September 2012
Edmonton high school teacher
Lynden Dorval has been suspended for going against his school’s no-zero policy.
Under that policy, a student who completed only six of 15 assignments was only
graded for what he did – and got a 63% average.
Lynden Dorval tried to talk
himself out of it. He understood the stakes.
You push back against school
administrators, swim against school policy and you become a marked man, an
"insubordinate" problem teacher with a bull’s eye on your back.
But the problem was the more he
thought about it, the more Mr. Dorval, a physics teacher at Ross Sheppard High
School in Edmonton with 35 years’ experience, became convinced of what he had to
do – even if it cost him his job.
"I knew it was going to be a lot
of stress," he says. "But I just couldn’t talk myself out of it. It was the
right thing to do."
What he did, over the past 18
months, was what he had done for over three decades when a student didn’t submit
an assignment, skipped a test or missed an exam: he pulled out his red marking
pen and gave them a zero.
It was a lesson in consequences,
one contrary to the school’s no-zero policy, an official dictum Mr. Dorval
willfully ignored.
After repeated warnings from the
principal to toe the line, the renegade was hauled before a school board
hearing. Three days later, on May 18, he received a letter informing him he had
been suspended indefinitely. He suffered the consequences.
Mr. Dorval fully expects to be
fired in the coming months.
"It was against my principles not
to give zeros," the 61-year-old says. "Through experience, I found that giving a
zero – a temporary zero; the students could come to me to make arrangements to
do something to erase that mark – was the most effective way to get students to
do the work.
"It put the onus on them. I could
see some other method working with younger kids. But these are high school
students. They are becoming adults. They are getting ready to step out into the
real world and it is time for them to start taking responsibility for their own
actions."
The anti-zero argument goes
something like this: Getting a goose egg discourages students. Zeros are not a
measure of intelligence but a matter of behaviour. Kids should only be graded
for what they do – not for what they don’t do.
So – why do anything?
Mr. Dorval gives the example of a
student who transferred to his class from a nonzero class. The student completed
six of 15 assignments for his previous teacher and, since he was only graded for
what he did, had a 63% average. Mr. Dorval made it clear to the boy that missed
work meant zeros on his watch.
"With me, he did seven of seven
assignments," he says. "It is right there in black and white."
Other teachers at Ross Sheppard
expressed support for Captain Zero, telling him they wished they had the courage
to do what he did.
And he understood why they didn’t.
Being younger, they had a career to think about. After 35 years, his career was
nearing its end.
Ron Bradley, principal of Ross
Sheppard and the man responsible for adopting the No Zero Rule, declined to take
my phone call Friday. A school secretary directed me to the local school board.
The board did not return messages.
In the vacuum, however, is the
voice of common sense. We all have it, those of us who somehow survived high
school. And we all know the voice speaks the truth: Life is about consequences.
It is a series of tests.
Don’t submit the job application
and you won’t get the job. You get a zero. Skip work, tell the boss to shove it,
neglect to file your taxes, miss a mortgage payment, bounce a cheque or get a
speeding ticket, and what happens? You pay for it.
It is Newton’s Law: for every
action there is an opposite and equal reaction. Unless, of course, you are a
student at Ross Sheppard high or some other institution where every missed
assignment is met with an excuse.
And not from the kids, but from an
apologist administration that encourages serial irresponsibility by offering
second, third, fourth – and 10th chances – but not zeroes, never a zero.
Lynden Dorval knew it was wrong.
He had had enough. So he picked up his red marking pen and stayed true to his
conscience. It is a choice, he says, he would make again.
"When I was a student it never
occurred to me that if you did not do something that you wouldn’t get a zero,"
he says.
"Things like exams – I would never
think about not writing an exam. I would never think about asking a teacher to
write it later.
"It was just assumed, even if you
were sick, that you went to school and wrote the exam. You went to school and
you did the work."
National Post, June 2, 2012.
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