I was devastated to get a D on my first speech in my college public speaking class. I’d always considered myself a great speaker. As early as elementary school, I’d gotten blue ribbons in 4H for giving presentations, and I’d always earned A’s on speeches in middle and high school. And I couldn’t see how what I’d done in class was so bad. It certainly wasn’t any worse than most of the other speeches my classmates had given.
Plus — and this was no small matter to me at the time — I was counting on public speaking to be an easy A (or at least B+). What would this bad grade do to my semester grade? And what would that do to my overall GPA?
I don’t know for sure that all the students in the class got D’s on that first speech, but I do know there was a lot of frustration in our classroom that day. But then our professor made it clear that this grade was not in any way the final verdict on our performance. Our grade for the semester would be based not on how we did on that first speech but on how we did on our final few speeches. She wanted us to use her feedback and get better, even if we were already pretty good.
I’ve rarely been more motivated to excel in a class as I was in that one. Our professor gave detailed feedback and expected to see us apply that feedback in our next speeches. We gave each other feedback, often right in class as a group so we could learn from each other what worked well in a speech and what didn’t. The professor’s word wasn’t the only one that mattered — she learned from the feedback we gave each other, too.
At the end of the semester, we were all better speakers. And the grades did indeed reflect our final performances, not the early “disasters.”
If I’d gotten an A or B on that first speech, I don’t think I would have worked nearly as hard to improve. I would have glanced at the professor’s feedback, and I might have taken some of it to heart. But I wouldn’t have seen the point of putting much energy into improving because I was clearly already “good enough.”
On the flip side, if my professor hadn’t quickly made it clear that this grade wasn’t going to be simply averaged into everything else, I might have given up. I would perhaps have tried to do enough to pull that grade up to a C, but I would have been frustrated that a C was the best I could expect.
To me, this is the power of mastery learning. It’s having a clear goal, getting sufficient feedback to make improvements, and putting that feedback into action.
Why isn’t this the predominant approach to teaching and learning? Ira David Socol and Pamela R. Moran talked to multiple educators who’ve implemented mastery learning at their schools, and they learned that it’s hard to make the kind of shifts needed to make this the norm. They share in this issue of Kappan that educators have to work together and learn from each other how to make the needed changes.
Any attempt to make a major change in how we structure learning must consider the potential unintended consequences and outcomes. Kelsey Hammond and Chelsey Barber explain that their experience of mastery learning turned learning into a race to meet some kind of clear, external standard. I like to think a writing classroom could look similar to my public speaking class, where the journey proved to be as important as the destination. But I also know that a small classroom of college students who chose to be there is different from a large classroom of 4th graders with different levels of motivation and interest.
Still, I hope all students get the chance to experience what I did in that college classroom. I hope that all students come to recognize that there’s always room to improve and that a single grade — good or bad — isn’t the final answer about anyone’s abilities.
This article appears in the October 2024 issue of Kappan, Vol. 106, No. 2, p. 4.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Teresa Preston
Teresa Preston is an editorial consultant and the former editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan and director of publications for PDK International, Arlington, VA.
Visit their website at: https://prestoneditorial.com/
