Showcase: Spotlight on Bismarck Public Schools' Empower[Ed]

Speaker 1 I would say they should definitely do it or at least look into what we're doing or other schools are doing similar programs. Like I mentioned before, school was just kinda something that I just kinda got through. I didn't really enjoy. So I don't know. Pushing myself into this program made a huge difference in how I see school, and I want that to be an opportunity for other kids out there that are similar to me. I think being able to be a leader and kinda make your own choices in how you're learning and how you're showing, how you're getting things done, I guess, is just a really neat concept to me, and I really would want other students to at least have the opportunity to explore what's out there and their learning.

Speaker 2 Hello, and welcome to episode 166 of our podcast here at Human Restoration Project. My name is Nick Covington. Before we started, get I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are John O'Brien, Jennifer Mann, and Skylar Primm. Thank you all so much for your ongoing support. And with the help of teacher powered schools, Soko Moran Partners, StimPunks, and What School Could Be, we've completed the lineup for our fourth annual virtual conference to restore humanity for July twenty first through twenty third, focused this year on the quest for connection. Between now and then, with each episode, we'll briefly spotlight one of our conference keynotes, workshops, panel discussions. This year, Doctor. Emma McMain will be leading a two hour workshop on critical social and emotional learning, shifting from competencies to culture. This workshop takes a fresh approach to social and emotional learning. Instead of treating it like a checklist or a rigid program, we'll use SEL as a starting point for open ended, meaningful conversations. Alongside Doctor. Emma McMain, participants will reflect on their own social and emotional values and consider how those values fit into culture, history, and society. By the end of the session, participants will collaborate to create an artifact whether it's a list, a mind map, an art piece, or another kind of guide to help them approach SEL not as a set of skills to hand down to students, but as an ongoing shared journey of growth. If that sounds interesting to you, tickets start at just $50, and you can find the full lineup at humanrestorationproject.org/conference. This episode is the latest in our Spotlight series, and the first of 2025, where we reach out to schools who are engaged in awesome work and talk with teachers, school leaders, and students to shine a light, inspire, and influence others to do the same. As with all learning, the process is the point, not perfection. And there's so much to learn from these schools as we reimagine education in our communities. So today I'm joined by

Speaker 3 My name is David Saint Peter. I am the English teacher that started this Empowered program here in Bismarck Public Schools. Came from a middle school, high school background, and brought some of my awesome students and one of my other teachers to talk with you guys this morning. I'm Tammy Anderson. I am the science and math teacher in Empowered.

Speaker 4 I come from a long history of middle school, high school, a little bit of elementary teaching, kind of done a lot of variety of things, and this is the coolest thing I've done yet. And two senior students.

Speaker 1 Hi. I'm Brie, and I'm one of the students in Empowered.

Speaker 5 I'm Ethan, and I'm also a student in Empowered.

Speaker 2 And they represent Empowered, a student led community powered program in North Dakota's largest public school district, Bismarck Public Schools, that offers both core classes and an inquiry based approach to learning.

Speaker 3 So we are housed in a career and technical education building. Bismarck Public Schools has three comprehensive high schools and then a CTE campus for our, like, fourth building. So all the students here are coming to get their career and tech ed classes. Bree's here taking small animal care. Ethan's here taking Welding. Welding too. They're getting those, you know, vocational skills. But to be a true academy model, our principals have always felt we needed to offer the core classes. So the the model sprang up out of a innovation academy that happened in 2019, I wanna say. How could we offer core classes? We came up with this model based on, Lindsay, California and Iowa Big out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We kinda blended both into what we've made and now call empowered. So we offer the core all the core credit classes to upperclassmen in BPS. So they can go to any of those three high schools. As long as they're in a career in tech ed class, they can come over here to take a la carte English, math, science, social studies, PhyEd. These two are both in English and social studies this year. That's it for you two. Right? And yeah. Then then our pedagogical approach is different too, but that was kind of the impetus was how do we offer core classes up here Because we know, historically, this is one of the best places to be in our district, and the thing that might have prevented kids from taking our classes was those pesky, boring core classes they had to take at their their homeschool. So how could we offer them up here to get them here and keep them here? So how does that work for teachers?

Speaker 4 My role is the facilitator of science and math as well as the community projects that we go out into the community and do. So it's a little bit different. There's conversations when students want to be with us for their core content here. We have those conversations right away about where do you see yourself post high school, what are your academic or career goals, and then, try to make sure that our course options for science and math are appropriate for where they want to go as well. And what I mean by that is if if a student wants to go into medicine, more than likely, they're gonna need to stick around and take some more traditional styles of courses like a chemistry or maybe an advanced anatomy physiology course, something like that. Whereas here, we offer an integrated science that allows them to kind of pick and choose what type of science they want to do an inquiry about.

Speaker 2 And the first thing I asked all of them was the first question we use in our own focus group questionnaire with students. What's one word you would use to describe school and why? In one national pre COVID survey of 21,000 American high school students, tired, stressed, and bored were the most common words students use to describe how they feel at school. But for Brie and Ethan, their experience at Empowered tells a different story. For me, I would describe it as flexible,

Speaker 1 especially at the Empowered room. We have a lot of flexibility as for what we learn and how we learn it, so I think that's the biggest thing for me here.

Speaker 5 I agree with that. I would I would probably say it's it's definitely unique. The ways that we learned that here are more personalized and it's a little bit different than a traditional school setting.

Speaker 4 And for Tammy and David? I'm gonna go with the word engaging both for myself with the students because of the environment that we get to be in with them. We get to be creative and we get to know our students a little bit better more personally. And then also on the flip side, it is very evident that our students themselves are more engaged in the process of actually learning, and being able to have authentic experiences in Empowered helps them to be feel like they have more of a role in their own learning and in the community, which we'll talk about at some point here, I'm sure.

Speaker 3 And I would say responsive because I think we are responsive to each individual kid, who they are and who they want to become, and what they're good at, what they wanna be better at. We We meet them where they're at and help them get to where they wanna be.

Speaker 2 And are you able then? Because a lot of times, I think core curriculum is something, and David mentioned it earlier, it's, like, boring. It's, very rigid. Right? It's almost like, I don't wanna call it a canned curriculum, but it's kinda on rails. You you kinda know what you expect. And are you saying, Tammy, then that the that core curriculum experience is even you're able to be more responsive there in the empowered context than in the traditional high school context? Absolutely.

Speaker 4 The language that we often use to help people get an idea of what we do is a push versus a pull curriculum. What you were kind of mentioning is in a more traditional setting, and it I've taught for a very, very long time, so I always mention that I understand when you have a a room of 30 students and they're rotating every fifty minutes possibly, the most efficient way to feel like you can run your classroom is to have more of a set curriculum. These are the topics, the units, the things we need to move through. This is the timeliness that we need to move through them. But in here, what we do is we usually start the year prioritizing our relationship building and getting to know our students, doing some personality kind of questioning, some interest surveys, and then we use those area of interest for the students and pull together topic ideas in curriculum that best matches their interests as well as their learning style. So there's a lot of one on one kind of brainstorming that takes place with students, what they're interested in, and then kinda trying to work together with the student to build a curriculum that matches them. I would just say my my spiel has always been we have the same

Speaker 3 scope as our counterparts in the traditional high school buildings, but ours we don't follow the sequence. Right? So when I taught in a traditional high school English 12, it was like, hey. You teach Beowulf and the senior paper and Canterbury Tales and job skills and, like, literally, my curriculum was on a sticky note. Whereas in here, I have the same prioritized standards, but I'm like, hey, Ethan. You have to read and write and do authentic speaking listening. How do you wanna do it? Right? So Ethan, in his mind, is gonna go into the medical field. Let's cater his work towards that, life goal of his. Like, would you speak to that a little bit, Ethan, the difference you've seen? Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 5 Traditionally, when I was a junior, my first semester, I was in a a normal English class, and I transferred over here because I I just kinda wanted to change. You know, I struggled a little bit in English, and I found that, you know, coming over here, I was able to put more of a focus onto instead of, like David said, a more like set set literature. I was able to to broaden my view towards things that would that are gonna help me in the future.

Speaker 3 So like, what are you what are you reading right now? Because you wouldn't have read that at Century.

Speaker 5 Oh, what is it? The Psychopath. Oh, The Psychopath. How

Speaker 2 could you forget a book title like Psychopath?

Speaker 3 If I was at Century right, Ethan would be reading Hamlet and not giving a shit about it. Whereas here, he's reading a book that he's gonna actually, like, probably remember and take with him and might influence his career when he gets there.

Speaker 2 Y'all seem to be living the dream here in terms of providing core classes, but having that flexibility and responsiveness. What are the structures and supports that let you do that? Because I imagine what teacher does not want to have that experience as a core teacher? I taught social studies for ten years. I taught economics. I taught US history, world history. Right? We had sort of that set curriculum. What what what makes your context so different where y'all are able to do that?

Speaker 3 Yeah. I think a couple success factors would be, you know, initially, we had to get a a Carnegie unit seat time waiver from our Department of Public Construction because we're a personalized program. If if Ethan masters his 16 standards in April, he's given his credit. He doesn't have to sit his butt in a seat for x amount of minutes. Like, that's no indicator of learning. Right? So we've been, you know, company competency based from the start. We also were allowed to start really small. So I was kinda proud of our district. You know, we were ready to launch our pilot right when COVID hit. And instead of being scared and saying, no. Let's wait till school's normal. We just did it anyway. So we're able to start that first year with 14 students and really, like, figure out how this can work. From the teacher perspective, the the challenge is you have to figure out how do I track, you know, up to 60 different learners in where they're at in English. It's we're used to you know, I control it, I've I have a grade that's due here or this test goes in here where instead I've got 60 kids doing 60 different things. A lot of times, I'm asking Ethan to remind me what he's reading because I can't keep track of all of it. Right? So kind of that partnership with kids has been really fun, but just over the years, Tammy and I would probably both say always being reflective and trying to fix our tracking tools, our assessment tools to just, like, make school happen this way. But it's been really, really fun. We also have a huge a huge supporter

Speaker 4 from our superintendent level as well in the district. Our secondary assistant superintendent, doctor Johnson, is very, very supportive of the innovative learning model that we are that we're trying to do. So that gives us a little bit of a boost that he's always he's always there, always wanting us to learn and grow as well as teachers traveling and looking at different schools and different ways that, other kind of progressive

Speaker 3 learners are are trying to do some things. So Yeah. And maybe one other contextual piece for your listeners would be that North Dakota doesn't allow charter schools. So we almost you could picture us like a charter school or like a micro school. You know, we exist in a in the largest public school system in the state, because our leadership is willing to, like, sacrifice that student to teacher ratio FTE a little bit because they think this matters. And I think we've proven in year five here that it is really effective. We've copy pasted the model into one of our high schools as well. Maybe a long term goal is that there'll be four sites. You know, each of our BPS secondary buildings will have an empowered

Speaker 2 located within it. So that's been pretty cool. That's awesome. How many teachers are on, site at Empowered?

Speaker 3 We have basically three at all times. We have two social studies teachers on 50% contracts. So they kinda split the day, and then Tammy and I are in there full time. So that's I think one of the other, like, parts of the secret sauce is we have, like, a three classroom complex where kids are coming and going all day. Tammy and I are in there as the the rocks to kinda keep it going steady. And then, I mean, it's just like it's way laid back. Like, how would you guys compare coming into empowered versus, like, when you walk into a traditional class at Legacy or at Century? What what feels different about that experience?

Speaker 1 For me, I'm always greeted, and I always have a conversation with my teachers first. Whether it's just, like, about learning, it's usually, like, personal stuff, like, in of, like, my weekend or what I did. It's, like, nice to have that connection with my teachers and, like, feel like I'm actually, like, cared about instead of just showing up to sit in a classroom and I'll listen to a lecture, then I'm out of there. You know? It's it feels like just more positive and uplifting.

Speaker 5 I would also have to agree with that, you know, having the the personal connection with the teachers and and being able to come in and know it's a it's a relaxed environment instead of, okay, you gotta sit down. You can talk for two minutes when the teacher comes in, shut your mouth, and listen. It's it's more of it's it's more relaxed. Like, you can you can talk to your teachers. You can discuss things with your friends. You're able to to collaborate with other people, and I think that's definitely an important aspect.

Speaker 2 Yeah. That's huge. What how many how many students are served at Empowered?

Speaker 3 So this year, I think we have right around 55 at the Career Academy here. Legacy has somewhere between forty and fifty.

Speaker 2 Next year, you know, we always we have to recruit our own students too, so we've got right around 60 right now for next year. Our goal is to have 70 kids in our Career Academy empowered next year. Do you pull from nine through 12? Is that the high school range that you pull from? Just juniors and seniors right now. Is there plans, I guess, with expansion to expand it down into sophomores and freshmen, or do you guys like keeping it right there at the junior and senior level?

Speaker 3 I think that's, like, our bosses to decide. I know right now, like Tammy mentioned, doctor Johnson has been a a staunch supporter in making this happen, and he's pretty adamant that kids get the traditional high school experience for nine and 12. I think a fear might be if Ethan steps in as a freshman and he's kind of a butthead, do they just kick him over to this you know, does it start to look like an alternative program when that's not the goal? We picture ourselves almost like an avid, if you've heard of that class. Like, it's avid targets the academic middle. We we think any kid can do this. It's just not for everybody. Like, we have kind of that same disposition in kids we look for, which is like that self management determination. Like, they they have a a goal or a passion they wanna work towards. Because, you know, like you've said, Nick, this sounds awesome. Right? Like, who wouldn't wanna do this? There are still kids who just school isn't doesn't matter, and they wanna just be told what to do, and I'll check the boxes and get done. We've had kids come try Empowered, and that's the case, and we have to say sorry. Like, this doesn't work. To Right. When we, like, hand over the keys to your education and you don't care, it's actually pretty easy and Empowered to fall really behind. Because like Brie mentioned, we're not, like, sitting there trying to lecture a whole class and making everyone keeps up with our deadlines. It's kinda like, what are you working on today, Brie? Like, you're having a bad day? Like, okay. I'm not gonna worry about you. I'll go work with Ethan and we'll talk about his book, whatever. Like, it's kind of on the kids to

Speaker 2 manage their time. Yeah. No. It it requires an amount of agency and autonomy, and with that comes a lot of trust and executive skills and a lot of things that perhaps, you know, freshmen and sophomores don't necessarily come come in raring to go with to be in such an open ended program, but that's that's exceptional. We we've been talking a lot about the the core classes in part because that, I think, is my own fantasy is to be in that context, so I wanna know more about that. But at the beginning, both Brie and and Ethan, you guys said you were into small animal care and welding. Let's come back to those. What does that look like? What does the course of your day look like when you're addressing and following your passion to pursue small animal care, Brie?

Speaker 1 So I'm mostly focusing on agriculture right now. So I take a lot of, like, agriculture classes, which is really nice because, like we mentioned, we're at a career academy is what we call it. So pretty much all career related education. So for the most part right now, since I am taking my core classes also at the career academy, I'm pretty much only here most of the days. I go to my homeschool legacy for maybe an hour or two, three times a week. And so the rest of the time, I'm here, which is really nice because, like I mentioned, it's it's just a lot of having a different environment to be in and less stressful. So that was a big part for me that I really like about the building as a whole. And I'm just gonna chime in.

Speaker 4 Brie's career current career goal, I believe, is what? Agribusiness. Agribusiness. So it works out great for her to be able to be here, focus on taking as many agriculture courses that, our Career Academy offers, and then she can kinda hone in and maybe amp herself up. Hence, name of our program, but to empower her to, get where she wants to be post high school.

Speaker 2 And what has that looked like for you so far, Brie? What experiences or courses have you been able to accomplish through that career academy that, have been memorable or meaningful or important to you?

Speaker 1 With my career classes, like, that are directly related, I've done, like, a lot of learning how to take care of cattle. So, like, doing sutures and doing, like, giving them medicine or, things like that. So, like, dosages, all that kind of fun stuff. A lot of it also is, like, just meeting people who have the same interest as you. A lot of the times, kids aren't just signing up for classes that, know, they don't really like, I I suppose. So I've also done welding. I'm not as passionate about that, but that's kind of something I did, and I found out that's not the career path I wanna go into. So I guess you kind of get to learn both, what you like and what you don't like, which is nice. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Both of those are important parts of that experience. Right? Weeding out the things that might not be for you and then being able to find those passions. This is this is total sidebar. But to feed a cow medicine, do you have to do the thing like I do with my dogs where you have to, like, pry them out and, like, jam it down in there and then hold their mouth shut so they don't spit it out? Or our cows, Are they more amenable? Are they more accepting? I

Speaker 1 think they're more accepting. We actually just talked about that that method we have to do for dogs and cats and stuff, but

Speaker 6 terrible. There's gotta be a better way. It's what it's what I'm thinking. I think they need to develop a

Speaker 4 cattle shoot for for dogs.

Speaker 2 Yeah. For That's hey. You wanna talk about agribusiness.

Speaker 3 Right? That's the next big idea right there. I will I will tell you, Nick. Horses are the same as dogs. You gotta, like, put that thing way up in there. But

Speaker 2 horses are, like, 12 times the size and terrifying. And they will they can kill you. I'm I'm scared of horses. So maybe maybe let's change topics. But how about how about for you? What is your interest and passion in this? You had mentioned welding at the top of the show. How have those experiences what what are the important and meaningful experiences, and how have those influenced,

Speaker 5 you know, your vision of yourself in the future? Yeah. So I actually don't want to go into to a field like that. I I want to be a a nurse practitioner.

Speaker 2 Gotcha.

Speaker 5 Yeah. But I think, you know, I enjoy working with my hands for, you know, for fun. And I think, you know, when I own a home in the future or, you know, I wanna have a little bit of a ranch too, so all these skills that I'm learning here at the Career Academy are gonna be able to to be applied to that. Daily, I go I go to welding every other day, and then I come to the empowered classes every day. And there, I kinda shift my focus towards, you know, medicine and preparing myself for college. And then after I'm done here, I go home and I work on my online class, medical terminology, which I'm taking through BSc here. And I've also done college algebra here so that I can get it out of the way and I don't have to take those classes in college.

Speaker 3 Like, two basically core parts of the model. One is personalized competency based learning. The second is our community projects. So the the initial vision was like, would bake, we're gonna send our kids out into the community to do authentic work, like, real problem solving for real people. And our initial vision was, yeah, like, that's how Ethan's gonna meet his social study standards. Breeze is gonna meet your science standards through that. But what we've learned is when we're making these cold calls and I say that, hey. I've got these kids at the Career Academy, and they're in welding, and they're in agribusiness. A lot of the projects that come in are actually require the kids to flex their CTE capacity. So there might be some authentic speaking listening when when Ethan has to collaborate with the, director of our local, like, business bureau to figure out how to weld her refuse enclosure doors. But, really, the skill that they're doing so often here is our, their CTE skills. Right? So we might get a project going and then say, hey. You need to go talk to your Career Academy teacher who taught you how to frame up walls because I'm an English teacher. Don't have any clue how that stuff works, but we get ourselves into those projects all the time. So would you guys wanna just continue the segue and talk about, like, what project you're doing now or a project that you've done that's been memorable since you've been with us for about a year? So currently, we're working on these these these dumpster doors, and we're welding new new hinges and latches.

Speaker 5 So I've that's where I've, you know, applied welding. But I've also been able to apply a little bit of English because we've had to communicate with the the people over at Bismarck Chamber, and we've had to communicate with Palky Steel, the source steel. And the the doors are in a different shop than the welding shop, so we have to communicate with the teachers and others, you know, other students and and how they can help out. So, yeah, I think that's that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 For me, this one doesn't directly relate to the agriculture class I've been taking, but my favorite one that I've been a part of was a grief awareness, nonprofit organization here in town called Soul fifty seven. And it was really fun to meet with principals and counselors and just, like, inform them of what it was and, kinda give presentations to the kids and just bring awareness to that type of thing too because I realized very quickly that it wasn't something that was talked about a lot. So it was kind of cool to be a part of something that almost felt like bigger than yourself and helping other people.

Speaker 3 We reach out to this new nonprofit that's popped up called Soul fifty seven. Like, hey. What do you guys do? What problems do you have? One lady running the show doing awesome work, but, like, how much can she do by herself. Right? So she says, wanna push into the elementary schools to spread the word about what I offer here. It's free service for the the kids and families in Bismarck. Can your students help? Right? So then that's where Brie and a group of three other kids jumps in and says, yeah. We can we can go meet with principals. We can get you into the schools. We can go deliver sessions. We can distribute flyers, all that stuff. Would you speak to how the Bismarck Chamber EDC project got going? Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Well, part of the reason that we got going with this, I'm facilitating with Ethan and some other kids on that project. It maybe doesn't sound like a huge project because we call these things doors, but these are like, how much do those doors weigh? 400 pounds? Yeah. Probably close to it. It's ridiculous. But it it's so much work. They're scraping paint. They're gonna have to repaint all this stuff. But so the president of the Bismarck Mandan Chamber EDC is someone who we're kind of lucky we have her on our side too. She is a just a huge supporter of what we do. Her son was with us a couple years ago, and she just talks about what a difference it made for him as far as his kind of general outlook on schooling and learning and the unique opportunities that our kids have. But that that project came to be primarily from just reaching out and saying, hey. We're here. We have these students who are ambitious, and, they have skill. And what what can we do? How can we help you? And then she came up with this crazy plan. It's kind of how it came to be. And she, she's hoping and she's excited about it. She then wants to continue to help promote Empowered through featuring the students in a newsletter, and she gets pretty excited. She probably wants to end up having some news, organization show up and, just she's very, very appreciative of of their willingness to help.

Speaker 2 So for Brie and Ethan, how have the practices, programs, and supports that we've been talking about

Speaker 5 impacted your experience at school, and how do you see school connecting to your goals in the future and for your life outside of Well, I think compared to, like, regular school, I've definitely been able to apply more of what I wanna do in the future, which is nursing. I've been able to, like, read medical articles, go over stuff like that with my teachers, and just kinda review that why and I've also been able to kinda explore my passion, like welding, you know, auto repair, things like that as well.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think for me, it's been really nice because school is just kinda something that, I don't know, I was just trying to get through. Here, it feels like, I don't know, just like I'm able to connect more with what I'm learning. So whether it's, like, my career practices or in the empowered room learning my core classes, I'm able to use time and learn about, like, my career goals that I wanna accomplish when I go into college. So that's really nice.

Speaker 2 So let's go ahead and talk about the empowered community impact ArcGIS, the story map that you all built to showcase the program. When I was looking through that as a humanities guy, as a former social studies teacher, there were a couple that stood out to me. Students welcoming Ukrainian refugees. You know, for one, I would have had no idea that Ukrainian refugees were settling in North Dakota. And then another one with the state historical society where students were researching biographical information to help with archival research. And I think that story map itself is just a powerful way to showcase a kind of learning that might otherwise be really hard to capture and communicate. So what led you all to that tool, and how have you seen it make this kind of learning visible?

Speaker 3 So one of our initial community partners, I think it was in year two, was the city of Bismarck. Right? There's all kinds of departments including our GIS department. And the the project work our GIS department had for us was updating the base map in ArcGIS. So that was nothing any of us had had experience with before, but we figured there's probably some students who wouldn't mind a a project that's less collaborative and more just like putting your nose in your computer and updating a base map. Right? So we did have one. Chris did a great job with this base map, updating it, kind of all the, the trees, parking lots, parking lot lines right here on the campus that we live on, at Bismarck State College. And kind of in exploring that resource that he was you know, that tool he was using, both the the CDGIS guy and then my own inquiries led me to that story map feature. So between having noticed that and then a little bit of pressure from the top to say, like, hey, you need to make this work visible because we know you're doing great work, but we're not unless people walk in the building, they don't have any way to see it. We just committed one spring to put all our our stuff on there. So that was a kind of a fun tool for me to learn and then knowing that it's gonna be a resource that, you know, has archived all the projects we've done and will continue to grow. One decision we made just last week, as previously mentioned, there's a there's an empowered cohort at one of our other high schools. We said we're just gonna put all the projects on this one map. Right? We're we're empowered at Bismarck Public Schools. We have different sites, but all the work we're doing is to benefit this community, and so it should all live on that map. So, yeah, that's one of my one of my goals this afternoon is to get back in there and start adding projects from this year to to show both what we've done, where we've done it, and when we did it. And you mentioned, like, the pressure and the need to showcase that to make that visible outside of the building. Has the story map been a success story in achieving that goal? I think so. I mean, we don't have any type of analytics to be like, oh, yeah. We're we're getting hits from North Carolina and China and all that stuff. But, I mean, the fact that, like, you mentioned you were using this to to brag about us is pretty cool. Right? And when we present at conferences or when we just talk about this aspect of the model, having that piece of evidence to pull up and show is, like, really dynamic. So we we've liked the work that's gone into it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's just an incredible way. I'll link it in the show notes for folks to click on. Just I mean, there's probably a 15 mile radius around Bismarck where you could just see this constellation of different projects and either navigate it g geographically and say, hey. What were students doing out here on Anderson Farms? Or you can zoom into a lot of the projects that have been, you know, seeming like like in a downtown area. It really gets granular, and you can see, just for yourself, the the sheer impact that these projects were having. So that's such a cool tool. We connected at the mastery transcript consortium conference in Denver last year. And the mastery transcript is grading assessment reporting tool that a lot of schools and systems have adopted to help capture learning that looks a lot more like this instead of the traditional model. How are you all navigating bridging those two worlds between this big hands on experiential project based learning world and fitting it into, you know, a traditional assessment grading reporting model. What are you using? Does the master transcript play a role in that at all? I would say right now, we are using

Speaker 4 probably just a variety of tools. Most of them have been generated by us trying to create something that matches our content standards, matches what our district is trying to do, specifically even the career ready practices, which are another element that we score our students on. And that that's really reflected in the community project work. We kind of started dabbling with the the tool last spring and just kinda didn't have time to dive into totally changing what we do. So we kinda do a mix of PowerSchool and our own tracking, and then we sorta have to override the PowerSchool system a little bit to make it work for us, because we do score on standards and progress, completion of courses. So we sort of differentiate between what level of proficiency are the students at as well as where are they in the process of completing the required amount of standards for their courses. So we kind of we kind of just do a lot of generation of our own stuff, and then we reflect on it, we revise it. And something David and I always talk about is how we're never really satisfied. So every every year, during the year, at the end of the year, at the beginning of the next year, we're always tweaking and changing things to try to feel like it matches what we're doing.

Speaker 2 So it's kind of a work in progress. It's so it's such a tale as old as time, I think, in this work, just cludging together a bunch of different things to make PowerSchool work in the way that it should work or any of these other LMS platforms. Can you speak a little bit more to what what tools for people who might be listening, what things have you found that might be particularly successful? Is it just keeping track in a Google Sheet of some kind of things that, you know, you report a portion of it over here in PowerSchool and do student led conferencing and arrive at a grade at the end. You speak more to the specifics of that model? Yeah. I would just I would start

Speaker 3 to echo back to the MTC conversation. We were, as a PLC, trying to make the jump to reporting on competencies, which mastery learning record, their MLR, and their new progress tracker tool that rolled out last April, we thought were gonna be a tool to be useful, but we hit two roadblocks. One was that as a PLC, I don't think we had all nine of us on the same page with what competencies meant in terms of where do our individual standards fall in this umbrella of a competency. And then number two is we kinda just felt like if we did dive in with both feet, we were kinda just re double reporting, and we didn't really see what efficiency was giving us. So we kinda pumped the brakes. We also, as mentioned, lost our social studies teachers. So we're like, let's just get this new guy on board and, you know, hone our practice before we jump into that stuff again. But each of us, I'd say, has had success formulating our own kinda Google Sheet that we push out each kid as their own copy. Right? So if these two kids next to us are both in English 12, Brie has her own English 12 tracker, Ethan has his own. They kind of have two functions. One, I'd say three. One, they give the whole scope of the course. Two, they help a kid kinda portfolio the work they've done to meet the standards that they have. And then three, it helps us as teachers to check-in on each kid and see what have you done, what's left to do. It helps when it's assessment time. It also helps when it's planning time. So we'd be happy to send those over to you too, just those either Google Docs or Google Sheets we've kind of, as Sammy said, been revising year over year to make, workable. The quest is always to make it student friendly. Right? In empowered stuff like this pops up all the time where all of a sudden we're out for an hour recording a podcast. My goal is that Ethan can use my tool to figure out what to do next and not need me there with my teacher toolbox to inform him where he should go, but that he can plan his own journey a little bit without me just using my tool.

Speaker 4 I'm guessing that would be one of the big differences that our students would talk about is how when they come to take a class, if they're taking integrated science with me, they don't come in and then every day or every week find out what we are doing today or what we're doing this week. They have every standard available to them for the entire year, the entire course in their own sheet, and they can kind of bounce around in that coursework in whatever way they kind of feel matches them the best. So we have every student that is in English 12, every student that's in integrated science is probably at a different place, at a different time, working on a different topic, a different content, whatever, they kinda feel matches where they are, which I think is something completely different than what most students are used to.

Speaker 2 Oh, totally. Total teacher dependence. Right? Not just on the content, but on how to move forward and what's next. Brie Brie and Ethan, do you all wanna speak to your experience with, like, the assessment grading reporting piece? You know, David's here saying that the goal is to make it student friendly.

Speaker 1 How have you all found it to be? I think it depends on the teacher. Like, they were talking about some of them are a lot more easier to navigate. For me, I really like mister Saint Peter's because the way he has it set up is we kind of can see what our target is and if we wanna go above and beyond what we have to show to do that. I think that's really nice. He also has, like, vocab that we have to meet in that. So seeing that is really nice as well. And then we also do a reflection, and we're able to, talk about what we did to meet that standard and also link it into the doc that he has. With my other course that I'm taking, it's just kinda on a spreadsheet, which is fine. But, yeah, I definitely like mister Saint Peter's more just because it feels, a little more like, I can see what I'm doing and what I've actually completed and, what still needs to be done for my course.

Speaker 2 And that he's sitting right next to you in the room. He knows.

Speaker 6 His

Speaker 4 head is getting bigger. So I know. It's I could it's taking up the whole screen. I was gonna say he won't be able to see anyone else. So

Speaker 5 Ethan, how about, your experiences there? Yeah. I think I think Brie hit the nail on the head. His is really it's really easy to navigate. Everything is linked really neatly. It's it's just it makes it so much easier when you're, like, when you put in evidence to show what you did. And then when it comes to assessment time, you can it's it's all right there. It's all right in front of you. And it's just it's very simple and easy to navigate. And I think the same with with my other classes too. It is on a spreadsheet, but and it's it's very similar. So I think they're they're both pretty pretty easy and intuitive to to use. And

Speaker 2 that to me seems it it seems it's not high-tech or low tech. It's just like middle tech. It's a really simple way of meeting this need that everybody has access to. It doesn't require specialized knowledge or skills to access a certain spreadsheet or something. There's probably a Google Doc, if I if I assume correctly, like something on a Google Drive. Yeah. You can share it with anybody. You can share with teachers, parents, whatever. That's that's such a great solution to that to that issue. So just kind of thinking about people who wanna make this shift. We had started the conversation, and y'all had talked about the the models that you looked at in launching Empowered. One of those was Iowa Big, which is just across the state here for me in Iowa. You're all in North Dakota. Clearly, there are so many great examples of these throughout the Midwest. Every region of the country sort of has these standouts. For schools who might be curious in carving a similar pathway that you all did, What would you say for those leaders, for those parents who might be interested in that opportunity for their own kids? What would you say to them who are looking to make similar shifts?

Speaker 1 I would say they should definitely do it or at least look into what we're doing or other schools are doing similar programs. Like I mentioned before, school was just kinda something that I just kinda got through. I didn't really enjoy. So I don't know. Pushing myself into this program made a huge difference in how I see school, and I want that to be an opportunity for other kids out there that are similar to me. I think being able to be a leader and kinda make your own choices in how you're learning and how you're showing, how you're getting things done, I guess, is just a really neat concept to me. And I really would want other students to at least have the opportunity to explore

Speaker 2 what's out there in their learning. Let's hear from everybody. Let's just keep it going. I think teacher selection is a very, very important,

Speaker 5 you know, thing. I'm close with all the teachers here. And in addition to that, I think student selection is also important. You need students who are gonna be, you know, motivated to do their work and and dedicated to not only their schoolwork but also stuff outside of school. And I think I think it might be tricky to kind of sift through that and get started. But I think once you once you have a good base, you know, you can just kind of build from there. Great. These guys are saying

Speaker 4 excellent stuff. One thing that I always think about is in education for a very, very long time, we've been talking about differentiation. And I think a model like Empowered and Iowa Big and a lot of the other ones that we've even kind of gone out and about to try to learn from, I think the big thing is that it's it's differentiation on a larger scale. So it's beyond thinking how can we differentiate this content or, this assignment for different students. This is looking at how can we differentiate really for how our students learn differently, how they even how they differ as far as the level that they actually want to truly learn. So it's not to say that there's, anything wrong with the way that certain classrooms might operate. There are a lot of students who are very successful and who want to learn in maybe a more traditional, way, and that's okay. So what we wanna do is just have this type of a learning model in place so that our students have choice to find a way that they can feel the most successful in their learning. So that's one of the things that I would always say to people. It's not not that there's anything wrong with how classrooms are functioning. It's just another option. That's what we wanna give our students. It's just another option for them to to find their their most successful path. So don't be scared. That's that's what I always tell people. A little bit at a time, nothing is gonna be perfect. I mean, we're five years in and we're never really feeling totally content with how things are going, but we do know that we're giving something different. We're giving some variety for our kids and even for our community to see that young people can do amazing things.

Speaker 2 David, do you wanna have the last word on that? Sure. I'm I would just echo

Speaker 3 same thing Tammy said. My first thought was that it should be an option for kids. Right? I wouldn't wanna open up a school for 2,500 kids and think this is the only way that every single kid should learn, but I think it can be an option for any kid. Like Ethan said, some kids end up in here, it's not right for them. And the teachers and the students the other students in the in this option can tell. Right? So sifting through having the right teacher disposition, having the right student disposition is really important. But, I mean, to school leaders and the parents, I would say every kid deserves this option. It doesn't have to be a magnet school, charter school thing. Like, you can do this in a public school system if you have school leaders who, are visionary and care to support what we think is a really valuable option for kids. So as you mentioned, there's dozens of places to learn from around the country. You don't have to come up here to North Dakota in our flat prairie to find it. You can go anywhere and see people knowing that this personalized learning route is what's what's best for most kids, and it should be an option for every kid no matter where they grow up.

Speaker 2 Wonderful. Well, thank you all so much for taking the time to talk with me. Thank you. It was it was nice to meet you.

Speaker 7 Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player. Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts, all for free on our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.