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Kyle Henson
Professor Jan Riemann
UWRT 1103
August 20, 2014
From Degrading to De-Grading Response
1. Where did you do this reading? (in your room? the library? etc.) What time of the day?
What about the time and place helped or hindered your reading experience?
I read this in my dorm living room at 10:00 PM. I had people coming in and out during
my reading which probably hindered me because I was trying to concentrate. I did get
smart though and put my headphones in so that it shut out some outside noise and
persuaded others not to talk to me even though I wasnt listening to anything. The time
of day was probably good for me because I am usually pretty productive and alert at this
time especially since I slept good last night.
2. How did you engage with the text? For example, did you underline, highlight, annotate,
take notes, look up words, research anything you read about, just read? It may be helpful
here to indicate what format your text was inpaper copy or electronic and think about
how the mode of a text influences how you read.
I read the text electronically. This may have influenced me not to annotate as much
considering I havent really annotated electronically before. I did actually go to the
school in Durhams website that was listed at the end since it is pretty close to my

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hometown. It delved in a little deeper into the philosophy of the good that can come out
of it instead of just the bad thing that are happening with the current grading system.
3. What did you learn in reading this text, both about yourself as a reader/writer and from
the content of the piece?
First and foremost I learned that I sometimes get caught up in this grading structure
instead of being focused on truly learning new information. I grew up in a household and
a culture that what you received on your report cards partly defined you as an individual.
I find it hard to break away from this sometimes to focus on bettering myself regardless
of grades. I learned that as a reader I am definitely more logically driven considering
Kohn had a lot of logically based arguments and I was intrigued all of the way through.
His list format also helped organize all of the information that he was giving in my brain.
As a writer I learned, as I alluded to earlier, that it is good to balance out the negativity in
your argumentative essays with the positives.
4. What questions do you have after reading this piece? What do you want to/need to
explore more fully?
I would like to learn more about the people that have gone through the no grading
program and their success rate afterwards. What are more ways that teachers can
motivate students without any grades? Colleges may eventually adapt to the high schools
doing this, but how is the transition actually going to go, and how long would the
transition take? I assume there are multiple ways to change the grading system. What
are some of the other ways other than totally taking out the grading system that could
potentially work?

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5. What personal experiences can you relate to this text?

In US History I was honestly interested in the topic because my teacher was able to
motivate me in a way that didnt include grades. I succeeded in the class and I still
remember information in that class that baffles my mind. On the other end of the
spectrum though is English III, which came right after US History. In that class I was not
interested in the curriculum at all and the teacher really didnt make me interested. I
thought of that class as another A that I needed to make. I did end up making an A
but I couldnt tell you a thing about the class now.
6. What are your suggestions for how we may focus class discussion today? It may be
offering a quote you found interesting or confusing and want to explore more. It may be a
concept you think we should talk about. It could be some tangential idea you want to talk
about. Or perhaps its some guiding question for the class to consider.
I would like to explore some of the options that teachers have to motivate students in
other ways that just grades. I know a lot of my classmates in high school that never did
assignments that they knew werent graded or didnt listen to concepts that werent going
to be on the next test. I dont think it is as easy as this guy says it is. I see that a few
private schools have been getting rid of grades somewhat successfully, but would it ever
truly work in public schools. How would they initiate the transition period that would be
rough for everyone involved?
7. Why do you think I assigned you this reading for today?
I think that you assigned this today as a way to start out college thinking about what is
really important in our academics over the next 4 years and maybe even beyond. College

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is a place that we are supposed to learn how to organize information for a potential career
in the future, not a place where grades rule all. It is important to care more about the
knowledge than the grades. The grades should follow where your knowledge goes.