What's my name?

My name is Arthur Chiaravalli, a English and Mathematics teacher at Meridian High School in Haslett, Michigan (east of the capital city, Lansing).

Our school is an alternative high school, serving students who have struggled in the mainstream. We also feature fully-staffed and accredited infant and childcare. As a result, we attract many teen parents from Lansing and the surrounding areas who would otherwise face a nearly insurmountable barrier to receiving a high school diploma.

My main interest in teaching is the concept of mastery learning, and its potential to replace the outdated, idiosyncratic grading systems that punish students and tell us nothing about whether they can in fact do any of the things we want them to.

I don't want to spend a lot of time defining mastery learning or suggesting books--suffice it to say that it's the same system we use with swimming. Either you can swim or you can't. A "D-" in swimming means nothing. We may actually assume that a person receiving such a grade should not go swimming unattended yet--and certainly should not move on to more advanced classes without ample support. But, too often, this is the rubber stamp with which we pass a kid on to the next level, utterly unprepared and unaided as they face even more challenging educational experiences. Once you understand the aptness of this analogy, you are prepared to consider why a comprehensive mastery approach to teaching, learning, assessing, grading and reporting is needed in our schools, now more than ever.