep their experience meter moving.

I know there will be many people who might be skeptical of this new idea, just as I realize it will work better for certain classes than others, such as Math and Language. Even though it might be harder to implement in English or Social Studies classes, that does not mean it would be impossible. These are only some of the ideas that are out there. A truly creative and dedicated teacher could easily come up with more, and adapt this idea to their learning environment. The real essence is the experience point system, but you can expand on that anyway you want. What about a loot system, where you get pens and pencils, or even hats and t-shirts. What about a friendly PvP or Arena system? What about a raid system where students collaborate and share XP to take on larger tasks? The possibilities are endless, and best of all, it is a learning system based upon a system we already know works to reach students. It is a system they instinctively understand. So instead of decrying the evils of the gaming industry, maybe its time we took a page from their books to patch some of the bugs in an ailing school system.

It's All Geek to Me

"Meh."

Three letters that express so much indifference, laziness, mild disappointment, and a general malaise to one's own existence, but there is also much more to that small interjection. It proves a point that language is not static. It morphs (like a verbal giant mechazoid,) with each new generation, each new year, and even with each new Netflix original.

In case you are unaware, Meh is a term that was coined by The Simpsons all the way back in 1994, when a librarian used it to react to the fact that voting records weren't classified in Springfield. Since then it has entered our vernacular as a dictionary-definable word. That was not The Simpsons' only contribution to English language, Cromulent and Craptacular both entered our collective vocabulary after being featured on the cultural juggernaut of a show, as well.

Language is an integral part of the human experience. Even those without the ability to speak or hear still engage in the use of language through other means. As such, the way we speak inherently affects the way we see and talk about the world around us, but that is not a one way street. The way we see the world and our interactions with it also affects the way we speak and talk about things. Additionally, our cultural experiences and understandings also influence our word choices, speech patterns, and other linguistic idiosyncrasies. This is nothing new either, our language (regardless of what language you speak) has been changing and evolving ever since our great x 10,000 grandfather grunted about someone not picking up after themselves.

I mean who leaves their dirty loincloth just lying around on the cave floor. "What were you raised in a barn?" (Which of course would mean that not only had you managed to move beyond the hunter-gather phase of civilization, but you had developed complex ideas of animal husbandry, crop rotation, feed storage, and construction techniques utilizing lumber.)

Realistically, cavemen would not have used the phrase What were you raised in a barn? I am sure they had other culturally relevant phrases to use when insulting their off-spring about their untidiness. I have no idea what those phrases were, but I am almost certain they had them, because humans shape our language with allusion and metaphor. We use our understanding of the world to influence the way we talk to one another, and I am not just talking about cliched lines that your grandfather might toss out.

For example: Toxic. The word traces its origins back to the Greek root-word toxon, which literally means a bow, the instrument you would use to shoot arrows from. That seems like an odd word to evolve into something that basically means poison, but not when you consider the story of Hercules and the Lernaean Hydra. The hydra's blood was poisonous, and after Hercules managed to kill the beast he dipped his arrows in its blood. He then used the poisoned arrows throughout the rest of his adventures. So in ancient Greek, saying something was toxic literally meant you were saying something was "from the bow of Hercules."

To them it was an allusion, a cultural idiom based around a story. The word then evolved into Latin and eventually into English to mean poisonous, with the original cultural reference lost to the ages, (unless you Google it.) More to the point, this is not the collective lexicon being influenced by just a person's direct experience with the world, but by a myth. Similarly calling someone Superman or Sherlock are two words not based on experience but on stories, mythologies in their own right, yet they are used commonly in everyday speech. Sticking with the comic book theme, Kryptonite, is literally a fictional rock that weakens Superman, but we use it in passing to mean someone's weakness, their Achilles' Heel.

The ancient Greek hero Achilles was invulnerable in every spot, except for his heel, the spot where his mother held him when she dipped him into the River Styx. Most people don't think of that story or need to explain it when they use the term Achilles Heel. People just understand what it means, because language is more than just sounds we make with our mouth holes. It's a social contract we all enter into, and it's not just about common words that represent ideas. Language is about nuance and even a little poetry. Yes, you can say, "I am not great at Math," or you can say "Math is my Kryptonite." It is more expressive, and it automatically gives the listener an intense and personal understanding of what you meant.

This means that culture (and especially nerd culture,) our stories, movies, comics, literature, etc, are all ways we absorb the world. They paint the picture that we hold up to compare to the people and places that surround us. We construct our world based upon all our influences, just like the Ancient Greeks. We do not have gods, we have superheroes. We do not have traditions, we have pop culture, but it all amounts to the same. It is a lens through which our lives and our language becomes filtered. Our shared stories give us a sort of cultural shorthand. We call someone a Newb or Noob if they suck, we say something has been Nerfed, if it was made softer or easier. Words like Frak and Khalessi enter into our vocabulary because, in some ways, they are more descriptive than saying F*ck or Barbarian Queen. Some will stick and some will fall off, proving to be nothing more than a fad, but they do enter into our thinking and our world views. We experience the world not only through the things we see and touch but through the stories that we tell, because language is so much more than pointing and grunting. It is so much more than mundane observations or utilitarian sound.

As Stephen Fry once said, "Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot."

Language is also as Lisa Simpson once said, "Meh."