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Katie Martin says to let students defend their learning
83 Plays8 months ago
Find Katie at https://twitter.com/katiemartinedu
Music by AudioCoffee: https://www.audiocoffee.net/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Learner Centered Spaces podcast, where we empower and inspire ownership of learning. Sponsored by Mastery Portfolio, hosted by Star Saxton and Crystal Frommer. In each episode, we will bring you engaging conversations with a wide variety of educators, both in and out of the classroom.
00:00:21
Speaker
This podcast is created for educators who want to learn more about how to make the shift toward learner-centered spaces for their students, schools, and districts, or education at large. The learner-centered spaces podcast is now a member of the Teach Better Podcast Network.
Guest Introduction: Katie Martin
00:00:42
Speaker
We are so glad to have Katie Martin on the show today.
00:00:45
Speaker
She is the co-founder and chief impact officer at Lerner Centered Collaborative. She is a former middle school ELA teacher, instructional coach, new teacher mentor, professor, researcher, and director of professional learning. Her purpose and passion is to ensure all learners know who they are, thrive in community, and actively engage in the world as their best selves.
00:01:09
Speaker
Some fun facts about Katie is that she loves to travel. She enjoys bar, that's capital B bar. She is a sports mom and I'm so intrigued by this. I'm gonna ask her about it later. She has two tortoises. So Katie, welcome to the show. Thank you, I'm so glad to be here.
00:01:29
Speaker
Can we start with the tortoises? We can start with the tortoises. And just to clarify, bar is exercise. Love to go and have my bar classes. But we have two tortoises, Buddy Pretzel Myrtle Martin. We got him when my son was four, hence the name.
00:01:49
Speaker
And we have another tortoise tortilla that we thought we needed to keep the other one company. And during the winter months, we live in San Diego, but it still gets cold outside. They just roam around the house. And so every once in a while, I'll talk to someone like on a Zoom and say, oh, there's my tortoise. He just bit my foot. But they just roam around and we love them dearly.
00:02:11
Speaker
And how long do they live? They live a long time, right? They live a long time. So we're not sure. We don't know how old they are or how much longer they have to go. Wow. That's fascinating.
Katie's Journey in Education
00:02:23
Speaker
Well, to switch gears a little bit, can you tell us about a defining moment in your education journey?
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, happy to. My mom was a teacher. And so I grew up with my mom being a teacher and kind of seeing the passion and the effort that she put into creating really cool opportunities for her students. And I remember distinctly feeling like I didn't have that same experience as a student. So I knew my mom was a great teacher, but I often felt like in class I didn't
00:02:56
Speaker
I really feel very connected to my own teachers. I felt like I was just going through the motions a lot in school. And I did that pretty much my K through 12 experience. I went through because I had to. So a defining moment for me didn't actually really come until I was in college.
00:03:16
Speaker
I ended up going to a small, small state school in San Diego, close to where I live. And I got to choose classes really for the first time. I took sociology classes, human development classes, and I actually fell in love with school. I started learning about people. I got to read books that I chose to read.
00:03:41
Speaker
So books and things that were interesting to me and learn more information. And I all of a sudden felt like school was actually fun and I was excelling and I was excited to show up and have my mind expanded.
00:03:57
Speaker
And it was then that I decided I actually wanted to be a teacher, not because of the teachers I had, unfortunately, but because I wanted to be a teacher who could bring this type of learning into the classroom much earlier for young people so they could find their own passions and interests while they were still in school and have opportunities to do things earlier and grow in their learning journey while they were still in the K-12 system.
00:04:25
Speaker
I connect to that so much because that is exactly why I'm a middle school math teacher, because I lost my love of math around that age. And that's my mission, like yours is to help them keep that love in the middle school ages. So your story really resonates with my own. So thank you for sharing that.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah. And I ended up taking at the middle level and I do believe that those people who want to be in the middle school makes such a difference for young people. It's such a, you know, of course an age in between young elementary and high school where young people are trying to figure out who they are. And when they have teachers who really take the time to get to know them and help them in that space, it can be so powerful and they're so fun and quirky. I loved it.
00:05:12
Speaker
They are quirky and the teachers too, right? They certainly are. Yes.
What are Learner-Centered Spaces?
00:05:18
Speaker
So tell us what a learner centered space looks like and feels like to you. I love this question. Um, we have really done a lot of work to define this at the learner centered collaborative. And I would say first a learner centered space system.
00:05:37
Speaker
is focused on outcomes for young people that are necessary in our world today. So focusing on developing skills like creativity, collaboration, global citizenship, broader skills that really matter. But then based on those, a space that is learner-centered really begins with learners, who they are, what their goals are, and helping them to achieve that. And then learning experiences
00:06:07
Speaker
are really inclusive and equitable where everyone can show up and be who they are and be seen for their strengths and interests and talents. The work is authentic. Young people are doing work that matters to them and others, and it's connected to the real world. It's personalized, so they have opportunities to work on things they need to, develop those skills, but also go with their own path and pace.
00:06:34
Speaker
And it is competency-based. So learning is assessed by what young people know and can do, not just checking off boxes or multiple scan trons. So all of those together we think are really, really critical to creating learner-centered spaces.
00:06:53
Speaker
So you started to talk a little bit about assessment. Can you tell us more about what assessment might look
How Should Assessment Be Conducted in Learner-Centered Spaces?
00:06:59
Speaker
like? It's competency-based, it's based on what they can do, but just some how-tos. Could you share some of that, what that might look like for assessment? Yeah, I mean, assessment plays such a critical role because, of course, what you assess and how you assess really kind of shapes
00:07:20
Speaker
the system and shapes what's happening in the classroom or in that learner center space. So we have to be really clear on what we're trying to assess. It sounds so obvious, but what are the outcomes that we really want young people to be working towards? And once they know what those are, they have clarity on what it looks like, then we can have opportunities for feedback,
00:07:47
Speaker
multiple iterations, we're not just turning something in on the day or taking a test and putting it in the gradebook. We're working with learners to help them understand where they are in relationship to that goal, making sure that they're collaborating, they have models, and then that feedback is really clearly aligned to those competencies that you can
00:08:12
Speaker
grow in them over the semester or the year and whatever that is. We're not just averaging points. We're really looking at evidence of mastery toward those goals. And one thing I will say, the difference between knowledge, outcomes, math, science, ELA, and those standards, we can often assess of you met it or you didn't because we call them ladder
00:08:41
Speaker
outcomes you they build on each other. But then these larger competencies I talked about like collaboration, communication, problem solving, those aren't things that you just check a box off and say, Oh, you mastered collaboration today because they're so contextual. So a lot of this is performance assessment to helping young people develop portfolios.
00:09:04
Speaker
have conferences to talk about their skills and how they're developing them and what's working and what's not. And a lot of our partners in systems are really thinking about defensive learning. So they are creating a portfolio or evidence of these outcomes and able to defend their learning to their peers and their families and educators to show how they're growing in these skills.
00:09:35
Speaker
And Starr cannot be with us today. She's visiting a school. But when you start talking about portfolios, I was thinking Starr would chime in right at this time because she loves to talk about portfolios and she talks about that a lot in her new book. So listeners, if you want to know more about portfolios,
00:09:53
Speaker
Please check that out and listen to Katie's podcast as well because I know you talk a lot more about assessment in your podcast. I love everything you're saying about learning isn't just, we're going to check this box and we're done with this unit today and that's it. There's no retakes, there's no redos, there's no growth. I think there's a lot of schools and a lot of teachers out there who think that's how it is and how it's always been and how it should be.
00:10:19
Speaker
because that's at least how it was when I was growing up and I see it as a teacher, I see some of my colleagues still prescribing to that methodology. So what advice would you have for someone like me who works in a school that is somewhat traditional, but really wants to be more learner centered and wants to spread that across the school? Like what advice would you have for a teacher like that?
Advice for Teachers in Traditional Schools
00:10:43
Speaker
Great. Well, first I want to give
00:10:46
Speaker
props to Star. I do love her book. It's great. And I think the other things that Star would probably jump in and say too is we have to start with the learners. So that would kind of be where I would say for any teacher who wants to think about more learner centered assessment and spaces is we have to start with the young people and get to know them and bring them into the process.
00:11:07
Speaker
So a teacher recently said to me, well, I can't grade all this work, right? A middle school language arts teacher. I can't possibly grade all their assessments. And so students would write a paper and turn it in, you know, to Google classroom or wherever, and then didn't get feedback or didn't get anything on it for three months.
00:11:29
Speaker
And then they had agreed and they moved on. By that point, there's no revision. There's not even any interest in what they did. They forgot about what they did. So I would say we have to start thinking about what are the assignments that are really going to help us get to the outcomes we want and show evidence of that, not assignments we've always done. So most likely you can take out some of the assessments that you have or some of the fillers that are
00:11:57
Speaker
currently taking a lot of time and space and you can't get to grading. If you can't get to grading it, it's not really helping students in their learning journey. So if we start with students and really get clear on those outcomes, they can be part of that process. They can get feedback from their peers. They don't have to wait for the teacher to grade 150 essays and turn them back.
00:12:18
Speaker
They could be looking at models. They could be using AI. That might be scary, too, to get feedback. But we really need to start with bringing the students into the process instead of just making them like passive bystanders for the teachers to be doling out points and grades. They're going to be more invested. And then they're actually going to take a lot of that work off you. And you can do it in class by giving feedback, talking to them about the work, not just simply turning it in and grading it at the end of the semester.
00:12:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I love what you're saying about there's some things that we could take away because we tend to, as human beings, we tend to think we're going to get better or things will get better by adding. And I just recently read a book by Lighty Klotz called Subtract, and it inspired me to write an Edutopia article about what we as teachers can subtract. So it's right in line with that with
00:13:14
Speaker
Sometimes less is more. And I love what you're saying, because not every assignment is really all that meaningful or giving the appropriate feedback to the students. And we can maybe think about what we could take away. And another podcast of ours that I recommend the listeners listen to was with Nick Moskaluk. And he had a really great practical way to do a little bit of less grading on the teacher and a little more grading on the students, where he teaches middle school math.
00:13:43
Speaker
And he posts the answer key, the various answers around the room. I have my hand up here just going around my classroom. No one can see me doing this. But all the answers are posted in various corners around the room. And the students go around with their own written quiz or test. He calls them check-ins. And they assess themselves. And they look at his answer key. And they compare it to their work.
00:14:07
Speaker
That's right then instant feedback for the students and he's not doing any grading. And so it's kind of a win-win. So that's another way that we could subtract as well. Besides, you know, in English we, ELA I should say, we can use chat GTP.
00:14:25
Speaker
I use it all the time to be honest. I ask it to assess what I've written because I'm a math person and sometimes my grammar is not, you know, I didn't study ELA intensively and I do ask it to give me feedback and to correct any typos or errors or help me to restructure sentences. Do you have any other examples that maybe are beyond ELA topics maybe in the STEM that teachers could use for assessment?
00:14:55
Speaker
It's a great question. I was just thinking about an ELA example, but I mean, anybody can be using it to give feedback on their writing or start models. You know, if you want to do research or you want to ask it a question, I know was just talking to some people yesterday and they're like, how can the chat GPT can help them write code and then they can check it and build on it or help them help them think about kind of
00:15:21
Speaker
setting up a problem. So I think that we can use it in a lot of ways for planning, but students certainly can be checking their work, revising it. Even in social studies the other day, a student had to write an essay and they had all of the main ideas plotted out and kind of what they wanted to say, and they plugged it into chat GPT to kind of get a draft
00:15:50
Speaker
So I think it's a great tool for models and for drafts to be able to kind of check your work and look for other ways of structuring things because sometimes it's so hard to stare at a blank page. So you just need something to get started.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely helps with the writer's block for sure. And here at our school, like many schools, we are dipping our toe into the AI policy, right? It's really difficult to write a policy because everything is so new to us and we want to
00:16:24
Speaker
not be too narrow, not be too broad. And so we've developed, with the help of other sources, it's not just completely our idea, but we've developed a red light, yellow light, green light for using generative AI.
AI in Classrooms: Balancing Assistance and Originality
00:16:40
Speaker
And we're helping teachers to teach the students when you have a green light, completely green light to use
00:16:48
Speaker
chat DTP, Bard, or whatever its new name is, I forget its new name with Google, or any, you know, just green light, go ahead. And then yellow light would be, you could use it to generate ideas, you can use it to give you feedback on your text, but you can't use it to write for you, right? So there's some, you have to pump the brakes a little bit if it's a yellow light.
00:17:08
Speaker
And then there's also red light where this is an assessment that has to 100% come from you as an individual. You may not use outside assistance. And so we think that this three color system might help our teachers and our students to know that chat GTP is very helpful or any generative AI is very helpful. But there's time and a place for when to use it and how to use it. I love that so much. I think it's a great way
00:17:36
Speaker
to not just bar it or ban it and say that no one can use it or just like freely use it as you want and really give parameters around what type of tasks. I think we're all learning, but being able to have a framework to make decisions on, I think is a great tool for educators, but especially for students who are learning. And we want them to have access to these tools. We want them to have proficiency, but we don't want to lose
00:18:06
Speaker
the human skills and get too caught up in just relying on AI to do work that really should be work done by humans. Yeah, it's teaching. There's a time and a place. Yeah, absolutely. And we don't want our graduates to leave here. I mean, I can't imagine a student going to a school where generative AI is completely banned because they're going to go off to university or off to whatever they're doing after high school. And they'll be like, I have no experience with this.
00:18:36
Speaker
I was never allowed to use it or I had to always keep it secret when I was using it because we know that like 90% of students are using it, whether they're permitted to or not. So I agree with you. It's just a great way to help them make decisions. Well, I mean, Crystal, think about what you just said and expand that to a lot of things in education. Right now, in many traditional spaces, young people are not able to like make decisions. They have to raise their hand to speak, raise
00:19:05
Speaker
You know what I mean? Get a pass to go to the bathroom, walk on certain sides of the hallway, and then they're going to go out into the world and be expected to function on their own. So it is AI, and I think that's a great example. But I think we also need to extend that to a lot of policies and practices and think where should learners be more involved in their journey, have more agency, and have more opportunities to
00:19:30
Speaker
make tough decisions and make mistakes so that they are best prepared to go into spaces where they're gonna have to do things more independently. Yeah, yeah. And if you're a teacher listening to this and you work in a school that leans a little bit towards banning and prohibiting, this is a great conversation to have with the school leadership. You can tell them Katie and Crystal sang. That's right.
00:19:55
Speaker
Well, you talked about this in the beginning a little bit about your university experience and how that helped you fall in love with education and school and being in the classroom and learning all of those things.
Acknowledgments and Inspirations
00:20:08
Speaker
So beyond your professors that you had who helped you with that, what other shout outs do you have for people who have influenced you in a learner centered growth area? Gosh, there's so many. I mean, I would just say shout out for the team.
00:20:25
Speaker
that we have at the Lerner Center Collaborative is amazing. They push me every day to think differently from the superintendency to classroom teachers. I just did a podcast recently with Sun Sam who is at Big Picture Learning and he's just so thoughtful in sharing the work that he's doing and they're doing throughout the network of creating
00:20:50
Speaker
some really amazing schools where young people can thrive in and out of school. I would say friends over in Cajon Valley, David Miyashiro, and Nural Winter at Hidalgo, that team is really thinking about the K-12 system and how to create spaces for young people to know who they are at an early age and connect them to what's outside of school, the world of work,
00:21:19
Speaker
and have those experiences early like we were just talking about. And I have to say, we're headed to AASA this week. So I'm about to present with Mike Nagler. He's superintendent of Mineola Public Schools and excited to talk about the high school redesign that he led and I got to support. So sharing that more broadly. I'm just really inspired by the models we have and then the leaders in
00:21:46
Speaker
district systems who are thinking about how to support this shift to more learner centered practices so that all kids can have the benefit of having a K-12 system that sees them, knows them, and grows them. Listeners can find you at katimartan.edu. You're active on LinkedIn and Twitter both, right? LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram depending on the week, but all of the spaces are katimartan.edu.
00:22:15
Speaker
Okay. I highly recommend if you don't follow Katie already, please do. You've already taught me so much, um, by your posts and what you share and your podcast is absolutely fantastic. And I definitely recommend that. So, um, give Katie a follow and Katie, it's such an honor that you were on our show today. Um, I feel really, really lucky that you said yes to be a guest and, um, thank you for your time. I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:22:46
Speaker
Thank you for learning with us today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. If you'd like any additional information from the show, check out the show notes. Learn more about Mastery Portfolio and how we support schools at masteryportfolio.com. You can follow us on Twitter at masteryforall and on LinkedIn on the Mastery Portfolio page. And we'd love your feedback. Please write a review on your favorite podcasting app.