This is the tenth post in the Professional Development 2.0 series. If you have not already, I would encourage you to start with the first nine posts:

Thank you Jason for providing me this venue to share a few thoughts on learning and my journey through reform.

When I began teaching I tried to lay low, blend into the background, and cause the least amount of commotion as possible.  In my mind I was there to teach the . . . → Read More: A New Year, A New Approach]]>

Thank you Jason for providing me this venue to share a few thoughts on learning and my journey through reform.

When I began teaching I tried to lay low, blend into the background, and cause the least amount of commotion as possible.  In my mind I was there to teach the kids, have some fun doing it, and fill my grade book in preparation for report cards and conferences.  I looked into best-practices and did my best to self-assess and reflect each day.  Not a bad start for a newbie.  This was good for a year or two, but as the last few years have gone by, I’ve learned that laying low is no fun at all.

Now I’m going to start my fifth year of teaching with a very unique opportunity for myself, my students, and my staff.  I’ve been given the responsibility of working with teachers to purposefully and effectively integrate technology into their classrooms to enhance learning and increase engagement.  I will also continue to teach half-time in a fifth grade classroom, focusing on Science, Math, Writing, and whatever other learning opportunities we encounter together.

As I approach this new year, I am looking for ways to make learning more “real” for students and find ways to encourage them to learn, take risks, and challenge themselves.  I want to make learning a meaningful process and far more authentic than it has been for them in the past; and my first step towards that goal is to make some essential shifts in my thinking with regard to what learning looks like and how we get to “mastery.”

Schooling and learning is at a pivotal point in its evolution.  I’d have to agree with Mike Rose in Why School?, when he says,

…schooling can devolve to procedures, to measures and outputs that constrain what gets taught, how it’s taught, and how we define what it means to be an educated person.

There is a lot of focus on federal mandates and AYP and NCLB and the new Race to the Top.  That pressure often trickles down from district administration to building principals and then finally to classroom teachers.  A lot of us find ourselves going through the motions just to make sure our class “knows” enough to meet state assessment standards.  We often feel like we have to teach to the test.

To be honest, I support states and their efforts to ensure their students are learning specific knowledge and necessary skills; ensuring an educated society, democratic life, and economic prosperity.  I do believe that students and teachers, both, should be accountable for that learning.  How states do that is an issue, I feel, that most educators struggle with today.  I’m not sure that education and policy makers will move away from standardized testing and incentives for higher scores anytime soon (seeing as how our current administration is picking up where the last one left off).  These tests will be with us for a long time.  That does not mean that learning cannot happen though.  How a teacher facilitates learning or delivers content is still something I feel that we can control, at least, in our own classroom.

In my class I want learning to look like this:

One of the ways I hope to do all of this is to shift from an arbitrary grading system to a collaborative evaluation of performance and mastery.

I’ve recently been reading a bit of Alfie Kohn.  He presents some extremely valid points about the ill-effects of grades in “From Degrading to De-grading”; two of which struck a chord in me and my recent failed efforts to motivate kids:

The more the task required creative thinking, in fact, the worse the performance of students who knew they were going to be graded.

The last two years I have dealt with these issues and to very little avail.  In an effort to  overcome this (and becoming quickly “addicted” to Twitter), I stumbled upon one man’s passion and efforts to abolish grades.  Joe Bower and his blog, For the Love of Learning, have played an important part in introducing me to this shift in thinking and approach to student learning.  New to this too, Pernille Ripp (of Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension and The Global Read Aloud Project) and I have discussed our “no-grade” plans as the new school year approaches.

From all of this I have (tentatively) come up with the following plan to create–for a lack of better words–a healthier “grading” system for my classroom:

It all comes down to what my purpose is as a teacher.  I’ve never felt like I had all the answers.  Becoming a master teacher is a long process; one of which I still find myself somewhere around the starting line.

I got a good education.  I was inspired by some of my teachers and discouraged by others.  That is part of why I’m doing this, shifting my focus back to where it needs to be, on the student and learning.  A lot of my education dealt with tests and preparing for tests.  My motivation was good grades.  I can’t say that I learned everything I was supposed to, but as Kohn mentioned, I adapted to each environment and learned how to get the best grades possible.

I don’t want that for my students.  I want students to be motivated to learn for the simple sake of learning.  By removing the pass/fail consequences of grades, I hope to create a new paradigm for my students–one that consists of learning, reflection, and growth.  My purpose as a teacher is to foster learning in an environment where students feel safe to take risks and make mistakes; and I feel I can’t do that if their motivation and my focus is on grades and test scores.  Removing traditional grading will allow students to focus more on the process and what they may still need to learn to attain mastery, but without the fear of negative feedback or failing marks.

There are many contributors to the education of each student; including, but not limited to family, administration, teachers, counselors, specialists, peers, and of course, the student himself.  It is only fair that each contributor understands the direction and reasoning behind the new collaborative evaluation system.  When each involved understands the “why”, I feel that most, if not all, will support this more focused shift towards learning.  Learning is a process as will be this “no-grades” approach.  Communication with parents must be regular and meaningful in order for such a transition to be successful and learning to truly take place.

Collaborative evaluation implies a need for communication.  Marks and grades will be left off of assignments, projects and assessments and will be replaced with comments, suggestions and questions.  Students and teachers will participate in regular conversations regarding their work and progress towards mastery.  Class pacing and learning goals will be based primarily on the results of these conversations.  When report cards roll around, students will work with teachers in determining what “grade” they feel best represents their work and progress towards mastery.

“Mastery” is a tough word to tackle.  It is something that will have to be defined and communicated before any real expectations can be met.  As I mentioned before, my state requires certain knowledge and skills to be taught across basic core content, like Math, Language Arts, Writing, Social Studies, Science and Health.  Each content area has standards and objectives that I am responsible (by contract) to teach to mastery.  The objectives are set, but the way I deliver that content and how students attain mastery may vary.  Each student learns differently, so I must provide opportunities for students to progress and show mastery in his or her own way.

Mastery will depend on the objective.  For example, Math and Health have different standards and objectives that need to be learned during the school year.  When we approach one of those objectives, students need to know what mastery looks like.  This is another reason why communication is so important.  As the class discusses what mastery looks like, they are able to learn more about the actual objective.  Expectations for mastery can be established and students can then guide their own learning.  These expectations can be described in student-created rubrics (which may still seem a bit prescriptive, like grading, to some) or checklists that help them monitor their progress towards learning as they choose how to get there.

Before teaching or learning a new standard or set of objectives, students will participate in a class discussion that will help them better understand the why and the what of what is to be learned.  The discussion will determine what mastery will look like, what the expectations are (whether recorded via rubric, checklist or some other means) and what will be a reasonable time to complete the assignment or show mastery.  Another small conversation should also be devoted to the exchange of ideas of how students can show progress and demonstrate mastery.

All assignments will be reviewed, but I will only leave comments on a certain few.  All projects and assessments will be reviewed, commented on, and then discussed with the student to determine progress, mastery and what else needs to be done.

Assignments will be seen as practice.  My goal is to make them as relevant and authentic as I can.  Student discussion will help with that.  Students will be encouraged to take risks and be creative in their learning.  The point of practice is to work towards mastery, not achieve it in one try.  Mistakes will be a natural part of the learning process.  We often learn more from our failures than we do our successes.  Students should learn to use this as information, guiding future learning.  I don’t see “grades” as a fair reflection of this process.  Self-reflection and teacher conversations will help students see where they are and what may need to be done still.

Projects and assessments will mirror assignments and reflect life experiences.  Instead of just “testing” knowledge of content, I want students to understand why they learn these things and how it applies to life outside of the classroom.  Assessments will not only require a basic understanding, but will challenge students to show mastery through application, creation, and questioning.  Upon completion, the students and I will discuss the finished product.  The dialogue will include a review of the objective, the expectations and it will help the student and teacher determine if mastery demonstrated.  In many cases students will be given the opportunity to go back and do whatever else needs to be done to show mastery of the objective.  Reflection and change is a part of life, why not make it a part of their learning?

Students will keep a working portfolio for the entire year.  Their portfolios will contain examples of all their work, not just their best pieces.  Students will also create a digital portfolio–something very similar to George Couros‘s blogfolio idea–for all of their work and collaboration done on the computer and online.  Currently I am looking at creating a blog, using BuddyPress, that will allow students to share their work with their family, peers, and teacher.  These work samples will be shared as blog posts, facilitating individual comments and communication, and providing a way to archive their work.

My school district mandates letter grades on report cards for fifth grade.  Fair enough.  I’m still not quite sure how I am going to take student-teacher conversations, portfolios, and my own observations and create an arbitrary grade (that I had been avoiding all term) for each student, but the following is an idea that I leave open to any suggestions and feedback.

Grades will be determined by students and me.  Essentially these would be arbitrary marks for the sake of the report card, but in this case I hope they will be more meaningful.

Many find a D or an F to be harsh and depleting for students.  Communication is the key here.  The D or F would merely represent a lack of communication and sharing during the learning process.  If a student is not learning something or cannot show mastery of an objective, it is my job to find out why and provide that student with adequate opportunities.  If students are unwilling to communicate and share through this process, a D or an F will simply show that.

That’s my plan so far.  Is it perfect?  No. I’m new to all of this.  Like my students, I will also need to regularly reflect and evaluate where I need to make adjustments.  I need to make sure that I am meeting my students needs, and this will require me to rethink certain strategies and make modifications as I become more comfortable with not grading.

There will always be a fear, I suppose.  Whenever we try something new there is often that initial hesitation.  As human beings we fear failure; we fear ridicule; we fear not being accepted.  We educators have to overcome such fear and replace it with courage and sound dedication to the students.  Learning should be central to our classroom structure.  Our job isn’t about you or me, or administration, or even policy makers.  Education is about the students, young or old.

In all honesty, these could be the ideologies of a naive fifth year teacher, but I am excited to see what change this brings about.  My principal wants to change the learning climate in our school.  This is a start.  It’s not about teaching anymore, it’s about learning.

Jeremy Macdonald
www.mrmacnology.com
@MrMacnology

With thanks . . . → Read More: Hiding in the open]]> Chad Sansing is one of the teachers whose conversation and insight really got me thinking at the beginning of the summer. He asks some really good questions about when assessment is appropriate, especially in the context of authentic work. I appreciate Chad taking the time to share his insight here.

With thanks to Jason:

Ron Berger’s An Ethic of Excellence makes a strong case for letting authentic work be the evidence of learning. The books is remarkable, as is the work of Berger and his students, because it shows that assessing students by their work is possible and valid. Berger works with Expeditionary Learning, a organization that partners with schools to transform student learning through field work, the creation of “high-quality products for audiences beyond the classroom,” and supportive school cultures that value and foster safe and effective critique and co-learning.

I often ask myself why I find Berger’s work so remarkable, and why I haven’t done much like it with my students. Why don’t I let my students’ work stand as evidence of their learning? Why do I use summative assessment? Assignments that aren’t project-based? Tests that correlate 1:1 to my curriculum but not my students?

Where am I that it’s remarkable to find a teacher who assesses students through their work – not through grades or other ciphers – but through critique and coaching? Through peer feedback and expert mentoring?

Why am I here? To whom or what am I beholden for the chance to teach and learn like Ron Berger and his students?

More concretely, here I am, sitting behind an enormous picture window, looking out on my last day of vacation on the Atlantic shore. I’ve just finished my rambling re-watching of the entire 5-season run of The Wire, a Baltimore-set brutal, human, tragic, and sometimes heartening account of the society in which we live, our hiding-in-the-open complicity with it’s failures, and the consequences of our compromises with the systems in which we operate. The Wire speaks to teaching, learning, and #edreform throughout its run, though season 4, in particular, looks at school.

The structure of the show and its cadences discourage, in my mind, bite-sized viewing. It gives itself time to tell years-long stories of its principal and supporting casts. It approaches a human time scale that “here we are again” pop TV conventions don’t even attempt to apprehend.

You could call it a police procedural so long as you’re also willing to call it a drug-dealing procedural, a stevedore procedural, a school procedural, a newsroom procedural, and a human procedural.

It’s an amazing product. It surpasses everything I’ve watched in terms of performance, structure, payoff, and reflection. I like it better than most books I’ve read and music I’ve heard. I love to talk about the show – to read about it and to watch it – but I can’t imagine ever grading it.

Could I ever love my students’ work so much? Could I ever be so excited to talk about it – to read about it and to watch it? Could I ever want to go back to look at it again and again? By designing it? Assigning it? Grading it?

People who care deeply about other people, about Baltimore, and about our shared personal responsibility for caring for one another made The Wire. I didn’t assign it. I found it. I let the creators, cast, and crew move me.

How can I approach teaching and learning the same way? Ready to be amazed? How can I approach assessment the same way? Ready to watch and listen and think and imagine further?

What amazing things could my students and I find together in the work they want to do? What amazing things hiding in the open could we discover about our lives and world if we didn’t always tie up content with a bow? If we didn’t choose to make public education so brusquely episodic and pretend that learning operates the way a school does? If we acknowledged that we’re all together in a system that we choose to challenge or not?

I’ve come to believe that the best assessment is hiding in the open – it’s human, reciprocal – but not necessarily transactional – and perhaps inelegant if trial and error seem any less of a mess than complacency. It comes from conversation about student work between people who value and acknowledge students, their relationships, and the learning they do throughout their lives.

I’ve come to suspect that grades are what I tell myself when I know I’ve assigned work that doesn’t carry value of its own.

So this year I’ll be hiding in the open, resisting grades as best I can, writing about the conversations we have and the learning we do without them, and following the work of reformers in schools. I’ll be trying to help my students amaze us, to take on a measure of responsibility for learning and community that my teaching and assessment practices very well may may have precluded them from taking in the past.

Here I am. Stop by and help keep me accountable. Maybe talk a while about The Wire. You know. In a middle-school appropriate way. Right?

Chad Sansing teaches humanities at a Virginia charter school and blogs about reforming classroom practice at Classroots.org and CoöpCatalyst.

Dr. Milton Ramirez is a man I greatly respect.  As you will see from his post, he places a great emphasis on research. I originally started talking to @tonnet on Twitter where he is consistently among the most insightful people I know. He seems to be one of the rare people . . . → Read More: Funds and Participation to Move Beyond the Government Policies]]>

Dr. Milton Ramirez is a man I greatly respect.  As you will see from his post, he places a great emphasis on research. I originally started talking to @tonnet on Twitter where he is consistently among the most insightful people I know. He seems to be one of the rare people who can be both intensely smart and yet still get to know you on a personal level. He blogs at Education & Tech; I am thrilled and humbled that he took the time to write for the Diffusion of Innovations series. He brings a fresh point of view that has not previously been discussed here.

The mere fact of speaking of change scares us away and put on the defensive more than one. I’ve had the opportunity to work in the private business in management for several years and know firsthand what innovation means. The word as such belongs not even to education, is a  borrowed term which belongs either to of economics, business, entrepreneurship, design, technology, sociology, or engineering. While they, in this case  education officials , talk about innovation, the first thing to consider is to decide based on what we are going to implement innovations.

And that is where the educational structure leaves much to be desired. While the industry invests huge amounts of money for research and development, money is almost nonexistent for education other than non-government resources. One wonders why this happens. Since the education as an institution of change was created in the Greek era, this discipline, although it was used to educate the children of monarchs, was performed by slaves in the service to the empire. That scourge has not been eliminated and today, in almost every country worldwide, an individual with a doctor’s degree in education neither has the prestige nor receives the same money as an individual with a doctor’s degree in medicine.

Then, first thing we should do is obtain the money and government funds to carry out independent research. In this information-linked society we are pretty much able to see the limitations of our imaginations, and better able to make clear-eyed  transformations. Once we know scientifically the flaws in the system we can start thinking of innovation. The reforms to which we are accustomed to obey government  and political party slogans, do not always respond to technical research factors. Hence the same program receives small changes and it is renamed it, they  are still  thinking of the absolute goodness of the tests and want to make teachers accountable to a system where they do not even take any policy decision.

I have to resort to a book I read carefully. It is written by Clayton Cristensen, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. Taking a clue from Bill Gates’ 2005 critique of the American school system, Clayton applies his  theory of disruptive innovation to a much-needed evolution in the educational technologies, offering new opportunities and challenges for a system based on the business principles. After all, who with national authority has been able, at least,  to collect empirical data to proclaim that the proposed reform as it is, offers chances of maintaining the status quo.

If we refer to Biology, for example, evolution is a continuous process of attaining perfection through small steps. This is how creativity and innovation work. There must be an environment to experiment and create without too much overhead. The time from the conception of an idea to its birth must be short. This is the basic idea behind innovation in technology, which can be borrowed by education. Arun Ravindran is a computer scientist and he believes that: “The real secret of innovation is in making prototyping, experimenting, iterating or whatever you call it, cheap.”

What I am saying may seem like another set of words than we have already been heard. It is possible. But it is my vision of what innovation entails. Two people who I greatly respect have raised their concerns about the danger of wandering without concrete proposals. One is Steven W. Anderson, also known as @web20classroom.  He recommends us for example, “Educators have to reach out and add voices to the chorus. Get to your parents, make them an ally. Talk to your community. Make them a partner. It is easy for policy makers to ignore educators. (Frankly, they do it all the time.) But when we add local business, parents, community leaders, it gets that much tougher for them ignore. We have to quit thinking that parents and the community are the enemy. Schools were once centers of our community. We have to get back to that. Separated, we are weak. Together we are strong.”

There are several voices I have not had the opportunity to hear, but these two are the ones I am in touch with. Dr. Jeff Goldstein, who goes by  @doctorjeff on Twitter , is the other person. He has rightly called for a cessation of oratory and a shift in the way that educators need to be heard. The two education professionals have a lot to do with what Irving Wladawsky-Berger, one of the key innovators at IBM, presented to the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) back in 2007: To raise concern about changes in education (pdf)we have to foster collaboration among leaders in education, business and government . We have to expand participation of underrepresented groups in all fields, especially those essential to America’s development and competitiveness. Attract and retain the best and brightest minds from around the world, and enhance the quality of education-through community members’ ongoing research.

I was doing an initial search for material on the topic of innovation in education and what I found is really little. Again, there is not research. If social support is not present for children and their families to buffer the consequences of poverty and other problems, even with the implementation of school reform proposals, educational success is highly unlikely. I think one of reasons we look for innovation is that this society has to be remove from the relative poverty in which this economic system has all immersed. But unfortunately there is no recipe, no book that tells us how to innovate. Or maybe we should continue with the utopia of innovation with little or no money, as Ravindran suggested.

Every step toward change and innovation therefore aims to prompt debate around the nature, purpose and tools that may promote innovative practice in schools. Of course, any discussion of innovation in education necessarily opens up a host of related debates, from debates on the nature of curriculum and assessment, to debates on the identity and role of teachers and communities, to discussions about the relationship between changing research and practice in teaching and learning. We cannot begin to address all of these issues here, but we leave the discussion open enough to influence others so they can take the lead.

New practices, no matter how small they are, tend to expand our vision of education. Teachers are obliged to get into the culture of continuous and daily innovation; if we do that there will be changes in the educational policies of each country. Remember though, that innovation leads to mistakes and we must be prepared.

This post was written by Milton Ramirez. He is a Math and Spanish Teacher and his contributions on education can be found at Education & Tech. He also writes about Ecuadorian affairs at Global Voices.

Photo credit to: AussieGold

Steven W. Anderson is @web20classroom on Twitter. He is one of the founders of #edchat and blogs at the Web 2.0 Classroom. Initially, I contacted Steven about giving a keynote presentation at the TeachMeet conference I hosted in April without much expectation. He wasn’t following me on Twitter yet, I hadn’t . . . → Read More: It All Starts At The Top]]>

Steven W. Anderson is @web20classroom on Twitter. He is one of the founders of #edchat and blogs at the Web 2.0 Classroom. Initially, I contacted Steven about giving a keynote presentation at the TeachMeet conference I hosted in April without much expectation. He wasn’t following me on Twitter yet, I hadn’t spoken to him, and I couldn’t cover his whole trip cost. He was extremely gracious. On top of agreeing to fly over right away and giving an amazing presentation, he is a genuine and a good person. I’m honored to have him write for this blog.

First, I just want to thank Jason for allowing me to do a guest post on his blog. It is truly and honor and a pleasure.

Change…

We hear a lot about change in education. Seems like everyday there is a new discussion popping up about something that needs to be changed. Whether it is the use (or non-use) of Interactive Whiteboards in the classroom, to the conversation swirling around what exactly 21st Century skills are to talk of even a complete overhaul of our current system in favor for something different, there always has been, and what I feel, always will be a desire for something different. We are never content with what we have. And you know that’s quite alright with me. We in education should never settle for anything. There is always room for improvement and we should all have the desire to do better by our students.

But what if you are in an environment where change is unacceptable? I am sure we can think of one teacher who has crossed our paths who is comfortable with the status quo. We might be able to change the minds of those around us. Or maybe not. But what if you are in a school or district where the leadership is fearful of even the talk of change? That is a different story altogether.

Change starts at the top. Change comes from the top. It all starts and ends with school leadership.

School leaders (administrators) are responsible for a lot. There is no doubt they have a tough job. But, let not the challenges of the day-to-day cloud our judgement for the future. School leaders have to understand the culture in their school, their staff, their students and their community. They have to understand the needs of all those groups and understand the direction they are going, where they are and where they need to be. And at the very top, they should have a desire to do better for their school because it is what is best for the school community and not themselves. Ultimately, when school leaders look inward at their buildings they should see a need to do things differently; constantly seeking out new ideas and new ways of accomplishing their goals. They have to change.

But the ideal situation is a building that has leadership that thinks that way.  Are their buildings like that out there? Sure there are. I believe I am part of one. Our school leadership is always trying to do better. Even when we might be at the top of something, it is never enough, we have to do better. Not for ourselves, but for our students and our community.

The reality is there are not enough schools that have the ideal leadership out there. You might even be in or know of one of these schools, or even worse, a whole district that is missing the ideal leadership. What can you do? What do you do?

First, don’t get discouraged. It is easy to give up the fight for the change your students need when no one wants to follow. You look around and realize you are all alone but sometimes trails need to be blazed and sometimes you have to blaze that trail alone. Just remember your purpose and remember who you are doing it for.

When you are faced with the challenge of a school leadership that thinks differently than you challenge it. Challenge everything you can. Does your school have a leadership team or school improvement team or a school board? Are you going to the meetings. Are you speaking up. Be a thorn in their side. Question the why and how of everything that the school is doing. But remember, there is a line between questioning everything and being belligerent. You can push your agenda without being pushy.

Use social media to your advantage. Did you read a great blog post? Why not send the link to the school leadership with the offer of setting up an RSS reader with other great blogs. Find an interesting resource on Twitter? Send it out to the staff and mention that you got it on Twitter. Maybe you do a workshop highlighting some of the things you have found that have helped your change process. Invite administrators to read an #edchat archive or, better yet, get them to sit and talk while you participate. Many have misconceptions about Twitter and blogs and social media in general. Help change their minds. Perhaps you don’t show the how, but you show the why.

Change starts at the top. It takes a strong school leadership to be the driving force behind change. But isn’t the saying you can lead a horse to water, but you…well you know the rest. The point is you can’t make anyone do anything. You can present them with opportunities, suggestions, ideas. But they have to want to do it. Help them understand why the change is needed and be a model of the change you desire.