Pia Singh ’19: Along with the evolving technological world, the Episcopal Academy is keeping up with the latest online programs to make education easier for everyone. With the successful implementation of the one-to-one laptop program, many traditional aspects of school are becoming available online. One of the recent changes at the Academy has been the introduction of a new learning system, Canvas. Canvas is an online environment enabling students to access their to-do list, homework, and grades – also allowing parents to access their child’s grades. Faculty can post the homework and class materials online, relieving students from the burden of lugging heavy textbooks all day.
Although the new platform is convenient, many students are dissatisfied with the feature that allows parents to access their grades in an instant. This topic is causing tension between students and parents. Most students believe that parents being able to view their grades adds unnecessary stress.
This feature also means that Upper School students are prevented from being independent when their parents know about every grade they receive. Brooke Kraftson ‘19 believes that “by giving parents all access to grade right away, the parents tell the kids what to do, and in order to be prepared for life, if you get a bad grade or mess up, you have to handle it yourself.”
Agreeing with Kraftson, Amy Chen ‘19 states, “We are supposed to be mature and we’ll be taking things into our own hands in the future. If we value our education, we will tell our parents if we are having any trouble and work on it from there.”
As a student grows and learns, he or she wants to feel more independent, especially in Upper School. With a parent stepping in and monitoring their behavior at every turn, students are feeling restricted. Patrick Zhang ‘18 says, “Although there are benefits, there are also disadvantages to this system. Believe it or not, most students know where they need to be and know if their grades are slipping. If parents see that their child isn’t doing well and constantly bring it up, it just builds up extra tension that isn’t necessary.”
Many students are surprised on a daily basis that parents are aware of their grades before they are aware themselves. Parents are getting messages and notifications from Canvas while the student hasn’t even had that class that day. Zhang continues, “Having parents check grades on Canvas just adds more undue stress to the student who on average receives more than a healthy dose.”
The fact that parents are only seeing numbers on a screen and not the actual work of the student can create the illusion that only the numerical grades matter, not the learning experience the student is receiving. “Although grades may reflect some students’ level of learning, not everyone’s intelligence is reflected through this system and parents might only pay attention to the written grades,” says Zhang.
During the beginning of the year, one bad assessment may drastically affect the class grade, which could give parents a false impression of their child’s performance at school, causing unnecessary stress for both parents and students.
Matthew Shapiro, a Science teacher in the Upper School, is new to Canvas along with the rest of the Episcopal Community. When asked if his students are facing inconveniences because their parents are seeing their grades he responded, “I think that it makes sense for parents to be able to see students’ grades.”
The real issue may be that that the students have no time to communicate with their parents before the Canvas notification pings in their inbox. Shapiro shares, “I think it’s a little tricky when the parents can see the grades at the exact same time as the students. If they’re coming home from their day, the parents already know what they got on the test and they don’t have that sort of experience talking to the parent about how the test went. The dynamic would be difficult for students in that situation. Maybe it makes sense for the parents to have a little bit of a delay so that the students can at least have a conversation with their parents about how they did before.”
Following up on Shapiro’s idea, a decision popular with the students would be to delay the notifications by at least a day so parents would still receive their child’s grades but the student would have the opportunity to explain how the assessment went. If this adjustment is made, students could avoid the pressure of a parent lecturing them about a bad grade. Instead, they will be the ones to initiate the conversation, allowing them to explain the assignment or assessment fully.
Michael Letts, VI Form Dean, made an important point, saying, “Parents should be able to see grades, but the real question is should they see grades, homework, comments, and lesson plans in real time? Do they need to see everything, all the time? I also think it depends on the age of the student.” Letts, who is also an Upper School English teacher, believes that it could be worthwhile and appropriate for younger students, but when talking about 17 and 18-year-old seniors, parents may not need to see every homework assignment and communication the teacher has with the student.
Constantly releasing grades on Canvas to parents causes more problems than it solves. Since students do not have the opportunity to talk with their
parents to give some context before the grades are released, it causes unnecessary stress to all parties involved. Most importantly of all, students lose a sense of independence when parents are constantly hounding them on why they did or not get a certain grade on an assessment.