Chapter 6: Accountability for High Standards

This chapter had three major categories. Holding students accountable, holding ourselves as educators responsible and responding to standards. There are many tips on how to hold students accountable for their work. Some things that I thought were really good was stating to the classroom that their work is going to be on display for the school. This makes the students take pride in their work, because they know that others are going to see the work that they produce. Another suggestion that I thought was really good for holding students accountable was not offering extra credit for students. Instead, if they want to better a project, or paper, they can take the time to correct the things that they were docked points on. Wormeli said that his students eventually just gave 100% on their papers and projects the first time around, so they didn’t even need to fix anything and they had good grades. Holding ourselves as educators accountable is something that shouldn’t be a problem, but as he states, and as we saw in “Waiting for Superman”, many teachers just place blame on all of the things working against them, and stop teaching the way that they should. So Wormeli suggest that we need to become better teachers despite this, and really teach the students well. His view on standards is very positive. I really like how he states “I’m waiting for the moment when all the countries of the world can find common ground through intellectual achievement”. In order for this to happen we do need to have standards, and instead of looking down on them, we need to respond to them in a positive light.