I have been thinking about templates and the social reproduction that they promote in society. Templates are often used not only to replicate but to grow and scale certain practices, ideas, and priorities. This idea started a few years ago when our district thought it was important to provide students with language supports to develop their academic language when speaking and writing in classes. The training consisted of three day-long sessions where teachers learned how to use the templates to enhance their current curriculum to support students in class. There were laminated cards to provide support, which included sentence frames for each form of writing (divided amongst argumentative, informational/explanatory, and narrative (although, one would argue that all three are done with good writing)) that students were assessed on through the Common Core Standards. There were drafting templates in the form of lengthy documents with many boxes spread across the page like a grid to provide students with the illusion of choice for their writing; these documents were confusing to navigate when coupled with the attempt to fit one's ideas into the formulaic format. There were handouts that could be repetitively used across units to give students the figurative academic "reps" that they needed to develop their English. It sounds good on the surface: provide language support to help students develop their ideas to be successful in society (more on this later). Beyond feeling overwhelmed by just looking at the drafting templates, I had some creeping skepticism about the effectiveness of a template. A template is a pre-designed pattern for content. By using the template, it creates habits of mind that, eventually, some may argue, make creating content more efficient and consistent from an instructional perspective of the teacher. I know that real learning is not about being efficient, and real creativity is not about imitating what has been done before. With all our talk in education and the broader societal contexts about innovation, I did not see any innovation in this form of instruction. The more I’ve thought about the issue of templates, the more I have considered the effects of their use in the classroom as well as other considerations around assessment and grading. I’ve been thinking about what a grade really means, the role of standardization by and through grading, and if grading standardizes and homogenizes thoughts through necessitating certainty. Further, I wonder about the rationalization of grades and if we are preparing students for the future or if we are repeating the hierarchical, hyper-competitive economic models in the classroom, preparing students to participate in those social structures more than the life of the mind and possibility. Lastly, I’ve considered the role of technology and AI and the ways that it will alter the role of reading and writing, diminishing students’ curiosity and capacity for wonder. Most importantly, I wonder about the civic impact that grades have on our country; grades become representative of one’s social value in the classroom, and when students don’t earn good grades, it may cause students to internalize the belief that they are not valuable to society, resulting in civic disengagement and subsequent resentment towards the systems that created their outlook and shape their current material realities.
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