Changing the culture of traditional grading practices

By Mark Heintz

Last week, I celebrated my attempts to minimize the value placed on grades in order to focus on learning. In my previous post, I triumphed over my progress and stated, “So far, I have never felt better about finalized grades.  Some student anxiety has been alleviated and I don’t feel that I have as many students point-grubbing.  I feel that students are learning. The grade is an afterthought.  They know they can argue to make a change.  They know they have a voice in the process other than just the assessments I use.  It has become a partnership.  Something it should always be.”

I wish it was always this easy.

Minimizing grades is a process, and what I hope to do in writing these blog posts is to be as transparent as possible in hopes others see what I do and are willing to try it as well. I hope to not just present a perfect picture of the process of going to gradeless.  I have encountered many bumps in the road because it’s hard to move away from relying on coercive grading methods, which, if we were to be honest with ourselves, grades are.  It is even harder for students not to feel under the thumb of those practices. I firmly believe in order for me to make larger shifts in going gradeless it will require more people making the effort.  Joy Kirr has curated a lot of educators attempts and practices in going gradeless, and I hope to continue to contribute to that resource hub.



The day I posted that blog, I asked my students some additional questions.  As a class, writing is a focus, and I wanted more descriptive feedback.  In another Google form, I asked them how they felt they're doing and what they needed more help/time on in each of the following areas: making claims, using evidence, explaining that evidence, making connections between arguments, using prior knowledge to set the stage, and again what grade would they give themselves.

I am still incredibly happy with how this is going.  The feedback from the students was overall positive.  Their feedback was constructive and helpful for them and me.  However, I did receive a comment that is troubling me.  One of my students gave themselves an F and was very critical of themselves. I was confused by this reflection because the student has a clear voice, and they actively can do all of the things required of them.  They are a strong reader, and they naturally make connections between topics and disciplines.  If I were using traditional assessment metrics, this student would have an A.

When I conferenced with her, she said she needed the validation from me.  She wanted me to give her the grade.  She has been so accustomed to a teacher being the authority that without my grading her, she simply can’t do it.  I expressed my hope that she should know what she needs/wants, that “grading” yourself would lead to me helping where she need it.  I told her to go back and reevaluate what she put and why.  I got an email later that day asking me to give her a grade.  I again expressed my wishes, but I caved and said I would give her an A.  This was her response:

“You're the teacher. Ultimately, I have no say in what you do. Even with the illusion of us having a voice in anything, we don't. I'm sorry for challenging your beliefs about how you run your classroom, but it's justified by your control over the grade book”

This comment is hitting me in the reflection stomach.  Comments like these demonstrate just how much power a teacher has in determining grades.  Even as I am pushing the boundaries of what is possible in a school, I ultimately hold all of the power. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, using grades leads to a lack of motivation.  The kids are stripped of the agency that I want them to have--partially because I do have the authority, but also because these students are experiencing traditional grading practices throughout the rest of their day and have experienced this practice for most of their schooling.  I have spent this entire year minimizing grades, and I still get comments that reinforce traditional grading views.  Next year, this student will most likely go to classes that reinforce their beliefs.

The ultimate problem of having all of the authority is that students will learn less.  Grading causes a loss of intrinsic motivation.  Giving a grade lends to a mentality that there is an end to learning; The grade is more meaningful than the process and the outcome.  We use grades to get kids to be compliant, but we also see that they don’t take risks and often do required work to memorize what we are asking for the test and then forget it.  However, that is not what I want school to be.  I want them to have agency over their learning, and to do that, they need to have conditions that allow them to take risks, see that learning doesn’t have an end, and not feel threatened nor shamed to learn what we are asking them to learn.

I will continue to make shifts and share my journey in hopes that others do the same.

A special thanks to Kim Miklusak for feedback and edits on this post.  She continues to be the best English teacher I never had.

S1E8: Bruce Janu "Moving away from the traditional classroom"

By Mark Heintz



In this episode of School Chat, I sat down with Bruce Janu, a history teacher at Elk Grove High School. We both recently watched most likely to succeed and have since been inspired to try new approaches to our classes. Bruce started a project in which students could choose to create a podcast on World War I as an alternative to the traditional assessment. Our conversation pushes the boundaries of what a traditional classroom could be and how do we engage all of our students. I hope you enjoy.

Bruce Janu's Wikipedia page can be found here.   And you can watch his documentary on Amazon here! 

Learning: the struggle in going gradeless

by Mark Heintz

I struggle with grading.  Not keeping up with it, but rather assigning a grade as a measurement of learning.  Maybe the struggle comes from my own experience.  As a student, I was a grade manipulator.  I wasn’t a point-grubber, more of a...okay, I was a point-grubber.   In school, my goal was the grade.  As the teacher handed the syllabus to me on the first day of school, I combed through the categories to find out the most efficient way to get a 90.1%. I love a detailed syllabus. The more information the better.  It gave me the rules on how to earn the grade I wanted. The whole process became a game for me, and I enjoyed how to game the system.

Each teacher had their own rules, and my part to play was to earn points.  I played the game fairly well in high school, but things escalated beyond just manipulating a syllabus. Now, I could game the system even more because I could pick the teacher.  I asked, snooped, around to find out teacher reputations on their system before signing up for the class.  In this system, I knew the teacher held most of the power.  I know the teacher’s intention was for me to learn, but my objective was to get points.

Despite all of the manipulation, I loved to learn.  Grades and learning just didn’t go together for me.  That being said, I never tried to get out of anything. When I was assigned work, I would do it.  I just was efficient and completed it quickly in order to get to my interests.  One of the best parts of college was that the abundance of free time allowed me to explore what I wanted.  Each semester I read books, just not the ones in the syllabus.  I talked to people outside my major about their passions.  My utopia version of school would have been just going to different classes all day, simply talking to others and diving into things I was curious about.  I loved connecting with others and learning for the sake of learning. From that love, I became a teacher.

As a teacher

As a new teacher, and like most people new to a profession, I thought I would be different. I could make the grade book represent learning.  I knew the student tricks and throughout my first decade as a teacher, I changed grading practices in an attempt to have the grade book represent what a student had learned.  I tinkered with my categories, did grade replacement, allowed retakes, and only counted major exams  Ultimately though, I became part of the system I manipulated. No matter how much I shifted, I continued to create conditions just like my teachers had, that made me all-powerful in determining a student’s grade.  My ultimate power continued the trend of having most students playing a game to accumulate as many points as possible.  No matter how much I tinkered, I could only deemphasize the importance of the points, but it still remained the most important goal.  In the end, the goal wasn’t learning.

In my course, there was a mandatory curriculum.  To cover the material, I used a textbook.  Students struggled to understand what was important.  Some spent hours each night digesting the material and others gave up because the task was too daunting.  To help them I used reading guides, but then students copied each other or hunted for the information needed not really understand anything. For this course, I needed the students to get the information and what I was doing wasn’t working.  Either the kids gamed the system or it simply didn’t work for them.  I ditched the textbook.  I created videos and questions that students would complete after viewing.  I put these into Schoology checklists and made them required.  I emphasized that all students would need to complete each checklist. It was compulsory and efficient like my learning had been.  I told each student what they needed to know.  To ensure all kids would complete the work, each had to finish the checklist before they could take the exam. To move away from the point-grubbing, nothing went into the grade book if they completed it.  They simply got to take the test.  From this system, kids spent less time on their work, actually did it, and my scores improved.

Something's wrong

Yet, I knew something wasn’t right.  While the system worked for some, there were inherent flaws.  Some kids did all of the work the way it was intended and still struggled to pass. Others gamed the system by fast forwarding the videos and just taking the quizzes. I found that some of the kids who gamed the system earned the highest scores.  Neither one of those things should happen if the system was about learning.  Reflecting on the system I created, I realized that the system emphasized completion not learning.

Ultimately, having to assign a grade gets in the way of learning.  I understand that and the importance in the role a grade plays for a students future.  Despite that conflict, I continue to deemphasize the grade and have it be about the learning.   In that attempt, last year I made another change in order for the class to focus on learning.  I did this at the end of the year, before the final.  I made a simple Google form. There were three questions: What did you learn? What grade do you think you earned? Why do you think you earned it?  After reading through their responses, I only disagreed with a handful of students; Most of which judged themselves too harshly.  For the few others who I disagreed with, their reflection opened my mind to their experience.  Many students cited their effort as a validation of earning a grade, but others detailed how they collaborated, learned about themselves, changed habits, and just an overall changed in abilities. A lot of that reflection is difficult to easily compute into a grade or empirically assess with traditional metrics.  Asking them their thoughts allowed for their journey to be seen.

Students know their experience more than anyone.  The purpose of the class is for them.  As I continued to want the importance of the grade to drop, I realized I needed the students to be viewed as a partner in determining the grade.  I don’t want them to game the system as I had.  I wanted it to be a journey where they are learning, not just grabbing at points to get the A. The problem with last year: I did it at the end of the year.  It wasn’t a partnership.  It was an afterthought.  Even though I did value their responses, the students didn’t know how much I valued it.  I learned that I need to be transparent in the value I placed in their responses. The process can’t just be lip service; Another thing that they do, but ultimately has no influence.

The present

Which gets to this year.  I asked my students the same three questions every time I have had to formally submit a grade, with two additional ones: What are you proud of? What would you do differently if you could go back in time and redo the time that has passed in this semester?  Again, I learned about their journey.  The two additional questions revealed more about who they were. Anyone that I disagreed with or needed more information, I held a conference with them.  I got clarification on the points they made or what happened in class. After that, I submitted the grade.  So far, I have never felt better about finalized grades.  Some student anxiety has been alleviated and I don’t feel that I have as many students point-grubbing.  I feel that students are learning. The grade is an afterthought.  They know they can argue to make a change.  They know they have a voice in the process other than just the assessments I use.  It has become a partnership.  Something it should always be.


A special thanks to Kim Miklusak for feedback and edits on this post.  She is the best English teacher I never had.

S1E7: Jessica Maciejewski "My journey as a learner"

By Mark Heintz

Jessica had a non-traditional path to becoming a teacher.  Her unique path of Elk Grove has lad her to embrace that mentality that teaching will constantly evolve.  She says in the podcast, "Teaching will be refined for the rest of my life."  She is an amazing educator and is passionate about her students and viewing them as learners.

School Chat S1E6: Patrick McGing "Students as learners and leaders"

By Mark Heintz

Patrick McGing is a Career and Technical Education teacher at Elk Grove High School that learns with his students.   His students remodel an entire house that the district purchased from start to finish.  He constantly focuses on learning and pushing students for them to find their passion.

School Chat S1E5: Anthony Furman "Change the mindset"

By Mark Heintz

In the fifth episode of School Chat, I sat down with veteran physical education teacher, Anthony Furman.  He is ever-evolving and has made some incredible changes to the physical education program at Elk Grove High School this year.  His reflection will inspire you to change your mindset about traditional practices to focus on the student and learning.  As a bonus, Kerry Frazier from Grove Jr. High joined the recording of this episode.

School Chat S1E4: Natalia Habas "What I love about school"

by Mark Heintz

In the fourth episode of School Chat, I sat down with current sophomore, Natalia Habas.  She has an amazing perspective on school culture and how she takes advantage of everything the school has to offer her.

School Chat: S1E3 Kate Glass "Literacy is my passion"

By Mark Heintz

In this third episode of School Chat, I sat down Kate Glass a longtime educator sits down with me to discuss the changes she has seen in her career, the direction she is motivated by, and how changing the mindset of literacy can refocus schools to an institution of learning.

School Chat - S1E2: Alyssa Trausch "What I Want School to Be"

By Mark Heintz

This is this second episode of School Chat, I sat down Alyssa Trausch a current sophomore at Elk Grove High School.  She wrote an amazing piece on what she wants school to be.  Here is an excerpt:

I want school to be a place where I love to go to every day. A place where learning is new, innovative, and exciting. When learning feels natural and not like all the content is being forced into my brain I have a tendency to remember it more.  Truthfully I think what I really want school to be is a place where I can learn new things without being worried all about what score/grade I’m going to get and rather worrying about how I can use what I just learned to make my life (or someone’s else’s) better.

It's a message everyone should here and we should strive to make happen in our classrooms every day.  Have a listen.     

Finding Purpose: "Talk Less, Smile More"

By: Rachel Vissing

Last week I had the opportunity to see the musical Hamilton.  Though many would say I was late to the party, I had listened to the music many times prior.  Listening to the soundtrack, however, was not as powerful as putting the music with the context on stage.  I left with my brain running for many reasons, but for this blog post, I'm am going to focus on one important line:

Talk Less, Smile More

Let's see...where have I seen this before?  Oh yes!  My wise mentor, Linda Ashida, has been sharing a similar message for years, complete with a post-it note by her desk (which is still up despite her retiring at the end of last school year).  

Whether the line is from Aaron Burr telling Alexander Hamilton to keep his opinions to himself or Linda's philosophy of learning from listening to others, I find that I struggle with this.  Therefore, I'm challenging myself to button my lips and to observe and listen more.

With My Students

In the classroom, I have started asking myself "Do I need to be talking now?"  I am questioning whether or not students need specific information or whether they can pull it from prior knowledge or work with peers to obtain this information.  For instance, instead of giving notes on the key terminology in mathematical translations like I have done in previous years, my students brainstormed on the whiteboard wall all of the terms that are associated with the math symbols +, -, >, =, etc.  Instead of correcting or adding words that were missed, we worked together throughout various translations and made adjustments to the board throughout the week's lessons based on our findings.  

The experience was surreal.  Many students thrived, and I saw their confidence soar!  Other students struggled a great deal and questioned me, "Why aren't you telling us what to do?  I need notes in order to learn."  It was hard for me to stand my ground with these students and not cave to provide them what they were asking, but by the end of the week these students trusted in the process and found more confidence in their abilities.  When I noticed that most groups were struggling with a concept, I had another group go to the board and explain their thought process.  It was really eye opening for me to step back and allow the students to teach one another, and I plan to continue to facilitate these types of processes as much as I can.

With My Peers

I get very excited talking and collaborating with others about education, lesson ideas, and new methods of facilitating learning in the classroom.  Often times when I am talking with a peer, I find myself interjecting suggestions that I have observed in other classrooms or those that I have tried with my students because I get very excited to bounce ideas around.  I have realized that I sometimes cut off the other person's thinking or impose my own beliefs on them instead of allowing my peers to find what works best for them and their students.  I'm challenging myself to go back to my mentality as a student teacher: I am a sponge.  This was my philosophy of listening, absorbing, and processing all of the ideas around me and then figuring out what works best for my situation.  This is especially important in my role as instructional coach, to provide my peers with the tools to set goals, brainstorm lesson ideas, and self-reflect purposefully.  

So as I am adapting this phase as my new mantra, you can listen here to have a positive song stuck in your head the rest of the day!  Maybe it will influence you as well!

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Introduction to Strength and Condition-Students

By Daisy Crus and Jaina Pfister

This is part of a blog series intended to document and define learning at Elk Grove High School throughout the 2018-2019 school year in order to increase student learning, give professionals autonomy, increase trust in our learning community, and foster a sense of personal-intellectual collegiality within the building across departments.  You can read all of the previous posts here.

In this post, two freshmen students reflect on what they learned in the first few weeks in Introduction to Strength and Condition.  You can read the teacher's reflection here.  The students are in control of their learning in this class. Here is a quick video the students talking about what they want in the course and how best to hold each other to those expectations.

Daisy Cruz

What did you learn in this lesson?

Something I learned in this lesson is that if you put your mind to what you are doing and you stay focused, you will always work through it till it’s complete. I also learned that when you are working out you always want to work on three things.  Those are strength, auxiliary and core.  Working with those three things will complete your daily workout. One thing I learned in this lesson is that you have to work on both parts of your body to not have one small leg and the other a lot muscular.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

Something I would like to learn in the next lesson is how to make the exercise more challenging if we feel it’s not pushing us to work harder. The teachers make us work hard and they are great but some people have already been in sports or activities and done harder workouts. They should have a specific workout and have it in two different ways, the normal way and the experienced way.

Jaina Pfister 

What did you learn in this lesson?

Today we learned about box jumps and step-ups with the boxes. It was mostly a learning day but days like those are a crucial step when it comes to working out. Learning the correct form will ensure we won’t get hurt and teaches us to become better athletes.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

For next time I hope we can incorporate the boxes in our workout so we can use the knowledge we learned. An important part of learning to me is being able to practice our learnings and continue to grow from there.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Dual Credit College Composition-Students

By Madison Reed, Jake Mizialko, Alexandra Glinski and Mark Heintz

Emily Mikuzis reflected on learning in a previous post, but what do the students think? A group of teachers and students explore what learning is. From the students perspective, for deep learning to occur, they've got to be interested in it.  They have to find meaning to them.  Here are just a few highlights before you read:

• This story’s argument really made me think about how much meaning I give things in my life and my perspective. 

• I love the freedom of ideas and creativity it allows us as students to have most times.

• I hope that students will be able to branch off of those three things and be able to incorporate it into their own writing.

• I would hope to find a style of writing/narrative the best suits me.

Madison

What did you learn in this lesson?

In this lesson, I learned about narratives and arguments from a deeper perspective. We read a passage called ‘This is Water’ by David Foster Wallace. The story touched pretty heavily on the ideas of “you control the meanings on everything in the world” and “you control your own perspective and decide how much meaning everything gets”. The whole class was split into groups. After listening to this piece and annotating things we found important in the text, everyone in each group shared a sentence, phrase and word from the reading that we thought was important and at the end, the whole class discussed thoughts on the reading as a whole. This story’s argument really made me think about how much meaning I give things in my life and my perspective. I enjoyed this narrative a lot and I loved the message/argument it brought with it.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

I hope to learn more about the other types of writings that are out there. Writing is one of my favorite things to do in school. I love the freedom of ideas and creativity it allows us as students to have most times. Also, I hope to learn how to better my writing abilities. So far in my senior year here at EGHS, College Composition has been one of my favorite classes and generally my favorite English class I've taken.

Jake
What did you learn in this lesson?

During this lesson, we, as a class, learned how to fully understand a story by highlighting significant words, phrases, and sentences. These three things helped us figure out what the narrative, argument, and effect were on the reader. This way of annotating shows that students are able to concisely get to the point while still annotating and understanding the story completely. This was a unique lesson because once the student finished reading on their own they were able to talk to their group members to hear what they took out of the story and how they perceived it.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

For the next lesson, I hope to learn how you can you words, phrases, and sentences to help you learn more about the message that the author was trying to get across to his readers. I hope that students will be able to branch off of those three things and be able to incorporate it into their own writing. By practicing this task, this will allow students to strengthen their writing abilities and easily identify key parts of a story.

Alexandra
What did you learn in this lesson?

In this lesson, I learned how different narratives can be used to make an argument. We listened and read through a couple of texts which all had addressed an argument, but all using different narratives. Individually, we would complete a reading guide where we, the students, had to annotate for a sentence, a phrase, and one keyword from the text that we believed was important. By identifying these different things, we are able to identify what the argument of the text was and how effective the narrative was. While repeating this process a few times, I learned how narrative is a key figure to an essay and how a good narrative will help your argument, which together can create a successful piece of writing.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

In the next lesson, I would hope to find a style of writing/narrative the best suits me. Trying and testing different essay structures will be a big part of finding out what I like. I want to be able to write an effective essay that not only has a good narrative but also gets my argument across. Hopefully, in our next few writing assignments, my best style of writing will become more clear to me.

A Year in Learning at Elk Grove: Intro to Engineering Part 1-Students

By Alexander Danan, Margi Patel, Ryan Libiano and Mark Heintz

Patrick McGing and I gave our insight into what learning looked like in Patrick's Intro to Engineering class. But what do the students think?  What do they want the class to be? If the focus of a school is meant to be on the learning, especially student learning, shouldn't we spend time getting their feedback?

A group of teachers met with me last May and agreed on a common mission and vision.  Part of that vision included partnering with students in an effort to document and define learning at Elk Grove.  Each week, as a teacher and I share our thoughts on learning, students who are in the teachers class I visit will do the same.  This week, three students in Patrick's class shared their thoughts on the first days of school. Here is what they had to say.

Ryan

What did you learn in this lesson?

Although we did not yet dive too deep into the engineering process or have started any projects, I found the class still to be engaging in the sense that we were able to reflect upon how we do now and how we will do in the future (as in our future work life etc). Certain topics such as skills and interests seemed to have no meaning in the basics of the design process or literally anything that relates to engineering, but I finally realized that these topics would soon help me become aware of what strengths I have and fields they were applicable in. Furthermore, the class will teach me how to write a resume and prepare myself for future endeavors throughout my adult life.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

Although we did not cover any engineering related topic in this lesson, I am still very excited to learn more about how to write a resume and cover letter and prepare myself for the future. Along with that, I am still very excited to dive deep into the engineering process and design my first object/thing (I don’t know what it is yet). Another huge hope is to finally use machinery such as the shopbot, CNC mill, Laser cutter, etc.

Margi

What did you learn in this lesson?

It's only been a few days so we haven't really started yet. I found some things interesting such as how to operate the machines and how to write the resume. We are going to start a project very soon so I'm really excited to find out how to do the designs and stuff. We also learned the things that we are going do it throughout the semester and I found most of the things very interesting.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

I hope to learn how to use the 3D printer and the new technology. By end of the semester, I would love to know what I should put it in my resume and cover letter. I'm a senior and I'm glad I took this class because I'm sure it's going to help figure what I want to do after high school in specifically engineering. I'm excited to learn more about the topics that we talked about. I'm also excited to see what interests me the most.

Alex

What did you learn in this lesson?

During the class I learned what our class is going to be and some of the things that we will be using in for the future. One of the things that stuck out to me was learning how to make a resume. Since I'm only 14 and don't know anything about resumes or jobs, this was a nice piece of information that will be able to help me throughout life since people need jobs to make money and live. Another thing was knowing that we will be able to use a lot of cool tech that I've never even touched before.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

What I'm interested in is going through the design process to create some different but amazing things. I also want to learn more about how to use all the machines to make 2D into 3D.  One of the biggest things that I hope I learn next time or later in the year is all the small things that I'm able to do while designing program so I can make what I've already made and make it better to the best of my potential.

Learning at Elk Grove: Intro to Engineering

By Patrick McGing, Merlyn Manoj, Kaelyn Rittle, and Mark Heintz

I was fortunate to visit Pat McGing's Intro to Engineering course a few weeks ago.  I asked him and a few of his students to document the learning that took place that lesson and what they hoped to learn in future ones.  From my outsider's perspective, there was a high level of student agency present.  The students were focused and working with purpose.  They rarely deviated from the task at hand and that was evident by the amount of time student spent on the task at hand.  

More importantly, the teacher and the students were all learners.  The teacher was learning right alongside the students.  Because the student projects were so different, it was impossible for the teacher to know the answers to all of their questions.  Rather than giving the students the answers or saying he did not know it, he worked with the students to come up with the solutions.  The equity in the partnership between students and the teachers reminds me that everyone is a learner and together we grow so much more than by ourselves.  Watch the short clip of student focus and the partnership between student and teacher.  Aftwerwards, be sure to read the reflections that follow.  

Teacher Perspective: Patrick McGing

What did learning look like in the lesson?

Learning looked like collaboration.

Students in this Introduction to Engineering Design section are at many different points in a project. Many students were working with their peers to solve problems, demonstrate, or just assist in a minor way to help a peer along. I could look around the classroom and see multiple students leaning over to their neighbor or getting out of their seat to assist a classmate. Therefore, the teaching did not come from me but from students peers.

• Learning looked like students building skills in smaller areas of Autodesk Inventor with 3D modeling or 3D assemblies.
• Learning looked like students building communication skills.
• Learning looked like students building time management skills.
• Learning looked like students recalling previous knowledge to aide in their current project.

What do you hope to do for the next time?

I hope for students to have a better grasp and understanding of assembling parts in Autodesk Inventor. Many of the students helping each other during the lesson were helping students assemble parts. Something I have tried in one of my other courses is having students develop a step by step “protocol” for troubleshooting specific problems. This helped students actually attempt troubleshooting a problem with already brainstormed solutions and gave them better success in solving a problem on their own. I would like to try this in my introductory course so that students could better persevere through problems.


Student: Merlyn Manoj

What did you learn this lesson?

During this project, I learned how to use my manage my time since we worked on our project independently. It was a bit hard though because if you were falling behind you would have to go to the lab outside of class to catch up with your peers. This project also gave me a lot of freedom since we had to create our own parts, and even though it was frustrating at times because you can’t just follow a plan right in front of you when things are going wrong, it was fun having that creative aspect in our project.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

I want to learn more about Inventor rather than the basics of it. I think learning how to figure out a solution to a problem rather than just asking a friend or a teacher right away would be a great skill to have.

Student: Kaelyn Rittle 

What did you learn this lesson?

I’m not sure I can say I learned anything new from this unit because most of what we did included skills I learned in the past. However, this unit granted a lot of freedom as to what we were allowed to create, and I would say the design process was the most challenging for me. My project is slightly different in that I have two cranks whereas pretty much everyone else has only one which makes spacing everything just a little harder. I have 5 parts - three in the back and two in the front and measuring everything out so that they wouldn’t hit each other involved a lot of trial and error. This was difficult because whenever I’ve worked on Inventor in the past, I was either following a sheet with the dimensions given to me or I was physically measuring parts as I went along.

What do you hope to learn for the next time?

I think it would be fun to work with other features on Inventor that I haven’t used before. As far as I know, I’ve only used the very basics of it, and maybe exploring it more will help me further understand the program in case I were to ever use it in the future.

Reflections on Reading: What is our goal? What influences students?

By Kim Miklusak

Often we hear people bemoan a perceived or real decrease in sustained reading in our students.  Teachers express frustration that students don't read outside of class or are not reading at a level that teachers feel they should be at.

This year our Senior English students were doing independent reading choices for 20-60 minutes a week in class, and I know more classes have added this across all grades.  So as the Senior English teachers prepared for our Independent Reading Book Circles, I asked my students to do a brief journal entry on successes and barriers when it came to their reading.

In the words of Paulo Freire in Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare to Teach, he says, "As a practical-theoretical context, the school cannot ignore the knowledge about what happens in the concrete contexts of its students and their families.  How can we understand students' difficulties during the process of becoming literate without knowing what happens in their experiences at home or how much contact they have with written words in their sociocultural context?"

I want to share some of their responses here.  They certainly caused me to step back and reflect as we set our goals and targets for our unit: was our goal a quiz at the end?  Was our goal just to finish a book?  Was our goal to inspire a love of reading?  In the end our goal was to have sustained dialogue about a reading both within one book circle and across books.

Student Moments: Christian Paeng

By Mark Heintz

Most moments each day are forgotten. Even though there are great, little moments each day, they affect us, then pass us by.  They are not impactful enough to hold on to; therefore, we as humans tend to forget these great, little moments.  Life is made up of these moments and I want to capture some of them to change my perspective as an educator to the daily moments with students, instead of just the few momentous ones.  To accomplish this goal, I asked my students if I could write and share one moment of each of them. My hope is if I stop to record a brief moment about them, I would reflect on those great, little moments each day.  I want to build a recorded history of my students and my time with them.  Here is one student and one moment.

Christian Paeng: January 2018

Christian Paeng is an affable, funny student.  I always enjoy his presence, even when his humor is not completely directly related to the task at hand.  He is lively and engaging. He ensures that class will never be dull.  Last week, he took a content knowledge quiz on the Atlantic Revolutions.  It was a basic, do you know your stuff quiz.  Christian memorized, for it was just a memorization quiz, all of the content questions except for one.  I marked it wrong on his quiz and handed it back to him.   He quickly came up and said I made a mistake and quickly reasoned with me why his answer was correct.  I was so proud of him and his growth as a student and his ability to advocate for his intellectual expertise.  It was a nice moment and I wanted to capture it.

Perspective-Taking through class "Pinwheel" activity

By Kim Miklusak

In previous work in Emily Mikuzis’ senior English 101 class, her students worked on exemplification—making a claim and supporting it with examples rather than reasoned evidence.  In this case, students are using the guiding question “To what extent has your education served you?” with examples from their own experience.

To prepare for this lesson students read and annotated an excerpt from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” which focuses on his experience in education—specifically compliance versus critical thinking.  Students prepared by annotating form 4 different perspectives, color-coding each: urban student, suburban student, urban teacher, suburban teacher. 

They used Coates’ description of his neighborhood for the experience with urban schools and their own experiences with suburban schools.  Understanding that this pulls on some biases, the class had a conversation on empathy, per  While this is a limitation of the activity, the class talked through the nuances of each, handling it compassionately.  For example, one student pointed out that just because someone has a certain identity, it doesn’t mean they only have one perspective or a common perspective. 

Students worked independently first, then in small like-groups, then together in a “pinwheel” activity [from Sarah Wessling on the Teachers’Channel].   One member of each “perspective” sat in the “hot seat” and answered questions posed by the “provocateur,” who had prepared based on a question writing workshop held by the whole class on the previous day.  Therefore, groups were aware of some of the questions, but they could not prepare for all.  In the “pinwheel,” the provocateur also asked follow-up questions to continue and push the conversation.  Students referenced the text directly but also made inferences based on their perspective.  This is a much smaller group discussion than a Socratic with only 6 students in the group to encourage all students to participate while the outer group participated in a real-time backchannel on BackChannelChat.com

After class students debriefed.  Students expressed the difficulty in looking through others’ perspective, but they also appreciated that it slowed them down, forcing themselves to rethink what they would say.  They also really liked the backchannel because they could speak from their own life perspective and experiences, which allowed them a comfortable place to share.  In the end they felt it helped them take different perspectives in addition to simply analyzing what the text means.  After this practice activity, students will return to this activity in a few weeks, focusing on multiple authors and putting them “in conversation with each other.”

Student Involvement in Assessment (Part 1)

By: Rachel Barry

When I was a student, I was the true definition of a rote learner.  I also was very involved in extra-curricular activities, so I would do what I needed to in order to obtain the grade I wanted.  Now as a teacher, I regret that the school system allowed me to spend so much time focusing on grades, instead of truly learning.  

Attitude Towards Grades

I feel that a significant part of this was the assessment process.  If I got a poor score on a test, I didn't always go back to learn what I missed.  If it was going to be included on another assessment (ie: final exam), I would learn enough to get by, but never go back to fully understand the content and how it related to the course or real life. As a teacher I am now trying to change how I assess (both formatively and summatively) to create learning experiences from these assessments.  I had been finding that students who receive an "A" feel that they have learned all that they need to learn, and student who receive an "F" feel that they cannot learn.  Therefore, I am working to promote continuous growth through assessments, instead of an assessment being the "final call" of what a student knows.

Getting Students Involved in the Process

Last year, I started incorporating students in the assessment process.  For the first quiz of the year, I have students grade their own assessment.  I do this by passing back each student's quiz with a colored pen.  I show the answer key over Apple TV and talk through how I grade each problem.  Finally, I show how I use the grading rubric to assign a grade to the quiz.

Once they have assigned their grade, I have them go through the questions that they got wrong and make corrections.  

As you can see, students are using this assessment as a learning tool, fostering more growth and understanding.  These quiz grades go in the gradebook in the formative category, so there isn't a battle over getting "points" back.  The conversations with students were focused on the content and application of skills instead of spending time discussing grades.  It was awesome!

Personal Reflection

As I continue to grow in my professional development, I am becoming less scared of trying new things.  Throughout the year, I hope to keep the assessment conversation going, as well as continuously obtain student input as to assessment methods that continue to motivate them in the learning process.  I will continue to think back on the thought of "What would have made me want to learn in class?" instead of my high school mentality of "What do I need to do in order to get the grade that I want?"  I will be following up with more posts on student involvement in the assessment process, so stay tuned!

Student Voice: Questioning and Student Feedback

By Mark Heintz

I have been going around school stopping students at random to hear what they feel teacher's do that impacts their learning.  It is so important to continually ask the population we serve to get their feedback on what helps them master the content and skills we are trying to teach.  The responses have been so insightful into what works for each of the unique learners that enter our classroom and can continue to drive the methods we use to instruct them.  Once I captured the student's voice, I tracked down the teacher to share and get their input on the practice that was highlighted. 

The student I asked in the video highlights the way Mrs. Perkins questions at the beginning and the end of each class and allows time for students to process the material from the day before.

Here is Mrs. Perkins explaining how and why she uses the questioning strategy at the beginning and end of class. 

Sharing Learning Targets with Students

By Melissa Curtis

We’ve been hearing a lot about clear learning targets and meaningful feedback the last couple of years.  Many teachers I know have been using learning targets in their curriculum for years, but maybe not explicitly sharing them with their students or getting any feedback.  I have been using a simple yet effective way to use daily goals or learning targets in my classes that might be helpful to other teachers.

First, I have created a document called Daily Goals that I post in Schoology.

Students open this document in Notability every week.  They can reuse the same one from week to week and just erase last week’s info.  Some choose to upload it from Schoology each week and “add to existing note” so they have one long note instead of 36 different ones throughout the school year.  Each day when they come into class, I have the daily goal projected on the screen for them to write down in the left-hand column.  I post these in my calendar in Schoology so even when students are absent, they can see the daily goal and any handouts/links we used that day.  Here is an example:

At the end of class, I ask students to write a response to the daily goal.  This should be a thoughtful comment about what we learned that day in class.  It guides students and myself to focus on the clear purpose of the lesson.  By Friday, their daily goals document should look like this:

Every Monday, or first day of the week, I walk around the room and check their goals from the prior week.  I give students a small homework grade of 5 points for this.  The real value though is in getting a snapshot of what students learned that week.  In their own words, they are narrowing down my curriculum into the simplest forms.  I usually spot check one or two days for each student and I can comment on any mistakes they have made.  I can also get a sense of the whole class and clear up any misconceptions as a group.  

In my experience, students like the structure and routine of a class.  They know when they come in to take out their iPads and start writing down the daily goal.  At the end of class, it provides closure for the lesson and I can call on random students to help answer it for the whole class.  When students are absent, it provides a quick answer to “What did I miss yesterday?”.  It has become an expectation that most students buy into pretty quickly.  Yes, there are some who don’t do it or copy it from a friend, but you can monitor those individual cases pretty easily.  I have been doing this for years and like the simplicity and accountability of the daily goals.  Now, I will start calling them Learning Targets :)

Feel free to use or modify anything you see here!