Skinner Box, PacMan Pellets, Gold Stars, and High Scores.

What is Ungrading, and how does it work? Let's take a closer look!

My mentor, Dr. Kaur, prioritizes enlightenment and self-actualization over traditional pathways to knowledge acquisition. Ungrading is a beautiful undertaking, and she handles it with care. Yet, I struggle to propel myself into the ungrading process unapologetically, even as I agree with Jesse Stommel’s belief that grades don’t capture the true essence of learning (2021).

To cease striving has become my mantra in cultivating a liberatory learning experience. And so, I risk jumping into ungrading as a pedagogical approach to learning.

The further I travel in my education, the more complex and, paradoxically, practical ungrading appears. Many students, like me, are driven to prove their worth through hard work, points, and letter grades. Kaur’s syllabus insists that rewards are not extrinsically motivating, but I suspect neither are they intrinsically motivating. From early childhood, students are conditioned to chase validation through grades and rewards. Like Pavlov’s bells or the rats in Skinner’s box, we pull the golden lever that dispenses our worth—disguised as a good grade.

It feels like students have become addicted to the passing-and-failing cycle, equating academic achievement with happiness. But when grades no longer provide this external validation, there’s a withdrawal phase. As Sean Michael Morris writes, ungrading “has to do more than ring a bell; it has to have pedagogical purpose and to be part of a larger picture of how and why we teach” (Morris, 2021).

So, how do I retrain my brain to stop chomping down Pac-Man pellets and power-ups while running from the ghosts of systemized education scalability and standardization?

This brings me face-to-face with a familiar fear: What if I give my best, my all, and it’s not good enough?

Here’s where Brene Brown’s research on wholehearted living and shame resilience becomes relevant. Instead of asking, What if I’m not good enough? I can reframe my thinking: What happens when I give my all and acknowledge that my best is always good enough? Through ungrading, Kaur invites me to redefine “good enough” as progress rather than perfection. But this also means untangling the life experiences that shape my understanding of what counts as “good” and “enough.”

Can you measure what’s good? Who has the authority to assign a numerical rank to personal growth or knowledge? These questions push me to keep shedding the skin of “supposed to” and wear myself authentically. It reminds me to revisit The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where I’m reminded there’s no perfect answer. My journey is my own, and so are the measures I use to assess myself. Unlike measuring height or weight, there’s no objective yardstick for how much I’ve grown as a seeker of knowledge, stories, and truth.

People aren’t born with a starting measure of potential—so how do we define it? And how is human potential calibrated across different contexts? (Kaur, personal communication, 2024).

Still, I keep returning to the same question: How do I retrain my brain to stop chasing Pac-Man pellets while running from the ghosts of the educational system?

Kaur teaches me that educational justice requires a continuous reassessment of values as educators and individuals. Her commitment to this practice expands the classroom beyond its walls. I admire how she embodies justice through ungrading, removing the podium as a barrier between teacher and student (hooks, 1994). In this way, Kaur, hooks, and Brown remind me that engaged pedagogy invites students to question cultural values, challenge systems of education, and align (or misalign) with one another as part of the process.

And yet, habits buried in our bodies often pull us back toward the status quo, sabotaging the goals of liberatory pedagogy. As hooks notes, students experience conflict between body and mind, grappling with the tension between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation (hooks, 1994). Breaking free from these habits requires digging deep—finding the internal motivation to work for the sake of learning itself.

Through the relationship between knower and seeker, we move closer to freedom—learning, creating, and existing outside the rigid walls of the old system. Maya Angelou captures this beautifully: “You only are free when you realize you belong no place, you belong every place, no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great…” (Angelou, 1973).

To cease striving has become my compass in this journey toward liberatory education. And so, I take the leap, trusting that ungrading offers not just a new way of learning but a path toward becoming.

References:

Angelou on November 21, 1973. 

hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress. New York: Rutledge

Kaur, H personal communication, August, 22 2024.

Skinner, B. F. (1963). Operant behavior. American Psychologist, 18 (8), 503.Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903). Chapter 1: Of Our Spiritual Strivings. From The Souls of Black Folk.

Fields, B.J. (1990). Slavery, race, and ideology in the United States of America. New Left Review, Issue 181, 95-118.

Mills, C.W. (1997). The Racial Contract. Cornell University Press. https://asu.instructure.com/courses/189695/pages/module-1-learning-materials-3? module_item_id=  14526898

Thangaraj, S. (2022), Masculinities. Feminist Anthropology, 3(2): 254-262. https://doi.org/10.1002/fea2.12104

Weber, M. (1946). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (pp. 180-195). https://asu.instructure.com/courses/189695/pages/module-1-learning -materials-3? module_item_id=14526898