Personal Qualities Not Measured by Tests

Just a reminder for myself that I need to be making this clear to my students. The marks we give are not a mark for who they are, but for what they've done. Marks do not define the person.
This is also part of Daring Greatly--developing the above qualities--this what it is to be human.

Are we fostering some of the above qualities? Perhaps, but perhaps not for the right reasons. Students might develop self-discipline out of fear of failure. They might be reliable because they are afraid if they aren't, they won't be loved.

I struggle a lot with the feeling that schools are too much like factories. We don't allow the students to develop and learn in a natural way, but we push them through the system. You have to complete the curriculum, do the tests, report on their progress, do the exams, and pass them on to the next tier.

It doesn't feel like there is room  in high school for pursuing personal interests and going deep into topics that the students engage with. I wish there was a course that could just be individually-focused and -directed. Like a full year ISU, but the students would be self-directed and able to explore pathways of interest as they come up. They could write journals/blogs and do presentations and write essays and make videos, etc. and these would be used to assess them. It would be like grad school, I guess, where they would defend their "thesis" --the body of work they create-- at the end.
Maybe it wouldn't work for everyone, maybe there would be too much leeway and some people would be lost without guidelines. That, I guess, would be where their mentor/teacher would come in--to provide structure if necessary.
Maybe this is just an INTP dream. . .

Just some things running through my brain at present.