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Tyler Rablin says assess with check-ins
132 Plays1 year ago
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mr_Rablin
Look out for this upcoming book "Hacking Student Motivation Through Assessment"
Guest survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdQbOHl3-uy2eX_TAoIZcmvb-Zj30YTJj6p4Zrpvo0sZ6Va4Q/viewform?usp=sf_link
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Learner Centered Spaces podcast, where we empower and inspire ownership of learning, sponsored by Mastery Portfolio, hosted by Star Saxton, Emma Chapetta, 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.
00:00:27
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 a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. Get ready to be inspired as we dive right into the conversation with today's guest.
Guest Introduction: Tyler Rablin
00:00:54
Speaker
Tyler Rablin is a high school language arts teacher and instructional coach for Sunnyside School District in Sunnyside, Washington. On the side, he is the owner of Tyler Rablin Consulting Partners with the consulting group Shifting Schools. He is a contributing writer for Edutopia and has been a featured speaker at conferences around the Pacific Northwest for his work with assessment and instructional technology.
00:01:18
Speaker
He is a signed author with Times 10 Publishing and has a forthcoming book on the link between motivation and assessment.
Focus on Technology and Learning Cultures
00:01:27
Speaker
His educational passion is focused on the ways that intentional technology integration, modernized assessment strategies, and strong cultures of learning can allow us to provide meaningful, powerful, and personal learning experiences for each of our students.
00:01:44
Speaker
In his personal life, he enjoys reading, running, and spending time hiking and camping with his wife and two dogs. Hey Tyler, it is so great to have you on our podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, the role that you're in currently, your location, some of your journey, and maybe an interesting fact?
00:02:06
Speaker
Yeah, so I am Tyler Ablin. I am currently, I'm switching into an instructional technology coach role, but for most of my career, I've been a high school English language arts teacher. I am in Sunnyside, Washington, so that's central Washington state. We're on the dry side of the mountains, not the rainy side.
00:02:24
Speaker
My journey, so growing up, school generally worked pretty well for me. And so I thought I had a good understanding of it and then decided I wanted to become a teacher, got my undergrad, got my master's down in Portland. And then at the time there were no jobs for teachers. And so I took a job out in Milton Free Water. It's like pretty rural Eastern Oregon.
00:02:50
Speaker
Um, taught there for awhile and then moved up to Sunnyside, Washington, where I've been the last, uh, the last, let's see, seven years now, I think.
00:02:59
Speaker
Oh, and an interesting fact about me, I only say this because it has been like a hot debate between friends and people I interact with on Twitter. Apparently an interesting fact is that I unpack my suitcase into the drawers at hotels, which I thought everyone did that, and then I've learned I'm actually the weirdo. So that's the interesting fact.
00:03:20
Speaker
I saw on Twitter when you put that poll out and I like started typing out all this stuff. I wanted you to feel heard and seen. And I was like, my husband likes to unpack and I know Connie likes to unpack. I am definitely a suitcase person myself. But that is a very interesting fact. I think it says something about us psychologically. I'm sure it does.
00:03:46
Speaker
Tyler, I'm actually with you because I pack really lightly and so I usually just have one backpack and then I usually need that backpack to go to conferences and stuff, so I have to unpack my clothes from it. So I am on team Unpack. Yes. All right. More of us. Yeah.
Defining Learner-Centered Spaces
00:04:03
Speaker
Thanks for sharing so much about yourself and now we can get into talking about the classroom. So could you tell us a little bit about what a learner centered space looks like, feels like, sounds like to you?
00:04:16
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Yeah, absolutely. I want to start with a little bit of the opposite. So early on in my career, I knew that I wanted kids to have more involvement in the learning process and I wanted them to have more choice, more say.
00:04:33
Speaker
And the first few times that I tried it, and even still when I tried it, it feels a little bit unintentional or chaotic or unstructured. And so it sounds weird, but for me, something about a learner centered space is that there has to be a foundational structure behind it so that things are intentional.
00:04:56
Speaker
You know, there are times where kids should be able to just pursue really cool things that maybe aren't closely connected to the curriculum. But if we're focused on helping students grow and learn in our content areas or just academically in general, I've really learned that there has to be it's this fine line of a balance of a background structure or
00:05:17
Speaker
You know, for me, a lot of it goes back to, is the learning that we're intending to do, is that really clear? And is there, not just is it clear where we're supposed to get to, but are there supports that kids can use along the way? I mean, I've really found that clarity, if we want students to have like that learned centered space, clarity is a huge piece of it because, you know, for better or worse, kids approach school as trying to figure out
00:05:42
Speaker
how to play the game. And as much as I want to just say, like, hey, go do anything, have autonomy, there's still that level of fear that I think sometimes we overlook when it comes to learned centered spaces. And one of the big things for me that I found in battling that fear in a learned centered space is really focusing on
00:06:02
Speaker
I used to say confidence to help students feel confident, but I've learned to use the term self-efficacy instead. Confidence can be sort of a false confidence. It can be founded on nothing substantial, but self-efficacy is all about providing kids with evidence that they can be successful. And so for me, I used to really just focus on, do kids know where we're going? And I've really had to shift that and focus on
00:06:30
Speaker
Do kids know where they've been in a way that helps them see they can be successful? Like if I'm going to embark on a new journey, I'm going to be terrified unless I have a few steps I've taken along the way to say, I can do this. I've got this. And so for me, like that self efficacy, which sort of manifests as confidence or motivation in the classroom, you can almost when you, you know, when you asked what does a learner centered space look like and feel like you can feel that
00:06:59
Speaker
level of confidence and motivation, or on the opposite hand, you can feel the lack of it. And I know that sounds really like wishy-washy and hard to pin down, but for me, that's the biggest thing is, am I providing a structure to help students know where we're going? But also, am I thinking backwards and saying, do they know where they've been? And am I showing them places they've been successful so that they feel that
00:07:24
Speaker
self-efficacy, that confidence to take autonomy and run with it. Because risk taking is scary if we don't think it's going to work out for us. So we've got to have something to convince us that, okay, even if it's just a teeny tiny step at the beginning, I was successful there. So I can be successful if I take a little bit of a risk next time.
00:07:44
Speaker
So if a student is like you notice that they are not having, they don't feel that self-efficacy, they're not noticing their previous successes, what are some of the strategies that you use to help them see that? There's
Checkpoints and Self-Efficacy in Learning
00:07:59
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a couple different ways that I do it. One is being really intentional about how I build or I guess how I sequence my approach to assessment. So
00:08:11
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even if it's something really, really small, being intentional about having a check-in point at the beginning where maybe there's three new concepts we're gonna be talking about, having something where a student can demonstrate that even they know the definition of these concepts, maybe it's a bigger skill and they're not comfortable really engaging in the skill, but if I'm working on character development, like let's say that's something we're working on in our classroom, even just something along the lines of like, can they identify
00:08:41
Speaker
five methods of characterization an author might use. Like it's not the deepest skill we're going to do, but it's a foundational concept that is sort of a, that, uh, I like the term, like a low bar high ceiling where they have to have that vocabulary to engage in the conversation. And so often we just like, maybe we just rush past it to get to what we consider the meat of the learning. But for a lot of students who don't feel confident, they need that little check early on to say, okay,
00:09:10
Speaker
I at least know the definitions, right? Like I've got the foundation that I need. And so for me, that's one of the pieces is, did I build, I call them checkpoints, but did I build a checkpoint early on so that a student can really see that they are learning? Even if it's something small, like so often we overlook those small things and think the only thing that matters is the goal, but those little things along the way are what really help build that self-efficacy for students. And so the intentionality there, but also
00:09:37
Speaker
I mean, I have found throughout my whole assessment approach, one of the most important things that I can do with a student is sit down with them and talk about their learning. I use the analogy that the assessments for me are like the bricks that I'm using to build an understanding, but those conversations are the mortar that holds it all together. And there are times where you have a student who is not feeling confident or they're not seeing where they've been successful. And sometimes in those learning conferences with students,
00:10:06
Speaker
my goal is just to sit down and point out to them like, hey, look, you did this. Or, you know, you, yes, you're maybe struggling right now, but remember last time you struggled and you got through it, and this is the example of that. So it's, you know, I find the way to help students who are struggling with that self-efficacy if it comes on both ends. Something at the beginning that we've intentionally designed
00:10:29
Speaker
to to help students sort of cross that first little threshold and feel successful but then also recognizing that all along the way everybody gets stuck when they're trying to learn something new and just being intentional about building time to talk to students you know if
00:10:46
Speaker
as much as we can, founding that on evidence we're collecting from them so that we don't just say, you're doing great, which feels like sort of an empty phrase. But instead, if we can say, hey, you're doing really well, but I want to show you specifically how, that's where we really see students start building that self-efficacy because it's not just
00:11:06
Speaker
me telling them this is what I think, but it's me pointing at this is what you've done. And that's where we really see students building that confidence that they need to take risks and pursue autonomy in the classroom.
00:11:19
Speaker
Hi, this is Crystal here. And I love what you're saying about the checkpoints and helping students to kind of take the temperature of where they are with their own learning. And it sounds a lot like formative assessment, which a lot of us do. So I will ask a little bit about the summative assessment piece, because I know many of our listeners are teachers.
00:11:42
Speaker
and they are required by their school systems to somehow submit evidence of learning in a summative assessment type form. And I'm curious how that would fit into your vision of learner-centered spaces.
Assessment Methods and Evaluation Differences
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah. So that formative assessment, one of the things, building up, there are so many kids that when they get to a summative assessment, it's a
00:12:09
Speaker
they approach it with a level of fear. We have students in our classrooms who they've been successful in classes before, they feel like they can approach it with confidence. But for a lot of students, that summative assessment is...
00:12:21
Speaker
you know, it's terrifying. Um, and so those formative assessments help build their confidence. And one of the things that I really push on when we talk about this concept of summative, um, and it, you know, this is going to depend on what your district allows you to do, what the requirements are, but I really like, I used to focus on that summative assessment and I really like now using the term summative evaluation. Um,
00:12:46
Speaker
because a summative assessment oftentimes feels like it needs to be this big test, this isolated event that, you know, the term summative, we usually, that's the end, right? When you think about summative,
00:13:00
Speaker
And so often a summative assessment just means summative in terms of the end of time, not necessarily the end of where we should be in our learning or getting to the end of learning. And so instead of summative assessment, I've started using the term summative evaluation because for me that evaluation, when you think about what evaluate means is I'm looking at all the available data that we have over from those formative assessments that we've been building and we're evaluating where are we at now.
00:13:28
Speaker
Um, and so this is why for me, I mean, I still like my, I work in a district that's, uh, our high school is pretty big. I work on a pretty big team. Like we still have common assessments. We have common formatives and common summatives that we use. And I used to feel sort of hamstrung by that too.
00:13:46
Speaker
that was the only way that I could assess students. And by making that distinction for me just mentally, I have this summative assessment, but this isn't my summative evaluation. And really making that distinction for kids has shifted a lot how we approach that sort of that final reflection of learning.
00:14:05
Speaker
is we take the summit of assessment that's sort of our big thing that we do towards the end, but then we're going to sit down and say, Hey, maybe you struggled on that summit of assessment but that's not the only piece of data we have to determine how you're doing. So often we see kids that build
00:14:21
Speaker
confidence build, confidence build, confidence struggle on that final assessment and then are left with this feeling of I didn't do it. And then, you know, from there we go on to learn something new and one of the last places you want a student to start learning something new is this feeling of I didn't do it, I can't do it, I'm struggling. And so I really like that follow-up piece if it's the end of a unit, really being able to sit down and say,
00:14:46
Speaker
okay, we just did our summative assessment, but we need to talk about this more. That's not a, you know, no single assessment is going to capture the whole of student learning. Learning's too complex and too messy. It's an approximation at best. And so I like being able to sit down with students and really have that conversation where I can say, hey, you missed these three questions. It makes you think maybe you're not understanding this. Can you talk to me about that? And a lot of times you can uncover stuff that
00:15:14
Speaker
We think sometimes that summative assessment is truth and that's not often the case at all. And so that assessment might have covered up some of the truth. And so my goal in those follow-up conversations is to try to uncover what's really going on there. What are we missing in this approximation we just did in the assessment?
00:15:34
Speaker
Tyler, there's so much that you just said that I would love to unpack. First of all, I love the distinction between a summative evaluation and a summative assessment. And I so appreciate that you talk to kids as much as you do. You know, in the conversations we've had, that that is something I believe very, very, very, it's very important. I mean, kids aren't only one thing. There are so many factors that go into any one performance.
00:16:03
Speaker
that we need multiple data points all the time. And so often the assessments we create, although well-intentioned, are often not as clear as you mentioned clarity earlier, not as aligned, and not as effective as they need to be.
00:16:23
Speaker
And I know a lot of teachers struggle with that because creating a really well-balanced assessment that's going to provide multiple opportunities for students to show the depth of their understanding
00:16:36
Speaker
You know, it makes it makes me personally rethink summative summative evaluation or assessment completely and the necessity of it when really we want kids to be lifelong learners and have that iterative growth mindset kind of idea. So if we all buy into that, I don't understand why the necessity of a summative at the end is, you know, what schools cling to in terms of data so much.
00:17:05
Speaker
So to that end, as we kind of transition away from talking about assessment specific, you've described some wonderful things that are happening in your class. What advice or tips would you give to someone who wants to create a more learner-centered space like the one you've described?
Standards Mapping and Student Feedback
00:17:26
Speaker
I think one of the first things that's really helpful to do is, and I mentioned it earlier, a lot of times we focus on the end goal of the learning and that's what we said in front of students. And typically we do that with like a standard.
00:17:42
Speaker
Um, sometimes you break it into a learning outcome, but usually it's the standard and, and those are, they're big and meaty and complex. And I think I forget sometimes as an expert in my subject who knows it really well, I look at that and it makes sense to me, but then I have to put myself in the mind of like one of my freshmen who.
00:18:03
Speaker
maybe didn't do so well eighth grade in English and they're they're struggling and they don't even like I oftentimes use the character analysis example if you break down that standard there's like six seven eight things in there that a student needs to know and those can become roadblocks for students if they're trying to
00:18:24
Speaker
become more of an independent learner. And so one of the things that I found is most helpful for me, and this is not something that I learned this through trial and error through many messy attempts, is learning how to take that standard and sort of map it backwards. I call them learning progressions. There's a bunch of different ways that people have referenced that. But if I want students to be able to analyze how a character's development impacts the theme of a text,
00:18:50
Speaker
I need to go all the way back to the point of helping a student see
00:18:56
Speaker
Hey, do you even, a protagonist and antagonist, complex versus like flat or round versus flat characters, like being able to go all the way back there helps make sure that when we do give students more of that autonomy, when they get stuck, they have a reference point to say, okay, this is what's tripping me up. I can take that next step. It's not necessarily to say you have to go step by step through this progression. That's how I started using them and I learned that
00:19:25
Speaker
you know, no one can say exactly how anyone's brain is going to learn anything. There are general guidelines and rule, and I almost said rules, they're not rules, but there's general guidelines about how our brains take new information and make it more complex. But it's more about helping students building a path so that when a student gets stuck, they don't have to sit there and feel disappointed or discouraged, but they have something
00:19:51
Speaker
tangible and concrete to say this is my next step, this is where I can go next, or if or I'm stuck on this concept, I've got to go look this up and learn about it. So that's the first one is just really spend time unpacking whatever you're asking students to learn how to do and and build a progression that makes sense to and I mean I think about it in the makes sense to the student who's going to struggle most.
00:20:16
Speaker
I use the term access points a lot when I talk about the learning. If we have one access point to the learning and that's competency in the standard we're asking students to do, we're leaving out a lot of our learners versus if we can unpack that and look at all the different access points kids need. If we've got a student who English isn't their first language and the vocabulary is new, is there a point for them to access that learning just through the language that they need to use to engage in the conversation with the rest of us?
00:20:47
Speaker
So I would say that's the foundational piece that is more on the teacher. I've done some unpacking with students and there is some value in that, but I like to use an 80-20 approach with that. So I do 80% of the unpacking and then I'll talk to students for the other 20. But that gets me to my second point in terms of
00:21:09
Speaker
what to do, what first step. And for me that's ask kids for feedback, like constantly ask kids for feedback because I can tell story after story after story of times that I tried to give students more autonomy, create a more learner centered space and it didn't go very well. And then I tried to figure it out. And usually the solutions that I came up with
00:21:35
Speaker
needed more solutions later because they weren't working. And I've just found that as you try something new, as I tried something new,
00:21:43
Speaker
Being able to get that feedback from students of what went well, what didn't go well. I mean, I teach, I taught freshman English. They are very good at giving you their opinion when you ask for it. And I got a lot of my valuable solutions. You know, if we're doing a station rotation and it feels unproductive, being able to like talk with the class and say, hey, this is what I saw. What did you see? They'll tell me what they see. And then really saying, how do we do better next time?
00:22:09
Speaker
And again, it's that idea of letting them know that they don't have to be perfect at this right off the bat. This is, you know, a lot of students, a lot of classrooms, I'm happy to say more and more classrooms are changing, but a lot of classrooms, the way you're successful is you show up and you follow along. And it's weird for students
00:22:29
Speaker
to come to an environment where they don't just get to follow along. It's scary for some of them. It's intimidating. It's confusing. And so being able to recognize that this is going to be a process. We are going to learn this process of a classroom as much as we're going to learn the content and asking students for that feedback. That's been one of the biggest things for me as I've kind of been on this journey.
00:22:53
Speaker
That is all such great advice, Tyler. So thank you so much. If our listeners want to learn more, do you have anybody else that you'd like to shout out that they can continue to learn from?
Further Resources and Recommendations
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah, I would say Twitter is where I get a lot of my inspiration, my connection with other like-minded teachers. There's a teacher I connected with. Her name's Vanessa Ellis. She actually has a piece in an upcoming book that I'm working on where she talks about how she does it. She's great. Natalie Varadabasso is awesome out of Canada.
00:23:27
Speaker
I don't know what they're doing, but so many of the cool ideas I hear from educators about assessment and learner centered classrooms are coming from Canada. So I don't know, they got something good going on up there. I mean, Nicholas Emmanuel is great if you want to learn more about like student conferencing, human restoration project. Marcus Luther has been a favorite of mine on Twitter recently. He's another English teacher that shares a lot about how he's trying to involve students more in the process of their own learning and their own assessment.
00:23:57
Speaker
So, I mean, I'm sure I could go on and on, but those are the ones that I think of when I was asked the question. Thank you for that. I have to agree with you. I follow a lot of Canadian educators and I just went to a conference
00:24:13
Speaker
for building thinking classrooms, which comes out of British Columbia. And it's amazing how much we can learn from our neighbors to the north, if you're listening to this from the States, that is. So maybe you're Canadian listening to this saying, yay, Canadians. So thank you, Tyler. This has been fantastic. We really appreciate your time. And I know our listeners are really going to gain a lot of information about how to shift towards learner-centered spaces.
00:24:43
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on it. It was great getting to talk to all of you.
Closing Remarks and Engagement
00:24:51
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 mastery portfolio.com. You can follow us on Twitter at mastery for all.
00:25:12
Speaker
and on LinkedIn on our Mastery Portfolio page. We'd love for you to engage with us. If you'd like to be a guest on the show or know someone who would be an inspiring guest, please fill out the survey found in the show notes. And we'd love your feedback. Please write a review on your favorite podcasting app.