Eat Better - Grilled Cheese vs. Standards and Rubrics

TL;DR:

Grilled cheese has many variations.
Consider standards-based grading in education and the use of rubrics in assessment, grading, and reporting.
When designing a rubric, be sure to stay focused on what you want students to know or be able to do. Resist the urge to add criteria that do not relate to the task.

Grilled Cheese vs. Standards and Rubrics

I love grilled cheese sandwiches. They are simple to make, provide a quick meal, and are one of my go-to comfort foods. Coming from a family with five older brothers and two younger sisters, they were a meal that was made in bulk as I grew up. Mum or Dad would heat up the griddle, break open a loaf or two of bread, and we would all get to work, some of us buttering the bread while others were pulling apart slices of cheese. Once we were done cooking, we would gather around the table with a veritable mountain of deliciously golden brown sandwiches with ooey gooey melted cheese inside.

I like to open mine up right after they come off the griddle and spread some mayonnaise on the melted cheese. My mum has been known to add a fresh tomato to hers. My dad would always dip his grilled cheese sandwiches in tomato soup.

Now as an adult, I like to make mine with cheddar and/or pepper jack. Sometimes I use Swiss. I have even on occasion used Havarti. I’ve added ham, even though I think that makes it a hot ham and cheese sandwich, not a grilled cheese sandwich. I have also made them with crumbled bacon when I am wanting more protein or just want to jazz up the sandwich a bit.

A restaurant that only serves grilled cheese sandwiches?!

After the Teach Better 2019 Conference ended and before going home, I went out for dinner with family that lived in the area to a restaurant that served only grilled cheese sandwiches. Now, I am sure you are thinking, “Wait, hold on. How can there be a restaurant that serves just grilled cheese sandwiches? Isn’t that just something on the kids’ menu of most fast-food restaurants?”

I was doubtful at first, too, but we went, and wow! I had no idea there were so many variations on this staple of my childhood! The menu has dozens of options, but one thing is consistently true about every gourmet grilled cheese sandwich they serve: there are two slices of bread that have been grilled and there is cheese. (Side note: there are other items on the menu, but let’s stay focused on the sandwiches.)

One day I found myself thinking about all of these delicious sandwiches and wishing that someone in northwestern Illinois would open up a grilled cheese restaurant, preferably in Freeport where they would also sell fresh-made pretzels. (It is a source of frequent confusion to visitors to my town that, despite being the Home of the Pretzels, we do not have a single pretzel-themed restaurant in our town, not even a pretzel-based food truck!) During my ponderings, I asked myself a simple question: What makes a grilled cheese sandwich a grilled cheese sandwich? Put another way, at what point does it stop being a grilled cheese?

What does this have to do with standards and rubrics?

This got me thinking about academic standards in education. When I began my career as an educator, I was fully immersed in the world of standards-based teaching, learning, assessing, grading, and reporting—something that is typically called “standards-based grading.” I have never taught in a classroom where I was expected to rely on traditional grading methods with an ABCDF grading scale, although that was what I had during my own K-12 education.

Teaching, assessing, grading, and reporting based on standards meant that I had to learn how to make, use, and share rubrics. My fellow fourth-grade teachers throughout my district would meet several times a year to calibrate our rubrics, bringing in samples of student work and deciding together where these samples fell on the scale of below, approaching, meeting, or exceeding.

If I were to use this four-point scale for judging a grilled cheese sandwich, what would that rubric look like? Maybe something like this:

Criteria	Below	Approaching	Meeting	Exceeding
State of Bread	Neither piece of bread is toasted	One piece of bread is toasted	Both pieces of bread are toasted	Both pieces of bread are toasted with no burnt spots
State of Cheese	Cheese is not melted	Cheese is warmed	Cheese is melted	Cheese is melted and has a smooth texture
Quality of Taste	Sandwich is bland	Sandwich has some flavor	Sandwich is tasty	Sandwich is delicious

It is usually fairly easy to tell if something does not meet the standard. The difference between approaching and meeting is a little more difficult to identify, which is why my former district allocated so much time for calibrating and developing interrater reliability.

But how do we determine if something exceeds the standard? What if the grilled cheese sandwich uses multiple types of cheese and fancy types of bread? Does that matter? What if the sandwich has unique ingredients, such as different kinds of meats? Is it even still a grilled cheese sandwich? Or is it just a hot sandwich?

[scroll down to keep reading]

When it comes to academic standards, we sometimes allow flash and fluff to distract from the core of what we expect students to do. But as Rae Hughart so often says, fluff ain’t enough! Let me illustrate with one of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (aka CCSS ELA) for grade 4:

Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.

Introduce a topic or text clearly, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure in which related ideas are grouped to support the writer’s purpose.
Provide reasons that are supported by facts and details.
Link opinion and reasons using words and phrases (e.g., for instance, in order to, in addition).
Provide a concluding statement or section related to the opinion presented.

I once had students write an opinion piece in response to a prompt asking if they believed they should be allowed to have a pet dog. The prompt included a passage about what is required of a dog owner. One of my students wrote a wonderfully detailed six-page essay about a time someone brought a dog to her summer camp. She introduced her topic, stated her opinion, and had a clear organizational structure. She provided reasons that supported her topic and used linking words. The essay had a brilliant conclusion that wrapped it all up. So, did she meet the standard? Did she exceed it? Or did she not meet the standard because she didn’t respond to the prompt?

Focus on the focus, not the fluff!

This brings us back to the grilled cheese sandwich problem. We can perhaps say that someone has made an exceptional grilled cheese sandwich because it uses multiple types of cheese that are perfectly blended and melted and the bread is toasted to a perfect golden brown. Has someone exceeded expectations because they added bacon, lettuce, and tomatoes? Or is that just a BLT with cheese?

The next time you are designing a rubric for students, make sure you are staying focused on what you want students to know or be able to do. Resist the urge to add criteria that do not relate to the task at hand. As Dave Schmittou and Katelynn Giordano often remind us, focus on the focus!

About Alex T. Valencic

Alex Valencic is an educator, former small business owner, Boy Scout, volunteer drug prevention specialist, unrepentant bibliophile, and a geek of all things. He worked as a substitute teacher for three years before achieving his lifelong dream of teaching fourth grade, which he did for seven years in Urbana, Illinois, before accepting his current position as the Curriculum Coordinator for 21st Century Teaching and Learning in Freeport, Illinois, where he not only supports innovative educational practices in the classroom but also oversees social studies, science, and nearly all of the elective courses in the district.