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Cory Hafer says to have conversations with students about assessment
64 Plays7 months ago
Twitter (X): https://twitter.com/cory_hafer
Email: cory.hafer@appo.k12.de.us
Instagram: cory.hafer_2024_de_stoy
Music by AudioCoffee: https://www.audiocoffee.net/
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Learner Centered Spaces podcast, where we empower and inspire ownership of learning.
Sponsorship & Hosts
00:00:07
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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
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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.
Network Partnership
00:00:31
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The learner-centered spaces podcast is now a member of the Teach Better Podcast Network.
Meet Corey Haefer
00:00:41
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We are so excited to have Corey Haefer on our show today.
00:00:46
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He is an engineering teacher at Middletown High School and the 2024 Delaware State Teacher of the Year. He is still getting used to that role, he says. His previous role was a research technician, teacher of biology, forensic science, chemistry, and theory of knowledge.
00:01:05
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We asked him, what is one sentence on your purpose or passion? And he says, I want to find a way to develop a grading system that facilitates problem-based learning, motivates students, and accurately represents student achievement and is sustainable for teachers. More information about Corey. He coaches tennis and loves playing tennis. He enjoys running, hiking, gardening, and traveling with his wife. He also enjoys brewing.
00:01:34
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His tennis team received the 2023 Delaware Interscholastic Tennis Coaches Association Sportsmanship Award. And in 2022, received the Delaware Interscholastic Tennis Coaches Association Boys Coach Award.
Corey's Teaching Journey
00:01:49
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Please welcome Corey to the show today.
00:01:52
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Morning, Corey. It's always great to speak with you. Corey and I get to know each other in real life also, not just on here. And I can't wait to have the opportunity to share Corey's story with everyone this morning. Corey, can you tell us a little bit about what got you started on the path you're on right now?
00:02:15
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So it's funny, I kind of actually wanted to be a vet or a doctor. I never thought about education until I'd been working in a research lab for a few years after graduating college. And when I was doing research, I had to develop this deeper understanding of the techniques I was doing and all these things that I didn't understand fully when I was a student in college. I all of a sudden was doing them and I understood that really deeply.
00:02:43
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And I got to teach those to new people in the lab and to some summer students. And that was when I kind of fell in love with teaching.
Innovative Teaching Methods
00:02:50
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And then in that first year of teaching, I quickly realized that direct instruction and teaching content without actually making it relevant for students wasn't really a
00:03:04
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don't actually like to hear, it's because it's on the test. And so I wanted to find a way to really engage students and get them to learn about biology, which I was super passionate about. And I started getting into inquiry-based problem learning, developing, instead of just doing a cookie cutter lab, getting students to investigate questions. And then as you do that and you let them kind of go off on their paths,
00:03:31
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you start to realize that the grading system that we have doesn't really support the messiness of inquiry-based learning and problem learning. And so I guess just throughout that trial and error of pushing the boundaries of how to engage students and what problem-based learning could look like, I started to experiment a little bit with grading. And that's, yeah, I guess where I've been doing that for the last 12 years of just tweaking and reflecting every year.
00:04:01
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So I think it's really interesting, Corey, because you know, you and I have a similar starting point, maybe mine's not science, it was humanities based, but I also had the same experience.
Grading & Assessment Challenges
00:04:14
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Like, we want kids to engage deeply in different kinds of learning so that they could make, you know, they're constructing meaning for themselves instead of us giving them the meaning of everything.
00:04:26
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Yes. And when I was thinking about how best to assess that kind of learning, everything that I had at my fingertips wasn't working for me either. And that's when you kind of go down the rabbit hole and try to figure out what can I do that seems more equitable in terms of
00:04:48
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Honoring the learning that has happened, also being able to provide feedback, and then at the end of the day, also fitting into whatever the system expects you to do. Right. Yeah, having to fit within the system is definitely tough. As a student, I've never really experienced anything, but you do your formatives and your summatives and you have homework and you can do extra credit. There's all this stuff that goes into
00:05:19
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that I could figure out how much do I have to get on this test so that I can get an A in the class? And it really takes away from the learning that we actually want students to be thinking about. Yeah, my partner, Constance Borow, always kind of talks about how transactional grades are and how kids understand that whatever score goes on a report card is actually a mathematical calculation. So it's all about playing the numbers more than it is about the learning. Yeah.
00:05:49
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And when we think about those kinds of things, it's just, it kind of, I think cheapens the learning experience when we have to label it.
Creating Learner-Centered Classrooms
00:05:58
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So to that end, I would love for you to share with us a little bit about what a learner centered space in your engineering classrooms look like, feel like, sound like, and how your different grading paradigm supports that vision.
00:06:18
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So I think one of the biggest things for what it looks like is students are making the decisions and the questions that they ask kind of help drive where we end up going. And ultimately students are getting what they actually need.
00:06:34
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If I come in and I want to teach a lesson on simple machines and students are coming in with that knowledge, I don't need to teach the simple machine basics. I might need to work on application. As we do math and engineering, students are often at very different levels of mathematical abilities. And so ultimately, I need to get them all to be able to apply the math. How do we apply gear ratio to make the right torque output that we want?
00:07:03
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in a machine. And if a student comes in and they don't know how to do basic algebra, you know, that the learning for them needs to look a little bit different than the learning for someone who has mastered that. And so I think that's really the biggest thing with the learner-centered space is that each of those students are getting what they need. And so to facilitate that, there's not really a lot of direct instruction. There's going to be stations. There's, although I love starting with whiteboards, just blank whiteboards and markers.
00:07:30
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where they're at and pretty quickly you can start to see who you can push a little bit and who needs a little bit more one-on-one and then eventually those students who need one-on-one you can start to push them more too but it's a very responsive to them and where I've started to get to that I'm really excited about is that students are actually teaching each other and collaborating with each other so you know the learned centered space it takes the teacher almost I'm a facilitator
00:07:57
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I'm there to help teach maybe the first lesson on how to use 3D printers. Once I've taught it and students have mastered that skill, why can't they teach it? And so this year I'm experimenting with everybody learns the skill and then they teach another. And so that's actually how I can assess mastery. If the student can teach how to use a 3D printer, I know that they've mastered it.
Role of the Teacher in Modern Classrooms
00:08:19
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It feels really weird because I honestly sometimes am like, what's my role? Am I, you know, am I doing what I'm supposed to? I actually remember this time, the first time I had students doing research, I took them down to a library. It was my second year teaching, my first year teaching. Let me back up for a second. I didn't do any research projects. It was very much, let me get the students ready for the test.
00:08:41
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And then that second year, I was like, I need to do something more, right? Like, this isn't what students really need. And so as I was doing research, they were, they were, we were in the library and they were doing research. And I was realized that I didn't need to do anything at the moment. They were all self-sufficient. And I talked to the librarian. I was like, I don't, I feel like I should be doing something. And she said, you're doing exactly what you need to. You're giving them space to learn.
00:09:10
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I do all this prep work to get ready for the learning attentions and what space and environment and culture I want the room to have. But then once we're in there, I just kind of do what I need to and go where I need to go, but there's not necessarily a set task for me. So at times it does feel a little chaotic because I'm responding to what I see and improvising based on what I see, but time goes so quickly and it's really exciting to see the students empowered.
00:09:40
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So this is Crystal here and you mentioned about assessing students based on how they teach others, like if they're teaching another student how to use a machine or a device. I'm curious if you have other ideas you can share of ways to assess students in an environment like this to see what they're learning beyond just teaching others and maybe their products of their research or other ideas you might have.
00:10:08
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Yeah. So I'm, I'm constantly trying to figure out how to assess and I still don't really feel like I have a set answer. Um, which is crazy except I've been experimenting with this for so long, but I think, you know, one thing that's been tough for me is I've switched topics a lot. So I started off in biology and I'm in engineering. I've been doing engineering for five years, but each year that curriculum changes a little bit. So I'm still kind of learning how to teach and learning what the goals of each pathway are.
00:10:36
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But I think with a project-based learning, it really depends on what skills you're trying to assess. If I want to assess design process, there's so many things tied up in that category. Project management, being able to manage a three to four week independent project, that's a very specific skill. And during those four weeks, we're going to be doing all kinds of other learning.
00:11:00
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they're going to be researching and presenting. So honestly, I think one of the biggest things about, one of the challenging things about assessment is what are the actual skills we're going to assess? And that's something that I kind of, as you start going down that rabbit hole, you then start to keep questioning, but how do I, how do I assess, I guess, is developing rubrics sometimes with the students that show, you know, what does a good project management look like?
00:11:29
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And coming up with that language that students can understand and that ultimately allows them to kind of self-evaluate, that helps us kind of, helps us assess where they're at. And ultimately, I want to get to the point where students don't even need me as much to say where they're at in that process.
Evolving Assessment Strategies
00:11:49
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You know, they should kind of know, like, what does good project management look like? And if I'm doing it well,
00:11:55
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How do I know? And in terms of the outcome, if you can hit a four week, four weeks out, where you plan out your four weeks of this project and you can deliver the final prototype at that four week point and meet all those checkpoints in there, then that's kind of the skill that we want them to have. So ultimately, I know this doesn't really entirely answer your question.
00:12:20
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But yeah, I guess looking at the product and figuring out what that mastery level should be, does that make any sense? Yeah. And also what I'm hearing too from you and your answer is that you don't have an exact answer and you're constantly exploring and growing and trying new things with the students.
00:12:44
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And I think that's exactly what we're all doing as educators, right? And I would be more concerned if you said, Crystal, I have this exact answer and it's a hundred percent right. And I'd be like, Oh, okay. Because that's not what we have as educators. We're constantly adapting to where the students are. And okay, this project, it lends itself to this different type of assessment and this project lends it to this. Or I want to listen to student voice and that's going to change.
00:13:14
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how this project is assessed. So I love that you are vulnerable in the fact that you're sharing like, hey, I'm exploring some things and it's changing and it's evolving. I mean, I think that's an important, am I getting that right? Is that the goal? Yeah, that's absolutely right. I think that's such a good way to put that.
00:13:33
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that actually makes me feel better about why it feels so uncertain in my mind. Because we might be in the middle of this project, and I have a certain idea of where I think it should go, but based on student questions and student ideas, or based on what skills you see students struggling with, you start to realize, oh, actually, we're not doing a good research process, and we don't know how to ask good questions, so we need to go do a mini-lesson on how do we ask good questions. And now all of a sudden, the thing I thought I was maybe going to assess, I've added something else.
00:14:04
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And I think that's kind of the beauty of inquiry and problem-based learning. You give students these really high-level things that maybe not everybody can do, but it creates those learning opportunities. And it's, you know, assessment I think is more of a tool for identifying where students are at and helping make future learning, set future learning goals less about the, you know, where are you at in this point in time and let me put a grade book number to it.
00:14:29
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Yeah, exactly. So thank you for sharing your thoughts and your journey on assessment because it's really difficult to answer. I'm a teacher too.
00:14:41
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It's messy. And that also leads to my next question I have for you, which I will say most guests we have on this podcast answer this question with saying, you know, just be okay with the chaos, be okay with the mess. And I'm sure that is a big part of your class. But the question is, what advice do you give to teachers who want to be more learner centered?
00:15:09
Speaker
So all of that stuff you just said is so true, and so I think knowing that that's true, give yourself grace and just continue trying stuff. Just because it doesn't work right away doesn't mean it's not going to. And I think also part of what makes
00:15:31
Speaker
Part of what has made me successful with my students is that I listen to them. And so if you want to try something or you feel that something's not working in your space, tell your students very honestly, you know what? I don't like the way that this grading system is working. It's got us really focused on, you know,
00:15:48
Speaker
the number grade and everything but what we really care about. I don't really know how to do this, but let's work together and figure out what works. That's something that I think is really important, including students in that dialogue. It feels weird to be including students in grading discussions, but honestly, why not? We're doing everything we're doing for them, and we have really good background knowledge on education, but they're the ones who know what they,
00:16:17
Speaker
need and what they're struggling with and what they're interested in and so I think that's that's one piece of advice I would give is really listen and work with your students. I also think all of this stuff works really well because my students are comfortable with each other and so I think focusing on developing a classroom culture that you know where students are comfortable making mistakes they're comfortable talking to each other
00:16:43
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having that foundation of relationships in the classroom really, really helps because then you can have those open conversations.
Collaborative Teaching Approaches
00:16:52
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And then I think the other thing that's really important for what I'm doing, because I'm doing with STARS help, I've actually been adopting portfolios and figuring out how to have students track their mastery. And I've been doing student grading conferences where they lead their conferences and we kind of co-determine a grade holistically. That would not work if
00:17:15
Speaker
good work habits. And so I spend a lot of time now developing what good work habits are, getting students to reflect on that, and establishing that kind of expectation that when you come into this space we're going to learn potentially at different rates. We might have different goals. When I'm doing a grading conference it's really important that they're able to still be productive for that time.
00:17:39
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So that was a lot of stuff, but I think the biggest things are working with students and getting students to kind of buy into that collaborative culture.
00:17:50
Speaker
So it strikes me, Corey, while you were speaking, I was thinking to myself, as a person who's running courses in engineering and thinking about this whole process of inquiry that you talked about before, the way that you just described solving problems with your students, even if it's about grading, is exactly the same way. I have this basic understanding of how this is working. We all agree it's not working as well as it could.
00:18:17
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how can we problem solve together? And I think that how you describe that also demonstrates for your students that you believe the things you're telling them because you're actively engaging in the same kind of inquiry in your own practice.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's really important. Um, and I think sometimes when we look at teacher training, um, or even professional development, sometimes where we go sit in this space, we're stressed and we're sort of told, Hey, you should do this stuff. And, you know, often people just, yeah, I think if you, when you believe that it's worthwhile and you communicate that clearly and you get people to really also believe that it's so much more powerful.
00:19:00
Speaker
I agree. So if you have the opportunity now, who do you listen to?
Influences on Teaching Philosophy
00:19:05
Speaker
Who do you read? Who would you like to shout out so that our listeners can learn a little bit from where you're learning? Yeah. There are so many people and resources and things that I've drawn from. But I think, honestly, I wouldn't be the educator I am right now if I hadn't gone through the project lead the way
00:19:30
Speaker
courses that I've gone through. So I've been trained in four different engineering classes. And so I think, you know, they, they really deserve a shout out that organization Project Lead the Way develops STEM curriculum for
00:19:43
Speaker
I think it's now elementary, middle school, and high school throughout the country. And they lead teacher-led professional developments where you go for this 80-hour, really intensive learning experience. And all of their curriculum is based off of this problem project and activity approach. So it's problem-based learning. And so that's the curriculum that I have as a
00:20:08
Speaker
been really instrumental in helping me and helping a ton of educators throughout the country kind of learn how to engage students in solving problems. I think when I really look back to who I am as an educator though, I had my grad school advisor Jessica Riccio
00:20:28
Speaker
made us kind of like or encouraged us to kind of think about who we wanted to be not like what we wanted to teach and how we wanted to teach but who we wanted to be as teachers and she and the whole team that I had in that grad school program at Teachers College really really emphasized learner-centered teaching and the whole idea that you know we need to help students construct our knowledge so I think if I hadn't had that experience in those particular professors I wouldn't have come into the
00:21:00
Speaker
figure out how to create those powerful learning spaces. And then I guess a couple of the people that really jump out as helping shape how I've gotten to where I am, Marcus Lincoln here on high school in Ann Arbor, I had the opportunity to teach with him for two years. And I was on a team where we would meet every day to kind of develop curriculum and figure out how to develop IB assessments in biology. And I remember the first day that I
00:21:27
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I met him and he was telling we were trying to figure out with the NGSS next generation science standards how do we teach modeling like what is modeling and he had just been to this workshop on it and he said okay I want you to create a model that helps us test if something is living or non-living he just gave me a whiteboard and a marker and the other teachers were in his space and he treated us like students for like the next half hour and it was just oh it was such a powerful
00:21:54
Speaker
way to like experience I'd never learned like that where I was just I came in and created this whiteboard model to explain my thinking and then he asked all these questions and that's really you know I've taken a lot from that um and used that that a lot and then I think the other the other teacher that got me started on my portfolio journey is actually Nate States at Middletown High School in Delaware that I currently still teach with
00:22:19
Speaker
And I got to work with him in teaching a biology class, and he showed me how he did portfolios of project-based learning and took the knowledge in biology and had kids apply it. And then I kind of ran with that in engineering, and that's been really, really cool.
Impact of Student Engagement
00:22:37
Speaker
And then I guess, honestly, so Star, you've been so transformational in the last few years of helping me figure out how to actually think about portfolios
00:22:54
Speaker
and yeah I'm so grateful for everybody that I've had the chance to work with because it's it's pretty amazing over 12 years how many teachers you interact with how many students you interact with who I mean honestly my student my third year teaching asked me this question you know
00:23:12
Speaker
Why would I get punished by not doing homework? Because I got 100% on that last test. Why would I lose points in the class? I clearly didn't need the homework. So it's questions like that from students who I think honestly are probably most responsible for me being who I am. And it's pretty cool.
Contact & Closing Remarks
00:23:32
Speaker
And speaking of following and learning from others, where can our listeners follow you online?
00:23:39
Speaker
So I have a Twitter, or I guess, X account. It's at Cory, C-O-R-Y, underscore Heifer, H-A-F-E-R. That's probably the best way, I guess, to find me. And then my email, Cory.Heifer, at apo.k12.de.us. I'm assuming you can link something in that.
00:24:04
Speaker
bio or something. But yeah, those would be great places that I love talking about education. And I've also I've had this expanded network of educators with the National Teacher of the Year cohort. And I think it's worth, you know, potentially looking up CCSSO and looking at the four finalists. They're inspiring individuals and they're really cool to follow their stories as well. Thank you, Corey. It has been a wonderful time talking with you. Thank you so much for having me.
00:24:34
Speaker
Thanks, Corey. 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.
00:25:00
Speaker
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