Redefining Assessment by Implementing Gradeless Learning

Speaker 1 Hello, and welcome to season three episode five of Things Fall Apart, our podcast at the Human Restoration Project. My name is Chris McNutt. I'm a teacher in Springfield, Ohio. On today's podcast, we're looking at the grade list movement. There's a lot to be debated in the education system, but I'm hard pressed to find a topic so steep in research as this one. Whether it be motivation, willingness to learn, or even traditional test scores, not giving a grade shows improvement across the board. We summarized this research on our website as well as on a previous podcast, which you can find in our show notes. Therefore, instead of diving too far into why the greedeless movement is needed, much of this podcast is about implementing it. But before that, let me give a quick shout out to Bill Ryder, Jenny Lucas, and Erin Flanagan for being some of our Patreon supporters. We deeply appreciate you and your willingness to keep our resources, podcasts, writings, and more afloat. And if you haven't checked out our extensive progressive guides ranging from grade less assessment to mindfulness, take a look on our website. That's all free. If you like what you see, consider donating on Patreon. Thank you. There's countless research articles, books, podcasts, psychologists, education experts, and more writing and studying the effects of grades. And every single time, whether it be 1850 or 2019, it seems to support the same two outcomes. One, grades diminish motivation and do little to actually provide feedback for students to improve. And two, if there is research that supports grades, it's saying that they improve standardized test scores, not necessarily motivating or improving student outcome in the long run. I challenge you to find data that supports otherwise. I say that not out of spite for people that disagree with this, but because I'm genuinely curious if there is any. It seems to be one of those things that is really common sense when you start thinking about it. People have thought about this for a while. Even back in Dewey and Thordeik's time, you know, grades were intentionally brought into schools as a way to show student growth, a way to open up dialogue between teacher and student, but in practice, they do the exact opposite. Essentially, grades are a shortcut that communicate pass or failure with many students seeing anything under an a as a failure. And for those at the bottom who receive an f, they're pushed out of our schools. They're rank and filed to be the quote unquote losers in the education system. But there's a lot of barriers to best practice and going grade less isn't just, yeah, I'm just gonna stop giving grades. Many districts have grade book requirements, whether that be simply giving someone a grade or even just requiring a grade per week, and therefore, many don't even attempt this. It seems impossible. I'm here with our guests to show that it actually is possible. There are educators throughout the world going gradeless even in the most traditional systems. Of course, there are varying degrees of making this happen, but going as far as possible within one's own district for the benefit of their students is worthwhile.

Speaker 2 Make Them Masters is kind of like the larger project that I'm doing and the book is part of it because it bears the similar title, Make Them Process It. And it's a little self published book that I have. The main drive behind that book was I was having this really great experience with my students using writer's notebooks for writing instruction. It's really a place for a lot of informal writing, a lot of a place for students to make lots of mistakes with writing as they learn and grow without a lot of pressure for them to produce a grade. Because when I first started teaching writing instruction, basically all of my writing instruction would take place during the high stakes, big assessment type writing. So they're doing big essays and I'm putting all of my writing instruction in those times. So it's like, here's how you prewrite, here's how you draft, here's how you revise. And then on top of that, there's just well, also we gotta go over formatting and then we've got to go over like sentence level writing. So I'm just unpacking those assignments with just an intense amount of instruction, which is really unfair to my students that I and I learned that over time. And so I spread it out and space it out into a writer's notebook now and I'm talking to a colleague of mine. I'm saying, look at all this stuff my students are doing. He's he's kind of wowed by it too. And he kept telling me, like, are you writing this down? Are you writing this down?

Speaker 1 And eventually, said, I should probably write this down. This is Jeffrey Freedom who teaches English at Hillcrest High School in Corona, California and founded Make Them Master It, an organization aimed at connecting teachers to innovate their practice through a podcast, book, and blogs. Make them master it. Long before I had that that URL,

Speaker 2 I was dealing with I think it was kind of born initially out of a lot of frustration, maybe even a little bit of anger. What I was noticing as I came into education in, like, the year 2005 was when No Child Left Behind was in full swing. And there was, in some places, a bit of a panic with how we're supposed to respond to that as schools. Looking back on it, I'm not sure the administrations I was serving under at the time fully understood what was going on, but there's basically this just real push to have test scores going up. And then when it came time to look at why the test scores weren't going up, it pretty much all fell back on the teachers. Like, hey teachers, come on, what's going on here? And I was watching the we were bearing the brunt of the responsibility and the students were starting to bear less and less of that responsibility And that was kind of getting me a little frustrated. I'm I'm now frustrated about other things when it comes to, you know, assessment and accountability. But for a time there, I said this feels really unfair for the teachers. So I'm like, I gotta we gotta get the students to do more of this, take more ownership. I mean, you've heard that's a big, term that's been going around the last few years is having students own their learning. So I wasn't using that term back then. Was like, man, I gotta get these guys to take more ownership for what's what's really theirs and it's their learning. And so it's that's kind of where that make them master it. Like, they're I'm the one who's doing all the learning here. I'm the one that's constantly reflecting. When are we gonna get the students to do that? So I was trying to work that in as much as I could more and more over time getting students to assess themselves, giving feedback to one another, not just relying on me and any kind of grade that comes down, from me or from their other teachers, but to get them to take more and more ownership for what it is that they're there to do instead of it all falling back on the teachers. It needs to fall on them. And that sounds really nice, but again, it was a it was a frustration place where I was trying to I was actually trying to push the work back on them initially.

Speaker 1 But I've really grown since then and and now it's more of a challenge that I'm bringing to my students is like, alright guys, how can you take more ownership for the learning? This has come up with many of our guests, but it seems like something most progressive educators share is the realization that what they're doing isn't worth it and coming to terms with the fact that traditional education isn't just unsustainable due to how poorly it functions, but because it's ultimately soulless for the teacher and no longer feels like you're doing what you signed up to do, which is obviously helping and mentoring kids. Instead, you're almost roboticized. You're discouraged to show any kind of true emotion whether that be, you know, not showing any emotion or putting on this like like entertainer style moniker. Or maybe you're just held to ridiculous accountability measures in standardized testing. Could you go into further, Jeff, on what this shift looked like for you? I was really,

Speaker 2 really close to quitting. I was really, really close to throwing in the towel because of how much, and really a lot of it came down to grading, at the at the time where I was just expecting. Large largely, it was me being idealistic as a teacher. I was like thinking I could do it all. My teacher hero in my mind that I was aspiring to be, and I didn't even really know this at the time. It was like on later reflection. But he was a bachelor and he had nothing but time to give to giving feedback to his students and getting all this work back. And I had two kids at the time and was just trying to juggle that. I say at the time because now I have four kids at home. So I also needed a solution. I needed just practically like, if I'm gonna do this next year, and not feel immense guilt for not getting the work done or missing time with family, I need to figure out a way to get the students to do take more ownership of their learning because I won't survive.

Speaker 1 Right. I know going gradeless for me was empowering because you end up doing a lot less at home. I mean, obviously, it's not a replacement for giving feedback and we're still expected to work with kids. But I found myself spending way more energy at work guiding and mentoring and way less energy at home since if it's a project framework, I'm not really doing a lot of the planning. It's mostly the kids. How did you go about changing up your grading practice?

Speaker 2 By doing summative conferences at the end of a grading term and taking points off of assignments. So, it's been kind of a fun little joke to say in class where this class is totally pointless. But what I mean is I'm not I'm what I'm doing instead of just throwing points or a grade on there is I'm, giving students meaningful feedback and it's taking me probably just as much time as in the days when there were points to to put some information on there for the students to get back. But what's different this time for me as the teacher, my experiences, I'm I'm telling them where they are. Like here, here's where you are. Here's what you're doing well. Here's your next step as a learner in this particular skill that we're working on. And then for them, they get that back and they can they're freed up to look at it. Now the points aren't making so much noise, for them that they can focus on that feedback. And then they'll put together kind of like a portfolio. They're bringing their work to me, and then they're talking me through their learning. And then at the end of that conversation, we negotiate what their grade is in the course.

Speaker 1 So that's a they are taking ownership, but it is just as much work for me. And but now also more for them. They really have to think through how they're gonna make their case for their grade. And the influx of social media and in general, the ability to find sources that supports gradeless learning make this a lot easier. I know early on in teaching I was always very anxious about things I was doing. I tended to over plan, I always felt like students need to be accounted for, I had a ton of grades, it was really rote and a lot of this was part of a savior complex if you will that a lot of teachers tend to feel. I wanted to be a teacher because I want to help others. So that teaching mythos, you know, it makes us feel like we're trying to save the world, that students need saved and we're superheroes almost. And I know that's not the mentality now that we should be framing education with. I'm curious about what connections you've made on your podcast writings and on social media that have affected your desire and willingness to shift towards gradeless learning. Oh, yeah. There's been a major

Speaker 2 shift in that where I've also hit a point too in my own self efficacy as a teacher where I don't need as many external voices or measures on me where I'm like relying on what other people think of my practice because I'm confident in what I'm doing. So that actually takes the stress out right there. But when you're a young teacher, that's not there yet because you're still figuring out who you are and you're having new experiences with students on a regular basis and so you're not sure how to interpret all that and how you handled it. So I've really just been reflecting on my own practice over the years and that's really helped too. And I I never really struggled with a savior complex where I felt like I had to to save the students. My struggle was it's really weird one. I don't know if I've ever stated this on online. I've talked to a few people about this before. But there was very, very early on, think before I even taught my first class, so in my early twenties, I'm putting together my syllabus and I'm I'm talking about that in some venue where there's like new new teachers there and I say, you know, like, oh, man, I'm struggling with what's put on my syllabus. And I don't even remember what the guy looks like but there's somebody there that kind of dropped this thing. Well make sure whatever you write in your syllabus can stand up in court. That's it. And for whatever reason that really terrible advice like stuck with me And, the way I kind of describe it is every time so I wrote in the syllabus and I tried to actually make it, you know, legally ironclad. And then every time I'm doing an assessment of my students' work, putting points or a grade, there's kind of this thought in the back of my mind that I might have to give an account to it. So that becomes this sort of, Dickensian, specter that's behind me like this hooded figure with a gavel like just waiting to drop the hammer on me if I don't do something right or if I don't provide the right kind of feedback. And the way that takes shape or the way that it took shape for many many years for me, if you're dealing with a like an analytical rubric that has say 24 to 36 boxes of like how a student could score on a piece of writing is all of my advice, all of my feedback was how students weren't getting the top mark. So it's like, here's how you missed. And like, you missed here, you missed there, oh, you really missed on that one. Or and and people rarely got the top scores on the categories. And so for me, it's like I'm I'm living in fear of this specter behind me, but I'm also just giving this advice to students about how they're not doing perfect. And, it's just kind of creating this bad feeling all around for everybody. And this year, I decided that I'd had enough of that, and I could actually name what was going on. So to find out how I could approach young teachers about that having to move away from sort of that anxiety that's wrapped up in how we assess is kind of becoming my new, mission, I guess, is to connect people with, hey, it doesn't have to be the way that you think. It doesn't have to to be this,

Speaker 1 oppressive in a way. You know, know a lot of this isn't very easy either. I I know it's really hard to convince everyone that, great, this is the way to go. I mean, if you're brought up in the traditional system, saying that everything you're used to is really the wrong way to do things is a very much an uphill battle. What has been your experience in this regard? The the scary part for me this year,

Speaker 2 and I still kinda wrestle with it a little bit, but now now that we're most of the way through the year, I'm seeing that it works. But the scary part for me was how do I justify this to somebody who has questions? You know, if a parent or if an administrator has questions, which I've only dealt with a couple and they've been pretty softball questions. So I I've been fortunate in that regard. I know some people have tried to go the route that I'm going and have been met with a lot of opposition, because the way that but the word I'm gonna use here is schema. I mean, everyone's schema about what schooling is and what you do at school. It doesn't quite fit what I'm doing in my classroom. I mean, it largely does. There's, you know, kids show up every day. They sit down in relatively assigned seats, and,

Speaker 1 I take role and I instruct and they do work. I mean, it looks very similar, but it just kinda like how we get that sort of end result that we're all that know, I mean, more or less, the students are there for that grade teaching high school. And this led us to a discussion of Jeff's platform, make them master it, which is developed to connect teachers in a safe place to consider these progressive ideas. For him, it encourages practice in his own classroom because he knows that others are considering and doing the same things. For me, it's the same way. Human restoration project has allowed me to feel a lot more confident in the progressive ideals I try to hold up in my own classroom. Further, we as teachers can use our online platforms to bolster the why of using progressive ad showcasing our student work. Basically, there's a level of sort of submitting to this external measure,

Speaker 2 a standardized test. And I I would say if a school wanted to kinda go all in with this more student centered approach, now with, technology being relatively inexpensive and really fast internet, things like that, I feel like a school could just say, we're gonna go all in on this. And instead of just, like, waiting for somebody else to tell us our results, how about we just show them? How about we we put on our website here that we have, you know, video or we run a project that's all year long and we're just constantly updating and telling the community what we're doing here and showing what our really bright students are doing. And then when the test results come out, they can kinda decide for themselves when they look at, well, here, I got all this great stuff coming out from our school and we can see what our students are doing and then we see these results that might actually cause some questioning.

Speaker 1 I'm just you know speculating what if a school did that. I'm a huge proponent of this as well. I manage the website of our school and I make a point to upload the projects that we're doing including our resources and promoting social media accounts of teachers who show off student work. And we emphasize student work, not teacher work. I really find it annoying when teachers take videos of, you know, quote unquote engaging lessons. I'm not interested in someone's amazing techniques of control. I just wanna see cool examples of what students are doing and then I can use those ideas to propose new ideas to my kids. Next year, we're planning on having students actually all upload their work on our website and make their portfolios even public. What goals do you have for them, make them master it when it comes to promoting your ideas?

Speaker 2 Well, my goals for the platform going forward, I I do wanna grow, get as many stories as I can of teachers at that points where they really struggled in their career, but they they found a way through and and put that out there for other teachers. I wanna connect more at make them master it, around the idea of these alternative ways to assess students and, more ownership for the students and their learning. And as much as I can, kind of put that on my my website. And I'd I'm at I'm toying with the idea of, you know, having other people come on the website too to just kinda share their story about how they have students take on the learning or even like the the teacher side too of, you know, it's really hard but I push through and and here's some encouragement for you too. So kind of opening it up a little bit for other teachers to to share their story, but really to just kinda keep growing. Then that concept of getting students to own the learning and for teachers to sort of unburden teachers from the stresses teaching as much as possible in an encouraging way. I've seen some stuff out there that's that's the same kind of goal, but it's more of a destressor event. And I don't want that to take place on my website necessarily. I mean, we do need to vent. We do need to have time for we process stuff with people that we trust. But I also just really want to be an encouragement to, really, to learners and the teachers right there and just kind of build on that as much as I can. So I don't know if there's, I do know there's other books in me. I got some books in there that are gonna come out eventually and I'll continue to self publish so. In the same vein, what advice do you have for teachers who may want to share their voice? I encourage everyone to make their voice heard because I mean it's changed my teaching life. It seems like there's, like, when I entered the profession long before there was the proliferation of social media, there was a way, like a process you went through, an established process that you went through to be considered like a a leader or some somebody who could raise a platform and have a voice. But now with social media, it's more of like who's listening. And so there it's a very different route where anyone anyone can build a platform. And if the ideas are resonating, then some people can kind of flock there and they'll go there. And it gets shared around. And it it's not this established way. Like, I don't necessarily need to get a PhD or an EDD to be heard. I can invite almost invite people into my classroom with my platform and say like, hey, this is what's going on in here. And if the ideas resonate, people kinda hover around that. And then over time, they I'm it's there's no actual process of this. No one's handing me a diploma and saying you're an expert. But at a certain point, it's I'm being treated like I'm one. And, my me and my colleagues have been teaching for about the same amount of time, about thirteen to fifteen years, who are in the process of building a platform are noticing these things too. That, people are they're taking me just as seriously as they would, you know, this, traditionally published author over here. It's been a fascinating kind of concept to think through that there's different routes now too. There's alternative routes

Speaker 1 to this expertise in this platform building. Exactly. And as a soft promo, I'm always willing to share the human restoration project with you. If anyone listening has a story to tell, advice to give, or anything surrounding progressive education, I'll help promote you. We'll coach you through setting up some basic account stuff if you're not familiar and really offer just to promote your message for free. Just send us a DM on Twitter or you can reach me by email at chris,chris,@humanrestorationproject.org.

Speaker 3 In my opinion, it's valuing the student where he or she is. It's recognizing the individual strengths and weaknesses and challenging them beyond where he or she is currently at. Grading in of itself is comparative. It's either norm reference or criterion reference. And either way, when we're doing that, we are we're we're saying that the students should be here. And not all students should be somewhere.

Speaker 1 They should be exactly where they are and we should be challenging them beyond where they Here's Erin Blackwelder, an English educator in Woodland Public Schools in Woodland, Washington and founder of the organization Teachers Going Gradeless, which connects educators and provides a crazy amount of resources concerning gradeless education. Aaron references the end of average by Todd Rose.

Speaker 3 Throughout history, we have made these attempts to average or, you know quantify things and place the ideal around something and one of the biggest comparisons he uses is jet fighters and that pilots were, you know, we weren't very successful when we had these average built cockpits. But as soon as they started developing the cockpit to be adjustable to the the pilot, then we've been able to get pilots of all sizes, shapes, genders into the into the cockpit and we've been been, you know, we've we've had the greatest air force ever since. Now I'm not promoting the air force or war or anything like that, but what I'm saying is the idea is that has been transitioned to our automobiles and made us better drivers and and more comfortable in our cars. And he goes on to talk about education and that when we start looking at different aspects of learning and learning styles and learning abilities gearing towards that mindset, then we open up possibilities that can basically challenge each person and and, you know, develop ideas that that would never be developed if we didn't open up those opportunities. So yeah, that's to me, gradeless learning is about acknowledging a learner where where that learner is and exploring his or her potential

Speaker 1 rather than the potential somebody else thinks that they should be at. For sure. And it benefits the teacher just as much as the student. I find myself much more relaxed and less stressed when I'm not expected to put a number in for every student every single day or every single week. Sometimes I'm expected to summarize a grade for eligibility or state requirements, but mostly I spend most of my time giving feedback in class or through something more student centric. And I think that some might look though at gradeless learning and say, you know, specifically I'm referencing your progress report which I'll link in the show notes. If you're not familiar, it's a sheet of paper that lists a bunch of learning objectives with some banked in remarks and then there's a a summative section at the bottom for growth and what someone's doing well. For some they might look at that and go, man, that's a lot of work. How has gradeless learning affected your workload? In some aspects, I'm doing a lot less work than I've ever done before.

Speaker 3 I have to really think about what it is that I want to read and assess. So homework. I don't give homework. I haven't given homework in years. However, we do a lot of project based and problem based learning and I'm looking at the work in progress constantly and from those from from that perspective I'm doing a lot more in class working with individual students reading their work well over their shoulder essentially and giving ongoing feedback. So by the time that it's done and turned in I don't need to sit down with it and assess it. I've sat down with the students through the process and helped ensure by the time it's turned in, there's they're they're not having to get a grade from the word get get evaluation. I mean, they they pretty much are confident where that work is by the time they send it in. Through the process, it's a lot more work but in the summative, fairly easy at that point. As far as building that that progress report, yes, does look pretty daunting, doesn't it? In in all honesty, takes me about four to five minutes to fill one out for each student and that being pretty generous with time, I can probably whip them out a little faster than that. I actually use Google forms. I have two rubrics that I use that are one is based on the common core and what our learning targets are for that for that standard and for the one that you saw, it's based on freshman first semester. It's all about learning to to use text evidence for the claim. That's everything we do the whole semester long. And the other rubric that we use is a soft skills rubric and those both of those are embedded into the teaching and the learning in the class and I find that soft skills are far more important to talk about with students than the hard skills the writing. And so I like it because a lot of those conversations I have with students like we do a lot of group collaborative work in my class and I have this young, one young lady who I've had multiple conversations with, you know, she started off the semester by complaining that she was the only one doing the work and so I pointed into our soft skills rubric, I said well let's look at this, let's see, are you with the collaboration, are you acting as a leader or are you taking this on yourself? Are you working, are you being respectful by taking on the work or is it more respectful to challenge people and if they don't do the work, let them fail? And so it challenges students who are that type A personality to look to step back and go, what I'm doing is unhealthy. It's unhealthy for me and it's unhealthy for my group. So I really like those soft skills in recording this. The one thing that I truly believe in is when I talk about these, I don't report the full rubric to the parents. I don't want parents to look at when I report say one item, let's say it's a level three. I don't want them to see oh boy, they could be a level four. I just want them to acknowledge where the child is and just accept that because as soon as we start having conversations around well, why is he a level two? We start having conversation around a grade. Why is my child level three and around level four? And I don't wanna have those conversations. I wanna have a conversation about where your child is right now and if you're interested in moving your child forward, we could talk about how we can make things better without looking at level four. And even though you find yourself doing all this, you still have to report grades within your district, right? Yes, I do. I have to report a grade and what what I found is over the last I started doing that that long report this year and I found that parents have loved it, they've absolutely loved it and all they get on my report card is a letter grade and so there's no comments, nothing on the report card anymore. It's just the letter grade and then the child gets the long form sent home with them. And I find that that I'm having more conversations with parents through email, phone calls about that report than I am about the letter grade anymore. I've not had a parent call and complain to me why is why is my billy getting a b plus and not an a a or whatever it is. They're calling me and saying, hey, you know, noticed that you that in the one of your challenges for for my son, you said that he could develop his leadership skills. He's involved in this, this and this, what are you seeing in class because I would like to help him out with that. So I enjoy those conversations and and those I think are much more meaningful than, you know, what can I do to get my child from a minus to an a? It it it does just don't make sense in those conversations,

Speaker 1 but the conversations on how to make my child a better human being are are so rich and so so rewarding. Of course, we have to still deal with the ramifications that grades have on our schools as well. Let's take a second and talk about the article you wrote recently called Redefining Quality, Working Toward New Measures of School Achievement,

Speaker 3 where you talk about the effect that school grading has on the surrounding community. Well, the school report card emphasizes test scores, which is cool. And if you look at my article, I put a screenshot of Washington state's overall report card. And you can go to any school district report card. When a state emphasizes test scores, such as Washington does, You'll notice on that screenshot that 50% of the page is directed towards the results of the test scores. And, the bottom right hand corner, it kind of hidden away under other measures is four year graduation, five year graduation rate, and attendance. I don't know why graduation rate is is clumped with attendance. Who gives a crap about attendance? But graduation rate should be should have much more preferential treatment to it than the test scores. It isn't part of what our goals in high school is to get kids to graduate, but more than graduate, there are so many cool things going on in schools that just are not reported in state test scores. And, when we only publish state test scores, we are being reductive in what is possible in a school. We know that through, you know, years and years and years of research that the number one indicator of the success of the school on a test scores is the socioeconomic status of the community that surrounds the school. So when we report test scores as the number one indicator of equality of a school, then we're automatically disadvantaging students of poverty, students of color. I mean, we are perpetrating institutionalized racism as we continue to report state test scores and we're and we're gonna continue to give preferential treatment to the white affluent neighborhoods. So of course, you know, parents who are white and affluent are going to back up the state test scores because it is going to give their children higher preferential treatment with the schools. But the sad thing is is what are their schools really doing to prepare their kids for beyond? Are they just doing a really good job preparing them for the test so that they could take this test, or are we really preparing kids for life? You know, a lot of the things I I listed off in my article some of the wonderful things that my school does. We have two Washington, sorry, Washington State regional teachers of the year. We this is in the past six years that that these teachers have been recognized. And then we have we have a culinary program that has won several state and have gone to nationals. We have a a FFA program that has won several states and gone to nationals multiple times. And we've had, we have an art program that that that, he he uses pottery class and the kids make bowls and he sells the bowls for charity. I mean, these are wonderful things and these are not put into a school's report card. And when I if I saw those things listed on the school's report card, go, man, I want my kid to go there. But when I look at my school's report card, we are rated as a four out of 10. And it it makes me sad that our quality is not even on the top half because our our test scores and we have a large community of we're rural school and we have a large community of poverty students and we're automatically saying our school is not high quality because our test scores are not there. And to me, I just find that very sad. And I think that when we show that to parents, when we show that to community members, if we put it into their face that look, you're automatically disadvantaging schools. And the and when we flip that over, if we stop deemphasizing test scores and we start expecting schools to begin to report how is the school connecting with the community and what impact are you making in the community in your school, then we can we're gonna have to start redefining and and challenging ourselves as administrators and teachers to what we're doing in the classrooms. I'm no longer going to be doing some direct instruction that's telling my kids how to answer the the correct bubble and answer on on a question on the state test. Instead, I'm challenging my kids to publish their writing to a blog spot so that they can impact our community or we're we're doing some community activists to reduce to reduce, you know, drug dealing in our community or we're dealing with how do we, you know, how do we increase the salmon population in our rivers because salmon population are a decline. So we're beginning to look at those and reach out to the community and work with the community to solve problems. And when we we're ready to report those things, our school's gonna be much better than they were than just, hey, we did a great job on this test. So I'm curious then, is there a question that you believe that state standardized report cards should be addressing? I think that when we begin to quantify learning, we begin to reduce it to I mean, it dehumanizes, period. And I think what we need to do is start asking, not instead of asking the question what do we begin to quantify, but rather what do we get, how are going to begin to qualify this? How kids get to report what they've learned in the process four years of high school or their thirteen years of education. How do kids get to reflect upon that and say, here's what I've learned in my thirteen years of school and I'm so glad that I went through my schools and here's where I'm going to go with this information. And then what we can do is, and this is hard to do, is we check-in with them four, five, ten years after graduation and see where they are. And our kids, because of what they've learned in school, are they now people who are shaping their community? Are they shaping their jobs? Are they people who are influencers and creative? And yeah, I think those are the questions we have to ask but it's that's the hard work. It's much easier to throw a piece of paper in front of, you know, 1,600 kids and then pull the results in and have a machine run it and report the results by the end of the year. But those reports of a state test don't tell us where the kids are gonna be ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. And I think those are the questions that we need to ask. We need to be asking alumni, hey, how did how did your high school program help prepare you for college? Or how did your high school program help prepare you for the career that you were in involved? Or how did your high school program just help you to be a better person? And I really think that's the question that we need to ask is how did school make you a better person? And that's not quantifiable.

Speaker 1 And what final thoughts do you have surrounding your practice and gradeless ed? Couple years after I first started teaching,

Speaker 3 ratemyteacher.com came out. And I remember thinking, this is cool. I can get feedback from my kids and from their parents and people can see this around the world, what I'm doing and I can learn from what I'm doing bad and what I'm doing good. And I remember teachers being up in arms, hey, we can't have this. What if I get a kid that hates me? And I think what it comes down to really why teachers fear the students reporting of the teachers is because I really think that we if we really think about it, we know we're failing our kids. We know that we're not serving social emotional needs. We know that we're really not preparing them for life. We are because nowhere in the real world do we sit in a desk in isolation, not work with somebody next to us, take a test every week. We don't have six different bosses telling us what to do, six different rules. We're working collaboratively, we're working, know, most jobs we're solving real world problems and working with people to do that. And I really do think that if you ask a teacher, hey, how does what you're doing prepare kids for real life? If they're being honest, they're going say it's not. And I think that's part of the fear of having people report on us, but I think that if we move away from a test data driven school to a more holistic and problem based or project based outreach where we're working with our communities, then kids are going to be more satisfied with their learning. Kids are going to be more satisfied with who they are and their teachers because they'll look at their teachers as somebody who worked with them rather than worked at or did to them. And nobody wants somebody to do to them, they want somebody to do with them in life. I know like with my principal, my principal is phenomenal and he comes into my classroom quite often and he'll just ask me questions, he'll give me some suggestions, he'll tell me what he likes that I'm doing, he'll point out things that he doesn't like, but it's not it's a it's a relationship that we have and it's built on trust and it's built on how do we get kids to learn better rather than, hey, you're not filling in these check boxes and at the end of the year, we're gonna do our evaluation and I'm gonna grade you down for everything that you got wrong. It's more of, hey, how can I make Aaron Blackwell a better teacher? And I I trust my principal and I look at him, I I don't fear him walking in my door. I I'm excited when he walks in my door because I think, hey, I have another opportunity to have a conversation about what's going on in my classroom. And I think that's the same thing that kids need. They need to look at us when we're walking by their desk. Hey, this is an opportunity for me to share what I'm doing with my teacher and get some feedback so I could become a better writer or write a better scientist, a better thinker rather than, uh-oh, hope my teacher doesn't see me off as playing on my phone or, oh boy, I hope my teacher doesn't see that I've made this mistake here. So, yeah, think that that those are the relationships we need to build.

Speaker 1 I hope you're enjoying the podcast thus far. I sincerely appreciate you listening in. And if you enjoy this work, head on over to humanrestorationproject.org to find a ton of free resources and a wealth of writings. And then if you think we should keep going, take a gander at our Patreon page. For a dollar a month, you'll receive a professional print ready electronic magazine of our works every two months. But as always, all of our work is available free online. The best practices shouldn't be gatekept. So we're here as a resource to support progressive ed for everyone. Thank you. And finally, Nick Covington, who is both one of our earliest supporters and a social studies instructor at Ankeny High School in Ankeny, Iowa, who promotes the use of portfolio based learning as well as other progressive practices on his social media as well as his blog. Kinda had a a a strange journey into education.

Speaker 4 You know, graduated, into the great recession, had tons of odd jobs, worked at a cemetery, worked for the census, worked as a substitute teacher for two years, and then landed in in Ankeny, which is the school that I graduated high school from, and kinda fell into a social studies position from there. So, yeah, here I am seven years later, I think, and, and and teaching social studies. What was your journey like into progressive ed? Getting into progressive education and was seeing, how the system cultivates accumulation, whether it's, like, through points or through, you know, exit tickets and those kinds of things over, like, the messiness of of actual thinking. You know? And then we don't we don't really help students develop, tools to even think about their thinking or evaluate their learning. And for me, the the big wake up call was, I think, maybe five years ago now, we, and we had a we had a pretty you know, PLC culture is a pretty strong thing in in our district. So I I I was kind of tired of giving these cumulative finals. And so I said I was like, I'm gonna give a portfolio for a final and just kinda see did some research on that and kinda see what happened. But it but it was it was a kind of an interesting failure for the first semester because I didn't change anything about the ways that I was teaching. It was just, okay. Well, then let's compile this all at the end and kinda see how this connects back to standards. And so kids were were putting in their, like, summative assessments. They're putting quiz scores in there. And so we'd get to the end and, you know, and have these conversations. Say, okay. How does how does how how can you show that you learned the role of individuals and groups as promoters of change in the status quo? And they'd pull out a quiz score, and I'd say, well, how does this show that you learned anything? And they'd say, well, I got a 90%. And I would say, okay. So so what did you learn about individuals and groups to show that you got a 90%? And they would say, I don't know. But I got a 90%, so I must have learned it. And so it was like this circular thing, you know, and kids were just trapped in this language of, like, points and grades. And so I I really did realize that we need to switch. If we're gonna give them a language to be able to communicate learning separate from points and grades, we need to start using different, you know, ways of communicating those things too. So we we kind of act in school like if we just cover the accountability parts and and try and keep students accountable that, you know, then maybe they'll just figure it out at the end. But, like, really, I think what it does is just create kids who haven't had a chance to think about their learning in a in a meaningful way. And then they just get to the end, and and there's no time to reflect. They just have a GPA to to show for it. But the the consequences are vast. You know? There's the the the kids are more risk averse. They're extrinsically motivated almost exclusively. They don't really feel like a shared sense of collaboration or obligation to anybody else because, you know, at the end of the day, what goes in the grade book isn't what what reflects your, effort or your values or, you know and I'm pointing around the room here that the the the collective or group work, it's just, what did what did I do? How can I accumulate more of those things? And so they they they leave school just with a lack of curiosity of, you know, purpose or direction. And they they can't ask and answer meaningful questions about about their place in the world. And and literally, all all that stuff that I described started with just a switch to portfolio conversations that failed terribly, you know, my second year of teaching and then realizing I was gonna have to backfill all of these other I think my light's turned off. Backfill all of these other, skills and and abilities to be able to have conversations. Like, can't just go into this in the final and expect that they're gonna do well. You have to model it. You have to practice it. You have to build it into the structures of of your day. And that has just taken me down a rabbit hole of, you know, every other sort of thing related to those kinds of ideas. It started with portfolios.

Speaker 1 And what are the goals when it comes to using these practices? What's the point of using a portfolio and diving into grade less learning? In thinking about, like, those goals of using progressive practice,

Speaker 4 I I I mean, I can get to more specific things, but here's the the the thing that keeps me up all night, and I tell my kids this almost every single day too, is at commencement on May 25, when I'm sitting there in the in the audience and they're walking across the stage and and, like, I'm I'm sitting there applauding them, and then they hit the other side of the stage with them. You know? There's there's not gonna be, someone there to, you know, hold you accountable with, bells and all the, you know, the intense learning structures that we built up around this. You're not gonna necessarily have the instant feedback of something like a Gradebook or all those other accountability layers that we have. So, like, I just asked them, okay. So so what are you gonna do then? So so why should I do those things in my practice now if that if that's not really supporting you for a world without those kinds of things? So so what replaces it if you're gonna have to be intrinsically motivated? What what replaces, you know, me asking questions or teacher led questions when there's no teacher to lead those questions? And sure, some kids are gonna have they're gonna go on to have other educational experiences, but they're gonna look very different from the ones, you know, veterans who I think about my own college experience or even, you know, beyond that in in in adult learning environments, and they don't necessarily look like traditional classroom practices. They look more like reflective conversations, and they look like ungraded, you know, ungraded writings that just kind of ask you to grow and think and reflect as a professional practitioner. Or, you know, I I haven't taken a multiple choice test in in ten years because, you know, there's a part of the world that that doesn't necessarily value those things. So, you know, if the if the entire experience of school is focused on molding a particular type of student, but the world values things that are different than being successful in school, but we we send kids on a very specific path of success there. What are they gonna do with the rest of their life outside of school? And so, yeah, I think we just have to strive to make learning environments more authentic in in that world and to to understand through experiences rather than through through rote learning and and some of the ways that maybe maybe we learned when we were in high school. I thought a little bit about something that I'm trying to do in my in my own experience here and and trying to apply in my own context, which is, you know, which is the concept of assessment as learning. And and I I've I've learned about it through, you know, Twitter and talking to people through Twitter, but, like, that seems to be, like, the the the key here in in terms of understanding, like, learning as a process. You know? Instead of learning as learning as assessment, assessment as learning. Literally, it it turns the whole thing on its head. And and and here's a quick anecdote just just from an econ class. So even in even in cases where students don't have a whole lot of choice over over content. So say we're learning about economic systems and and to scaffold that, you know, loosely, it's we're we're building a quick little organizer, but I I'll leave a blank space in there and just say, okay. Draw. Draw a symbol. Draw a cartoon. Draw a diagram. Draw something that to you, you know, represents in their brain, economic systems. This experience that I had with a student the other day was, you know, I haven't graded anything in the entire semester in the sense of, like, putting points in a grade book. But this student said, like, if I just draw a coconut for the traditional economy, would you accept that? And I I was like, well, what do you even mean will I accept that? So so, like, my mind went in a million different directions, and and I was just like, well, what does the coconut mean to you? You know? And he says, the coconut shows how in a traditional economy, they would just barter for good, like coconuts instead of using money. And in my head, was just, yep. You get it. You know? So there there wasn't a need for, like, an additional testing or assessment or anything else. It's it's like that fluid ongoing process. It's that it's that, like, the Frank Smith idea from his forgetting and learning, that classical view. You know? Learning is effortless when it happens as a result of being in a being in a community of learners who are doing the same thing together. So I wanna make my classroom environment more like that. Even if we have, you know, some traditional structures, because I still have to, you know, talk about economic systems and and PPCs and some of those things in economics class. But but how can we build that assessment as a learning part to just make it a fluid part of what we do, you know, and not a series of tests that you study for and forget.

Speaker 1 One thing I really wanna point out is your economics evidence journal.

Speaker 4 Could you go into more details about what this is? I mean, the evidence journal as it is as as it's designed to do, the evidence journal is, you know, it provides us clear language and clear paths to get to, you know, whatever we define as proficiency. You know, if we want kids to understand and can provide examples of wants and needs of goods and services, I don't care if they want to talk to me about that. I don't care if they wanna plug it, you know, if they wanna write it down on a sheet of paper or type it up in a Google Doc and have that as evidence or have some activity that we did plugged in there. You know, for the factors of production, we did an activity where we did a virtual tour of the chamber of commerce through Ankeny, and I had them you know, I was like, hey. Visit three businesses virtually and then just break out their factors of production, land, labor, and capital. So so if if you're a kid who wants to rely on that as an artifact of evidence, then pull that up as we go through this. But but the checkpoints basically are, okay, we might do some learning around here or you might just need to be in charge of finding out some of those objectives and and meeting those. And whenever you get to that point, I have some quizzes in there just so that way they can, they can self reflect and say, okay. If you if you really get it, maybe you should get this score on the quiz. And if not, maybe go back. And I put that on, like, the quizzes. Have you ever used quizzes before? Yeah. Yeah. So so that's great because they just have the number on there, and they can go through and do that. And then they they just do some some conference prep work work for me to say, like, okay. What are one of the one or two of the biggest takeaways of, of that learning for you? What are connections that you made to the material? So for example, I had a student today talking about how when she goes to the store and has to make decisions about name brand versus store brand stuff, that's a trade off that she's gonna have to make them perfect. You get it. Right? So it's it's all about getting it. And I'm not gonna put I'm not gonna put anything in the grade book that reflects less than you getting it. You know? The only thing I'm gonna put in there is an is an incomplete to show that you don't get it yet. And the other question there is show the depth of your understanding by answering the essential question. And that kind of just differs based on the, you know and I'll I'll use units loosely because we don't really have units because we're assessing as the kids are ready to assess. You know, I'll I'll be doing some instruction. The econ content is more, like, on my pace of delivery compared to the other content of the classes. But, you know, if you can, provide some evidence or talk me through this, you have this all through at your disposal here. You can load it with artifacts. You can put papers in here. You can type up responses. But the the big checkpoint is just a conference with me. So it's just a narrative conference. You know, it takes two, three, four minutes, and it's just, okay. So I just start with, you know, how would you how would you rate your learning? And that's that smiley face thing. So it's like, if they're super stoked about it, then it's, okay. What what why were you so excited about scarcity? Or or if they hated it, like, I wanna know that too. Why did you hate this unit? You completed the learning for it. What did you hate about it? And then just start talking them through, okay. What are takeaways? You know, answer that. How did you answer that question? How can we use economic thinking to help revenue decision making? So it's everything that, we just talked about at twenty minutes ago, which was about how do we give kids language to communicate learning is by communicating using the language of learning. Know, giving them the objectives. I don't ever talk about points or grades. It's all in reference to, you know, those objectives. And and and just semester long things that we'll do, like, we we did that the PBL project, like the the economic engagement project. And there's checkpoints in their journal for that too. So where are they at in there? Have they completed the research agreement and conference with me about that? Okay. Cool. Well, then you're good to go. So that way, you know, we have and and I I show them a video, like, from the from from one of the talk shows back in the sixties of some guy doing some plate spinning. We talk about how we're always spinning these plates. And so what plate are we spinning today? You know, we might be we might be tending to some econ content today. So that's what we're gonna be going. Or you get to make some choices about, are you gonna do the ever five financial literacy online learning piece that which is due by the end of the semester? Are you gonna attend to your economic engagement project, which is due by the end of the semester? And and, like, that just frees up me from basically minimum instruction so that way I can just be with kids all class that was today. And I love those days because I'm just I'm just talking with kids about, hey, what do you what do you got? What do you need help with? You know, I'm initialing in here so it shows their progress and their growth as they're going through it. The goal is just to have a completed booklet, you know, a packet of of showing all their learning and all the objectives. So that way, it makes that that comp when I go to parent teacher conferences on Thursday, and and we're not talking about, you know, how can my kid go from a 90 to a 92 or, right, how can my kid keep the d minus? It's, oh, here's all the stuff your kid has done. Right? Here's here's how they've shown that learning. And I'm not putting a grade in the grade book until they can show their learning. And and that was part of the process today too was just, okay. We've done some learning. So what does that look like now here at six weeks? We have these big eighteen week goals, but are you meeting now? Are you in progress? Do you not have any evidence? How can we move you from having evidence to to all that stuff? It's it I love it because it's I call it the no surprises, you know, econ agenda. You know all the stuff that you have to do in advance. Right? So so how are you gonna get there? How are you gonna show it? Are you gonna talk to me about it? Do you need to some people some kids build a Google slide, you know, and they they have every single slide has the objective on it and they have the evidence in there perfect. Some kid just wrote on here, show the depth of your understanding by answering the essential question. He wrote words. And I was like, what does what does words mean? He's like, well, I'm gonna talk to you about it. I was like, okay. We'll go. Right? Talk to me about how you can do those things. So, you know, it's just it's it's again, going back to that classical model just of of building, you know, a classroom culture that's focused on on the learning and not the artificial things that that, like, preclude real learning. Right? And that might be a controversial, you know, thing to say just generally, but, like, all the crap that we put in place of of just talking to kids about what they're learning, like, gets in the way of getting learning done. You know? And and then just having this awesome artifact at the end to say, okay. This represents the six weeks of of work that you've done in econ class. It's just such a cool thing. So so the final then at the end so let's come full circle and talk about portfolios. So we complete one of these things for the first six weeks. We've kind of got a year long one for some of the year long goals. We've got a second and third six weeks because those are our those are our big chunks. So then by the end, we just mash those suckers together and then and then just have some reflection questions, you know, to ask them, you know, how do you think the semester went? What do you think you understand the most? What could you teach to somebody else? Like, if you went to, the middle school right now and had to teach a lesson on economics, what would you what would you teach to them? What can you what can you walk away from here changing your you know, changing the way that you look at the world? How does what you've learned in this class connect to other learning inside or outside of class? How has your learning this semester changed your view of economics? And even, you know, then some personal questions that I'll ask them at the end like, okay. So what's next? You know, this is the last time I'm gonna get to talk to you in this the final narrative conference. I'm just out the hallway talking to kids for four or five days, and it's awesome. You know? And with a fist bump or a high five or something and say, hey. You did it. Great job. So so glad for for the thing that's that's coming up next. And, you know, none of the baggage of redos and retakes and grade grubbing and all of that stuff. You know, it that focused conversation on how are you? How are you doing? How are you doing on the learning? You know, how are doing on your goals? How are you doing on my goals sometimes? But I mean, that was a long way to get to that question, but it kinda seemed like it came full circle, you know, for me with just putting this this journal together.

Speaker 1 In the grand scheme of things too, is it awkward to have all of these progressive techniques, let alone at a traditional school, but at the school that you yourself went to. I mean, just the relationship factor there of coming into a school that you were a student at. I mean, I feel awkward, with the things that I might say or the things that I might share and how my coworkers might see that. What has that experience been like with your peers when you're pushing all these boundaries? I had the exact same I didn't invite my so honestly, was a little bit anxious about about that part of it. Like the the idea of the narrative conference

Speaker 4 is like way different than than what a lot of I I've been doing portfolios for five years and nobody else, like, around me has has even dipped a toe in that. So I'm always the weirdo out in the hallway talking to kids and, you know, people are closing their doors because they're taking a test or something. You know? And I and I guess whatever. Do do your thing. But but it was so interesting because, you know, it it it and it's not just about the learning, but the relationships that I have with kids are from first semester are so much stronger than any relationships that I've ever had because you don't end with that single stressful moment of, you know, oh, I'm I'm stressed and anxious. The last time you see this kid is when they're at their most stressed and anxious and when, like, their grade is on the line to pass this final. It's just like, hey, let's just celebrate and talk about what's what's next for you here because, you know, this is this is the last time we're we're gonna get to do these things. So I was out in the hallway. We're kinda by a stairwell that goes to our 2nd Floor, and and our our main our our head principal was walking by and walking up the stairs. And and I was just talking to a student, and and we were just kinda going through that list. Right? So talking about what it is that they learned or talking about the next steps for them. And, you know, I was just asking him questions. And and he stops and he kinda walks a few steps back and he just has a big smile on his face. And he's like he's like, oh, I I had heard that that that that this is what you were doing, but it's just so great to actually hear you doing this. And I love what you're doing. And he gave he gave me a fist bump. He gave the student a fist bump on here too, and then just, like, stuck around for a few more seconds and then and then walked back upstairs. So, you know, I I I think people are afraid, like, oh, if I don't have a score to show whether kids know something. But, you know, they they the the the thing the thing is, then you don't even you're too scared to try something new, and and you don't even know what the rewards could be reaped for those kinds of things, you know, and and thinking that administrators wouldn't support that. But here I am in the hallway under the stairs talking talking to kids about, you know, their internships or their their college choices or something else and admins smiling

Speaker 1 and and walking around giving fist bumps. So I think it I think it works out. You're super active on Twitter too. You know, you're incredibly involved in posting your thoughts and sharing ideas.

Speaker 4 What are you finding on social media that you might not find in the quote unquote physical world, you will? Back when I was kinda making this this transition, I was on more of like, you know, an instructional leadership team. I've been on a PBIS team. I've been on the standards based grading team and all those things. And and and and I thought maybe those would be the vehicles to to be able to do that kind of work. But I found that, like, those are just those are just vehicles to, like, systematize, you know, more of the more of the doing school part of those kinds of things. So, like, over over the last two years, I've really just dropped out of, you know, the the the instructional leadership stratum, I guess, of of colleagues. But, you know and then in continuing the Twitter work, that actually has led, you know, into a lot of great conversations. Like, maybe you've seen between