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111: Building the Modern Progressive Education Movement w/ David Buck
20 Plays3 years ago
On today’s podcast we are joined by David Buck. David is an English professor at Howard Community College in Maryland who is actively involved in the ungrading movement, as well as focusing on open access resources, open pedagogy, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. To foster and grow the practice of ungrading, David is actively involved in utilizing social and other online media for discussion, including but not limited to his “Let’s Talk Ungrading” Twitter Spaces, which is also an edited podcast, the Ungrading Twitter Community, the Ungrading Book Club, the Ungrading Discord Community, and “Crowdsourcing Ungrading” an open-access book on Pressbooks.
We talk about:
- The desire and need for more spaces to gather and reflect on progressive education.
- What it means to build these spaces in "new media", such as Discord or Twitter Spaces.
- How we can get more young people involved in joining, curating, and creating these spaces (such as on Twitch).
- How we can inspire more educators to lead and grow these spaces, co-created with students.
GUESTS
David Buck, English professor at Howard Community College and mass-curator and co-leader of various ungrading spaces
RESOURCES
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to episode 111 of our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
00:00:06
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
00:00:10
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Joelle Ostrich, Jordan Bacca, and Timothy Fox.
00:00:18
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:00:20
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
David Buck and the Ungrading Movement
00:00:38
Speaker
On today's podcast, we are joined by David Buck.
00:00:41
Speaker
David is an English professor at Howard Community College in Maryland, who is actively involved in the ungrading movement, as well as focusing on open access resources, open pedagogy, and the UN sustainable development goals.
00:00:53
Speaker
To foster and grow the practice of ungrading,
00:00:55
Speaker
David is actively involved in utilizing social and other online media for discussion, including but not limited to his Let's Talk Ungrading Twitter Spaces, which is also an edited podcast, the Ungrading Twitter Community, the Ungrading Book Club, the Ungrading Discord Community, and crowdsourcing ungrading an open access book on Pressbooks.
00:01:15
Speaker
So thank you so much for coming on, David.
00:01:17
Speaker
This is very exciting.
00:01:19
Speaker
Thanks, Chris.
00:01:19
Speaker
Happy to be here.
00:01:20
Speaker
So we invited you here to talk about growing the movement because we know that you're an avid believer in the principles of ungrading.
00:01:27
Speaker
And I think there's so many different spaces, many of which that are provided by you, to learn about how to do that.
00:01:33
Speaker
And we'll link in the show notes places that you can go learning about ungrading as a practice.
00:01:38
Speaker
But today, we'd really like to focus on expanding the practice of ungrading and progressive education at a more meta community level, getting more people involved.
00:01:49
Speaker
I just started listing many of the spaces that you're hosting or co-hosting or involved in.
00:01:54
Speaker
Before we dive into those specifics, I'm just curious to start off with what drives you to do this, because that's a lot of unpaid labor, a lot of just time.
00:02:04
Speaker
Why?
00:02:05
Speaker
Why are you doing all this?
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question.
00:02:08
Speaker
Part of the idea for me is that my involvement, especially on Twitter in these digital spaces, is the, it's basically one intrinsic goal, which is joy.
00:02:21
Speaker
I get joy from connecting with others.
00:02:24
Speaker
I get joy from sharing from others, learning from others.
00:02:28
Speaker
And I think I'm the perfect guy to do this, Chris, because I'm no expert in anything.
00:02:34
Speaker
I'm just the guy.
00:02:35
Speaker
And so I don't write books.
00:02:37
Speaker
I don't have anything published.
00:02:39
Speaker
I'm just a practitioner that's trying to get better at his craft.
00:02:43
Speaker
And so I think that helps me a little bit in the sense that I am no threat to anyone in the educational space.
Growth of the Ungrading Community
00:02:51
Speaker
And so that to me helps me kind of grow that connectivism that is happening around ungrading.
00:03:00
Speaker
And I think there's a, when you look back at everything that's been happening, especially with ungrading and what you just listed, they all kind of seem to fall in place.
00:03:10
Speaker
extemporaneously, like there were extrinsic forces, intrinsic forces, but it was like the perfect storm to get this growing online community around ungrading and progressive education, unschooling, all this good stuff that we're all involved in.
00:03:27
Speaker
So I'm not going to take credit for any of that other than I think sometimes I was at the right place at the right time
00:03:36
Speaker
to bring the voices kind of just together and curate.
00:03:40
Speaker
I think curating the voices is an important thing.
00:03:44
Speaker
But what I've learned from, and your question is why, I've always been interested in social learning.
00:03:53
Speaker
Learning as a social construct where we co-create, collaborate, co-participate in these communities of practice, if you want to call them that.
00:04:03
Speaker
And I got that start from e-learning, believe it or not.
00:04:07
Speaker
From 2010 to 2014, I was the e-learning director at our institution, which I couldn't believe they even gave me that position.
00:04:14
Speaker
But anyway, in that four year span, we migrated from Blackboard to Canvas.
00:04:20
Speaker
We were one of the first institutions to go with Canvas east of the Mississippi.
00:04:25
Speaker
We migrated to Canvas in 2012.
00:04:27
Speaker
It was a brand new, Instructure was a brand new company.
00:04:30
Speaker
Having said that, I had to train faculty to migrate to Canvas within like three months.
00:04:38
Speaker
And so I had to build like a training mechanism or like a social learning construct.
00:04:46
Speaker
And that got me into this idea of,
00:04:48
Speaker
Oh, professional development, getting together with other teachers, talking about pedagogy and assessment and these types of things.
00:04:55
Speaker
So I always had that in my blood.
00:04:57
Speaker
When I got back to the English division, thank God I walked out of administration back to teaching.
00:05:04
Speaker
I did a ed camp for our English division and we did a Saturday where we just came in.
00:05:09
Speaker
So I've always been involved with those types of activities.
00:05:13
Speaker
Learning communities of practice, that type of thing.
00:05:15
Speaker
So when I got onto Twitter in like 2012, I think, or 2014, I got onto Twitter, I started getting involved with these teachers that were talking about assessment in different ways.
00:05:26
Speaker
And then that kind of just led to...
00:05:29
Speaker
Throwing out ideas, Chris, and seeing if they stick to the wall.
00:05:33
Speaker
That's basically my approach.
00:05:36
Speaker
And so when I got into teachers throwing out grades, that hashtag with Star, Saxton, and Mark Barnes, and I started following and jumping into these assessment chats.
00:05:47
Speaker
So I actually reached out to, I think it was two people, Jesse Stommel and Laura Gibbs.
00:05:53
Speaker
And I tweeted at them and said, why don't we have like a Twitter chat with the ungrading hashtag so we can kind of get together?
00:06:01
Speaker
And Laura Gibbs responded back to me.
00:06:04
Speaker
And that birthed the ungrading slow chats that we had.
00:06:08
Speaker
And Laura and I, and she's awesome.
00:06:10
Speaker
So she built a website for it and we had that.
00:06:13
Speaker
And then Susan Bloom comes out with the ungrading book.
00:06:16
Speaker
So I tweeted out, hey, is anyone interested in having a virtual book club?
00:06:20
Speaker
And that day, I think I got 50 people that said I'd be interested.
00:06:25
Speaker
That weekend, I built the website, got all the stuff together.
00:06:28
Speaker
And then I invited the authors to come to our book club.
00:06:32
Speaker
And here's the thing, Chris.
00:06:34
Speaker
We don't have digital communities of practice without generosity of spirit.
00:06:38
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And that is the key with around at least the people that I know with it.
00:06:42
Speaker
I've met you around it.
00:06:44
Speaker
I think we all have a common purpose.
00:06:47
Speaker
And that is to inject our teaching and learning with humanity and care, compassion.
00:06:53
Speaker
And that really is kind of the broad umbrella that we all operate under.
00:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very powerful movement because when you bring all those folks to the table, you are creating that learning community where everyone can learn from each other.
00:07:07
Speaker
in a very authentic way.
00:07:09
Speaker
I remember when I was like in teacher training, teacher Twitter was like just becoming a thing.
00:07:16
Speaker
They would say you should go on Twitter and get involved.
00:07:18
Speaker
And it was like this very mythical place.
00:07:20
Speaker
And there wasn't really a lot of direction on what that meant.
00:07:24
Speaker
And I think for a lot of folks, there still isn't.
00:07:26
Speaker
It's not really clear what exactly that means to get involved in teacher Twitter.
00:07:32
Speaker
And the work that you all are doing is making that more real.
00:07:35
Speaker
It's much different to attempt to follow a hashtag, which is sometimes not easy to do.
00:07:42
Speaker
And oftentimes it's pretty banal versus getting involved in like an extensive conversation over a Twitter space or having an hour long conversation in a book
Digital Tools and Engagement Strategies
00:07:51
Speaker
club.
00:07:51
Speaker
They're very, very different.
00:07:53
Speaker
And
00:07:54
Speaker
You linked me beforehand.
00:07:55
Speaker
I can't wait to put this in the show notes to share it with people, that dissertation by Christina Moore that studies ostensibly the work that you're doing, the spaces that folks are working in, specifically book clubs to learn from each other and grow movements such as ungrading.
00:08:09
Speaker
So we covered at the beginning there a few places that you're involved.
00:08:13
Speaker
So you're on Twitter, you're on Discord.
00:08:16
Speaker
Why are you using these spaces versus more traditional spaces?
00:08:20
Speaker
Like you could easily be meeting at Howard Community College with other teachers and talking about your craft.
00:08:26
Speaker
That's kind of part one of the question.
00:08:28
Speaker
But then if you want, you can dive into why newer media stuff like Discord?
00:08:32
Speaker
Because when I think of Discord, I think of gaming, video game stuff.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:08:38
Speaker
Right.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, we're part of the cool kids on Discord.
00:08:41
Speaker
Well, it's a good point, and I think you kind of touched on the answer, which is these digital tools have at their core autonomy and agency.
00:08:53
Speaker
I can choose with whom I want to learn, when I want to learn, and I can jump in and jump out.
00:08:59
Speaker
Two, there are many other tools that have beautiful learning, thriving communities of practice.
00:09:06
Speaker
For me, I never got on Facebook.
00:09:08
Speaker
I don't know why.
00:09:09
Speaker
I just never felt comfortable giving away my digital information to a big company.
00:09:13
Speaker
But I got on Twitter.
00:09:14
Speaker
But I use Twitter, Chris, not to post what I had for breakfast.
00:09:18
Speaker
I use it essentially for professional learning and building those professional learning networks.
00:09:23
Speaker
So again, it's based on where people come and congregate and how they feel when they're there.
00:09:31
Speaker
So if they feel heard, valued, engaged, they're going to stay there.
00:09:35
Speaker
Because the biggest thing I think is right now, the challenge for any building of a learning community that thrives is sustainability.
00:09:43
Speaker
How do you sustain it?
00:09:44
Speaker
How do you keep it relevant?
00:09:45
Speaker
So I think these digital tools help us in the sense that we remain relevant, right?
00:09:52
Speaker
I'm not on Twitch or TikTok.
00:09:53
Speaker
That's a little too relevant for my taste, but hey, whatever fits.
00:09:58
Speaker
But I've chosen Twitter Discord as almost a sidebar, meaning our Discord presence came out of our ungrading EdCamp when a bunch of the planners and I, which Christina was one of, of
00:10:14
Speaker
There was about four or five people that helped me plan that.
00:10:18
Speaker
And we said, we want some place that is for asynchronous jump in, jump out at a slow pace.
00:10:24
Speaker
What could we do?
00:10:25
Speaker
Slack, Discord, Telegram.
00:10:27
Speaker
We chose Discord simply because it had that immediacy of the voice channels.
00:10:32
Speaker
And we looked at accessibility and all that.
00:10:35
Speaker
all those concerns, which we should.
00:10:37
Speaker
So that's how we came out with Discord.
00:10:40
Speaker
After the EdCamp, Chris, Discord was sitting there.
00:10:43
Speaker
So I just said, I'm going to rebrand it the Ungrading Hub and just throw it out there.
00:10:48
Speaker
Right now we have 250 people on that thing.
00:10:52
Speaker
So is it going every day?
00:10:54
Speaker
No.
00:10:54
Speaker
But every once in a while, people will jump into that.
00:10:57
Speaker
And I have to use Twitter to kind of remind people, hey, we got this thing.
00:11:01
Speaker
So I think my weakness is I've created too many areas where there's too much going on.
00:11:09
Speaker
So –
00:11:10
Speaker
Right now, I'm focusing on three areas, Twitter and Twitter spaces.
00:11:15
Speaker
That's always going to be there.
00:11:17
Speaker
Discord and then, of course, Twitter with the Twitter spaces and then Pressbook, that crowdsourcing on grading.
00:11:26
Speaker
That book has been building and building as it goes.
00:11:29
Speaker
And again,
00:11:31
Speaker
It takes someone to kind of keep the ball in front of everyone's eyes.
00:11:36
Speaker
So, for instance, if I see a really cool thread from someone on Twitter, I might reach out and DM them and say, could you kind of put that into a blog post and put it on our crowdsourcing?
00:11:47
Speaker
It's that kind of thing where sustainability and relevancy are there.
00:11:52
Speaker
The main thing, the tools that I use, Chris, it's all about marketing.
00:11:55
Speaker
I call it a pulsating web of engagement.
00:11:58
Speaker
It contracts and expands based on intrinsic factors and extrinsic factors.
00:12:03
Speaker
For instance, the pandemic, that was an extrinsic factor that brought all of us kind of to these digital spaces because we couldn't go physically to our campuses.
Growing and Sustaining Educational Movements
00:12:12
Speaker
And then the intrinsic pulsating is at the end of the semester, I've got all of this stuff I'm trying to close up on my courses.
00:12:21
Speaker
I might not be active in Twitter, so I'll see the drop off in engagement.
00:12:25
Speaker
around these kind of, you know, the academic calendar per se.
00:12:29
Speaker
So, you know, it's one of those things where it contracts and expands based on all of these factors.
00:12:37
Speaker
I guess my point is I want to be there when it expands and contracts.
00:12:41
Speaker
I want to make sure I'm in the right place at the right time.
00:12:44
Speaker
Let's talk about growing those communities and what it means to do platform adoption.
00:12:49
Speaker
Because that's something that both of us do.
00:12:50
Speaker
We also have a Discord.
00:12:51
Speaker
Ours is not nearly as successful as yours.
00:12:55
Speaker
It's very difficult to get folks to engage in spaces they're not familiar with, especially when the way that you're recruiting them to get there is already from kind of a subsect of the population.
00:13:06
Speaker
The community on Twitter, despite being very active, is still a very, very small percentage of overall teachers.
00:13:13
Speaker
So if we want to grow a movement such as Ungrading,
00:13:16
Speaker
How do we go about getting one folks from the I want to refer to them as like normies, like people that like don't that don't engage like on Twitter.
00:13:25
Speaker
How do we get them to get more involved on social media as teachers and not just for personal use?
00:13:31
Speaker
But then how do we then take them into being the even more active users that are engaged in all these other spaces like open access books and discord?
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question.
00:13:40
Speaker
I don't have an answer for that, Chris, other than creating a need for it.
00:13:47
Speaker
So for me, it's that outreach, that evangelism per se.
00:13:53
Speaker
That's a word I'm used to.
00:13:55
Speaker
My father was a minister for 42 years.
00:13:58
Speaker
And so he died when I didn't go into theology, but I went into English.
00:14:01
Speaker
But anyway, I'm part of that idea of spreading the good word type of thing.
00:14:06
Speaker
That's in my DNA as a pastor's kid or minister's kid.
00:14:10
Speaker
So part of that spreading the word is one, create a need.
00:14:15
Speaker
Instead of saying, you should do this.
00:14:18
Speaker
It's, oh, would you like to come in into this space?
00:14:21
Speaker
I think you could contribute some really cool stuff.
00:14:24
Speaker
Like we got a lot of STEM and math, you know, math science people that way.
00:14:29
Speaker
Because most of my stuff on grading, Chris, is really humanities driven, English driven.
00:14:33
Speaker
I teach online composition.
00:14:35
Speaker
But, you know, these other disciplines and diverse fields work.
00:14:39
Speaker
we have to create a need for those people to come in as well and not just be a humanities driven type of movement.
00:14:45
Speaker
So that's the first thing is getting into the diversity and also inviting them as far as getting them used to these other platforms.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:54
Speaker
I, I try my best to do a lot of the, um,
00:14:58
Speaker
work the lead-in time.
00:15:01
Speaker
It's actually lead-in heavy, which is I'll make a quick little tutorial on the best way to navigate spaces, and I'll throw that out in a Google Doc or the Discord.
00:15:12
Speaker
Basically, we never really came up with a kind of user guide for that.
00:15:18
Speaker
We just threw them on there and said, here's where it is.
00:15:21
Speaker
But what I found is
00:15:22
Speaker
When they get there, there has to be an organized, clear pathway for engagement.
00:15:27
Speaker
So when we did Discord, I made sure we had four channels based on the four themes of our ed camp, anti-racism and equity, creating communities of discourse, ask me anything, how to's about ungrading.
00:15:42
Speaker
So we had all these different channels so that the participants could
00:15:47
Speaker
could jump in whenever they wanted and where they wanted to.
00:15:50
Speaker
So that's the other thing.
00:15:52
Speaker
There are folks, Chris, I know that we're leaving by the wayside simply because of the choices of the digital tools we've chosen.
00:15:59
Speaker
I'm hoping that when people come into this Twitter community, they leave and go back to their campuses because I'm hearing a lot of people actually being invited by their divisions and deans to give presentations about ungrading face-to-face to their colleagues.
00:16:14
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:16:15
Speaker
Wonderful.
00:16:16
Speaker
And, you know, I've been in some of those as well.
00:16:18
Speaker
So there is that, you know, the community just isn't on Twitter.
00:16:22
Speaker
It'll filter out into the world, into the globe.
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:31
Speaker
The Conference to Restore Humanity is an invitation for K-12 and college educators to engage in a human-centered system reboot, centering the needs of students and educators toward a praxis of social justice.
00:16:44
Speaker
The traditional conference format doesn't work for everyone.
00:16:47
Speaker
It's costly to attend, environmentally unfriendly, and it doesn't allow everyone to engage or have a voice in the learning community.
00:16:55
Speaker
Our conference is designed around the accessibility and sustainability of virtual learning, while engaging participants in a classroom environment that models the same progressive pedagogy we value with students.
00:17:06
Speaker
Instead of long Zoom presentations with a brief Q&A, keynotes are flipped.
00:17:11
Speaker
and attendees will have the opportunity for extended conversation with our speakers, Dr. Henry Giroux, the founding theorist of critical pedagogy, Dr. Denisha Jones, educator, activist, and co-editor of Black Lives Matter at School, and the Circle Keepers from Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, a student collective focused on social justice.
00:17:32
Speaker
And instead of back-to-back online workshops, we are offering asynchronous learning tracks.
00:17:37
Speaker
You can engage with the content and the community at any time on topics like anti-carceral pedagogy, disrupting linguistic discrimination, designing for neurodivergence, promoting childism in the classroom, and supporting feedback over grades.
00:17:52
Speaker
The Conference to Restore Humanity runs July 25th through the 28th.
00:17:56
Speaker
And as of recording, early bird tickets are still available.
00:18:00
Speaker
It's $150 for four days with discounts available for individuals from historically marginalized communities as well as group rates.
00:18:08
Speaker
Plus, we'll award certificates for teacher training and continuing education credits.
00:18:13
Speaker
See our website humanrestorationproject.org for more information and let's restore humanity together.
00:18:26
Speaker
Yeah, it seems like it's been ultra successful specifically in ungrading, in part because of the work that you're doing.
00:18:32
Speaker
I feel like that has become more and more mainstream.
00:18:34
Speaker
Like there's at least one person at every school that we visit who is actively involved in some kind of ungrading movement that you don't necessarily see in perhaps like restorative justice or experiential learning.
00:18:45
Speaker
Not that people aren't doing that work.
00:18:47
Speaker
It just doesn't seem like it has the same online presence as the ungrading camp.
00:18:51
Speaker
And perhaps that's because the...
00:18:54
Speaker
type of people that would be interested in ungrading are also the type of people that are more interested in being involved in these types of online communities.
00:19:00
Speaker
I'm not sure.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yes.
00:19:04
Speaker
No, I think you're right, Chris.
00:19:05
Speaker
I agree with that.
00:19:06
Speaker
It's fascinating to me because it seems like we're at a point now.
00:19:10
Speaker
in the history of education, where because we have access to these communities, we can spur a movement that doesn't die out.
00:19:19
Speaker
Because obviously, over time, there has been an ungrading movement back to like the 60s, even like there's text back to like the 1910s of teachers talking about how report cards aren't accurate.
00:19:30
Speaker
But over time, that just kind of fizzled out because folks would just talk to each other and then they'd resign or retire and people just stopped talking about it or various political forces shut it down.
00:19:40
Speaker
Something happened that would get rid of it.
00:19:42
Speaker
But now you have this movement where you constantly have people coming in and maybe a few people coming out, but that information is always there.
00:19:49
Speaker
And it's easy to connect with other humans and not just books to engage in that and feel like you're doing the right thing, that you're not just like kind of living in your head.
00:19:58
Speaker
It's not just all pure imagination.
00:20:01
Speaker
It's a very powerful tool to have all those things.
00:20:03
Speaker
And I would imagine that especially perhaps as even younger teachers enter the fold, you'll see adaptations on Twitch or on TikTok or on whatever the new thing is, maybe Snapchat or something.
00:20:16
Speaker
I don't know.
00:20:17
Speaker
I'm not sure.
00:20:19
Speaker
But whatever that might be.
00:20:20
Speaker
What are your upcoming goals?
00:20:22
Speaker
You have all these spaces.
00:20:24
Speaker
Are there other places that you're exploring?
00:20:26
Speaker
Are there specific metrics or like ideas that you have in the back of your head?
00:20:30
Speaker
Like, man, I really wish that we could do this that you're doing right now.
00:20:35
Speaker
It's a great question.
00:20:36
Speaker
So as far as metrics go, I've learned not to pour so much meaning into the metrics.
00:20:42
Speaker
For instance, the virtual book club, we ended up with 628 registered users.
00:20:45
Speaker
Now, those 600, all 600 aren't.
00:20:51
Speaker
You know, participating.
00:20:53
Speaker
So a lot of folks will register for something just because they want to get the communications.
00:20:59
Speaker
And that's fine.
00:20:59
Speaker
I do that, too, sometimes.
00:21:01
Speaker
So our Twitter community right now, we have a Twitter ungrading community that has about 278 members are.
00:21:10
Speaker
Our ungrading hub has 250 members.
00:21:12
Speaker
So we're all interspersed out into these things.
00:21:15
Speaker
And that doesn't mean that's how many people are actively engaging.
00:21:19
Speaker
So I've learned that there is a core of us, kind of that pulsating heart of the community that will always be there, that people I can always reach out to and say, hey, do you want to come on a Twitter space and have a 30-minute conversation?
00:21:32
Speaker
And they'll be like, yeah.
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, fine.
00:21:33
Speaker
Sure.
00:21:34
Speaker
I know that those are there.
00:21:35
Speaker
Then we've got these kind of like on the outer rim, these folks that are maybe curious about ungrading.
00:21:42
Speaker
So they're jumping in a little bit and then jumping out.
00:21:46
Speaker
So there's that kind of levels of engagement outside of that pulsating web that I that I talked about.
00:21:51
Speaker
So I always focus on that core.
00:21:54
Speaker
What can we do with the core that will push some of this going forward?
00:21:58
Speaker
And we'll always get those outer rings of people coming in and out.
00:22:02
Speaker
So we've done an EdCamp.
00:22:04
Speaker
We've done a virtual book club.
00:22:06
Speaker
We're doing spaces.
00:22:08
Speaker
We have a press book with crowdsourcing and grading.
00:22:10
Speaker
There's all of these things I would love if you ask me what I would like to do in the future is, first of all, keep the conversations going on Twitter spaces.
00:22:18
Speaker
Because, Chris, what I'm finding is –
00:22:20
Speaker
Ungrading is just a threshold, a doorway to walk through to talk about teaching and learning, progressive education, restorative justice, all that.
00:22:27
Speaker
So that's kind of my Trojan horse to get in the door.
00:22:30
Speaker
Oh, it's about let's talk ungrading, but we're really talking about unschooling, oppressive systems, all that cool stuff.
00:22:36
Speaker
So keep that going.
00:22:38
Speaker
But I would love to do a Twitter conference.
00:22:41
Speaker
I saw an institution that did this.
00:22:44
Speaker
And what a Twitter conference is, it's not an ed camp where kind of like that's totally participant driven.
00:22:50
Speaker
This Twitter conference has a little bit more structure to it.
00:22:54
Speaker
And it's where people actually propose to give a presentation at a specific time on a specific topic through Twitter.
00:23:03
Speaker
So at that hour, that person will live tweet their presentation for maybe 30 minutes.
00:23:09
Speaker
And then the remaining 30 minutes of the hour, we all who are listening or watching this live Twitter presentation, we can start to interact and it will always become a chat in a sense.
00:23:21
Speaker
I would love to do that.
00:23:22
Speaker
We could have a keynote where a keynote person at the top of the hour, that person starts tweeting out their keynote presentation and then we all jump into a quick chat afterwards.
00:23:32
Speaker
So I love to do something like that.
00:23:34
Speaker
That is a little bit heavy for me to, so I have to get my brain around organizing it.
00:23:41
Speaker
Chris, a lot of the stuff that I organize is at about 20 minutes or maybe an hour after I get the idea.
00:23:50
Speaker
I'm a quick person to create something.
00:23:52
Speaker
I like to fail fast and I fail furiously, which is great because some of the stuff I throw out there does not stick to the wall.
00:24:00
Speaker
And I just go, okay, because I have a tolerance for failure because that basically characterizes most of my professional life is failure.
00:24:08
Speaker
So I'm good with that.
00:24:09
Speaker
So yeah, exactly.
00:24:10
Speaker
So you throw things out and then when they go and you start to see some movement, then you start to really massage it, start to think about making it better, putting on some bells and whistles to it because you know that it has roots into the community.
00:24:25
Speaker
So I think I would like to keep doing something like a conference type thing.
00:24:29
Speaker
where we all, I would love to do, I mean, if someone had the money to have an ungrading conference where we go somewhere, you know, and meet and that would just be wonderful depending on, you know, the pandemic and all that.
00:24:41
Speaker
But in the meantime, just growing this Twitter space.
00:24:45
Speaker
The other thing I like to do, Chris, in the future is make it practical.
00:24:50
Speaker
I think what you were saying before I thought was really good, which is people get involved constantly.
00:24:56
Speaker
at their level of comfort, but you get them involved when there's a lot more, a ton of praxis rather than theory.
00:25:07
Speaker
I think the key to ungrading and why it's gotten more roots than maybe things like restorative justice and progressive education is that there's a very concrete problem
00:25:19
Speaker
part of ungrading that I could do in my class tomorrow if I wanted to.
00:25:24
Speaker
So there's that praxis.
00:25:25
Speaker
And I'm a big praxis guy.
00:25:26
Speaker
I'm not a big theory guy.
00:25:28
Speaker
I like just to give me something I can do right now and see if it works.
00:25:31
Speaker
That's what I like to do.
00:25:33
Speaker
So I think that praxis part of ungrading will always be there.
00:25:37
Speaker
And we still have good discussions about how to best introduce it to students.
00:25:42
Speaker
How do you make your prompts with the language you speak?
00:25:46
Speaker
So there's always good praxis going on.
00:25:48
Speaker
So the other, that's the one thing I really want to keep going.
00:25:51
Speaker
And the other thing is, is I would like to try to kind of copy what you guys do.
00:25:57
Speaker
I'm working on a ungrading children's book in Pressbook.
00:26:03
Speaker
And I was trying to work with people who could animate it and illustrate it.
00:26:09
Speaker
And it kind of dropped off.
00:26:10
Speaker
So I'm actually asking my daughter, she's 11, to maybe draw something.
00:26:14
Speaker
I was searching for this thing.
00:26:16
Speaker
And this is one of those things that didn't fly.
00:26:18
Speaker
I had about seven to eight people saying, I'm with you.
00:26:22
Speaker
I'll help you build that.
00:26:23
Speaker
And it just died.
00:26:24
Speaker
Probably because of me, I didn't keep it in front of people's faces.
00:26:27
Speaker
But anyway, so I love to build this book and steal from you guys and have an accompanying teacher's manual.
00:26:36
Speaker
to go along with it if a teacher wants to use this ungrading book in their course.
00:26:42
Speaker
I would love to do that.
00:26:44
Speaker
That is, I might be pushing the envelope of my capabilities though, Chris, because I don't know if I can actually come up with that content, but that's the kind of stuff
00:26:53
Speaker
I would love to do is get ungrading in front of students.
00:26:58
Speaker
And so that is probably my third goal.
00:27:02
Speaker
Get more of the student voice.
00:27:04
Speaker
We do a lot of PD with each other.
00:27:06
Speaker
We all get together.
00:27:07
Speaker
We talk about teaching learning.
00:27:09
Speaker
And a lot of the stuff I get involved in, I never think about, well, what do the students think?
00:27:13
Speaker
Let's bring them into the conversation.
00:27:15
Speaker
So one of the sessions of our ed camp, we had a student panel.
00:27:18
Speaker
It was awesome, Chris.
00:27:20
Speaker
It was the best
00:27:21
Speaker
Zoom part of that ed camp, having about four students talk about what ungrading has meant to them and their education.
00:27:27
Speaker
So that children's book is kind of like my little baby that I want to really, you know, grow to get ungrading in front of students because, you know, ungrading.
00:27:40
Speaker
It doesn't mean everything for everybody.
00:27:42
Speaker
It's a huge umbrella.
00:27:43
Speaker
We have arguments about where that term even comes from or what it actually means because at the end of the day, I still have to give a grade in my course.
00:27:50
Speaker
My institution requires it.
00:27:51
Speaker
So I'm not 100% on grading, but it's that concept of looking at process and experience over outcomes and production, right?
00:27:59
Speaker
Because that's what traditional grades force us to focus on, that production.
00:28:03
Speaker
Instead, we're looking at owning one's labor, owning one's agency.
00:28:07
Speaker
If we can get to the students early, we can kind of maybe eliminate some of that trauma that traditional grading has done.
00:28:14
Speaker
That's actually a really fascinating point that I'd like to dive into a little bit further because –
00:28:19
Speaker
At least for me, the most powerful discussions in PD I've had about specifically on grading has been in those conversations with kids.
00:28:28
Speaker
I would spend, God, I don't know, four or five extended conversations at the beginning of every school year talking about why the course is set up the way it's set up, where students are.
00:28:39
Speaker
allowed to remediate work, revise things.
00:28:41
Speaker
There's basically, there's deadlines, but they're very soft deadlines.
00:28:46
Speaker
And at the end of the day, like you go, I call them best by dates.
00:28:49
Speaker
So I mean, it's designed in a way that no one should hypothetically fail, because I'm not comfortable doing that.
00:28:58
Speaker
Despite some like Ohio Department of Education rules.
00:29:01
Speaker
That's a whole other story.
00:29:02
Speaker
But we do whatever we can.
00:29:06
Speaker
Students who are very open about sharing their anxieties around grading, I find more issues with students that are, quote unquote, like all A students who really struggle if they get a B or a C, because I always want to push people to do more.
00:29:19
Speaker
I don't give them a low grade, but I give them feedback and say, hey, you should do more with this.
00:29:23
Speaker
I'm not saying it's bad.
00:29:24
Speaker
I'm just saying you just need to make it a little bit better because that's what my job is.
00:29:28
Speaker
Right.
00:29:28
Speaker
It's difficult to have those conversations with folks that are used to always just doing the rubric.
00:29:33
Speaker
That's the end of it.
00:29:34
Speaker
Put it away.
00:29:35
Speaker
Versus having students in that conversation who don't do well academically, that really struggle, who have a lot of different things going on.
00:29:42
Speaker
Maybe they just don't like the subject.
00:29:44
Speaker
And I relate to that.
00:29:46
Speaker
I was not a huge fan of school when I was in school either.
00:29:48
Speaker
And that's
00:29:49
Speaker
Those conversations really drive us to do better because when you hear from the people in the room and have that emotional connection to them, you understand why the things in your classroom happen the way that they do.
Student Engagement and Feedback
00:30:01
Speaker
And so much of that is attached to assessment and ranking and filing and judgment.
00:30:05
Speaker
So pulling students into that conversation is
00:30:08
Speaker
about changing education online, I think is a huge missed opportunity that we can find ways to do because obviously, like every kit is on social media and online.
00:30:17
Speaker
And I know it might be a little, I guess, lame to be associated with like teachers and doing that kind of work.
00:30:23
Speaker
However, it's the thing that you're doing every single day.
00:30:28
Speaker
And I feel like there has to be a way to reach out and get folks involved and taking charge of that.
00:30:33
Speaker
It's kind of an awkward conversation to have because many students are very powerless in what they can do.
00:30:38
Speaker
They can band together and attempt to change things, but at the end of the day, it's very difficult to do so.
00:30:43
Speaker
There's organizations like Student Voice who are doing some really cool work surrounding that and publishing student thoughts.
00:30:49
Speaker
But I think there's also more room on social media.
00:30:51
Speaker
I think of, what's the guy who does like slam poetry on YouTube?
00:30:56
Speaker
He's pretty popular.
00:30:57
Speaker
Oh, a Taylor Molly.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:59
Speaker
Taylor Molly.
00:31:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:00
Speaker
Who like talks about like the issues with school and trying to solve those things.
00:31:04
Speaker
And kids like really resonate with that work.
00:31:07
Speaker
We have a board member, Madeline Jester, who's on our board, who talks about ungrading and publishes their thoughts.
00:31:13
Speaker
So, yeah, I don't I don't know where I'm going with this outside of saying like, do you have ideas on how we can pull more students actually into these discussions?
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think the invitation to speak, like you said, some of them are powerless and voiceless.
00:31:29
Speaker
So inviting them into our divisional meetings when we're doing PD on ungrading, inviting them to share their thoughts.
00:31:37
Speaker
And I do a lot of anonymous.
00:31:39
Speaker
I ask them, could I use, because I think I say to them, the student voice to me is the most powerful method of convincing other professors to
00:31:49
Speaker
to adopt some of the principles and guidelines of ungrading.
00:31:53
Speaker
Could I use your voice?
00:31:54
Speaker
And I'll make it anonymous and I'll make sure there's no identifying.
00:31:58
Speaker
And they gave me their permission.
00:31:59
Speaker
Once I get their permission, then I can post it on Twitter or send it to someone.
00:32:04
Speaker
Like I just did a, in our institution, we're not, we're merit-based.
00:32:09
Speaker
So I have to do a merit achievement plan at the end of the year.
00:32:12
Speaker
I put in my student comments.
00:32:14
Speaker
in there, because that to me is a reflection of my teaching excellence, is that I am hopefully changing these people's lives.
00:32:21
Speaker
And it's not about me being a great teacher.
00:32:23
Speaker
It's about removing the trauma and removing those things that rank, sort them, put them into scarcity positions and positions of competition, all of that.
00:32:32
Speaker
So yeah, I think there's more ways that we can get the students involved.
00:32:36
Speaker
And one thing I think is the way we position our courses.
00:32:40
Speaker
giving them more say into how they want to learn.
00:32:44
Speaker
So I've got outcomes that I have to put into my course syllabus based on the institution, but that doesn't mean I don't divergently re-articulate those with my students into learning targets.
00:32:57
Speaker
So we say we're going to take this institution speak and put it into learning targets that you and I can talk about and how we're going to
00:33:04
Speaker
which target that you want to really own this semester and really grapple with.
00:33:10
Speaker
So there are ways to kind of to do that.
00:33:12
Speaker
But I do agree with you.
00:33:14
Speaker
The more people that we get hearing student voices, and there's a lot of talk about the research behind ungrading.
00:33:22
Speaker
There needs to be more quantitative research.
00:33:24
Speaker
I totally agree with that because people some people won't be convinced unless there's actual documented research.
00:33:28
Speaker
That's great.
00:33:29
Speaker
I always say, just ask the students.
00:33:31
Speaker
That's enough research for me that this stuff is working and that it has that powerful impact on their lives.
00:33:37
Speaker
And for even what you guys are thinking about, the humanity involved in being a student who's heard and who's seen rather than judged or critiqued or evaluated all the time.
00:33:49
Speaker
So that to me is important.
00:33:51
Speaker
So I do a lot of that through, Chris, reflection.
Challenges and Opportunities in Ungrading
00:33:55
Speaker
So in my students' reflections and self-assessments, I'm always asking them to characterize their labor.
00:34:02
Speaker
And I use labor, and that raises a red light for some people about the trend.
00:34:08
Speaker
What do we – it's that transactional relationship of labor.
00:34:11
Speaker
No.
00:34:11
Speaker
To me, learning is labor.
00:34:13
Speaker
So if I recognize their labor, I recognize themselves, the students.
00:34:17
Speaker
So I ask them.
00:34:18
Speaker
How much were you able to labor?
00:34:20
Speaker
Because I know some of my students, I have single mothers with two kids and ailing parents, and then I have a kid that's working 40 hours to pay for his apartment.
00:34:27
Speaker
There's all kinds of challenges.
00:34:29
Speaker
So I say, what labor did you do?
00:34:32
Speaker
What learning did you derive from it?
00:34:34
Speaker
And then how engaged were you?
00:34:36
Speaker
Because I found, Chris, that I have students that can only devote two hours to my course in a week.
00:34:42
Speaker
But those two hours are big time engaged hours.
00:34:48
Speaker
And I'm like, OK, I'm going to recognize that instead of saying, oh, you didn't get it in by this due date.
00:34:54
Speaker
You're losing 10 points, blah, blah, blah.
00:34:55
Speaker
So I think there's a way to give these students more agency and voice.
00:35:00
Speaker
And how do we do that?
00:35:02
Speaker
I think we have to harvest those comments and get them in front of people like our deans, our chairs, our principals, and get that in front so that they can see that there is actually something going on here.
00:35:14
Speaker
Because I remember when I first was into ungrading, I remember we had a slow chat and someone got on there.
00:35:22
Speaker
God bless this person.
00:35:23
Speaker
But the person said,
00:35:25
Speaker
I think on grading is just – it sounds like a bunch of hippie bullshit.
00:35:28
Speaker
I'm like, yes, that's right.
00:35:31
Speaker
I mean it's all this – because there are these major anchors that are being dislodged from people because the anchor is grading.
00:35:41
Speaker
academic rigor.
00:35:42
Speaker
This is why we have our certificates or our diplomas have meaning behind them because of the beautiful academic rigor that we can ensure.
00:35:52
Speaker
And you start ripping those anchors out, man, people start to get a little disrupted.
00:35:58
Speaker
And so for us, I think it's that, and I go back to what I said before, is to appear non-threatening.
00:36:05
Speaker
I don't want to disrupt your pedagogical approach.
00:36:07
Speaker
I'm not making any characterizations of you if you
00:36:10
Speaker
have due dates and penalties for students.
00:36:12
Speaker
It doesn't make you a bad person.
00:36:14
Speaker
But could you maybe think about this?
00:36:17
Speaker
And just asking the question of, is there a potential that you could do this?
00:36:22
Speaker
So instead of focusing on what is and what's bad, focus on the possibilities and potential.
00:36:27
Speaker
That's...
00:36:28
Speaker
And that's like learning anyway, right?
00:36:30
Speaker
When you meet students, you want to say, what's the potential for you?
00:36:33
Speaker
Not let me identify all the errors that you're making.
00:36:37
Speaker
I mean, when you're collecting that feedback and soliciting it, you're taking a step in the direction of eliminating that barrier between teacher and student, that authoritarian barrier where it feels like,
00:36:48
Speaker
perhaps your feedback isn't being heard or doesn't matter.
00:36:51
Speaker
I remember, especially in college, filling out like the end of your evaluation.
00:36:54
Speaker
And I don't know, I felt like it was kind of pointless.
00:36:57
Speaker
I never really saw anything out of it.
00:36:58
Speaker
I was already done with the class, so who cares?
00:37:00
Speaker
So I wonder if inviting students into online spaces, perhaps that aren't even your own students, has a lot of validity in disestablishing that authoritarian mindset.
00:37:14
Speaker
I've been very fortunate in my position at HRP that I get to talk to a lot of students who are not students in my own classroom.
00:37:21
Speaker
I don't know.
00:37:22
Speaker
I found it a lot more powerful in some regards to hear from students across the country because, one, it reflects the exact same thing that's going on in my classroom here in Ohio.
00:37:31
Speaker
which is fascinating by itself, but also because those students, I think, have less of a filter.
00:37:36
Speaker
I try my best to establish a classroom where students are open and honest with me, but I know at the end of the day, I'm going to be perceived as an authoritarian figure.
00:37:43
Speaker
I'm the one giving the grades.
00:37:44
Speaker
I'm the one enforcing the discipline, despite all the things I try to say otherwise.
00:37:49
Speaker
Students are very unfiltered if you ask them about ungrading and they know that there's nothing they could do to stop you.
00:37:55
Speaker
And I wonder if getting those students in online spaces, not necessarily as like
00:38:00
Speaker
aggressive people, but as folks who are willing to have those unfiltered conversations would do more to change the movement.
00:38:08
Speaker
I think about a parallel in the political world, for better or for worse, there are a lot of new political Twitch streamers or political discords.
00:38:19
Speaker
I've noticed a lot of third parties are starting to operate Discord channels that are very subversive and radical.
00:38:26
Speaker
And I don't necessarily want to associate ungrading and some school things with that because they can be a little questionable and suspect at times.
00:38:35
Speaker
But there are people that are deeply involved in those spaces that are very young, like 18, 19, 20 years old, who want to change the world and do what is perceived in their opinion, good things.
00:38:47
Speaker
So I wonder if by using these new media spaces, if there isn't a way that Discord could, for example, be advertised and say, hey, like you're in your, I don't know, your League of Legends channel.
00:38:58
Speaker
That's like super dated Elden Ring channel or whatever.
00:39:01
Speaker
Why don't you also join your ungrading channel and talk about how grades impact you and like have this open network of talking to teachers because it's...
00:39:10
Speaker
I don't want to compare it to someone's job because I don't think that's the purpose of education.
00:39:14
Speaker
But in terms of time invested, it's very similar.
00:39:17
Speaker
It's something that you're doing every single day and having that space where you can talk about that.
00:39:21
Speaker
And instead of trying to just escape from school, you try to make it better.
00:39:25
Speaker
There's just so much power in that.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:39:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:39:30
Speaker
And I think there's a good – there's a way to do that without stripping them of their humanity, their privacy, all of that.
00:39:35
Speaker
And I think that's an interesting idea of getting students and professors and teachers and administrators into the same room having the same discussion.
00:39:44
Speaker
Because one thing I fear is that in ungrading – and I don't see it so much, Chris – is that a lot of times a hashtag can become an echo chamber.
00:39:53
Speaker
where everybody's saying the same thing.
00:39:55
Speaker
And it's good to have speech and counter speech.
00:39:58
Speaker
I think that's healthy for a community to have the people that come in to say, yeah, but what about, or did you think about
Building Thriving Online Communities
00:40:06
Speaker
this?
00:40:06
Speaker
You know, that type of thing.
00:40:07
Speaker
And what I like about the ungrading community is that there's so many overlapping groups
00:40:11
Speaker
Ideas, diversity of experience.
00:40:14
Speaker
We have people, I think from our ed camp, we had, I think I put it in a statement.
00:40:20
Speaker
We had people from Pittsburgh to Poland, Florida to Finland.
00:40:26
Speaker
And these people all have different educational experiences, and it would be awesome if we could have students from those locations also get into – because everyone's experience isn't the same, and that would help avoid that echo chamber of where everyone's saying the same thing and agreeing and saying – and just nodding your head to everything.
00:40:47
Speaker
So I think we do need that that counter speech.
00:40:50
Speaker
And there is there are challenges of ungrading.
00:40:52
Speaker
We're crazy not to say that there aren't.
00:40:55
Speaker
And we are up against institutions that are based on transactional relationships and and extrinsic motivators and all that GPA and all that stuff.
00:41:04
Speaker
So, yeah, I think there I think the health of the environment has to have.
00:41:09
Speaker
speech, counter speech, but also all voices heard.
00:41:12
Speaker
So I agree with you.
00:41:13
Speaker
There is.
00:41:13
Speaker
And I, you know, I use discord in my course, Chris, and it is funny because when I see who's available, I see who's gaming and who's doing it.
00:41:23
Speaker
And then my teacher mind goes, well, they should be working on my course.
00:41:26
Speaker
I go, no, no, no.
00:41:28
Speaker
You know, trust the student.
00:41:29
Speaker
They need all of that for all of their health and all that.
00:41:34
Speaker
But it's finding those tools that will work because I agree going back to your point.
00:41:41
Speaker
We do leave a lot of educators on the side of the road because they're just not comfortable getting into Twitter or setting up an account or whatever.
00:41:49
Speaker
are doing things like that.
00:41:50
Speaker
I like spaces because you can just go and listen.
00:41:53
Speaker
You don't have to be seen.
00:41:55
Speaker
You don't have to tweet.
00:41:56
Speaker
You just listen.
00:41:57
Speaker
So there are some things that I think can encourage people to get more involved, but it's a tough sell when the toll is not one of comfort.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah, there's three things, and then we'll kind of lead into, I guess, a wrap-up question.
00:42:14
Speaker
that you just said that I think are very powerful.
00:42:16
Speaker
The first being the power of using these spaces specifically just in the classroom, let alone trying to grow a movement with them.
00:42:23
Speaker
I also use Discord in my class as well as I have an esports coach.
00:42:27
Speaker
So we use it for that.
00:42:28
Speaker
And we also use it organizationally.
00:42:29
Speaker
All of our staff communication.
00:42:30
Speaker
Ah, cool, cool.
00:42:32
Speaker
I've found that that is by far the most intriguing and perhaps best way to connect with many kids.
00:42:39
Speaker
A lot of kids that I would perceive as being very quiet or socially awkward are just so open and funny and charismatic in online text-driven spaces.
00:42:49
Speaker
And when it comes to accessibility, I just think about all the different ways that you can communicate via a chat app like that, whether it's voice or text, et cetera.
00:42:57
Speaker
that you perhaps might not be able to in a traditional environment and you're able to speak up.
00:43:03
Speaker
Probably one of the proudest moments I think I've ever had was
00:43:07
Speaker
Last year, when we were in kind of still a COVID learning space, I had a Q&A channel on our class Discord.
00:43:14
Speaker
And kids would be messaging each other at like one o'clock in the morning, like way, way later than I was up, helping each other on projects for my course.
00:43:23
Speaker
They would like create things like in Photoshop and kids and say like, oh, you just need to do this, this and this.
00:43:27
Speaker
They'll be talking to each other and have like this extended conversation.
00:43:30
Speaker
And like congratulate each other's work and building that learning space where I'm sure, at least hypothetically, I hope that those conversations happen in my classroom, at least sometimes having a record of that and be able to read it and go through it and having it asynchronous is just really cool.
00:43:46
Speaker
That's the first thing.
00:43:47
Speaker
The second thing deals with getting educators involved and students for that matter who maybe don't participate in these conversations but are there.
00:43:57
Speaker
The lurkers, if you will, folks that just read everything, that do things.
00:44:02
Speaker
That's what I am.
00:44:03
Speaker
Even though I get super involved in conversations, most online computers, I just read through stuff.
00:44:07
Speaker
I listen to things.
00:44:08
Speaker
I like just being on the sidelines and taking a second and digesting it.
00:44:12
Speaker
And I think that we forget that when we build these movements, even though we might not hear anything, there is a lot of work that's happening.
00:44:20
Speaker
I'm always shocked.
00:44:21
Speaker
Like we went to a school and they were like, hey, like we know who you are.
00:44:24
Speaker
We listen to your podcast.
00:44:25
Speaker
It's like, I don't like who are you?
00:44:27
Speaker
Like that's that's shocking.
00:44:28
Speaker
Like it kind of freaks me out a little bit because I think that a lot of times we think we build these online commuters is like 15 people because it's the exact same 15 people that come back over and over again.
00:44:38
Speaker
But there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people who are also listening, who are there and sharing that with other people and they're having conversations about it.
00:44:45
Speaker
You have to kind of keep a perspective there and kind of keep yourself honed that, no, my work is not with those 20 people.
00:44:50
Speaker
It's with all of these people.
00:44:53
Speaker
And finally, that builds into the idea of, let's say that you're going about building one of these spaces, you want to become David Bach, and you want to spread information as well, not just about ungrading or whatever it is that you're passionate about.
00:45:06
Speaker
Maybe it is restorative justice that keeps coming up.
00:45:09
Speaker
What suggestions or concepts would you offer to folks who are just getting started with this that want to start growing their own online communities?
00:45:19
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:45:19
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:45:21
Speaker
I, you know, like I say, a lot of it to me, I don't know, Chris, it's a, it's a mystery to me how things grow.
00:45:28
Speaker
But I guess if I, if I, if I look at, you know, I tried to write down some things that, because I knew you were going to ask me this.
00:45:37
Speaker
So, uh, I tried to think about what are the common threads with learning communities, uh,
00:45:44
Speaker
and professional learning communities or even just communities of practice that really thrive.
00:45:49
Speaker
I would say this.
00:45:51
Speaker
One is they're there where those people are.
00:45:54
Speaker
You meet them where they are, wherever they are.
00:45:56
Speaker
So that means, like you've said, if it's discord, it's discord.
00:46:00
Speaker
If it's sitting in a division meeting and making a presentation face to face, it's there.
00:46:04
Speaker
So it's actually trying to be available to
00:46:07
Speaker
to meet people where you are.
00:46:08
Speaker
So if I'm trying to grow a community, I got to be really ears to the ground where the conversations are happening and get into those conversations.
00:46:18
Speaker
That's the first thing.
00:46:19
Speaker
Two would be provide multiple levels of engagement.
00:46:23
Speaker
Again, going back to what you said, some people want to lurk.
00:46:26
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:46:27
Speaker
I love lurkers because they're thoughtful processors of information.
00:46:31
Speaker
When they choose to engage, you're going to get something good.
00:46:34
Speaker
Because those lurkers aren't talking like I do off the top of my head and just throw stuff out there.
00:46:39
Speaker
They're really thoughtful.
00:46:40
Speaker
So multiple levels of engagement.
00:46:42
Speaker
We tried to do that in the EdCamp with Zoom synchronous Zoom meetings, Discord for the asynchronous, and then Twitter spaces for that little, hey, I just want to listen stuff.
00:46:54
Speaker
A bunch of grace, empathy, kindness, and compassion.
00:46:58
Speaker
That's the key to me.
00:47:01
Speaker
If people feel that empathy coming through that keyboard or whatever screen they're looking at, they're going to be more tied into, hey, I want to come back to that.
00:47:11
Speaker
That made me feel good.
00:47:13
Speaker
And we always talk about, oh, social emotional learning.
00:47:15
Speaker
It happens for us too.
00:47:17
Speaker
I'm not going to be in a space where I feel like I'm dumb or I'm evaluated or judged.
00:47:23
Speaker
So for me, I'm the most non-threatening person I can be.
00:47:29
Speaker
I don't know.
00:47:30
Speaker
I call myself a hack.
00:47:31
Speaker
I'm just a hack.
00:47:32
Speaker
I'm just throwing stuff out there.
00:47:33
Speaker
So that's the thing.
00:47:35
Speaker
The energy and passion has to be there.
00:47:38
Speaker
And Chris, this is where you mentioned, why are you doing this?
00:47:41
Speaker
There's a lot of unpaid labor.
00:47:42
Speaker
And you are right.
00:47:43
Speaker
Why?
00:47:44
Speaker
But what I found is a bunch of energy and passion covers a multitude of deficiencies.
00:47:50
Speaker
And this is my theory of why I'm doing what I do is that I don't know a lot.
00:47:55
Speaker
I'm not an expert in anything big.
00:47:57
Speaker
I seriously, I don't have anything that I'm really good at, but I do have some passion and some energy and people, uh, that's, um, they mirror that.
00:48:05
Speaker
So that's almost contagious for some people.
00:48:08
Speaker
If you're passionate about it, Hey, I want to grow this community.
00:48:11
Speaker
You will get those folks that say, man, I want to,
00:48:13
Speaker
I want to hook up with this guy and get into more conversations with him or her.
00:48:17
Speaker
So that's the – and then the last one is creating learning that's agile.
00:48:24
Speaker
That kind of – it's like the philosophy of be like water.
00:48:29
Speaker
You come and you just form around what's there.
00:48:33
Speaker
And so for me, it was the pandemic.
00:48:37
Speaker
Everybody in front of their screens, why not seize that moment?
00:48:41
Speaker
And then when that runs out, then you've got to be agile and say, okay, maybe we'll do more structured things like a Twitter conference or something.
00:48:48
Speaker
So I'm always looking for it to be agile and to kind of like be like water and form to the extrinsic factors that I find.
00:48:57
Speaker
A ton of praxis, not a bunch of theory.
00:49:00
Speaker
I need – when I build this community, it's like I want to build a community that says here's what you can do tomorrow.
00:49:07
Speaker
Here's a bunch of junk you can walk away with.
00:49:09
Speaker
And if you want to process that and read it, here it is.
00:49:12
Speaker
So that's the other thing.
00:49:13
Speaker
And this is what I've said way back when about –
00:49:17
Speaker
Twitter, that PD that I get in Twitter, Chris, is so much, it's almost like I'm in a practice and theory class every day because I'm learning from other professors, other teachers, other administrators, and that's good.
00:49:29
Speaker
The other thing is to provide support, be generous with suggestions and sharing, and then you have to deal with that final challenge of staying sustainable and relevant because, as you've mentioned,
00:49:43
Speaker
There are a lot of good communities that are out there, but they wither at the roots.
00:49:48
Speaker
And I don't know what it is, but there has to be, I think we talk about this with learning.
00:49:52
Speaker
You build the space, you tend to the soil, you create the conditions for learning to grow.
00:50:00
Speaker
Plants don't grow themselves, but you've got to provide the soil, the fertile area for that plant to grow.
00:50:06
Speaker
So I think it's a lot of tending to the garden when you're building a learning community.
00:50:11
Speaker
But Chris, I have no ownership over – the ungrading hashtag was out there way before – and like you said, it's –
00:50:19
Speaker
From the 1900s, people talk about that.
00:50:20
Speaker
I don't own anything.
00:50:22
Speaker
All I'm doing is carving out a little space in that big umbrella of ungrading that I can kind of mess around with.
00:50:28
Speaker
And it just happened to be that there are some people interested.
00:50:31
Speaker
So that's kind of like my theory is like I have no clue.
00:50:35
Speaker
It's a mystery to me.
00:50:36
Speaker
But I think learning is mysterious too.
00:50:39
Speaker
And that is cool to me, Chris, if I don't know the answers because –
00:50:45
Speaker
I then say to myself, there's so many other possibilities and potentialities that I can investigate and see if they work too.
Conclusion and Encouragement
00:50:52
Speaker
If everything worked the first time, it would be like, okay, been there, done that.
00:50:57
Speaker
But since it doesn't work right all the time, I'm always thinking, should I do more with Pressbook?
00:51:02
Speaker
Should I do, you know, so I'm always thinking to be agile.
00:51:05
Speaker
So those are some of the things I wrote down.
00:51:07
Speaker
I don't know if they help you, but those are kind of like my keys.
00:51:10
Speaker
No, that's awesome.
00:51:11
Speaker
I mean, I think in many ways to build a progressive education movement, you ostensibly are operating a progressive education classroom just with adults, because that's the exact same thing that you do
00:51:23
Speaker
Anyways, you're always constantly mobile and changing and listening and nothing ever like appears right because the second that it's standardized and right, then it's no longer progressive education.
00:51:32
Speaker
So it all feeds into itself.
00:51:34
Speaker
And I can't help but think too about the late Michael Brooks, who said, be ruthless with systems, be kind to people.
00:51:42
Speaker
And that the power and just like
00:51:44
Speaker
It's not that we're upset with anyone or trying to like harm anyone.
00:51:48
Speaker
We just recognize that the system is not working and we're trying to change that thing.
00:51:51
Speaker
And that's about as basic as it is.
00:51:58
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects podcast.
00:52:01
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
00:52:05
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.