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54: Making the Switch to Ungrading (feat. Abigail French, Dr. Susan Blum, and Dr. Laura Gibbs)
18 Plays5 years ago
Today, we're deep diving into ungrading. In episode 5, we looked at the gradeless movement and the pedagogy that surrounds it, and now we're looking at how it's incorporated, and the non-academic benefits of implementing it. To be clear, when I say "ungrading" - I'm referring to the movement away from grades. This doesn't necessarily mean that the class does not issue at grade at all. Typically, this means that grades are as limited as possible, as in one final grade at the end of a year, with opportunities to redo assignments or reach that goal in multiple ways.
Almost every classroom one visits today will have a chart on the syllabus which breaks down grades.
- Homework: 30%
- Tests: 40%
- Classwork: 20%
- Participation: 10%
- With opportunities for extra credit.
First, I don't blame educators for setting things up this way - it's the way it's almost always done. It's the dominant way of thinking about grading. But there are a litany of issues with categorical grades. Does a student who never completes homework really not understand the content, or are they just disobeying instructions to do work at home? If a student never passes a test, but does great in their classwork, are we grading their content knowledge or their anxiety levels?
GUESTS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Abigail French, a veteran public school teacher focusing on sixth grade, whose beginning her journey into ungrading after unrest with the traditional system.
Dr. Susan Blum, an anthropology professor at the University of Notre Dame, author of I Love Learning; I Hate School": An Anthropology of College, who utilizes ungrading in the classroom and is soon publishing a work on gradeless learning.
Dr. Laura Gibbs, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, who teaches mythology and folklore and epics of ancient India . Laura has been teaching these classes online since 2002 which have always been ungraded.
RESOURCES
- Alfie Kohn, “Punished by Rewards” (Discussion)
- Monte Syrie, Project 180
- Teachers Going Gradeless
- Dr. Susan Blum’s website
- Cathy Davidson
- Chapter on Ungrading - Laura Gibbs (from Dr. Susan Blum’s upcoming work)
- Dr. Laura Gibbs’ website
- Dr. Laura Gibbs’ Course Page
- Dr. Laura Gibbs’ Feedback/Mindset resources for students
- Dr. Laura Gibbs’ students’ work
FURTHER LISTENING
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Ungrading
00:00:11
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Season 3, Episode 12 of Things Fall Apart, our podcast and human restoration project.
00:00:18
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm a high school digital media instructor from Ohio.
Why Move Away from Traditional Grading?
00:00:23
Speaker
Today, we're deep diving into ungrading.
00:00:25
Speaker
In Episode 5, we looked at the gradeless movement and the pedagogy that surrounds it, and now we're looking at how it's incorporated and the non-academic benefits of implementing it.
00:00:34
Speaker
To be clear, when I say ungrading, I'm referring to the movement away from grades.
00:00:39
Speaker
This doesn't necessarily mean that the class doesn't issue a grade at all.
00:00:43
Speaker
Typically, this means that grades are as limited as possible, as in there's like one final grade at the end of the year, with opportunities to redo assignments or reach that goal in multiple ways.
Podcast Support and Additional Content
00:00:54
Speaker
I'm so excited to share the messages of our guests today, but first I want to implore you to visit our Patreon page.
00:01:00
Speaker
There, you'll find a place to support this podcast, as well as the free resources that we're creating.
00:01:04
Speaker
For as little as $1 a month, you'll know that you're keeping this endeavor afloat, and plus, you'll get our professional electronic magazine.
00:01:11
Speaker
A few of our patrons who sponsored this podcast are Steve Peterson, Aaron Dowd, and Tim Fox.
00:01:18
Speaker
I'm humbled at your support, and I can't wait to see the experiences that we create together.
Impact of Grading on Student Well-being
00:01:22
Speaker
You can learn more about our Patreon page, as well as find everything about the Human Restoration Project at humanrestorationproject.org, and on Twitter at humerespro.
Flaws in Categorical Grading Systems
00:01:50
Speaker
Almost every classroom one visits today will have a chart on the syllabus which breaks down grades.
00:01:55
Speaker
Homework at 30%, tests at 40%, classwork at 20%, participation at 10% with some opportunities for extra credit.
00:02:02
Speaker
First, I don't blame educators for setting things up this way.
00:02:05
Speaker
It's the way it's almost always been done.
00:02:07
Speaker
It's the dominant way of thinking about grading.
00:02:10
Speaker
But there are a litany of issues with categorical grades.
00:02:13
Speaker
Does a student who never completes homework really not understand the content?
00:02:17
Speaker
Or are they just disobeying instructions to do work at home?
00:02:20
Speaker
If a student never passes a test, but does great in their classwork, are we grading their content knowledge or their anxiety levels?
Grading as a Barrier to Teacher-Student Relationships
00:02:27
Speaker
And further, in addition to all the pedagogical issues with assigning grades, from what we're actually grading to how it affects intrinsic motivation, we're also enacting barriers.
00:02:37
Speaker
When we place these systems within our classroom, we're presenting one more step between us as educators working with students to help them learn.
00:02:45
Speaker
Because now the conversation isn't about helping someone get better, it's about ensuring that the categories are adhered to and scored properly.
00:02:53
Speaker
This system causes a breakdown of the relationship between all of us.
00:02:57
Speaker
I distinctly remember being horrified in an English class, which was one of my better subjects, because although I did great on tasks and assignments, a huge portion of our grade was participation.
00:03:07
Speaker
My teacher met with me with the advice to, uh, talk more, which for someone like me is easier said than done.
00:03:13
Speaker
The anxiety and fear that I felt within that class meant that not only would I get a lower grade than everyone else,
00:03:19
Speaker
But I just simply didn't like the class.
00:03:21
Speaker
I trusted the teacher less, and I didn't learn as much as I should have.
00:03:25
Speaker
And when my Spanish teacher assigned extra credit to make our points back from tests, which I did very poorly on, I would always do the extra credit.
00:03:34
Speaker
And it took a lot of time.
00:03:35
Speaker
And I remember turning in one of these longer assignments only to have it lost by him, and I got into this huge argument that resulted in me receiving his attention.
00:03:44
Speaker
The point is, is that when we create systems, when there are barriers to just learning, we're demotivating students because we're making this hierarchical structure that harms our relationships.
Challenges Teachers Face with Grading Systems
00:03:55
Speaker
The teacher becomes an enforcer rather than a coach.
00:03:58
Speaker
And these experiences are commonplace.
00:04:00
Speaker
Most people have some fond memories of school, but many have negative ones that harm them mentally and emotionally.
00:04:07
Speaker
Some of my worst memories are things that happened at school as a result of my teachers.
00:04:11
Speaker
This isn't to say that I blame teachers for acting this way.
00:04:15
Speaker
I'm blaming the systems that they have created and followed.
00:04:18
Speaker
It wasn't necessarily that my teachers intentionally wanted to cause harm, although I'm sure there are some that do.
00:04:23
Speaker
But in many ways, my teachers were just doing what the system set out to do.
00:04:28
Speaker
If they waiver from the principles set in their syllabus, or perhaps set by school policy, then, well, things fall apart.
00:04:35
Speaker
That's a very uncomfortable and unmanageable situation.
00:04:38
Speaker
If you don't have the pedagogical and instructional support to make these transitions in new systems,
00:04:43
Speaker
then it's going to be very difficult to figure out what to do instead.
Transition to Ungrading: Abigail French's Experience
00:04:47
Speaker
And the guests that I have on today are meant to help you transition to one change in systems, which is ungrading, moving away from the issues that grades cause within the classroom.
00:05:09
Speaker
I am a sixth grade U.S. history teacher at Peter Muhlenberg Middle School in Woodstock, Virginia.
00:05:15
Speaker
I've been back to teaching for about five years.
00:05:18
Speaker
I had a hiatus when I was a stay-at-home mom for about 15 years.
00:05:23
Speaker
And before that, I had an earlier teaching career.
00:05:25
Speaker
I've had the opportunity, like perspective-wise, to really see how things have changed over the last 25 years or so.
00:05:34
Speaker
We're starting off today with Abigail French.
00:05:37
Speaker
Abigail is new to the gradeless movement, but she has noticed firsthand the toll that grades take on classroom outcomes.
00:05:43
Speaker
For years, I have done map activities on the important rivers of the United States.
00:05:49
Speaker
I got out clay, I mean just clay, and I just had to make United States clay maps and lay out the rivers.
00:05:56
Speaker
And there was the connection between physically manipulating things and placing them that connected those rivers in space and time on that map for those kids that a piece of paper and a pencil or colored pencils never got for them.
00:06:11
Speaker
I never had success
00:06:13
Speaker
When I went around and had kids actually show it to me, they knew it.
00:06:18
Speaker
And it stayed within the whole year.
00:06:20
Speaker
I mean, I'm fascinated by the connection between the best learning processes, I guess, is what I'm thinking of.
00:06:29
Speaker
We did a lot of different ways for kids to show their understanding of whatever it was was our topic projects.
00:06:37
Speaker
But throughout this time period, what I started realizing was
00:06:41
Speaker
it wasn't grades at all that were motivating my kids.
00:06:44
Speaker
In fact, those were like the least, nobody was thinking about points.
00:06:47
Speaker
Nobody was thinking about
00:06:49
Speaker
grades, they were thinking about doing the best that they could possibly do either individually or in the groups with whatever project or problem-based project that we were exploring and looking at.
00:07:00
Speaker
They were bought in.
00:07:02
Speaker
So there was no, you know, having to like twist them on, get your assignment in, get your grade up.
00:07:08
Speaker
It just wasn't like that.
00:07:10
Speaker
It became this whole culture really of kids excited about what they were doing.
00:07:14
Speaker
And so that's what has propelled me.
00:07:17
Speaker
And you know, the typical counterpoint to what you're saying is that many of our students need extrinsic motivate or succeed.
00:07:24
Speaker
As in, if they don't have grades, they're not going to do anything because they lack intrinsic motivation.
00:07:30
Speaker
Well, I don't buy it at all.
00:07:31
Speaker
I think it's bunk and goes against everything I've seen in actual practice.
00:07:35
Speaker
Are there situations, are there kids that are extremely driven by, you know, whether it's competition or whether it's parents or whether it's their own needs,
00:07:46
Speaker
at the very top of a measurement, sir.
00:07:48
Speaker
And I think grade level also would impact that a little bit because I'm in sixth grade.
00:07:53
Speaker
It's middle school.
00:07:54
Speaker
I mean, if there's a place to go grade list and tap into student intrinsic motivation, tap into their love of learning, tap into their curiosity, it's middle school.
00:08:05
Speaker
It's all about social.
00:08:07
Speaker
It's all about development.
00:08:09
Speaker
And I know that there, I've listened to a lot and read about going gradeless at the high school.
00:08:14
Speaker
And I think there are certain places where there still needs to be rankings, I guess, or does there, I don't know, but it gets more tricky at the high school level for sure.
Systemic Changes for Effective Ungrading
00:08:24
Speaker
Sure.
00:08:24
Speaker
And it's, it's really about aligning our practice from analyzing what strategies we can use to instead, what systems can we change?
00:08:32
Speaker
We had Dr. Richard Wilkinson on a few podcasts back.
00:08:36
Speaker
And his work, along with Dr. Kate Pickett, who co-authors with him, is how on seeing systems create inequitable outcomes, and it makes it worse for everyone, whether that be in economics or in academics.
00:08:48
Speaker
When we're branded by this grade within the classroom, whether we're doing well or not, that competitive model makes us feel bad about what we're doing.
00:08:57
Speaker
And it shifts our focus from learning to just being entirely on that mark, whether or not that's subconscious or we're actively thinking about it.
00:09:05
Speaker
I have a learning disability and it was identified when I was in middle school and I explained a lot of heartache and heart difficulties with school when I was a little girl.
00:09:17
Speaker
But I had a fantastic teacher, a special ed teacher, and she worked with me and I learned how to accommodate it and coping mechanisms and all different things.
00:09:26
Speaker
I learned how to study.
00:09:27
Speaker
I learned how I learned and I learned how to advocate for myself with teachers or professors in college or whatever.
Personal Story: Learning Disabilities and Grades
00:09:34
Speaker
That was amazing.
00:09:35
Speaker
incredibly transformative experience for me.
00:09:38
Speaker
Definitely impacts the teacher that I am.
00:09:41
Speaker
In high school, because of the learning disability and during that particular time period, while I was kind of getting it by its tail, my grades were all over the place.
00:09:50
Speaker
I would focus on an area that I was worried, anxious about it, like I wanted to improve it or I wanted to keep it.
00:09:56
Speaker
So I'd really focus on, let's say, math or chemistry.
00:10:00
Speaker
And then other areas, I suddenly was kind of letting the pressure off a little bit so I could focus on that one area, and they would head downwards.
00:10:10
Speaker
So then it was a constant, constant, never felt secure, never felt like I had.
00:10:15
Speaker
And the pressure, I didn't want to be seen as getting bad grades or not being able to keep up.
00:10:22
Speaker
To be honest, I felt smarter than a lot of the people that I couldn't keep up with with grades.
00:10:27
Speaker
It was extremely difficult and it was really hard.
00:10:31
Speaker
And I felt a lot of shame.
00:10:33
Speaker
I felt a lot of shame for my parents.
00:10:35
Speaker
I felt that for my teachers because I knew they were trying, but why couldn't I just
00:10:40
Speaker
come through with the mark, always been about the mark.
00:10:43
Speaker
And my whole childhood education is really defined about that freaking grade at the end of the six weeks.
00:10:51
Speaker
And that what they left me with carrying that weight.
00:10:56
Speaker
And I think like, I love learning.
00:10:59
Speaker
I love exploring.
00:11:00
Speaker
I love nature.
00:11:00
Speaker
I love reading.
00:11:02
Speaker
I love learning from people.
00:11:03
Speaker
I'm like, I'm a really good learner.
00:11:07
Speaker
And it was about killed.
00:11:09
Speaker
out of me because of a system.
00:11:11
Speaker
I don't want that to ever happen to a student in my class.
00:11:16
Speaker
I don't care about their grade.
00:11:18
Speaker
I care about their learning.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:20
Speaker
And I think it's important that we highlight our teachers who make a difference in our lives, but we don't avoid those conversations of the negative impact that school can have.
00:11:30
Speaker
You know, we owe it to our students to reflect on and do better based off the harm that school can cause as it did to us.
00:11:37
Speaker
I know that as a teacher, I've accidentally or perhaps intentionally by the systems I've designed and operated in, I've caused harm to students, which obviously isn't my prerogative.
00:11:47
Speaker
And for the vast majority, it isn't.
00:11:48
Speaker
But if we don't talk about the negatives of our schooling experience and then work to solve those things, we're just continuing that narrative.
00:11:55
Speaker
It's very real.
00:11:57
Speaker
And in a lot of ways, it's really messed up.
00:12:01
Speaker
And it's not what is best for kids and their social, emotional selves.
00:12:07
Speaker
at all.
00:12:07
Speaker
It goes against it.
00:12:08
Speaker
When I was in second grade, this is one of the biggest moments, if I had to have five moments that I told you about in my education, that was impactful to me.
00:12:19
Speaker
I hadn't remembered to do a math worksheet, you know, from our workbook.
00:12:24
Speaker
And I wanted to please the teacher so badly.
00:12:28
Speaker
I didn't want to let her down.
00:12:30
Speaker
And I remember we were supposed to turn in our math worksheet to the inbox.
00:12:36
Speaker
And then after it was graded, it'd be waiting for us in our outbox.
00:12:40
Speaker
Okay, so I knew I didn't have the math worksheet.
00:12:44
Speaker
You know, I panicked and I'm seven years old and I go up to the inbox with my pencil and I take Barbara's, Barbara Janney, the smartest girl in the class.
00:12:56
Speaker
I take her paper and I quickly erase her name and put Abby on it and I turn it in.
00:13:03
Speaker
And the next day, Abby's paper's there with a hundred dollars.
00:13:06
Speaker
And I am so freaking happy.
00:13:10
Speaker
I am so happy.
00:13:12
Speaker
I feel so good.
00:13:13
Speaker
That's the grade I'm supposed to get.
00:13:15
Speaker
That's the paper I was supposed to turn in.
00:13:17
Speaker
Quickly, it was discovered.
00:13:19
Speaker
Quickly, very quickly because Barbara didn't have her paper and I suddenly had my... And I was mortified.
00:13:25
Speaker
The teacher called me out on it.
00:13:26
Speaker
She took me to the principal's office.
00:13:28
Speaker
I had a conversation with the principal.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I basically just said, I don't care what you do to me.
00:13:34
Speaker
At seven years old, I don't care what you do to me.
00:13:36
Speaker
Please don't send this home to my parents.
00:13:37
Speaker
Please don't.
00:13:39
Speaker
Please, I learned the lesson.
00:13:40
Speaker
I won't ever do that again, which I altered report card grades on my report cards.
00:13:45
Speaker
I also got caught.
00:13:47
Speaker
It was just awful experiences with grades, and it didn't show what I knew either.
00:13:54
Speaker
It didn't show that I knew how to do a lot of the stuff.
00:13:57
Speaker
It just was a horrible cycle.
00:13:59
Speaker
And I know that's personal to me, but the shame that goes along with those moments, I'm 48 years old, Chris, and I can feel it now.
00:14:08
Speaker
And that story, I think, can be related to the systems that we build.
00:14:11
Speaker
Because of the position you found yourself in, being judged and ranked according to others, you start to build up this tendency to get ahead and you're being, well, like narcissistic.
00:14:22
Speaker
Those who do really well in the system have a tendency to become narcissists.
00:14:26
Speaker
I mean, the whole cultural norm of capitalism is getting ahead, which is often at the expense of others.
00:14:32
Speaker
So it should be no surprise that our schooling system, because of this grading system and many other issues, promote individualism and competitiveness, but not so much teamwork or community building.
00:14:44
Speaker
That's reflected in how we rank individuals as well as how we rank our schools.
00:14:48
Speaker
And as a result, the hidden curriculum is teaching undesirable things.
00:14:52
Speaker
It's certainly a way different situation, but when I was in eighth grade in my social studies class, I remember I was working on this poster project with one of my friends, and our other group member wasn't there that day.
00:15:04
Speaker
So we did like roughly two thirds of the work.
00:15:07
Speaker
And in my opinion, it was pretty good in comparison to what everybody else had.
00:15:10
Speaker
So in the last 20 minutes or so of class, we decided that we were going to put it away and wait for our other groomer to come back because she, um,
00:15:18
Speaker
She had the information for the rest of the project.
00:15:20
Speaker
So I took out a book that I was going to read.
00:15:22
Speaker
And my teacher flipped out.
00:15:24
Speaker
I mean, like, he threw something against the board
Feedback-Driven Classroom Transition
00:15:27
Speaker
and it shaked and he screamed at me and my friend and told us to come out in the hallway.
00:15:31
Speaker
And he basically military-style interrogated us on why we weren't doing anything.
00:15:36
Speaker
And we, you know, we tried to explain it, but obviously that didn't matter.
00:15:39
Speaker
And me being a quiet, nerdy kid who rarely spoke up, I got my first attention ever that day.
00:15:46
Speaker
Now...
00:15:47
Speaker
You know, maybe the teacher was trying to teach us to work harder or not waste time or something like that.
00:15:52
Speaker
But for me, even as an adult, I reflect on that memory thinking that I got in trouble for working smart.
00:15:59
Speaker
and caring about my classmates' opinion, and ultimately for reading a book.
00:16:03
Speaker
I remember my mom picked me up that day, and I broke down crying in the car because it bothered me so much.
00:16:10
Speaker
I mean, it was a standout moment in my educational experience.
00:16:15
Speaker
So partially, these issues like this are caused by grades and the performative aspect of school.
00:16:23
Speaker
I know you're just getting started in your gradeless journey, but could you talk more about what this looks like for you?
00:16:28
Speaker
I am just getting into it.
00:16:30
Speaker
And I feel really fortunate.
00:16:32
Speaker
I am in a work situation in a building with an administrator.
00:16:36
Speaker
My principal, I feel a lot of... I send articles to him or podcasts.
00:16:40
Speaker
And I'm like, you want to understand me and my thinking?
00:16:43
Speaker
You have to listen to this or read this.
00:16:46
Speaker
This is what I want to do.
00:16:47
Speaker
And then he'll shoot back with, you know, okay, here, I just came across this.
00:16:52
Speaker
Read this.
00:16:52
Speaker
You're going to like it.
00:16:53
Speaker
But right now, I'm in a... I guess I would call it kind of a hybrid.
00:16:57
Speaker
I still am giving...
00:16:58
Speaker
grades.
00:16:59
Speaker
Last year, I still gave grades when I had to, but nothing felt right about it.
00:17:04
Speaker
Nothing felt like what I measured in terms of seeing the kids learning and interacting with them and conferencing with them on a daily basis.
00:17:14
Speaker
And that is where I struggle because I want to be able to translate that into a grade that feels really authentic from my perspective of their learning and theirs, but mostly theirs because I think that's where the value is.
00:17:28
Speaker
You know, this stone gradeless chat that we've been in a little bit talking about, that's been so helpful to me.
00:17:34
Speaker
I know that what I need to focus on this year is a feedback-driven class.
00:17:39
Speaker
And that's going to be my focus.
00:17:41
Speaker
That's going to be my goal is to find opportunities and ways to increase both the feedback that's going to be given to the kids, my feedback or peer feedback, but also then I want theirs too.
00:17:54
Speaker
And I want to develop them in giving good quality.
00:17:58
Speaker
feedback to others and self-assessment.
00:18:01
Speaker
So that is my focus this year.
00:18:04
Speaker
Very true.
00:18:04
Speaker
And the way you speak of this is similar to how I tackle gradeless learning starting off.
00:18:08
Speaker
I think it's important to communicate that when we say gradeless learning or ungrading, it doesn't mean that we're getting rid of every single grade in our class.
00:18:16
Speaker
I mean, that sounds very odd.
00:18:18
Speaker
That is the endgame goal.
00:18:20
Speaker
But most of us aren't in an easy position to change school policy, let alone college admission policy.
00:18:26
Speaker
So what we're doing is we're breaking down the barriers between grades and learning as much as we possibly can.
00:18:33
Speaker
like having one grade that's negotiated on at the end, or maybe letting students self-assess and then conferencing with them.
00:18:39
Speaker
It's about transitioning that language of grades to a language of learning, then pushing that further and further every single year.
00:18:45
Speaker
So what ideas are you thinking of incorporating to reduce the usage of grades?
00:18:49
Speaker
I want to keep the student, what I spoke of earlier about their motivation and their interest and their buying
Promoting Student Self-Direction through Portfolios
00:18:58
Speaker
up.
00:18:58
Speaker
It's going to come from them having...
00:19:00
Speaker
some self-direction and choosing like where they go with things in projects and choosing their evidence, their piece, their artifact, their evidence of their learning for me or to show whoever, if it's a parent, they are going to create a portfolio of sorts that showcase that.
00:19:17
Speaker
That's my rough outline for how I'm going to do it because I need to show and they need to know that they've had growth.
00:19:24
Speaker
And that's really important.
00:19:26
Speaker
The feedback part of that is typically I know how I'm going to start out my year.
00:19:30
Speaker
I'm actually borrowing this idea from Mayor Servanak, who has a podcast that she spoke directly about feedback, and I loved her idea.
00:19:39
Speaker
When I'm getting my sixth graders, these are brand new sixth graders coming to middle school.
00:19:43
Speaker
I don't think that they are well-developed.
00:19:47
Speaker
And this whole giving and receiving feedback.
00:19:50
Speaker
In fact, I don't even think adults are really great at that.
00:19:52
Speaker
I think like we very rarely have to deal with that as adults.
00:19:56
Speaker
And when we do, it's difficult.
00:19:58
Speaker
I mean, summative evaluations and the conference after, I don't care how well I think I nailed something or if I know it's going to be a good conversation.
00:20:06
Speaker
I'm still a nervous wreck.
00:20:08
Speaker
My brand new sixth graders, my 11-year-olds coming in, I want to let them warm up to this feedback thing.
00:20:14
Speaker
And I think the best way to do that is by giving them the chance to give me feedback so that I can model how to receive it and walk them through how to give it.
00:20:24
Speaker
how to give quality feedback, how to speak to the person you're giving the feedback to.
00:20:29
Speaker
Those things are really big at sixth grade.
00:20:31
Speaker
I have to develop that in them before they can go through the rest of middle school and into high school being able to do that.
00:20:37
Speaker
So I see it as a really great opportunity to do that.
00:20:40
Speaker
I think by them critiquing me, the pressure is not directly on them right from the start.
00:20:46
Speaker
They get to warm up to it.
00:20:47
Speaker
So on Fridays, I'm going to have them do a review.
00:20:51
Speaker
And they're going to fill out probably a Google form or some sort of product to critique how the week went.
00:20:57
Speaker
What did you like about my teaching?
00:20:59
Speaker
What did you like about the lesson?
00:21:00
Speaker
What did you like about your learning?
00:21:02
Speaker
What can we do better?
00:21:04
Speaker
And then eventually we're going to start as we get into projects or different points.
00:21:09
Speaker
Then we'll turn the focus.
00:21:11
Speaker
Then I'll give them feedback and critique what they're doing.
00:21:14
Speaker
I've learned so much from Aaron, Teachers Going Graylist.
00:21:17
Speaker
He's been so helpful to me.
00:21:19
Speaker
And
00:21:20
Speaker
has shared a lot of resources so that I've got some things to go off of.
00:21:24
Speaker
Yeah, Teachers Going Gradeless is a great resource for those that are making this work happen inside their classrooms.
00:21:29
Speaker
And it just feels so good to realize that you can make these systems work
00:21:33
Speaker
within almost any classroom and school district.
00:21:36
Speaker
You don't have to worry about that cognitive dissonance of doing something that you know is wrong, but you don't really know how to change it.
00:21:44
Speaker
And when you have gradeless learning, you can feel compelled to work on projects, and then that builds into critical pedagogy.
00:21:49
Speaker
All these systems tie together once you start going down that path.
00:21:53
Speaker
I finally feel like my head and heart are aligned, that so much of what I needed when I was a kid
00:22:02
Speaker
And so much of what I believe in as an educator working with these kids every day, so much is now there's synergy and there's this connectedness.
00:22:13
Speaker
And a lot of it is because it pulls all these parts together because they require it for the whole.
00:22:19
Speaker
And the research is there, too.
00:22:21
Speaker
I mean, it's not like we're making this stuff up to make ourselves feel good.
00:22:23
Speaker
There's an ample amount of backup.
00:22:26
Speaker
It's almost surreal.
00:22:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I appreciate the Human Restoration Project's focus on sharing that research and sharing the data that supports this because it is there and it's overwhelmingly there.
Building Relationships and Empathy
00:22:40
Speaker
That kind of brings me to my other piece that underlying everything that I want to do this year, probably the most significant change that I made.
00:22:48
Speaker
It was really one of the most simple, simple things that I ever have done in my practice.
00:22:56
Speaker
that had the biggest impact.
00:22:58
Speaker
And it was simply by starting every class.
00:23:02
Speaker
Every day we sit down on the floor, my sixth graders and me, we sit down and we have like a general just kind of check-in.
00:23:10
Speaker
And we, I say a rose and a thorn, but other people use a smiling and a frowny face or whatever, a check-in.
00:23:17
Speaker
And it's not demanded.
00:23:18
Speaker
It's not, if people want to pass, they don't have to.
00:23:21
Speaker
But it's a chance to share something positive, something negative.
00:23:24
Speaker
Most often, it's just in general, like what's going on in your life?
00:23:28
Speaker
Talk to me or if you have something you want to share.
00:23:31
Speaker
And we share that.
00:23:32
Speaker
And it builds this relationship with the kids, with me, between them, mostly.
00:23:37
Speaker
Empathy increased.
00:23:40
Speaker
Happy, joyful celebrations increased.
00:23:43
Speaker
Care for someone when it's a negative increased.
00:23:47
Speaker
The working relationships, how that translated then to what we do in school, like with our content and our projects, was just unbelievable because there was this connection.
00:24:00
Speaker
That speaks to the SELP kind of underlies what we do.
00:24:04
Speaker
And it was a single little tiny five minutes at the beginning of class.
00:24:08
Speaker
It was a routine.
00:24:09
Speaker
And it was something that even when I wasn't at school, a substitute would leave me a note, hey, your kids wanted to do...
00:24:16
Speaker
a rose and thorn activity today.
00:24:19
Speaker
So I let them do it.
00:24:20
Speaker
To me, that... And I got this idea from Monty Sayri, his block 180.
00:24:26
Speaker
He's an incredible person, teacher to follow.
00:24:30
Speaker
And I just have learned so much from him.
00:24:33
Speaker
And I think that that started really, for me, that started everything.
00:24:37
Speaker
Right, and educators who are working together to solve these issues, they can see that they're solving problems outside and beyond their classroom as well.
00:24:45
Speaker
When we change our grading policy to be cooperative, to make one care about someone else succeeding, and then we build these communities together where we share how we feel and what we value,
00:24:56
Speaker
That has ramifications to our society and building, and it sounds really hokey, but preparing for a better future, fostering better learners, so to speak.
00:25:05
Speaker
But how we feel and treat others is much more realistic and useful than preparing for a certain skill set or to be, quote unquote, academically rigorous.
00:25:15
Speaker
We have this one part that we can hopefully impact and change for the betterment in education.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah, life is much broader, but...
00:25:25
Speaker
If we can actually change parts of the system and also, in addition to,
Support for Free Educational Resources
00:25:30
Speaker
help kids self-regulate and navigate in a better way, then that's so powerful.
00:25:45
Speaker
I hope you're enjoying the podcast thus far.
00:25:47
Speaker
I sincerely appreciate you listening in.
00:25:49
Speaker
And if you enjoy this work, please head over to human restoration project.org to find our free resources and a wealth of writings.
00:25:58
Speaker
And then if you think we should keep going and take a gander over at our Patreon page for $1 a month, you'll receive a professional print ready electronic magazine of our works every two months.
00:26:09
Speaker
But as always, all of our work is available free online.
Higher Education Perspective on Ungrading: Dr. Susan Bloom
00:26:18
Speaker
Next, Dr. Susan Bloom is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame whose upcoming work focuses on ungrading.
00:26:25
Speaker
I have training in cultural, linguistic, psychological anthropology, which sort of brought me to my study of education, but in a kind of roundabout way, I started my career studying China.
00:26:40
Speaker
I was interested in truth and deception, which led me to a study of plagiarism in China, but also in the U.S., which led me to a study of education.
00:26:50
Speaker
What are people doing here?
00:26:51
Speaker
Why is plagiarism a kind of rational, not that I endorse it, but a rational solution to a problem, which might be how to get something done really fast that you don't care about, which led me to wonder what is going on with school in general in the context of
00:27:10
Speaker
childhood, adulthood, growing up, what kinds of values we have as a society.
00:27:15
Speaker
So I've written quite a bit now on higher education.
00:27:19
Speaker
I have two books out and I'm working on a third, but I've also got this interest in ungrading, which is why you're talking to me.
00:27:29
Speaker
But that grew out of my dissatisfaction with a lot of things that were happening in classrooms and
00:27:36
Speaker
that seemed to be only about school, but not about learning.
00:27:39
Speaker
So I've been trying now in my own teaching to improve the structures so that I focus entirely on learning and don't focus at all on control, coercion, and those kinds of things.
00:27:55
Speaker
I've been influenced
00:27:57
Speaker
as probably many people you'll talk to have been, by Alfie Cohen and his work, Punished by Rewards.
00:28:03
Speaker
I keep that as a kind of Bible as I try to think through what am I doing?
00:28:07
Speaker
Why am I doing it?
00:28:08
Speaker
What am I really doing?
00:28:09
Speaker
What are the outcomes?
00:28:11
Speaker
And all of that has led me to a focus on grading.
00:28:15
Speaker
So there's a book coming out next year, we hope, on grading.
00:28:19
Speaker
It's a collection of 13 chapters plus an introduction to
00:28:25
Speaker
And I've just gotten the editor's reports and they encourage me to have some kind of conclusion.
00:28:30
Speaker
So I may be also getting a conclusion.
00:28:33
Speaker
And as a professor, you utilize ungrading.
00:28:35
Speaker
Could you talk a little bit about what that looks like for you and how you've adapted these practices for your classroom?
00:28:41
Speaker
I think it's in some sense the same problem in higher ed as in other levels of education.
00:28:47
Speaker
And I'm so committed to that, that I have five chapters in the ungrading book
00:28:52
Speaker
from people who are not in higher ed, even though it's in a series on teaching and learning in higher education.
00:28:58
Speaker
So I think that all of us who are involved in the project of education are grappling with the same issues.
00:29:04
Speaker
My own experience has mostly been in higher education, so I'll talk about that.
00:29:09
Speaker
It's to really remind students that, yes, they're here for all kinds of reasons and there are all kinds of consequences, but one of them surely has to be learning and learning.
00:29:21
Speaker
If we focus on that and what that means for each student, which might not be the same thing for every student, then they're willing to take risks and they're willing to take mistakes as information or as experience rather than something that will doom them to some sort of future, perhaps not even admitted to medical school.
00:29:43
Speaker
I was trying at first not to talk about grades.
00:29:47
Speaker
Actually, at first, I tried to tell them, don't think about your grade, which makes them think about their grade.
00:29:54
Speaker
Then I tried not talking about grades, but I still gave them.
00:29:59
Speaker
Finally, three years ago, I encountered Starr Saxton's book,
00:30:03
Speaker
a hacking assessment, which is how to go gradeless in a conventional graded system.
00:30:09
Speaker
And that gave me the courage to not give grades at all.
00:30:14
Speaker
It wasn't that I kept them secret.
00:30:15
Speaker
It wasn't that I didn't talk about them.
00:30:17
Speaker
There just weren't grades, which isn't to say there isn't a lot of assessment.
00:30:21
Speaker
There's a lot of assessment because I'm trying really ultimately to make what's happening in the classroom more like life, more like life outside the classroom.
00:30:32
Speaker
And in real life, we learn things, we try things, sometimes they're better, sometimes they're worse, and that's okay.
00:30:41
Speaker
We don't expect perfection out of everybody with everything they do all the time.
00:30:47
Speaker
And so in that sense, there's not a single scale in real life.
00:30:52
Speaker
Are you
00:30:53
Speaker
the best plumber there is.
00:30:55
Speaker
I know now we can go onto websites and we can rate plumbers and we can rate therapists and we can rate doctors and restaurants, but is a Japanese restaurant better than an Italian restaurant?
00:31:09
Speaker
You know, there's no single scale in real life.
00:31:12
Speaker
And so there doesn't need to be a single scale in the learning that happens in a classroom.
00:31:18
Speaker
And finally, I
00:31:20
Speaker
With all of the kinds of self-assessment and then reflection that students do and I do back to them, there's a lot of information and a lot of feedback which people learn from.
00:31:31
Speaker
And all kinds of research shows that when you put a grade on an assignment, even if you also give comments, students fixate on the grade and they almost never really pay much attention to the comments, except as they see them as justifying the grade.
00:31:50
Speaker
But if you don't put a grade on, then they'll read the comments.
00:31:53
Speaker
And that's really what I want.
00:31:55
Speaker
What does this all then look like when your peers see this in practice?
00:31:59
Speaker
Mostly I've spoken with high school and middle school educators on this podcast, but not a professor.
00:32:05
Speaker
A lot of people are curious about it.
00:32:08
Speaker
I've had a couple people ask for help.
00:32:11
Speaker
Maybe they could do a little piece of it or something.
00:32:15
Speaker
I've heard of a couple colleagues, maybe not in my own department, but who are trying it themselves.
00:32:20
Speaker
But then other people say, yeah, that's all fine, but I have to wait till I get tenure before I can try something risky.
00:32:27
Speaker
And then other people disregard it because it really changes the
00:32:32
Speaker
the entire way you relate to students and how you think about everything.
00:32:36
Speaker
And it's a lot of work.
00:32:37
Speaker
And it's a lot of work to do it.
00:32:39
Speaker
It's a lot of work to think about how to do it.
00:32:41
Speaker
And not everybody has the time or energy to fixate on pedagogy.
00:32:47
Speaker
So I've had people argue about it, but what about medical school?
00:32:52
Speaker
What about graduate school?
00:32:54
Speaker
What about the real implications of this?
00:32:57
Speaker
Certainly, we have to tell people where they stand.
00:33:02
Speaker
I argue that my whole life purpose can't be preparing my students for the next level of schooling.
00:33:10
Speaker
That can't be what four years is.
00:33:13
Speaker
40 courses is all about, although it often is.
00:33:16
Speaker
And I think it's hard for people to really understand what gradeless looks like in practice.
00:33:21
Speaker
Like they might understand the pedagogy or what tools there are, but they don't really grasp how transformative this can be.
00:33:29
Speaker
In your experience, what has gradeless learning done for your class?
00:33:33
Speaker
It's made teaching so much more joyful.
00:33:37
Speaker
It's made the relationships with my students much more honest.
00:33:41
Speaker
They're not trying to play me, I think.
00:33:45
Speaker
I mean, I may be wrong.
00:33:46
Speaker
I've written a book about deception, so it could be that they are.
00:33:50
Speaker
But they are not trying to go through the game of school.
00:33:54
Speaker
They're not trying to lie about why they're not in class.
00:33:58
Speaker
I've actually...
00:33:59
Speaker
I keep tweaking almost every element of my classes.
00:34:02
Speaker
So this past year, for the first time, I've stopped taking attendance.
00:34:06
Speaker
But I still, because I have a relationship with the students and they have relationships to each other, and I try to foster a community of learners, they have a responsibility to be there.
00:34:17
Speaker
So if they're not there, they explain it.
00:34:21
Speaker
But they don't lie to me.
00:34:22
Speaker
If they tell me
00:34:24
Speaker
I just was really tired because I had to do X. I had to prepare for the MCAT or something.
00:34:32
Speaker
I'd so much prefer that.
00:34:34
Speaker
than them saying, oh, I was taking care of my roommate who was sick or some kind of story.
00:34:39
Speaker
So there's that.
00:34:42
Speaker
I've had students be so much more honest about what they're doing, why they're doing it, how much effort they've put into it.
00:34:49
Speaker
They're not all putting on a game, playing this game of trying to look engaged if they're not engaged.
00:34:56
Speaker
I accept that not everything is engaging for every student every minute of the day.
00:35:02
Speaker
I have found
00:35:03
Speaker
Students have so much more fun.
00:35:06
Speaker
They try a lot of different formats for producing their work.
00:35:10
Speaker
They sometimes don't do a great job with everything and that's okay.
00:35:15
Speaker
They then start to feel a little bit more ownership of the class and of their learning.
00:35:21
Speaker
They're willing to suggest things rather than simply following the checklist that I provide them.
00:35:27
Speaker
And that's exactly what I want.
00:35:29
Speaker
My dream is...
00:35:31
Speaker
what happened to Kathy Davidson, my dream is that the students would take over and they would just say, this is what we want to learn.
00:35:38
Speaker
This is how we want to learn it.
00:35:39
Speaker
This is why, this is what's going to happen.
00:35:43
Speaker
And then they just say, we're so committed to learning that this is all we can think about.
00:35:50
Speaker
I have had students say, I got so absorbed in this project, I forgot it was for school.
00:35:56
Speaker
And I can't think of anything that makes me happier than that.
00:36:00
Speaker
Exactly.
00:36:01
Speaker
That willingness to learn, the intrinsic motivation that our students have to learn in a classroom that cares about them is a fact that we can't pass up.
00:36:08
Speaker
There's this negative viewpoint of students that are always trying to game the system or that they hate school and you have to manipulate them to control them.
00:36:17
Speaker
This is all a recipe for disaster.
00:36:20
Speaker
If you're planning your class without trusting students, the structure you're building is going to lead them to not trust you.
00:36:27
Speaker
The words and practices we use, especially when we're initially developing our relationships with students, has serious effects on how they view us and the value of learning within our class.
00:36:36
Speaker
If we set up the situation like they're doing something wrong, or we think that they're going to do something wrong if we don't control them, it shouldn't be shocking that they don't trust us in return.
Building Trust and Addressing Privilege in Education
00:36:46
Speaker
And trust is key to learning.
00:36:47
Speaker
We have to model the behavior that we expect.
00:36:50
Speaker
And so if we're going to encourage learners to be more cooperative and trusting towards one another and build a community and focus on soft skills, then we have to have a classroom where we are building that place where these things flourish.
00:37:01
Speaker
And I also want to talk about, too, there's an element of privilege there as well, because those that have the most resources tend to send their schools that do focus on all these things like cooperation and soft skills.
00:37:14
Speaker
The most expensive schools tend to be progressive, like Montessori schools, and they have really small class sizes.
00:37:20
Speaker
And, I mean, that's just interesting in and of itself because, you know, people say they want the best possible outcomes for their children.
00:37:27
Speaker
But then you look at the most rich and powerful people and they're sending their students to progressive schools.
00:37:32
Speaker
Like I think of like Elon Musk who has like five kids in this design-focused school.
00:37:37
Speaker
And so, you know, there's also those that aren't privileged.
00:37:40
Speaker
And their variation of these quote-unquote elite schools is very rigid and it drills academics.
00:37:48
Speaker
And one more thing dealing with privilege.
00:37:50
Speaker
Those who are very privileged, who have support networks and have financial resources and just attend your average everyday school and their children receive the highest grades and have great test scores, they also have a hard time understanding why everyone can't get an A or they don't understand why grades might not be working because their student is doing well with their extensive support network.
00:38:13
Speaker
I hope so.
00:38:14
Speaker
You know, one of the things that really concerns me is the mental health of the students.
00:38:19
Speaker
Of course, our society, anthropologists and other social scientists talk about neoliberalism and the fact individualism, focus on competition and all of that, foster a sense of self-absorption, but also anxiety because you're just one failure away from disaster every minute of the day.
00:38:41
Speaker
So if failure is not the threat all the time, then it does release students to
00:38:47
Speaker
follow their curiosity, which I believe everybody has.
00:38:51
Speaker
I have to just make a little aside here and say that I love the name of your project, the Human Restoration Project.
00:38:58
Speaker
I think that's just so beautiful.
00:39:00
Speaker
And we clearly need it in school and out of school.
00:39:04
Speaker
But at least for those of us who are in education, our sphere is education.
00:39:09
Speaker
And so that's where we try to have an effect
00:39:12
Speaker
Back to the question about privilege, certainly students at places like Notre Dame, where I teach, are very privileged.
00:39:19
Speaker
Not all of them come from economically privileged backgrounds.
00:39:24
Speaker
We have first-generation students.
00:39:26
Speaker
We have students who...
00:39:28
Speaker
come from other countries, not all the children of professionals.
00:39:33
Speaker
We have increasing numbers of people of color, people from minoritized backgrounds.
00:39:39
Speaker
But generally speaking, anyone who gets into Notre Dame has been able to figure out how to play the system.
00:39:46
Speaker
And so they're very good at it.
00:39:48
Speaker
So I think the biggest pushback I've had has been from a handful of students over the three years that I've implemented the ungrading.
Resistance to Ungrading: Student Perspectives
00:39:57
Speaker
because they see teaching is grading.
00:40:01
Speaker
School is getting graded.
00:40:03
Speaker
They don't see that there's any sort of contradiction between those.
00:40:08
Speaker
And they kind of see grading as the raison d'être of going to school.
00:40:12
Speaker
And so if I take that away, I had a student once tell me when I wanted the students to organize some of the discussion, why don't I just do it?
00:40:22
Speaker
Isn't that my job?
00:40:24
Speaker
I can understand that that's all they've ever known.
00:40:28
Speaker
But showing them another way, I think really prepares them much better for life than giving them a constant checklist.
00:40:36
Speaker
So students, yes, they're privileged and they probably do have fewer barriers and everything.
00:40:42
Speaker
But sometime in their life, they're going to encounter a situation where nobody tells them what to do and they're going to have to figure that out.
00:40:52
Speaker
So I'm trying to give them some practice in that.
00:40:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I think all of this builds into a great need for just re-evaluating how we do assessment in schools.
00:41:02
Speaker
Just to throw this out there, is there greater autonomy for professors who are looking to go gradeless?
00:41:07
Speaker
This might be some ignorance on my part, but it's difficult for many K-12 educators to attempt gradeless learning just because they're worried about how administrators might look at them or how peers might judge them.
00:41:19
Speaker
But to me, it seems like professors have way more leeway in whatever it is that they do.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yes, mostly.
00:41:25
Speaker
I mean, there are accreditation agencies which sometimes try to assess what's happening.
00:41:32
Speaker
An assessment in the colleges has been driven in part by the accreditation process.
00:41:37
Speaker
But there have been schools like Hampshire College and Evergreen State and formerly Santa Cruz that were grade free.
00:41:48
Speaker
But yes, certainly private schools have a lot of leeway to determine how they do things.
00:41:54
Speaker
But there's also the scale question.
00:41:57
Speaker
And a lot of things are connected.
00:41:59
Speaker
Financial aid is often tied up with how many credit hours you're taking and making progress toward degree and having a certain GPA and eligibility in sports is dependent on those things, too.
00:42:12
Speaker
So there are a lot of things that really aren't part of the educational mission that
00:42:17
Speaker
do ride on conventional metrics.
00:42:22
Speaker
And so a school that wants to cast off some of these conventional metrics may then have to be a lot smaller and have to have other kinds of funding.
00:42:34
Speaker
In one of the questions that you sent me in advance, you asked about a future that might have more authentic learning.
00:42:44
Speaker
And there's kind of
00:42:46
Speaker
the aspirational future and the actual future that I foresee.
00:42:49
Speaker
And, you know, in some sense, what we're probably going to see is more of the same, but with fewer players, because a lot of small regional colleges are folding and a lot of small liberal arts colleges are folding, but there is still room for innovation.
00:43:07
Speaker
And I use the word innovation in scare quotes because I have trouble with the idea that everything should be innovative all the time.
00:43:14
Speaker
But
00:43:15
Speaker
There are probably going to be other places experimenting with the very framework of the whole thing.
00:43:23
Speaker
So do you need classes?
00:43:25
Speaker
Are classes the best way to organize learning?
00:43:29
Speaker
I'm actually part of a project called A Theory of Public Higher Education.
00:43:34
Speaker
And we're trying to imagine what higher education could be like.
00:43:40
Speaker
And classes may or may not be part of the mix.
00:43:43
Speaker
They may not be the necessary and default organizing principle.
00:43:49
Speaker
So experiential learning, I think, is something that all schools are doing, often in addition to conventional classes, sometimes in conjunction with conventional classes, but rarely in place of conventional classes.
00:44:05
Speaker
There's problem-based learning, project-based learning, place-based learning, community-based learning,
00:44:12
Speaker
And internships and placements and field placements and co-ops and a lot of schools are doing those things.
00:44:20
Speaker
I would love to see more of it as long as it then doesn't become just another kind of checklist that people go through the motions of.
00:44:30
Speaker
I agree with you.
00:44:30
Speaker
And I look forward to all the schools that experiment with and showcase the ways that they're becoming more and more student-centered.
00:44:37
Speaker
And building off of that, I want to ask you a question about college admissions.
Mastery Transcript as an Alternative
00:44:42
Speaker
You wrote a relatively recent blog post about the mastery transcript.
00:44:47
Speaker
And last year, we spoke to Tony Wagner, the author, education reformer, whatever you want to call him, and his contributions to the mastery transcript.
00:44:57
Speaker
He's one of their board members and I'm sure a financier.
00:45:01
Speaker
And the mastery transcript is being pioneered this year at the Hawkins School in Cleveland.
00:45:06
Speaker
And it's being adopted by a few other schools as well.
00:45:08
Speaker
And for those listening, the mastery transcript is a portfolio that college admissions counselors look at.
00:45:14
Speaker
They're taught to read it.
00:45:16
Speaker
And in lieu of a traditional graded transcript, it's just like a list of skills that are somewhat standardized where you would look at student work and that would be a way to get into college.
00:45:26
Speaker
So it would be on a pathway to eliminating grades.
00:45:29
Speaker
However, in your article, you talk about how
00:45:32
Speaker
It's dangerous to prescribe certain skills because it is still very standardized.
00:45:36
Speaker
Could you go into more detail about this and whether or not it's even possible to have college admissions without any kind of standardization?
00:45:44
Speaker
Yes.
00:45:45
Speaker
I spent an hour on the phone with Scott Looney, who was the guy behind it, to talk to him about it.
00:45:50
Speaker
And he was very generous with his time, very thoughtful, really had students' well-being in mind, really trying to figure out a kind of middle path between
00:46:02
Speaker
what we do now and some ideal system where every student is evaluated on the basis of their own needs and goals and skills.
00:46:13
Speaker
And this is kind of in between.
00:46:15
Speaker
And there was a lot that I loved about what he was saying.
00:46:19
Speaker
And he was trying to get colleges on board so that the people in high school wouldn't think that there was too big of a risk because the
00:46:29
Speaker
College admission workers work really hard and they read a lot of files and they don't have much time for them.
00:46:37
Speaker
So for them to learn about an entire new system, it has to be worth their while.
00:46:41
Speaker
So there have to be enough high schools doing it so that the college admissions people can't.
00:46:46
Speaker
learn how to read those transcripts, but there also have to be enough colleges so that the high schools can do it.
00:46:52
Speaker
So I know he's trying to pilot it at a bunch of schools, not all affluent, not all private schools, but it has a range of students at all different income levels, all different kinds of schools.
00:47:03
Speaker
And I think...
00:47:05
Speaker
That equity idea is really brilliant.
00:47:08
Speaker
So I did write something critical about it, but just eight days ago, Inside Higher Education, the online journal about higher ed, had an article about it, and I wrote a supportive comment about it, which was then critiqued by people who were challenging it.
00:47:25
Speaker
So I clearly have mixed feelings about it.
00:47:30
Speaker
I just want to put out there, though, on Inside Higher Ed in April,
00:47:34
Speaker
as a response to the Varsity Blues scandal, the college admissions scandal where all these wealthy people were bribing college admissions people and coaches and stuff.
00:47:44
Speaker
College admission is actually not that selective for most students.
00:47:49
Speaker
Fewer than 3% of all colleges admit less than 20% of their students.
00:47:57
Speaker
So most college is open.
00:48:01
Speaker
More than half of all colleges admit more than two-thirds of all the applications.
00:48:07
Speaker
More than 80% admit more than half of all applications.
00:48:12
Speaker
So we want to be careful not to exaggerate how selective colleges are.
00:48:19
Speaker
There are 50 schools or so that admit less than 20% of all applications.
00:48:25
Speaker
Those might be the schools everybody wants to go to.
00:48:28
Speaker
It might be Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and admittedly, Notre Dame, those kinds of places.
00:48:33
Speaker
But most people can get into college.
00:48:36
Speaker
So making high school entirely about college admission seems still to be a kind of misplacement.
00:48:46
Speaker
That's a very good point.
00:48:47
Speaker
And our extreme focus on next step education is making our students lose a lot of that place within the now.
00:48:54
Speaker
As in, they're spending a lot of time living their lives in K-12, just, you know, wasting it.
00:49:00
Speaker
They don't feel like their lives start until college.
00:49:02
Speaker
And then once they're in college, they feel like their lives don't start until they're an adult.
00:49:06
Speaker
And by that time, time has flown by so quickly that they're, you know, they're relatively purposeless.
00:49:11
Speaker
They're missing out on all those moments of just being a person.
00:49:14
Speaker
So, you know, we're fortunate as a school to be located near Ohio State, Ohio State University, which is where I went to school.
00:49:20
Speaker
It's a 100% acceptance school.
00:49:22
Speaker
So if you don't get into the main campus, assuming that you haven't been expelled or anything, you'll be placed at a branch campus, which if you're at the branch campus for a year and you have a C average, you can transfer to the main campus.
00:49:35
Speaker
That for us is a strategy to tell students who are really anxious about college admissions to realize that, I mean, OSU is a public school, but it is a fairly high ranked school, even though the rankings are
00:49:45
Speaker
I mean, that's a whole separate story about the rankings, but it's a decent school and you can get in no matter what.
00:49:51
Speaker
And there's not any college admissions drama.
00:49:53
Speaker
In the same vein, the book Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be by Frank Bruni or Brunei is a great resource to demonstrate, you know, how many successful people, they don't go to Harvard or Yale.
00:50:06
Speaker
And in the grand scheme of themes, like 99.9% of people, it doesn't really matter where you go.
00:50:11
Speaker
to school.
00:50:12
Speaker
As long as you're acting with a purpose and you know what you want to achieve, you'll likely get there as long as you keep trying, or at least you'll feel like you're on that path.
00:50:20
Speaker
That being said, though, the grading element and college admissions drama seems to be more about financial aid than it does about admission.
00:50:30
Speaker
Most of the conversations that I have with parents about ungrading is less about, you know, is this going to get my student into college and more about, you
00:50:39
Speaker
Am I going to still be able to get scholarships?
00:50:41
Speaker
Tuition rates are crazy right now.
00:50:44
Speaker
And, you know, I personally believe, and I put it out as part of the Human Restoration Project's mission, that college should be free because it guarantees equity, students' equity to get into higher
Ungrading and Social Justice
00:50:56
Speaker
education.
00:50:56
Speaker
It isn't reserved for the privilege and those that have
00:50:59
Speaker
greater pocketbooks.
00:51:00
Speaker
And there's, you know, there's so much pressure among scholarships and tuition aid.
00:51:04
Speaker
What are your thoughts surrounding that competitive pressure to get into colleges because of that financial connection?
00:51:11
Speaker
It depends on their situation.
00:51:13
Speaker
You know, some people can afford modest college tuition at regional campuses.
00:51:20
Speaker
but they can't afford private school tuition at national, highly selective colleges.
00:51:26
Speaker
Community colleges are affordable largely, although not entirely, but there's also foregone wages and there's housing and there are all kinds of other things.
00:51:36
Speaker
I mean, the cost of college is a huge and really pressing topic.
00:51:41
Speaker
It's part of our political conversation.
00:51:44
Speaker
It's part of the conversation in this project I mentioned that I'm part of to imagine future of public higher education.
00:51:51
Speaker
But I do want to just suggest that if everybody's going to college to have a credential that's higher than everybody else's credentials so they can get the few remaining good jobs, that's not a solution to inequality.
00:52:09
Speaker
We need also to focus on
00:52:12
Speaker
having everybody get access to jobs that pay living wages, not just to pit people against each other to get the few jobs that still pay living wages and benefits.
00:52:23
Speaker
So college, as I will reiterate, doesn't solve the problem of economic inequality for the society, but it can help individuals position themselves above other people who are also competing for those few jobs.
00:52:39
Speaker
That's very well stated.
00:52:39
Speaker
And I think, too, that ungrading, as you're writing about in your work and pushing for, is an element of the social justice component to ensure that learners can be successful and have the tools they need to be equipped in the world.
00:52:52
Speaker
Also, too, in the scholarship vein, ungrading allows for more opportunities like project-based learning to make things that could get you a scholarship, at least until we make things better.
00:53:02
Speaker
And I suppose, too, that when we don't grade, we're making sure that we don't rob people of these skills that they might have naturally developed.
00:53:09
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:53:10
Speaker
I mean, I'm a social scientist, at least in part, and we don't operate in a vacuum and our students aren't created anew every semester in our classes.
00:53:20
Speaker
So there are many, many big, daunting social factors that really have way more to do with anything we can do
00:53:31
Speaker
on our own.
00:53:32
Speaker
I do want to say though that one social justice dimension of ungrading and the way I approach teaching now is to believe it's the kind of anti-competitive model that says my job is to help every single student learn the best and the most that they can and want to.
00:53:53
Speaker
And so if they all learn really well, then I think I've done my job well.
00:53:58
Speaker
And that seems to me
00:54:00
Speaker
a matter of justice, not trying to pick the winners and say, I'm going to help the ones who are the best because they've already been helped a lot.
00:54:10
Speaker
My job is more to tell the other ones, you know, maybe you haven't been told that you're the best up till now, but what does best mean and how can I help you?
00:54:20
Speaker
And it seems to me that's a much more
00:54:23
Speaker
for me, anyway, morally responsible position to take than simply to say my job is to identify winners.
00:54:30
Speaker
For sure.
00:54:30
Speaker
And I mean, a lot of these huge ideas take so much time and effort, and it requires a big push in our classrooms.
00:54:36
Speaker
It takes a lot of work to spread the practice.
00:54:38
Speaker
And even pushing for equitable solutions outside of our classroom, going beyond it, that can take a really big toll.
00:54:45
Speaker
I feel this heaviness every minute of every day.
00:54:48
Speaker
I don't know if you do, but in my work, I don't really have that much power.
00:54:56
Speaker
I do protest.
00:54:56
Speaker
I do go out there and try to do my political work.
00:55:01
Speaker
But in the classroom, it's political work that doesn't call itself politics.
00:55:07
Speaker
You know, it's not with a party.
00:55:09
Speaker
I mean, it is.
00:55:10
Speaker
Anybody who is looking can figure out what party it is.
00:55:14
Speaker
But it's about power and who has power and what we do with power.
00:55:19
Speaker
And I've concluded, you know, I'm a white woman and I have tenure and I'm at a private school and I have all this privilege and I need to use it.
00:55:30
Speaker
And so I feel this great responsibility to use it.
00:55:35
Speaker
for the things that really will make a difference for people.
00:55:38
Speaker
And I don't necessarily feel I do that that often, but when I can, it makes it worthwhile.
Gradeless Teaching in Online Courses: Dr. Laura Gibbs
00:55:47
Speaker
And finally, we have Dr. Laura Gibbs of the University of Oklahoma.
00:55:52
Speaker
She teaches mythology and folklore in the epic church in India.
00:55:56
Speaker
Laura has been teaching these classes online since 2002 and has been gradeless ever since she started to.
00:56:01
Speaker
And I think for me, the ungrading and the being online
00:56:05
Speaker
go together.
00:56:06
Speaker
Like some of the techniques I use, I know people have used in the classroom too, and it's worked for them.
00:56:11
Speaker
But my ungrading happened at the same time that I went online.
00:56:15
Speaker
And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to go online was so that I could stop grading and start having the courses be individualized.
00:56:23
Speaker
When you teach online,
00:56:25
Speaker
You can, if you want, design the course so that each student is doing their own thing based on what they're really interested in and tapping into that motivation instead of the motivation to just do what the teacher says to get an A. And so when you are able to give them a real motivation, something that they're choosing and that they're enjoying,
00:56:45
Speaker
That allows you to get away from the grading and also gives you this great basis for sharing because if they're excited about what they're doing in the class, well, then that means they're eager to share that with other students.
00:56:58
Speaker
And it's fun.
00:56:58
Speaker
It's cool to find out what people are doing when people are really interested in what they're doing.
00:57:03
Speaker
In both the Ms.
00:57:04
Speaker
Bokor class and in the Indian Epics class, there's this huge range of
00:57:08
Speaker
readings.
00:57:09
Speaker
So people choose what they want to read.
00:57:11
Speaker
And then each person is working on a project and they're writing their own stories.
00:57:15
Speaker
So in a sense, I've got these two separate classes.
00:57:18
Speaker
It's kind of one big class and it's also kind of a hundred individual classes.
00:57:24
Speaker
And we use a blog network to bring that all together.
00:57:26
Speaker
So it sounds kind of strange, but when you see it in action, it makes sense.
00:57:31
Speaker
It works.
00:57:32
Speaker
And you are very progressive in multiple ways, both in the early adoption of online classes and going gradeless as an individual.
00:57:39
Speaker
What led you to tackling these ideas?
00:57:42
Speaker
I just made it up.
00:57:43
Speaker
As I went along, I knew that as a teacher, just giving grades was so painful for me.
00:57:49
Speaker
I mean, it was just, it was basically impossible.
00:57:52
Speaker
I mean, I did it, but I agonized over it and I didn't have any confidence in the grading system that people use, that kind of
00:58:00
Speaker
You know, 90 to 100 is an A. Like, what is that?
00:58:03
Speaker
I just couldn't wrap my brain around it.
00:58:05
Speaker
And so when I switched to the online courses, right from the start, I used a microassignments approach is what I call it with lots of little assignments that the students are doing every week.
00:58:16
Speaker
and just accumulating points as they go.
00:58:19
Speaker
And it's more like a record of work completed.
00:58:21
Speaker
It's not me evaluating what they do.
00:58:24
Speaker
And they don't do a lot of evaluation either.
00:58:27
Speaker
They reflect a lot and they set goals and they revise, but I really don't use that evaluation vocabulary very much at all.
00:58:35
Speaker
And so that's what I was doing from the start when I was teaching online, like I said, back in 2002, I
00:58:41
Speaker
And then when I met other people who were not grading, like Jesse Stommel and people like that, I felt so affirmed and started speaking out about it openly.
00:58:49
Speaker
Like at first I didn't tell anybody what I was doing.
00:58:53
Speaker
But then when I realized I'm not the only person who feels this way and I saw other solutions that other people were using, I
00:58:59
Speaker
I read Star's book, the one in the Hack Learning series, and I thought, oh, this is so cool.
00:59:05
Speaker
People are even doing this in high school, and I met more K-12 teachers.
00:59:10
Speaker
And so that helped a lot.
00:59:13
Speaker
So it is possible to just sort of go out there and do it on your own, but feeling like you're part of a group where you can brainstorm and share ideas has been really great.
00:59:22
Speaker
Was this an easy shift for you?
00:59:24
Speaker
For many of us, going against the grain, it's a really big stressor.
00:59:28
Speaker
When I even first started considering going gradeless with my class, I was afraid of a lot of the outcomes, how other people would see my class, whether or not it would work, if the students would embrace it.
00:59:38
Speaker
Did you have any anxiety?
00:59:40
Speaker
And like I said, for me, the emotions were all positive in terms of the class.
00:59:44
Speaker
Like for me, it meant I could do the job I wanted to do as a teacher, which is to help people discover what they're excited about and give them the resources and encouragement and feedback they need.
00:59:55
Speaker
And so the classroom side of it was easy for me.
00:59:58
Speaker
And the students were really enthusiastic, too, because I teach these writing intensive courses and learning.
01:00:04
Speaker
Nobody really feels comfortable with grades on writing.
01:00:07
Speaker
You know, the students weren't asking me, could we please have grades?
01:00:09
Speaker
I got rid of them.
01:00:11
Speaker
No student ever asked for them.
01:00:12
Speaker
But with my colleagues, wow, that was what was really hard.
01:00:17
Speaker
And I remember very naively giving a presentation maybe two years after I'd started teaching online about
01:00:25
Speaker
where a group of faculty at my school invited me to come in and speak to them about what I did and just show what we were doing because these were really the very first online courses at my school.
01:00:35
Speaker
So people were curious.
01:00:37
Speaker
And I showed how my system works, which is that the students declare their own work in the gradebook.
01:00:42
Speaker
I have them fill out these things that I call declarations, but they're really just true-false quizzes where they have a checklist of what counts as complete, and then they say true at the end, and that means they completed the assignment.
01:00:53
Speaker
They get the points automatically in the gradebook.
01:00:56
Speaker
And all these faculty members that, you know, that I liked, that were my friends, they were just appalled and looked at me and said, well, don't you think they're going to cheat?
01:01:05
Speaker
And I just, no, because it's all in their blogs and we're reading and we're sharing and they're working really hard and look at their projects and everybody's excited about what they're doing.
01:01:15
Speaker
You know, they're like, they're going to cheat.
01:01:19
Speaker
It hadn't even crossed my mind, really.
01:01:21
Speaker
I mean, it just, that's not what was happening.
01:01:23
Speaker
And because it was online, I was really in touch with the students and aware of all the work they were doing.
01:01:28
Speaker
And so it just wasn't a problem.
01:01:30
Speaker
And I realized that what I think are problems and what other people think are problems are not the same set of assumptions.
01:01:39
Speaker
And so I can help people solve the kinds of problems that I've worked on that I found hard to solve, which are
01:01:44
Speaker
How do I give really good feedback to the students and how do I help the students give feedback to each other?
01:01:49
Speaker
But if other people feel like they have other problems they're working on, it's kind of like you're on different planets or something.
01:01:55
Speaker
That's been what I've struggled with the most is that my assumptions and goals are maybe not the same as everybody else's.
01:02:01
Speaker
And so it's harder to have a dialogue with other faculty members if you have different goals and assumptions.
01:02:08
Speaker
Now, taking that plunge into a gradeless classroom is more than just saying, I'm not going to give grades anymore.
01:02:13
Speaker
There's a lot of work that goes into what that looks like, because if you just remove all extrinsic motivators, well, now your course has to be engaging because no one's going to do anything otherwise.
Importance of Feedback in Gradeless Classrooms
01:02:24
Speaker
So it really shows what kind of assignments and projects you're going to be offering and the guides that your students are going to have to follow.
01:02:31
Speaker
When you're not giving grades, if it's not good, then we can't expect students to magically be intrinsically motivated within that class.
01:02:38
Speaker
I hear that a lot from teachers who are afraid because they know that their work is not up to snuff.
01:02:45
Speaker
I know mine wasn't when I first transitioned over and it was it was kind of embarrassing for me.
01:02:50
Speaker
tricky because there are a lot of different pieces to the puzzle, a lot of different moving parts.
01:02:55
Speaker
So it's partly about the philosophy and being able to communicate that to the students.
01:02:59
Speaker
And that's really not very hard.
01:03:01
Speaker
But for me, I think probably the most important thing I've learned is if you're not going to have grades, you need to fill up that space with feedback.
01:03:10
Speaker
And so that's feedback from me and the students get a lot of feedback.
01:03:13
Speaker
And I design the assignments in a way that it's manageable for me to give them
01:03:17
Speaker
feedback.
01:03:19
Speaker
So when I'm looking at an assignment, that's one of the important things.
01:03:22
Speaker
I ask myself, does the student need feedback on this assignment?
01:03:25
Speaker
Are they going to be able to get it from me or from other students?
01:03:28
Speaker
And I also spend a pretty substantial amount of time helping the students learn how to give feedback to each other.
01:03:35
Speaker
Like a lot of people want to do peer feedback.
01:03:38
Speaker
It's great.
01:03:38
Speaker
I mean, it's an incredibly important part of my class, but you have to invest some serious time on the front end to
01:03:43
Speaker
working with students on how to give each other useful feedback and how to make use of the feedback that they get.
01:03:49
Speaker
And so I spend a solid four weeks now where I call it feedback boot camp.
01:03:54
Speaker
And we work on those skills and I give them different kinds of strategies to use and explore and
01:04:00
Speaker
before we start really getting into giving feedback on the projects as a kind of peer project.
01:04:05
Speaker
So those are important.
01:04:07
Speaker
And I would say too that one of the reasons that people use grades is a sense of accountability.
01:04:12
Speaker
I don't think of it as accountability, but I do think documenting learning is really important.
01:04:17
Speaker
So in these online classes that I teach, every assignment leaves some kind of trace in the student's block.
01:04:23
Speaker
So
01:04:24
Speaker
it's very easy to see what they're doing.
01:04:26
Speaker
They can see for themselves what they're doing.
01:04:28
Speaker
They can see what other students are doing.
01:04:30
Speaker
I can see what they're doing.
01:04:31
Speaker
So at least for me, using blogs as a way to document the learning has been really important, not writing it, but documenting.
Blogs as Tools for Documenting Learning
01:04:40
Speaker
Does that blog then build into the portfolio or?
01:04:42
Speaker
Oh, and this is kind of like portfolio on steroids because they've got a project that's like a portfolio.
01:04:47
Speaker
In fact, that's portfolio is one of the project options.
01:04:50
Speaker
And the blog is kind of like a class notebook.
01:04:53
Speaker
So it's everything.
01:04:55
Speaker
It's notes on their reading.
01:04:56
Speaker
It's their reflection posts.
01:04:59
Speaker
It's Wikipedia trails when they're doing research and just all the stuff.
01:05:03
Speaker
So most students end up with, I don't know, it must be around 50 or 60 blog posts at the end of the semester in their blog.
01:05:10
Speaker
And if they choose to leave a blog online, and most of them do sometimes take them down, but some leave it online, it's so great when someone needs a letter of recommendation from me even years into the future.
01:05:21
Speaker
I can go back and look not just at their project, but actually look at their blog and remember who this person was, like what they were into and how the semester went for them.
01:05:30
Speaker
And it's been great for me.
01:05:31
Speaker
And I should say, too, another trick I use in my classes, and this really only works online.
01:05:35
Speaker
It doesn't work so well in the classroom, but I enroll myself as a student in my classes.
01:05:40
Speaker
And so I do blog posts and a project and all the same assignments that the students do because online there's not teacher up at the front of the classroom, right?
01:05:49
Speaker
So as a teacher, I prepare all the stuff and, you know, the framework for what we do.
01:05:55
Speaker
But as the semester goes on, I actually get to be a student.
01:05:58
Speaker
That really creates this idea, once again, of co-learning.
01:06:01
Speaker
It's not about teacher evaluating you.
01:06:04
Speaker
It's about us all learning together.
01:06:06
Speaker
And could you go into more detail about what those blogs look like?
01:06:10
Speaker
They're different kinds of assignments, but it's consistent every week, so they get into a routine.
01:06:15
Speaker
They're reading notes posts, and so each week they're doing a pretty substantial amount of reading, and they take notes on the reading.
01:06:23
Speaker
And it's not notes for a quiz or something.
01:06:25
Speaker
I call it reading like a writer.
01:06:26
Speaker
The idea is that they're taking notes about the stuff they like best in the week's reading because they're going to tell a story of their own based on the weekly readings.
01:06:35
Speaker
And so for some students, that's a really different kind of note taking than they've ever done before.
01:06:40
Speaker
But that's great.
01:06:40
Speaker
You know, it breaks up their habits and gives them something new to try.
01:06:44
Speaker
So they take reading notes.
01:06:45
Speaker
That's a blog post or two.
01:06:47
Speaker
And then each week they tell a story.
01:06:49
Speaker
And so they tell a story in the form of a blog post with an image, a note explaining how they wrote the story.
01:06:55
Speaker
And then the other kinds of blog posts they might do are, like I said, the things they choose.
01:07:00
Speaker
So Wikipedia trail is doing research on anything that's related to the reading or your story or whatever's going on in class.
01:07:07
Speaker
They do growth mindset posts if they're interested in learning about learning.
01:07:11
Speaker
Reflection posts, like I call it famous last words, where you can keep sort of a week by week diary of what's going on in class and your goals.
01:07:19
Speaker
Lots of different kinds of things, but everything, like I said, leaves a trace in the blog and they use blog labels.
01:07:25
Speaker
So that it's easy to browse the blogs either by week, like to see what you did week by week, or if you're doing these Wikipedia trails every week like some students do because they really get into it, they can click on the Wikipedia trail link in their blog sidebar and see all their Wikipedia trails.
01:07:40
Speaker
Click on the stories link, see all their stories.
01:07:43
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
01:07:44
Speaker
I should have been prepared for this because –
01:07:46
Speaker
When I worked at a writing center in college very briefly, I saw the level of writing and I was shocked by how poor some of it was, even at the college level.
01:07:56
Speaker
But I mean, I should have been prepared again.
01:07:58
Speaker
But when I started teaching ninth grade, I was shocked at the different levels of writing instruction.
01:08:05
Speaker
Like we're talking students writing at a first grade level all the way up to writing at a post-college level.
01:08:12
Speaker
And it's really hard to wrap my brain around.
01:08:14
Speaker
How do you then use gradeless learning to ensure that all writers of all different levels are going to become better?
01:08:23
Speaker
The students who struggle with writing, and that is, let's put it this way, all writers struggle, right?
01:08:30
Speaker
Writing is hard.
01:08:31
Speaker
And so each week, the students are working not just on these storytelling blog posts, but they're working on a storybook or a portfolio of blog posts from their
01:08:41
Speaker
that they pick from their blog and put in their portfolio.
01:08:44
Speaker
And they get really detailed feedback from me about their writing.
01:08:47
Speaker
And that's mostly sentence level feedback.
01:08:50
Speaker
You know, so for the students who already do have some good writing skills coming into the class, I'm pushing them farther in terms of stylistic stuff and, you know, really extending their range as writers.
01:09:01
Speaker
But for the students who are struggling with like writing mechanics or let's say,
01:09:07
Speaker
ELL students, because I do get students in a class for whom English is not their native language, and they're really working hard on sentence level things, even things like word choice and spelling.
01:09:17
Speaker
They're getting all that feedback from me, and they're using it to revise.
01:09:20
Speaker
So revision is a huge part of how the classes work.
01:09:25
Speaker
And by putting in all that time writing every week, revising every week, if they do all that work, they're accumulating those completion points for the assignments.
01:09:36
Speaker
they're going to end up with a good grade at the end.
01:09:38
Speaker
There's this arbitrary scale that I set.
01:09:41
Speaker
And it's totally arbitrary, just the way that 90 to 100 is arbitrary, 80 to 90, 90 to 100, 80 to 90 is be that whole thing.
01:09:49
Speaker
So they're accumulating these points as they work, and that's how they get the grade.
01:09:52
Speaker
So I literally don't have anything to do with it.
01:09:55
Speaker
They complete their assignments.
01:09:56
Speaker
They record it in the LMS gradebook themselves.
01:10:00
Speaker
The points accumulate.
01:10:02
Speaker
And, you know, some students really just want to pass the class.
01:10:05
Speaker
They just want to get a C.
01:10:06
Speaker
So that might mean they do a little bit less work every week.
01:10:10
Speaker
It might mean that they finish the class two or three weeks early.
01:10:13
Speaker
They just say, I've got the points I need to pass.
01:10:15
Speaker
I'm done.
01:10:16
Speaker
That's all fine with me.
01:10:17
Speaker
And that's actually really not an important part of the class.
01:10:21
Speaker
Like my goal is that everybody should pass the class.
01:10:23
Speaker
That's important to me.
01:10:24
Speaker
And I worry about the students who look like they're skating near the edge and might not pass.
01:10:29
Speaker
But the real effort is in that revision, getting feedback from me, getting feedback from the other students and working really hard to improve your writing.
01:10:37
Speaker
The improvement is dramatic and it's really exciting to see because a lot of students have never gotten sentence level feedback on their writing before.
01:10:46
Speaker
And for some of them, that's what they need.
01:10:48
Speaker
That's what they're working hard on.
01:10:50
Speaker
It takes time.
01:10:51
Speaker
And I design the assignments, like I said, so that I have time as a teacher every week.
01:10:56
Speaker
to give them the feedback they need.
01:10:58
Speaker
Like the stories, they can't be more than a thousand words long.
01:11:00
Speaker
You know, and sometimes students, they want to go, they want to write more.
01:11:03
Speaker
So I tell them, make it a two-parter.
01:11:05
Speaker
This story really needs a thousand more words.
01:11:09
Speaker
Well, do a part A and a part B. That'll work because I can only do so much feedback every week.
01:11:14
Speaker
And they respect that because, you know, they can see I put a lot of time into the feedback and they put a lot of time into the revising based on that.
01:11:22
Speaker
So you've been going on grading in a pretty unique course design, a self-directed design for 16 years, which is an amazing amount of experience.
Enhancing Engagement through Writing Projects
01:11:31
Speaker
How do you recommend that we get others on the same trajectory, this mindset?
01:11:35
Speaker
I'm going to recommend a book that's not actually a going gradeless book.
01:11:40
Speaker
but I think is a roundabout way to get at the issues that we're really talking about here, right?
01:11:45
Speaker
Because notice, like in our conversation here, once you say we're not going to talk about grades, opens up the space to talk about all this other really important stuff, which is how do you support students and how do you make the work meaningful?
01:11:56
Speaker
And when you're doing that, that a grades issue and the cheating, they sort of just naturally become non-issues.
01:12:03
Speaker
So anyway, the book is called The Meaningful.
01:12:07
Speaker
And this was a college level study that was done on three different campuses and University of Oklahoma was one of those campuses where they did this amazing thing.
01:12:16
Speaker
They surveyed graduating seniors and asked them, what was the most meaningful writing experience you had in college?
01:12:24
Speaker
Very open ended, very qualitative survey.
01:12:28
Speaker
Based on what the students then told them about what they considered to be their most meaningful writing experience, they connected with the faculty members who had taught the classes that the students were in to gather more information, and they pulled it all together in this one called the Meaningful Writing Project.
01:12:44
Speaker
And I think if you look at something like that where you see these really cool writing projects that are being done in all kinds of ways across all kinds of disciplines, courses that are in someone's major, gen ed courses like the ones I teach, you will find so many ideas about how to address these issues of what's truly motivating for students.
01:13:04
Speaker
And if you can tap into something that's really meaningful and really motivating, you
01:13:10
Speaker
then you won't need to use grades anymore as a motivator.
01:13:14
Speaker
I'm guessing that when people think about giving up grades, they worry, oh, the students aren't going to do any work.
01:13:19
Speaker
I won't be able to make them work.
01:13:21
Speaker
Well, if they're doing meaningful work, then it's not an issue.
01:13:25
Speaker
You don't need to make them do it.
01:13:27
Speaker
They want to do it.
01:13:28
Speaker
They're motivated to do it.
01:13:30
Speaker
And so I know for my classes, creative writing and lots of choices, that's great.
01:13:35
Speaker
But, you know, if you're teaching in STEM or you teach history or you're teaching in a business school, you know, there are different approaches that are going to make the meaningful writing experiences for the students.
01:13:46
Speaker
So if you want to find out what students say are meaningful writing experiences, this is the book.
01:13:51
Speaker
It's a pleasure to read.
01:13:53
Speaker
It's really great.
01:13:54
Speaker
That's such a great point.
01:13:55
Speaker
And I'm always impressed by the learning that students will demonstrate.
01:13:58
Speaker
I'll never forget doing my first learning portfolios a few years back and students coming to our little conference, some of whom I didn't really know what to expect.
01:14:08
Speaker
And almost universally, every single student not only presented something really good, it was excellent.
01:14:15
Speaker
It was way better than anything I could have asked for, way better than anything I ever assigned or prescribed to.
01:14:22
Speaker
And they, you know, they put their own spin on it, which was really cool.
01:14:25
Speaker
I think of it in terms of like taking off the controls and also just opening up this space where you say, show me what you care about.
01:14:33
Speaker
Show me what you're here for.
01:14:35
Speaker
And that can be a little scary, I guess, if in the past you had filled up that space with your own stuff as a professor.
01:14:42
Speaker
Like, I'm here to teach you about X, you know, because I love X. And as a professor, you can fill up the space with stuff that you love.
01:14:49
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:14:50
Speaker
But that doesn't necessarily mean the students are going to love it.
01:14:53
Speaker
And so if you can clear out that space and get them to come back into that space and show you what's meaningful to them, then you can say, oh, okay, then I need to find more about this or more about that.
01:15:08
Speaker
that they're interested in for their projects every semester.
01:15:11
Speaker
And I learned so much that way.
01:15:12
Speaker
Like when I first started teaching this class, I knew nothing about Japanese folklore and fairy tales.
01:15:17
Speaker
And now it's one of my favorite topics because the students have educated me about it.
01:15:22
Speaker
And then that's provoked me to go read and learn and find resources for them.
01:15:27
Speaker
And it never would have happened if I had my hand opened up that space because I wasn't into Japanese folklore.
01:15:32
Speaker
I didn't know I was ignorant.
01:15:33
Speaker
Now I'm better educated.
01:15:40
Speaker
Revisiting the point that Laura just made surrounding space, it's important that when we discuss ungrading, we discuss the systems that allow for ungrading naturally lending themselves to experiential learning, critical pedagogy, and all facets of progressive education.
01:15:55
Speaker
We can't have an ungraded class with traditional assessments because students won't do them.
01:15:59
Speaker
We can't solely provide feedback and expect students to do better if they don't trust us, or we don't give them space to learn for their own sake, their own interests.
01:16:07
Speaker
Many educators who contact me, and something I reflected on early in this process, they'll ask, how do I make projects that have meaning?
01:16:15
Speaker
And the simplest answer is, ask students what matters to them.
01:16:19
Speaker
That's kind of a lame thing to say, it seems really obvious, but almost any educational scholar or speaker says this all the time.
01:16:26
Speaker
You just have to ask the students.
01:16:29
Speaker
But education at its core is a very simple thing once you take out all of the systems that get in the way between us and student learning.
01:16:37
Speaker
When we remove grades and remove traditional assignments, we implement things like restorative justice and trusting our students more, then we're effectively designing a space where we ask students and then just guide them.
01:16:48
Speaker
There's still a place for an interesting discussion or a teacher-led project every now and then, but our primary goal is to provide that space in the guidelines for
01:16:58
Speaker
for students to receive help from us and to do amazing things.
Fostering Intrinsic Motivation
01:17:02
Speaker
Instead of making insane systems that control students by making over-the-top assignments or just going crazy with gamification to the point where it's just manipulation, instead, we can rely on intrinsic motivation of just doing things that people love to do or are inspired to love to do.
01:17:20
Speaker
There's still that place for the passionate educator and
01:17:23
Speaker
to have students try new things.
01:17:25
Speaker
We can do that without killing a love of learning or forcing anyone to do anything.
01:17:29
Speaker
Just by providing that space and being a guide, we can have students discover new opportunities and new things that they enjoy doing.
01:17:36
Speaker
Starting your ungrading journey doesn't have to be this over-the-top endeavor.
01:17:41
Speaker
Let me briefly describe what this all looks like in my context.
01:17:46
Speaker
Students are supplied in a list of objectives at the beginning of the year.
01:17:49
Speaker
They're just student-friendly written standards that have been translated into miniature themes.
01:17:55
Speaker
Some of them are very specific and others are very broad.
01:17:58
Speaker
And in my digital design class, there's 20 of them.
01:18:01
Speaker
For example, the easiest one is you can organize Google Drive.
01:18:05
Speaker
And one of the harder ones would be you understand marketing and branding, such as logo creation, what that means and how your brand looks.
01:18:14
Speaker
So each month, students have a formal check-in, and a week before they have their check-in, they submit their portfolio.
01:18:22
Speaker
I check it, and then they present it that week later.
01:18:24
Speaker
And we use that time to go over what they've done, and I give them a lot of written feedback, pretty extensive written feedback.
01:18:31
Speaker
I supply it to their family.
01:18:33
Speaker
I send it home both physically and virtually to make sure that they get it.
01:18:36
Speaker
And then I record their progress for state compliance reasons.
01:18:39
Speaker
So I write down a number that doesn't really matter in the grade book that students don't even see.
01:18:44
Speaker
I use that just for athletics and things of that nature.
01:18:47
Speaker
I also keep track on my end of what objectives that they're completing to make sure that they're covering everything and how well they're doing.
01:18:53
Speaker
After we have this meeting and I supply all this feedback,
01:18:56
Speaker
We discuss ways to revise for next time or suggestions on where they should go next.
01:19:01
Speaker
There's a lot of different paths.
01:19:02
Speaker
Sometimes we'll review something like that Google Drive situation.
01:19:05
Speaker
If it's six months into the class, we might look at that again and make sure that everything is still up to snuff.
01:19:11
Speaker
Or more often than not, the big things that we're focused on is now that we've had our relationship together and we are learning more about each other, I give them suggestions on, you know, you're really into photography or you're really into your cats or something.
01:19:24
Speaker
I don't know.
01:19:24
Speaker
Let's start a cat Instagram.
01:19:26
Speaker
Or, you know, something more serious, maybe it's they're working with a nonprofit for one of our projects and their logo design isn't very good.
01:19:34
Speaker
Why don't you try making something for them?
01:19:36
Speaker
So just offering some kind of suggestion, which doesn't have to be adhered to.
01:19:39
Speaker
We just need to come to something that they're going to be working on for the next month.
01:19:42
Speaker
We have that meeting every single month.
01:19:44
Speaker
Then at the halfway mark, families are invited to do a more formal check-in where we discuss a grade.
01:19:50
Speaker
Last year, this was a requirement for school policy.
01:19:53
Speaker
So this was a workaround in a sense.
01:19:55
Speaker
We had to give a grade at the halfway mark.
01:19:57
Speaker
So we did a normal portfolio check-in, and the parents were there this time.
01:20:02
Speaker
I can say with certainty that is probably the most powerful thing that you could potentially do because it's one thing to get some feedback in the grade book or get something sent home to you.
01:20:13
Speaker
But when a parent sees their child really being open about school, when they see this whole portfolio check-in, they're usually really wowed by it.
01:20:21
Speaker
And at the end, we have students at the halfway mark propose a grade.
01:20:24
Speaker
They know in advance that the grade is going to be overwritten by whatever the final grade is.
01:20:29
Speaker
So it's not meant to be a pressured situation.
01:20:32
Speaker
Again, this is just for state compliance.
01:20:34
Speaker
So in the scenario where a student wasn't doing well, instead of giving them a D or an F or something like that, we brainstormed objectives together to increase that grade way earlier.
01:20:46
Speaker
So like we would say something like, hey,
01:20:48
Speaker
We're not going to write down a grade at this second.
01:20:49
Speaker
In two weeks, show me a few things.
01:20:51
Speaker
We can at least write down like a B, something like that, because there's psychological benefits to that.
01:20:56
Speaker
You don't want to give a student a very low grade because it's not going to incentivize them to do better.
01:21:00
Speaker
The final then worked the exact same way.
01:21:02
Speaker
We'd invite everybody back and do it at the end of the school year.
01:21:05
Speaker
And to be honest, the majority of students produce work well beyond anything I used to do when I first started teaching.
01:21:11
Speaker
I used to have four tests, four projects, a bunch of assignments.
01:21:14
Speaker
It's really embarrassing.
01:21:16
Speaker
I look back at how much time I took meticulously planning lesson plans.
01:21:21
Speaker
And now doing very little outside of school and just working with students at school, the quality difference is absurd.
01:21:28
Speaker
Outside of just making some adjustments during testing week by cramming a little bit, mostly students are just working on these portfolio check-ins week to week or month to month for formal check-ins and having some class discussions and every now and then doing an activity.
Reflecting on Self-Directed Learning
01:21:43
Speaker
It's way more self-directed, which means I can focus way more on building relationships because I can talk to them one-on-one and I can connect with them and I can guide them to success.
01:21:51
Speaker
And after that final, we discuss their final grade.
01:21:54
Speaker
So we can still work within a very traditional public school system.
01:21:58
Speaker
And that's the way that it is for right now.
01:22:00
Speaker
And happily, that's now transitioning to more and more teachers.
01:22:04
Speaker
Our entire ninth grade now does this whole system.
01:22:06
Speaker
So all of our check-ins are at one time to make things less confusing.
01:22:09
Speaker
And the practice spreads because it works.
01:22:12
Speaker
You see what kids produce and it's really hard to ignore that.
Conclusion and Resources for Gradeless Education
01:22:16
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes.
01:22:18
Speaker
We've cataloged a ton of information there from our guests, as well as some things that we have that can help you on your gradeless journey.
01:22:34
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Things Fall Apart from the Human Restoration Project.
01:22:38
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
Encouragement to Share and Review the Podcast
01:22:43
Speaker
If you have time, I'd love for you to leave us a review on iTunes, Spotify, social media, or anywhere that you see fit.
01:22:51
Speaker
Do us a favor.
01:22:51
Speaker
If you've listened this far, it was probably a pretty good episode.
01:22:55
Speaker
If you could tweet it out or post it on Facebook or put it on Instagram, wherever, ad buys are very expensive and we totally rely on your word of mouth to spread our reach.
01:23:05
Speaker
So let's push forward together and restore humanity.