Rethinking Grading with Agency and Equity

Summary

The National Education Association's webinar, "Rethinking Grading with Agency and Equity," explores grading's entrenched role in education and challenges educators to reconsider traditional practices for the benefit of students. Hosted by NEA's teacher quality department, the session involved experts like Crystal Taskalinen and Jeff Austin, who shared their journey towards more equitable and meaningful grading systems. They discussed issues like the psychological need for zero-based grading, the implications of grading on creativity and risk-taking, and the importance of feedback. Ultimately, the webinar emphasized connecting with fellow educators for shared advocacy in reforming grading practices and highlighted that change is both necessary and possible through collective effort.

Highlights

• Grading is deeply integrated into education, but many flaws exist, especially in harming students of diverse backgrounds. 🚨
• The webinar encourages teachers to rethink and question current grading practices for more fairness and inclusivity. 🤔
• Experts Jeff and Crystal discussed innovative methods like labor-based grading, which they implemented in their schools. 🎓
• Rethinking grading is a journey requiring buy-in from educators, and it's crucial to connect with allies for support. 🤝
• Existing systems should be challenged and redesigned to focus more on student growth and learning rather than penalization. 🌱

Key Takeaways

• Grading is a long-standing practice that often goes unquestioned, but it can harm students' learning, especially those of color. 🌟
• Progressive educators like Crystal and Jeff are experimenting with different grading methods, including labor-based grading and gamification. 🎮
• Feedback, rather than grades, should be at the center of education to genuinely support and motivate students. 📝
• Grading reform requires advocacy and collective effort, not just in individual classrooms but across entire systems. 💪
• This webinar highlighted potential new systems that prioritize student engagement and equity in education. 🌍

Overview

Grading is an ingrained practice in the educational system, often accepted without question. However, this webinar, hosted by the National Education Association, aims to shake things up by encouraging educators to rethink and question this norm. With a focus on agency and equity, it highlights how traditional grading can harm students, especially those of color, and stifle creativity. The session invites teachers to envision a more equitable future for grading in education.

The NEA session featured seasoned educators Crystal Taskalinen and Jeff Austin, who have embarked on the journey of reforming grading in their schools. Sharing personal stories and challenges, they underscored the importance of providing constructive feedback rather than just grades to motivate and support student learning. Crystal shared how gamification and frequent feedback can create a more engaging and effective educational environment, while Jeff emphasized labor-based grading to better reflect student effort.

Driving grading reform requires collective effort and communication among educators, schools, and communities. The webinar concluded by encouraging participants to use the power of networks and movements, such as the hashtag #ungrading, to unite those passionate about change. This movement towards equitable grading systems is a step towards overall improvements in educational practice, creating environments where all students can thrive.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Welcome The chapter titled 'Introduction and Welcome' serves as an introductory segment for a webinar on rethinking grading, organized by the NEA's teacher quality department. Anderkoffman, a manager in the department based in Washington DC, expresses excitement about the topic and provides a brief overview of what participants can expect, including information about certificates related to the webinar.
• 01:30 - 04:00: Acknowledging Traditional Lands and History This chapter covers the discussions led by Hannah Vandering, an elementary PE teacher from Oregon and NEA executive committee member, about the active role the union is taking in its commitments. It also sets the stage for further discussions related to credits and similar topics.
• 04:00 - 06:40: Webinar Purpose and NEA's Commitment The chapter begins with an expression of gratitude to the participants for attending the webinar during challenging times, specifically the pandemic. It highlights the importance of connectivity amongst students and between students and teachers. The meeting continues with a tradition upheld by the NEA, which is to acknowledge the original custodians of the lands across the United States, referring to America's first peoples. The speaker personally acknowledges residing on the land originally inhabited by the Calipulian tribes, consisting of 19 tribes. This acknowledgment is an embodiment of respect and honor towards America's first peoples and their elders, past, present, and emerging.
• 06:40 - 09:00: Speaker Introductions The chapter discusses the historical context of the Willamette Elk Creek and Calipoian Creek areas in western Oregon, focusing on the impact of settlers on the native peoples of the region. It highlights the racism and violence that indigenous populations faced as over 9,000 settlers arrived in Oregon by the end of the 1840s, bringing with them prejudiced attitudes.
• 09:00 - 13:00: Interactive Chat Exercise The chapter discusses the conflicts between settlers in the Oregon Territory and Native American communities, highlighting instances of violence perpetrated by the settlers. In 1849, residents of Lynn City carried out a nighttime arson attack on Native American villages, destroying their winter provisions. This act of property destruction exemplifies the broader damages inflicted upon Native American populations in the area.
• 13:00 - 16:00: Webinar Agenda In the mid-19th century, settler John Beason from Illinois traveled to Oregon, arriving in the Rogue River Valley in 1853. After witnessing the abuses suffered by native populations at the hands of white settlers, Beason decided to leave Oregon after three years, returning east to document and write a book about these atrocities. The shared content in this chapter is a segment of the many harms inflicted during this period.
• 16:00 - 19:00: Quotes on Grading Discussion The chapter titled 'Quotes on Grading Discussion' appears to revolve around discussions involving the history and culture of Oregon's native peoples. The speaker urges others to share and learn about the often-suppressed contributions and stories of these tribes in the broader narrative of America's history. Additionally, the speaker mentions the necessity of updating their own background information, which pertains to a higher education conference, and expresses enthusiasm for highlighting the priority work of NEA (presumably the National Education Association) and embracing new and exciting opportunities.
• 19:00 - 24:00: Jeff's Grading Practices Journey The chapter titled 'Jeff's Grading Practices Journey' focuses on the priorities needed to create a successful school environment. The key priorities include elevating educator voice, advocating for racial justice in education, supporting new and early career educators, and striving for professional excellence. These elements are essential in achieving the goal of establishing great public schools for all students. The chapter closes by encouraging educators to reach out with any questions about these priorities and to explore available resources further.
• 24:00 - 29:00: Crystal's Grading Practices Journey The webinar introduces a new website that is now live and searchable, providing a platform for educators to rethink and reimagine grading practices.
• 29:00 - 34:00: Advocacy for Grading Reform The chapter discusses the National Education Association's (NEA) efforts to support its members in promoting professional excellence across the country. A key focus of their current initiatives is on grading reform, a common topic of discussion among educators in staff rooms and buildings. The NEA encourages exploring new possibilities and learning from colleagues, sharing insights and strategies to improve grading practices collectively. However, the NEA clarifies that while they advocate for reform, they are not endorsing specific methods or changes but instead fostering an environment for dialogue and support among educators.
• 34:00 - 46:00: Closing Remarks and Q&A The closing remarks emphasized that the focus of the discussions was not on endorsing specific platforms or products. Instead, the goal was to highlight tools and platforms that have proven effective in online spaces for members across the country. There was a strong sentiment of collaboration and mutual support, where members could network and learn from one another. The webinars have been led by experienced educators and have been deemed very helpful for the participants, acknowledging that members themselves are experts in digital distance learning.

Rethinking Grading with Agency and Equity Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 on this computer yes it is one o'clock in hawaii yeah uh welcome everyone it's great to see you this evening we're really happy that you could join us for this uh nea teacher quality webinar on rethinking grading my name is anderkoffman i'm a manager in our teacher quality department here at headquarters in washington dc and we're really excited to delve into this topic and uh learn a little bit more we'll give you some more information about certificates and
• 00:30 - 01:00 credit and those kinds of things a bit later on but i am going to go ahead and pass it to our executive committee member hannah vandering hannah well good evening everyone and welcome to our um webinar this evening my name is hannah vandering i'm an elementary pe teacher from oregon and i proudly serve our members on the nea executive committee and super excited about the work that we're doing within our union where we've stepped up and stepped in to take care of our
• 01:00 - 01:30 students and each other during this pandemic so thank you for joining us tonight as with all of our meetings um with nea we begin our meetings by acknowledging that we all no matter where we are across this country meet on the traditional lands served by america's first peoples we honor america's first peoples and all elders past present and emerging here in oregon i reside on calipulian land the calipolians people were 19 tribes
• 01:30 - 02:00 and bands whose traditional homelands were in the willamette elk creek and calipoian creek watersheds of western oregon tonight i'd like to lift up the racism and violence that was inflicted on oregon's native peoples as settlers began to flood into the oregon country from points east they brought with them racist attitudes about the indigenous peoples of the region by the end of the 1840s more than 9 000 american and foreign national settlers
• 02:00 - 02:30 occupied the oregon territory some of the more violent members of the this white population periodically engaged in acts of violence in attempts to displace and destroy local native american communities in 1849 residents of lynn city launched a nighttime arson attack on native american villages and destroyed their winter provisions property crime was not the extent the damage inflicted upon native american populations in oregon
• 02:30 - 03:00 one contemporary settler john beason left illinois to come to oregon in 19 in 1853 he arrived in the rogue river valley in september and he remained in oregon only for about three years before leaving repelled by what he saw returning to the east to write a book about the abuses suffered by the native populations at the hands of white settlers what i have shared tonight is not inclusive of all of the harm caused
• 03:00 - 03:30 by oregon native peoples yeah but two organ native peoples we ask that you lift up and share what you've learned about the tribal history culture and contributions that have been suppressed and telling the story of america i know my background i need to update my background because it talks about our higher ed conference but i do love to lift up the priority work of nea and the exciting opportunities that we
• 03:30 - 04:00 have to bring all of those priorities together to make sure that we are doing everything we can to help prepare our students for success so our priorities my school my voice that's really lifting educator voice racial justice in education new and early career educators and professional excellence those four priorities are what pull us all together to create a great public school for every student so thank you for all that you do every day and if you have questions about our priorities please check out our brand
• 04:00 - 04:30 new website that is up and rolling and actually is searchable now tonight's webinar is a great opportunity to think rethink grading and what is what we want to do is reimagine what we could do how what does it look like when educators actually create what's what works for students there's more effective ways and tonight we're going to explore some of those new ways and get some ideas from two of our colleagues this webinar
• 04:30 - 05:00 is one of the ways that nea is trying to support members as we promote professional excellence across the country grading is something that's always a part of conversations in our staff rooms and throughout our buildings so we want to lean in tonight to different possibilities and learn from again our colleagues and see what we can share in the chat so that we're all um helping each other get better nea is not we're not promoting or
• 05:00 - 05:30 endorsing any particular platform or product instead we're really trying to lift up tools and platforms that have been working in online spaces for our our members across the country and we want to network and learn from each other so that we can ensure that we're supporting each other and as you know members are our experts in all digital distance learning these webinars are have really been helpful um they've been led by experienced ed
• 05:30 - 06:00 tech members and staff um so we we're very excited to have not only our members it'll present but our staff who've been working to support us in this work we are going to ask you at the end to please fill out an evaluation we want to make sure that we hear how we did and what we um what takeaways you have we're also interested in knowing if you have other topics that you would like us to um to promote through our webinars and with that i'm going to turn it over
• 06:00 - 06:30 to the stars of our show jeffrey and crystal miss j would you guys take it away absolutely thank you everyone for being here and as you probably already noticed this is a webinar format so chat is going to be our primary way to be interactive and we built that in a number of different times we have some fabulous people here to help in the chat if we don't get to your questions right away please don't hesitate to reach out to either jeff
• 06:30 - 07:00 or i can't do this work alone i absolutely believe that and so welcome thank you all for taking an hour out of your busy busy lives to listen to what i know jeff and i both believe is absolutely one necessary way that we need to rethink about education my name is crystal taskalinan and miss jade of the kids because it's a big long finnish last
• 07:00 - 07:30 name and i've been teaching for 20 years here in ann arbor public schools and i've had the joy of being at both alternative and comprehensive at the secondary level i love ed tech i don't always know why it works i just figure i'm not going to break google and so we you know wherever you pick up whatever nugget you take away from today another thing i learned when i was trying to become a runner is that forward is a pace and so we're going to throw a lot at you
• 07:30 - 08:00 tonight and this is an ongoing conversation that is personal in its implementation so wherever you enter and wherever you exit tonight is absolutely okay and we're here for you jeff uh thanks crystal uh i'm jeff austin i'm the english department chair instructional coach and writing center director at skyline high school in ann arbor i've worked in several districts before coming to ann arbor a decade ago uh so this is my 15th year
• 08:00 - 08:30 uh you can find me talking about this on rethinking grading and other topics in ncte pretty frequently um you know uh crystal has said a lot of really great things uh i just also want to acknowledge that um big change often starts with very small steps and so um like crystal said uh you know any nugget you can take away from tonight any small step that you can make in your advocacy toward more equitable fairer and just
• 08:30 - 09:00 grading practices i think is great so i'm a big fan of adrian marie brown i have her book all the time emergent strategy by me um she talks a lot about this uh i think we can get to more humanized learning environments um with these small steps that lead to sort of these these big changes so uh i super appreciate you being here and taking an hour out of your monday night um particularly with all of i'm gonna wave my hands uh all of this going on so thanks for being here
• 09:00 - 09:30 go ahead jeff all right uh well uh to get to know each other a little better this is a webinar so we're gonna use chat as uh we've said um we're gonna ask you to do uh a occlusion exercise we call it waterfall some people call it chat fall um but don't hit enter until we say go uh we want the full effect of this with all 177 people here so what we're going to ask you to do is type your name
• 09:30 - 10:00 the grades that you teach primarily and your three word pedagogy so uh i'll use crystal as an example and i know this is her three word pedagogy so i can i can use this uh with license uh so hers would be crystal jaskalinen grades uh 9 to 12 success breed success so don't hit enter until we say go we're going to give you uh like a quick 30 seconds to type yours in uh and then once we everybody has an
• 10:00 - 10:30 opportunity to type theirs in uh we will all hit enter at the same time and kind of scroll through so maybe another 20 seconds to enter your um through your name your grades that you teach and your three-word pedagogy and full transparent facilitation right chat is a great way to bring your visual or your
• 10:30 - 11:00 virtual students in it's safe and the waterfall means that they can they can wait and and feel confident that everybody is going to be participating at the same time on that note let's all hit enter if you haven't yet hey there you go that's so fun you gotta love it that's awesome i will say um dr goldie mohammed's fifth pillar of joy in her historically responsive literacy
• 11:00 - 11:30 framework i get a little bit of joy from doing this waterfall every single time so let's take a minute and and yeah scroll through see who's here small steps can lead to grand leaps thanks suzette that's uh straight out of adrian marie brown that's great stuff oh compassion creates rigor you are you that orientation is all about that like that's the first step in this
• 11:30 - 12:00 ungrading journey and for me it was absolutely right i needed to put the students first access plus success equals completion thanks elizabeth that's uh that's really good we'll be talking about some access tonight um and how rethinking grading can provide some access oh wendy said opportunity and failure yes we need to reframe how we talk about and how we assess failure absolutely learning over grades
• 12:00 - 12:30 thank you emily you've hit the nail on the head yep absolutely growth is learning right like let's take that during this pandemic this this concept of learning loss i admittedly right my orientation i work at a school that is all of the all of the numbers about who isn't successful in school but they're all geniuses so school hasn't been working for them
• 12:30 - 13:00 yet and so making school work for all students i saw all equals all absolutely uh and then we've got like everyone's an artist uh one of my favorite sayings is an english teacher everyone's a writer and building those positive identities around whatever it is we teach whether it's building positive math identities or positive writing identities and reading identities positive art identities that's exciting absolutely absolutely all right
• 13:00 - 13:30 so a little bit about tonight's agenda um we're going to get started with a a an incomplete history of this conversation because it's not just starting this isn't jeff and i having a conversation about oh we should do something else i mean we do that all the time but we we have inserted ourselves and he's taught me that this conversation has been
• 13:30 - 14:00 happening for decades and so i'm working to catch up and keep up and think about what that means for my ref or for my own practice jeff and i are both going to share different ways that we have reimagined grading in our practice and in our buildings they are drastically different and i say that to say hey there is an answer there are multiple ways to address grading i think the biggest
• 14:00 - 14:30 takeaway from tonight is that it let's just question it right let's question why we do it and let's examine how we do it and what the impacts are on students let's let's read the research around grades and zeros they're not motivators right so let's question it and then the big part is the the last piece the everyday advocacy which is how do i do this in my
• 14:30 - 15:00 own classroom in my own practice but then how do i spread it because it can't just be about us anything to add there jeff no that covers it oh talk about your image though yeah i can talk about that um so as crystal uh said here just a second ago really nicely you know we're going to ask you to rethink grading tonight and we know that greeting is one of the most intensely entrenched in personal processes in schools
• 15:00 - 15:30 um and you know rethinking everything that that entails um includes a lot of discomfort and includes a lot of dissonance uh but also some joy and excitement you know crystal was talking about goldie hammond's fifth pillar of joy i do think that there is joy in the collective liberation that's possible um but rethinking grading is not a straightforward process and even in the best of cases it is not uh you know there are fits and starts let's put it that way um so as crystal said there's no one
• 15:30 - 16:00 right way to rethink grading and there are tons of different entry points and directions that you can take once you enter into the conversation and everybody's journey to agency equity and liberation is going to look a little bit different um depending on your classroom your school and your your local context so um you know we're we're trying to free up the imagination a little tonight so there's no one straightforward path that we can i wish we could give you a checklist and you could walk out of here
• 16:00 - 16:30 with that uh unfortunately you know that's just not the case because things are idioms idiosyncratic they're different um you know one of my sayings is context matters and i think nowhere more than here maybe in some respects so uh that's the gist of the diagram because we as jeff said context matters and so we're we're coming to you as presenters today
• 16:30 - 17:00 but that by no means says we are the end-all be-all right this is just we had this opportunity and i'm so excited to spread these seeds of thought around just rethinking grading and we wanted to make sure ahead of this webinar that we let you know it's not a how-to um this is much more a webinar around around questioning our own pedagogy and
• 17:00 - 17:30 our own practice and and taking that first leap into maybe doing things differently so we've done this once before and it we know it causes feelings right it's you're going to be saying but what if and you're going to be saying no i can't um and i call those edges and those edges are my favorite place because i feel like whenever i push
• 17:30 - 18:00 myself over an edge then i'm like oh i'm freed up to imagine the ifs rather than the what ifs uh jeff what would you add to that yeah i think you've uh you've hit the nail on the head here crystal i just also want to add that you know um we're going to talk a lot about advocacy at the end of this and allies are an important part of advocacy um please see crystal and i as your your champions um people that are
• 18:00 - 18:30 willing to go on this journey with you um please feel free to connect with us uh following this um and you know there are 187 people here that's a really great start at a pln um that can propel this forward um sustainable advocacy requires allies um and so we've got a great start here tonight um you know uh it it may be a little uncomfortable that's to be expected uh when we're
• 18:30 - 19:00 looking at something again that's so intensely uh ingrained and so intensely personal um in education so uh again thanks for being here stick with it trust the process uh and uh i think we'll have a really great conversation tonight absolutely and and to go back to the title that piece about equity uh grading is absolutely an insidious practice and its negative impacts impact exactly the populations that we
• 19:00 - 19:30 are you know we we as a nation have struggled to educate and really what we need to do is perhaps examine our own traditional ways of doing things so equity is at the center of this journey um and so we want to just be transparent about about those big shifts because you will feel them um as we enter we thought it important to
• 19:30 - 20:00 start with the idea that this is an ongoing conversation and that quote at the stat at the top by schneider and hunt says grading remains a central feature of nearly every student's and teachers and parents school experience as such it can be easy to perceive them both as fixed and inevitable without origin or evolution an effect of this is that despite their limitations
• 20:00 - 20:30 grades are often accepted quite uncritically by all parties involved the fact that you are here tonight and you voluntarily signed up to join a webinar on a monday evening called rethinking grading proves that you're already willing to accept that as a concept and this crazy journey that we've outlined here are just some entry points to the
• 20:30 - 21:00 conversation that has been going on for decades so we began over here with the case against grades alfie cohen uh if you're not familiar check him out all of these are linked in the slides that you have for you but we go all the way up to this new text newer text called ungrading edited by susan bloom and um wherever you are on your journey one of these might be the best entry
• 21:00 - 21:30 point for you and we're here to kind of help you figure out where your entry point might be jeff yeah i just to echo that you know uh we've been talking a lot about goldie mohammed tonight goldie mohammed's getting some love in the chat and she deserves it all um she's one of the my favorite stories from her though is she tells the story about when she was studying in south africa and somebody would enter the conversation or they would they would come into the classroom and the teacher would stop and say we're
• 21:30 - 22:00 now more complete and i think you know the fact that like crystal said you're here at this webinar uh in the middle of a pandemic on a monday night um says a lot and we're more complete now that we're all here adrian murray brown also says there's a conversation that only the people in this room can have so find it uh we hope to do that tonight too like crystal said one more thing i want to acknowledge is that this is an ongoing conversation it's been ongoing for decades
• 22:00 - 22:30 and writing about what we consider to be progressive education that writing has probably been going on for a century or more um so we're all entering at different points um and that's okay uh one of the metaphors that i think is really helpful here is um to imagine that you're going to a party you're about an hour late um conversations have been happening without you there um and you need to figure out where you fit in uh eventually right you'll get the lay of the land you'll put your oar in the water you'll
• 22:30 - 23:00 find out where it's okay to uh to put your voice um so you'll find that entry point um you could be coming at this in a number of ways you could be just starting your journey to rethinking grading you could be a veteran of the uh rethinking grading movement and progressive education um we i think there's something here for everybody tonight including gaining a pln um some work around advocacy uh the
• 23:00 - 23:30 other thing i want to say here is as you go through this it's not like you have to agree with everything skepticism is okay uh it's healthy asking questions is good um but we're gonna ask that you keep an open mind even as you experience a little discomfort as we said earlier we're not gonna be able to provide a how-to each context is different but um hopefully we can uh give you some tools to use wherever you are and you can figure out how to best use them in your context
• 23:30 - 24:00 um so we're glad that you're here we are now more complete as a result so we're going to bring you in once again via the chat and we have six quotes for you they're numbered i'm just going to read each one aloud obviously they all contextualize grading in some way and after the sixth is read choose the one or two that is standing out to you the most if so inclined you can also
• 24:00 - 24:30 explain why that quote stood out to you obviously we can only use the chat in this webinar format but gathering our collective beliefs and thinking around these concepts is essential so here we go number one from brookhart an observation that many classroom teachers have made about their students if a paper is returned with both a grade and a comment many students will pay attention to the grade and ignore
• 24:30 - 25:00 the comment research bears that out too number two asawanoy says grading is almost always employed in order to control students and sometimes their teachers force students to be accountable and sometimes their teachers and measure or rank students and sometimes their teachers either against each other or against a single standard each of these purposes for grading in
• 25:00 - 25:30 classrooms is detrimental to learning generally and more harmful to many students of color and ratio linguistically diverse students number three from joe feldman a humbling but reluctantly honest reason many of us continue to use the zero on a hundred point scale may be because the zero satisfies a psychological need while reeves sardonically recognizes teachers need to punish
• 25:30 - 26:00 these little miscreants who fail to complete our assignments this need among us to feel satisfaction to hold students accountable for not following our directions is real and powerful number four our results suggest that the information routinely given in schools that is grades may encourage an emphasis on quantitative aspects of learning depress creativity foster fear of failure
• 26:00 - 26:30 back to that original three-word pedagogy and undermine interest that's number four number five whoops out of order sorry number five a b in english says nothing about what a student can do what she understands where she needs help moreover the basis for that grade is as subjective as the result is uninformative even the score on a math test is largely
• 26:30 - 27:00 a reflection of how the test was written what skills the teacher decided to assess what kinds of questions happen to be left out and how many points each section was worth and finally from my twitter favorite jessie stomall ungrading is not as simple as just removing grades the word ungrading and active present participle suggests that we need to do intentional critical work to dismantle traditional and standardized approaches to
• 27:00 - 27:30 assessment there's a lot to read certainly but no neat and tidy point of entry rather each teacher and each student must find their own way into the work so we're asking now if you would add to the chat the number that resonates with you most if so inclined please also tell us why
• 27:30 - 28:00 just a reminder you can change your chat to panelists and attendees so we can all see each other [Music] we've got a breadth of responses here jeff yeah i'm trying to look for patterns and uh you know we something's speaking to everybody here absolutely oh you
• 28:00 - 28:30 teachers i made the mistake for too many years of giving feedback after a student had turned something in for a grade and then the feedback just like number one says doesn't get utilized right but that's that's on me that's not on the kids that was a big shift for me and it was so important to make i'm also really liking the emphasis here on feedback that i'm seeing right i think rethinking grading
• 28:30 - 29:00 requires us to rethink our relationship to feedback um and and what extent to what extent are we feedback literate to what extent are students feedback literate and to what extent are our schools feedback rich places um so there's a lot of there's a lot of rethinking about feedback that does need to happen along with rethinking writing victoria brought up rubrics in the chat and said it's a separate issue it's not a separate issue this is uh uh jessie stomal on a salad no i had that had this fabulous webinar
• 29:00 - 29:30 and one of them i can't i don't remember which one just that grading is insidious like it just it's it's everywhere so once you start to unpack this it's going to impact your lesson planning it's going to impact your course organization it's going to impact how you deliver feedback it's going to impact how you communicate with families about progress um so it's it's all wrapped up in there together
• 29:30 - 30:00 absolutely uh asao talks about this in one of his books um that we'll touch on in a moment but you know when he started to rethink grading he goes oh i had to rethink everything including my own judgment um and my own sense of what was you know quote unquote good um so this is why it gets to that personal level sometimes that we find is that um you know it does cause
• 30:00 - 30:30 uh rethinking of large-scale parts of our practice absolutely um aaron and suzette both mentioned right like great once we get down to it they maybe are doing the opposite of what we want right they're they're killing that creativity they're making students fear risk-taking and and that's what we want but yet our grades punish mistakes so it's it's counter-intuitive once we start to
• 30:30 - 31:00 dismantle it yeah and uh nicolina in the chat also said uh that uh their school recently had a conversation about not using zeros that reveal a lot we'll talk about that a little later about um what kind of things get revealed when you have these conversations and then uh kind of how to approach that when you you do have these conversations with other people because eventually as crystal said earlier and as elfie cohen says in the introduction to the un-grading book we can take the low-hanging fruit of our
• 31:00 - 31:30 classroom but then we need to grab the ladder and start grabbing the higher fruit uh which is more systemic change oh my goodness yes and there's so much great conversation going on in the chat we could just stay there oh but let's take a look at the way jeff and i have implemented it jeff like we said before again these are just two entry points these are not the the these are some you know some entry points you can find a hundred
• 31:30 - 32:00 different entry points so we just want to preface that but um we'll talk about our own journeys a little bit so i want you to think back if you're as old as i am uh to when facebook first started okay and one of the choices that you could have about being in a relationship was it's complicated um and i would think that accurately describes my historical relationship with grading it's complicated um and maybe you feel the same way so in a district that i previously
• 32:00 - 32:30 worked in grades were frequently used as a means of control and maybe you've had this experience too long parts of department meetings were spent talking about who was the hardest grader in the in the in the building um i tried to fit into this culture at least for a little while because i wanted to fit into my new department and i also thought that grades were a required part of learning um that was something that had kind of put me out there um but i want to say that my relationships with students suffered and the conversations in my classroom uh
• 32:30 - 33:00 were pretty indicative of that so i would get questions like what's the difference between a 92 and a 93 or why should i get a zero for late work or what's the difference between size 11 and size 12 font for my grade uh these are good questions they're fair questions but they were ones that i really at that point in my career didn't have the capacity to answer at least in any way that's not embarrassing um at least at least as i'm looking back so i relied on some of the you know school
• 33:00 - 33:30 compliance complex talking points uh because i said so i'm the expert check out the degrees on the wall uh you get what you earn and you get what you deserve so with these questions my grading practices were less about giving kids feedback honoring their literacies and funds of knowledge or collective liberation that i had written about in college a lot and that i have tried to practice in my student teaching i relied on my own biased notions about what kids deserved
• 33:30 - 34:00 um something that cornelius minor talks about in his anti-racist grading piece that's linked on the path slide um but cornelius miner also in that same piece reminds us that pernicious grading practices often start with pernicious uh pedagogies and i i just want to say that that i find from my own experience that to be true i drifted away from things that i knew to be like helpful and good uh conferencing um and i started as an example i started
• 34:00 - 34:30 grading at my kitchen table and i was leaving margin comments into the void i actually watch kids you may have had this experience too just throw the paper into the recycle bin on their way out they looked at the grade it was done um so a couple of things for me this was not sustainable and was making me unhappy at work uh the whole reason i wanted to do this job was because i wanted to work for kids but i felt like i was working against them you can imagine what my classroom looked like kids were pretty disengaged they took the path of least resistance
• 34:30 - 35:00 and resentment simmered just at or below the surface um there's all this research as crystal was pointing out um that you know where you start with grades can impact you for the long haul um so long story short for me being a gatekeeper rather than a door opener was really an untenable situation jesse stonemall says we need to give students reasons less banal than grades to do the work of learning and goldie mohammed says we need to
• 35:00 - 35:30 start our student stories with genius i was not doing either one um so all of this was formative i started to question my own judgment and in the process i started to question large parts of why i was judging the way i was and what power dynamics were at work in that judgment so as it turns out there's a lot to unpack there race gender sexual orientation class status uh linguistic uh linguistic biases uh and probably a lot more than we have time for in this webinar um
• 35:30 - 36:00 this is a journey that i'm still on obviously in the identities that i inhabit and this isn't a journey i'll be on for the rest of my life so i've been on my journey for a better part of a decade and with some zero-based thinking i started to consider what i would build if the system that the current system didn't exist like what would i build in its place um what small steps could i take to getting there and i want to say that the steps
• 36:00 - 36:30 metaphor is really intentional um mia zamora and mahabali write a lot about what things look like at the intersections of care and equity and they ask us to think about what that intersection looks like feels like and sounds like at the level of course design in course practices how we respond to certain situations and in the personal and private um now at this point in my career i'm in a different district and role and i'm an advocate for grading reform and as you can see on the screen labor-based screening practices and i
• 36:30 - 37:00 was inspired by the work of a solenoid at the beginning of a term i co-create a contract with my students about how much labor constitutes an a b c or d as a final grade remains a requirement and a true mandate at my school but i control the inputs or maybe more specifically my students and i control the inputs so when people first hear about labor-based grading i get a lot of criticism that i've set up a system with a lot of loopholes that are right for
• 37:00 - 37:30 exploitation but i'm going to go back to my three-word pedagogy trust your students if they show up to your class especially during a global pandemic they want to learn and they want to do the work i'm not going to sit here and tell you that nobody has ever exploited this system um always exploited any system that exists but i feel like the system that i have implemented here with labor-based grading overall has allowed me to know more about my
• 37:30 - 38:00 students understand their motivations and tap more deeply into their funds of knowledge because we're having different conversations that are more honest and genuine so i conference with every student five times a term they conference with each other as necessary and i give them written feedback in between conferences so our community is feedback rich and connected we talk a lot in in my classes about family um this was not happening before this is not happening in the previous district that i was in so nct in 2019 uh i did a presentation about
• 38:00 - 38:30 this and i said you know i used a game show metaphor i wanted my classroom to feel like more like the price is right than other game shows because on the price is right one you're not rooting for people to lose unless you're watching you know with some malice um but two um there's a lot of different ways to find success and there's a lot of different ways to win even if you win the showcase showdown you might want a car you might want some money it's good times um so the labor-based grading contract
• 38:30 - 39:00 that we co-created with students makes failure at the course level impossible so that productive failure in the course can occur and it frequently does with what i ask students to do um it's not always successful they do advocacy projects that they design and implement but you know i talked about the questions that my students were asking before um you know a decade or more ago um but here are some real student comments that came out of
• 39:00 - 39:30 conferences this year i want to explore prioritizing care in my advocacy work the mistakes from last semester actually helped me to rethink my project this semester there's no such thing as instant advocacy so i need to do some more research and look for some other inspiration those are different um but i want to say that my relationship with grading remains complicated because as with any kind of advocacy there remains significant resistance uh i've been at my school for
• 39:30 - 40:00 a deca decade um as my student said there's no such thing as instant advocacy uh i want to wrap up here and turn over to crystal by saying these conversations often run into buzz saws of anxiety and i get that um changing grades requires these massive changes that we've been talking about but as we think about equity and agency which is the title of the webinar i would argue that there's probably no more meaningful change that we can start that's within our control than rethinking writing
• 40:00 - 40:30 so changing my practices with labor-based grading has made me less of a gatekeeper and more students can come through the front door of my classroom as their fullest selves and they can find success i want to also mention that students and parents have actually responded very positively to these changes almost with a sense of relief um this is not perfect i am not perfect um but and i won't ever be but it's better um and i feel like the arc has bent toward fairness and justice
• 40:30 - 41:00 in ways that are uh as i said more beneficial for access and equity and agency and all the things that this webinar is about so if you don't like what i have to say i'm going to turn over to crystal she's going to give you a totally different viewpoint and totally different so jeff could i just point you to man on the q a too while i'm chatting because some brilliant questions came in in there um as
• 41:00 - 41:30 so my journey is parallel but quite different i teach at a small alternative high school in ann arbor and the one thing all of my students share is that they have been harmed by the traditional system and they haven't found success in the traditional systems so it goes back to my three word pedagogy actually right success breeds success so
• 41:30 - 42:00 how can i provide my students with multiple varied entry points and opportunities for success again and again and again day after day after day because i need to be there for them and ready to accept them whenever they are ready to come through the door and and and and engage right and so trauma around schooling shows
• 42:00 - 42:30 up in a lot of different ways but most of my students were failing at their traditional schools and so i began this ungrading journey actually at skyline where jeff is we we worked together at one point um we did this great idea around mastery based grading and standard space grading can be one step along the path that
• 42:30 - 43:00 is not what jeff nor i have implemented but it is something to look into um that is more connected to content what i decided to do was gamify my grading i i've always had the belief that grades are rather arbitrary anyway and at the same time though they have kind of a a social power of understanding right parents know it students know it and so how do i gamify
• 43:00 - 43:30 my grading i created a point system and you it's it's i call it progress points and students either earn all the points or they pick up when they come in to earn all the points so it's it's playing the grading game but i'm not using the points in any way towards evaluation and so
• 43:30 - 44:00 students have a point total goal if they want to finish with a letter grade they i set a minimum total points that they have to hit and that means credit this goes to one of the questions that i got in the chat grades tied to credit oh my goodness we harm children because they didn't show up one day and we call it a zero and then they fail and getting them off track like that's a whole other rabbit hole but i'm sorry i didn't write the name of whoever asked that
• 44:00 - 44:30 high school especially you hold the future of your children in your hands and those zero those matter to that and they don't motivate so what progress points does instead is i don't use the zero they've either earned the points or it's blank and it takes that fight out of it if something comes in incomplete or incorrect i give them feedback on how to correct it and then they can turn it in for all of the
• 44:30 - 45:00 points and so instead of me being the gatekeeper actually this still has a little bit of the gatekeepiness um i'm not all the way ready to go fully on grading but it places the students at the center of their learning and it gave them daily tangible a clear target that they need to hit it doesn't move it doesn't depend on how i'm feeling it
• 45:00 - 45:30 doesn't depend on on their interactions with me it just depends on were you able to accomplish this i and i value everything so kids get points for showing up kids get points for engaging in class kids get points for choice reading and talking to me about it kids get points for everything and so there's just continuous opportunities to earn points and i've been able to
• 45:30 - 46:00 have about half of my staff so my coaches in the room i've been able to have about half of my staff adopt progress points in this virtual world and i will tell you a few things it takes off the table at the end of the semester i don't have the i just don't have the stress about what do kids need to do to complete to get the credit it's all right there um how many it's not the arbitrary push-pull of give you a d-minus or no
• 46:00 - 46:30 everything is laid out ahead of time the target never moves and i'm able to work individually with kids um to help them meet that target and i see the question all the time especially in this virtual world right about the students that aren't engaging aren't coming to class aren't doing anything um my school has a really great process where we have and not every school has this but if any
• 46:30 - 47:00 way you can build it in um we have an adult for every 12 kids that reaches out to their 12 every single day so we are keeping close tabs on our students even if they're not coming to class and all i would say is instead of feeling that personally i hope it's coming from a place of i'm worried about that child in there and their well-being and and meeting the
• 47:00 - 47:30 those needs first because especially during this pandemic if i've learned anything my classroom is not the center of anyone's universe not even my own um so progress points is another way to rethink grading and like i said i i tied gamification to this concept of the game that we have to play and the research uh the anecdotal research that i have so far is super powerful
• 47:30 - 48:00 anything in q a that we need to address out loud jeff uh i think you've addressed the one that i saw there's a lot going on in q a uh i i i i maybe not as fast as you um yeah uh you know like if student doesn't show up and do the work my uh district wants them to give a failing grade um so can you understand or explain more about what happens if a kid doesn't show up or only shows up once or twice a week so
• 48:00 - 48:30 one thing that we proactively did at my alternative high school and i actually think it's a great model for this virtual world is we designed what we call asynchronous pathways so we made um doable accessible short units that meant a g for credit on a student's transcript so that if a student is unable to attend
• 48:30 - 49:00 synchronously or virtually or like it's just a step towards engagement because it was nothing before will this get students to engage and i will tell you based on my alternative school experience we have students earning credit that we're otherwise not engaging with school we don't want them to stop there it's not the end we want to engage them back in school more fully in class more fully but especially at the high school level
• 49:00 - 49:30 that target of credit is a is a huge carrot and if we push students off of the credit uh mark they they're the likelihood of them to drop out and not get their high school diploma and just from one failing grade is is huge so getting creative and thinking imaginatively about or rethinking what does credit mean this was a conversation my coaches in the room i had a lot with my staff
• 49:30 - 50:00 about what is a credit in your class you've given d minuses your entire career but what does that mean what would it mean for a student to earn credit and even more importantly what if a kid walked into your class on day one and knew everything and had the skills to earn that credit why should they get the credit like these are just fun questions to think about jeff
• 50:00 - 50:30 yeah that's uh i mean that's a great question crystal uh you've really i think you really hit the nail on my head so uh let's talk a little bit about advocacy here um i think there are two big mistakes that we make when we are uh rethinking grading one we either try to eat the elephant whole or two we never address the elephant in the room um so advocacy to reform
• 50:30 - 51:00 an entrenched system like grading is gonna take time consistent effort and as i've said probably a hundred times in this presentation allies um so kathy fleischer and tara garcia uh have given us some tools to use to be sure that our advocacy our everyday advocacy is effective i wanted to highlight the everyday component because one again we need to be sure advocacy is consistent but two you don't need superpowers or a fancy title to be an advocate
• 51:00 - 51:30 right we're all advocates now welcome uh in the beginning of ungrading which we showed you earlier alfie cone says and i mentioned this before that we can start with our classrooms but eventually we have to be talking to others and doing the work to change systems that we inhabit with our students and their families um so again we have to think about collective liberation so fleischer and garcia ask us to start eating the elephant bit by bit by asking us to identify a concern in
• 51:30 - 52:00 this case the harm that comes from traditional grading to narrow that concern to something that can specifically be addressed like removing late work penalties for instance and then using some of our values and communities values including their alignments and misalignments to help frame the issue for specific audiences by anticipating some of the common arguments or rebuttals that might come up so for me this might you know look like asking how late work penalties
• 52:00 - 52:30 were aligned with our vision and philosophy at skyline as a mastery school um that seems like a values misalignment um so i think that uh you know that is uh it's really critical to kind of understand your values and your community's values these steps i think sound really simple but uh again as we go back to the facebook status it's complicated um we're not going to be able to do this work alone so finding your pln is going to be critical whether that's local or
• 52:30 - 53:00 whether that's global hello um and we can also expect pushback and also our own dissonance um that happens so if our work is truly about agency and equity we can't stop when we inevitably hit dissonance and push back um you're here with a couple hundred people tonight uh that's like i said earlier that's a great start on a pln um and what we can i think a pln can help you do right is um process the pushback
• 53:00 - 53:30 debrief the dissonance and celebrate the winds large and all along the way we're not going to celebrate the small winds you know that path becomes really perilous um and also i just want to say this is the amazing thing about the nea and your local ea um you've got built-in plns people that care about schools and kids and families that's amazing um when we find our pln and we're we're allies together
• 53:30 - 54:00 um we can make this work of disruption and collective liberation a lot more sustainable um this provides us the the the motivation to eat the elephant bit by bit it's a long process um but uh perhaps the hardest part about this is thinking about uh our work in a zero-based way again that means imagining what we would build if our current system didn't exist and working toward that meaningfully which requires us to free our imaginations means interrogating our own pernicious pedagogies
• 54:00 - 54:30 and it means uh thinking about our system complicity and advocating for change even when it's difficult and maybe most importantly not giving away our power as teachers don't do that um we might think our voices don't matter or that mandates our mandates um and that we can't make meaningful change but we can we can do that um we can't this work is urgent as we mentioned earl at the beginning and so we can't not address the elephants in the room we
• 54:30 - 55:00 we really do have to go upon eating it bit by bit um and so that might mean starting starting small but advocacy is the critical work here uh and being an everyday advocate is really important crystal absolutely and i'm aware of our time so just verbally i will address some of the questions that are coming up um email me about progress points you can have my entire spreadsheet of how i explained it to staff and we
• 55:00 - 55:30 can talk about it mastery based grading or standards-based grading you're really aligning your content and evaluating student progress along those lines there are pros and cons to doing that but neither jeff's model nor my model directly tied a content in the way that mastery or standards-based grading does um and melanie like i hear you
• 55:30 - 56:00 that your kids are my kids like if how do we engage them if they're not engaging and that is the biggest challenge and so creating the zero doesn't do it i'll tell you that and so creating opportunities to get kids engaged or re-engaged in this world is absolutely vital so there are 10 million questions that haven't been answered but for the sake of time i'm going to turn it back over
• 56:00 - 56:30 thanks crystal uh yeah i think you uh hit a few attention points with lots of great questions and everyone know that this is just the beginning i'm gonna pass it back to hannah to give us some concluding remarks fantastic well thank you again crystal and jeff it was uh absolutely amazing presentation your expertise is greatly appreciated and i want to thank all of our all of our participants i don't think i've ever seen a chat that was so active and
• 56:30 - 57:00 insightful so thank you for engaging and thank you to the presenters for creating that space where we really could um engage now at the beginning we did a cascade um and so we generally if we were together jeff and crystal we'd stand up and applaud and say thank you but we can't do that so we're gonna give you this cascade as we leave this evening and what i'd like if all of you would please all of our participants if you would share your name and a three word takeaway
• 57:00 - 57:30 from this evening and don't hit go yet don't hit send wait wait wait for it we're going to be about 30 seconds while you type that in i want to remind you please complete your evaluation please give us feedback and help us so that we can grow this program and i want to thank the staff team for all their work to make this happen i want to thank all of you for what you do not not only what you've done tonight to join us but what you do every day to support our students our
• 57:30 - 58:00 members in public education so with that we're going to cascade away and read some of the things in the takeaway so go let's see what you have to share let's see oh my goodness it's going so fast zero doesn't do it uh lots of potential uh let's see here still lost about what you're going so fast thank you for putting in i hope you're enjoying this crystal and you're getting a smile
• 58:00 - 58:30 is that and we can save the chat for you empowering teachers and students i love it no zeros needed thank you too important to have only one conversation indeed thank you for putting that we this is a step not a finish point um long way to go thank you gretchen uh engaged teaching and learning i love it once again thank you crystal and jeff for all of your expertise that you've
• 58:30 - 59:00 shared this evening and thank you to all of our participants and and back to you um so uh hannah mentioned the um exit tickets um if my uh friends could put the exit ticket link in the chat um it is not up there right this second i don't know where it is but jen or ellen in the background i know we'll find it i want to talk about a certificate of participation because this is something that always comes up um we uh have sort of changed how we're
• 59:00 - 59:30 doing it just so that you're aware uh so that the a certificate can automatically be generated through our learning management system so when this is posted and you need to give us a couple of days because it takes us a couple of days to get everything in the right places when it will have directions on the site of how to uh access the recording and you can find everything at nea.org
• 59:30 - 60:00 front slash webinars when when the time comes but it will take you to our learning management system and this has been confusing for people you actually have to enroll in the webinar course and you're not enrolling in a course but it's how we're taught you're enrolling in that you've taken this webinar and then that will allow you to uh go ahead and print your certificate you do not have to listen to yeah this is a little secret you don't have to listen to the whole thing again to get the certificate don't tell anyone else that
• 60:00 - 60:30 but you don't so uh just know that it it is a little bit different than it was and it has been a bit confusing for people that they are enrolling in a course when you're not enrolling in a course you're rolling in the webinar course which is what will be there so i just wanted to provide that little bit of uh of uh clarification again that feedback form is super duper important so that we can decide what subjects will be moving forward and again want to thank everyone for joining us
• 60:30 - 61:00 and being a part of this very lively discussion our panelists our panelists our presenters will uh stay on for a little while but i am going to have to cut it off at a certain point because i have a feeling this conversation could go on a really long time so um we'll we'll we'll answer as many questions as we can get through and uh we'll see how we do so thank you everyone this next part is absolutely not required so have a great evening and uh turn it
• 61:00 - 61:30 back to crystal and jeff to answer questions or whatever else uh i'll just say you know please do feel free to uh reach out to either of us um you know that was not it's not an empty webinar thing um you know you can uh we definitely want to be allies and supportive of anybody who's going through this process um to be on the journey you got to leave
• 61:30 - 62:00 the dock and we you know um that's how it's got to go so that can be a little bit intimidating and um you know we're here for you uh and you know on i will say if you're connected on twitter to um various groups there's a lot of really great um resources on twitter hashtag ungrading will connect you to a lot of people doing the work of ungrading in various ways um that are really interesting and that you
• 62:00 - 62:30 can learn a lot from i learn a lot from people even though i may not use their system they give me things to think about or things to chew on or new insight so that hashtag is really important absolutely i saw a lot of people in the in the final waterfall thing like i found my people uh hashtag on grading is more of your people so like we are out there these conversations are happening and uh you can find a lot of us on twitter i'm not
• 62:30 - 63:00 hugely active on twitter but it has been professionally like soul filling um specifically this group so well worth checking out and if we didn't get to your question please email tweet whatever you like um jeff and i are here to continue the conversation yeah absolutely um it it's interesting um you know it to crystal's point it can often feel like
• 63:00 - 63:30 you're alone particularly if you are the first uh i'll quote a sow here if you're the first person across the the under the rethinking reading rubicon in your school or district uh it can feel a little lonely i can feel a lot lonely actually and you can feel a lot of pushback um but again you know finding finding your people either through ungrading or your you know your local uh group that might be involved uh
• 63:30 - 64:00 i think that can help a lot uh it can affirm the things that you need affirmed and it can help you process the pushback i mean i think we've all been through those of us who've been in the ungrading journey for a long time have seen our share and so we can all process that with you okay anything you want we should address crystal you think uh no i was
• 64:00 - 64:30 i i thank you please don't hesitate to reach out like yes make significant changes now is the time yeah i mean not now really is the time uh to make significant changes i think you you know for the pandemic has revealed a lot um there's there's been a magnifying glass on a lot of the inequities and access issues that students face um grading is certainly one of them we've watched colleges and universities go past fail um our district has implemented a
• 64:30 - 65:00 modified grading system quite frankly that i i'll advocate and like i'd like to see them continue um that that's fail so and yeah jason i see your question coming up again please don't hesitate to reach out to jeff and i um jeff specifically is getting a little more resistance he's in a bigger more traditional school and so navigating that advocacy and that work when you're feeling really so low
• 65:00 - 65:30 you not alone you can repost the slide links uh i'm uh yeah i i'm certainly facing resistance from
• 65:30 - 66:00 that um cornelius meyer talks about well you know students have to get what they deserve it's an interesting standpoint i i would definitely read that article um because i think it i think it reveals a lot it says a lot and by the way i would all you in many ways those are probably thoughts that at one point we've all had uh because of the systems that we've been um
• 66:00 - 66:30 inculcated in and that we've we've grown up and so yeah uh if you uh if you need help navigating that uh send me an email or a dm or whatever and uh we'll uh i i'm willing to help process that with you all right are we good uh i mean this is you know i think when you start as you said when you start talking about
• 66:30 - 67:00 we could be here for hours but uh you know this is only one part of the journey one step in the process hopefully absolutely okay do we have a score update oh my gosh we forgot about it what are you doing with the score updates kristen i didn't i didn't don't nobody tell jeff