How do we communicate student growth? Is that the same as work ethic? The same as effort? Our conversation with teacher Aric Foster gets us thinking about what makes a healthy grading practice.
Our Email: cese@cmich.edu
Intro Music:
David Biedenbender
Other Music:
Pixabay
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How do we communicate student growth? Is that the same as work ethic? The same as effort? Our conversation with teacher Aric Foster gets us thinking about what makes a healthy grading practice.
Our Email: cese@cmich.edu
Intro Music:
David Biedenbender
Other Music:
Pixabay
Find us on social media:
Instagram: cmichcese
Facebook: cmich_cese
You know, people ask me what that is sometimes. And then there's really one major guiding principle. And that is separating proficiency from behavior. So separating with the kid can and cannot do academically versus behavior choices that they make.
Introduction:Okay, now we're recording so welcome to teach blender. Guys, welcome to teach wonder podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neill and Julie Cunningham.
Ashley O'Neil:Okay, this podcast episode is on a topic that people love to hate to talk about assessment. At its most basic form, it is simply the method we use to communicate a student's learning to themselves and to relevant audiences. But it's not simple as it and it's most harmful form. It's how we get keep kids from activities. It's the thing that keeps teachers at school way too late on a Friday. It's the reason we get angry parent phone calls. It's the thing that keeps kids ineligible to do their favorite sports. It's the numbers that get distilled and reported out to a community or the administration or a state that give value to a teacher or school district. It's a lot. I've met teachers who use only rubrics, I've met teachers who have a gamified system of percentages that require a multi step calculation. I've met students may have been that student who would master that gamified system to calculate my own percentages to see how many quizzes I could afford to miss without messing up my GPA. I've met teachers who strictly anecdotal narratives, grades are gone. And children get a paragraph that summer summarizes their performance each term. The one thing I want to keep at the front of this conversation, the one assumption we're going to use to frame this conversation is everyone is doing their best everyone. Teachers are doing the best they can with the tools they have in the systems that they're inside of students are doing the best that they can, with the tools they have with the system that they're inside of parents are doing the best that they can trying to understand the system that they're inside of. So this conversation is not a place to call it specific individuals for specific practices that you may feel are unjust, unfair or malicious. It's a place for us to start asking questions and to think about what all the consequences are to the decisions we make about grading. Our interview today is with teacher Eric Foster. We met Eric this summer, and we're struck by how passionate he was about a topic that a lot of teachers want to shy away from. Eric has been doing quite a bit of work around grading for some time and has come up with some answers that work for his context, in school and with his students. This conversation is incredibly interesting to me because Eric is so open about grading and honest about what he's doing. It's also a good conversation to me because it leaves me with more questions than answers. So that's my challenge for you today, not to hear Eric's story and to walk into your classroom tomorrow with a plan to overlay his practices on top of your system is to listen to Eric's questions and answers and to ask questions of your own to think about the domino effect that your grading practices have. Alright, so do you want to start by just saying your name and then maybe like, how you describe yourself professionally, so what you teach where you're teach whatever you'd like to share?
Julie Cunningham:Okay. I'm Eric Foster. And I teach in our made at Michigan, which is a small farm town about 35 miles north of Detroit. This is my 23rd year teaching. I am like the English 11 guy. I teach a lot of English 11. And I've been doing that for two decades. I also teach honors nine. I also teach creative writing. And I also teach my favorite class, which is Teacher Cadet, where we teach high school kids how to be teachers. This last year, last year was the first year we had actually Teacher Cadet two. So that was pretty exciting. I also do a lot of work with Oakland University have had a intern for nine years in a row I think and mostly a liaison where I meet with we have with all the interns in our in our district and act like a bridge or Ambassador liaison between the lab work I guess in in our media and then the work at the University that they're doing. And so I meet with them once a once a week and you go over things, most of them a university supervisor for them where I go in and see how the interns are doing and And they've also led me to a couple of methods classes there. So that's kind of my bio, I guess. So one of the things that I think that I know that you do is that you provide professional learning opportunities for teachers in standards based learning that that's correct, right? And then so can you tell us what you mean? Or tell the audience what you mean by standards based learning? And then maybe provide an example or two of what this looks like in the classroom?
Aric Frost:Sure, sure. Well, that's a five hour answer. If I'm to answer it accurately. It's actually an eight hour PD. But I'll try and trim it down a little bit. Sometimes the label of standards based learning or standards based grading gets, it comes off pejoratively in certain circles. And so actually, when I package it, and try and sell it to a district and actually deliver it to other teachers, we just kind of picture that package as healthy grading practices, healthy grading practices. And if you do, like these four or five things in your assessment, then you're accidentally doing a standards based grading. I mean, traditionally, in its form, it's, I'm marking things on a 4.0 scale. And that's, and then, according to a standard, and that's the standard based grading, well, it's, to me, it's a lot more than that. It's the healthy grading practices is really kind of a better way to describe it in my head anyway. And, and, you know, people ask me what it is sometimes. And then there's really one major guiding principle. And that is separating proficiency from behavior. So separating what the kid can and cannot do academically versus behavior choices that they make. Now that that sounds pretty simple. Except in a broad scale, lots of times I get teachers to agree on that. Yes, we should definitely separate them. And then I bring up things like, Okay, what about late work? Well, we got a marked down for late work, okay. Okay. Then you don't believe in separating proficiency from behavior? And they say, No, no, no, they go, Okay. Well, if if it's an A on Monday, and it's due on Monday, and then it's a quality work, and they turn it on Tuesday, what is it that well, it's a B plus, because but I said, Okay, well, then just under, you can do that. But just understand, you're mixing proficiency and behavior, because doing it lay is behavior choice. And the academic work on the task is the proficiency. So you're mixing, you know, oh, goodness, I guess I have, you know, and I don't I don't like to tell people what to do. I just like to ask questions. And basically regurgitate all the research and books that I read, and throw out questions. And so separating their proficiency and behaviors is late work is separate. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of things that you can look at for that, like, you know, one grade four group work. That's, that's not entirely a healthy grading practice, either. It's kind of epitomized in these two, I call them fake students, but they're actual real students in the same class that I taught about 10 years ago.
Ashley O'Neil:Alright, so Eric went on to talk about two students in his educational past. And it's important to note that back when the story took place, at AC T scores, were the full defining thing for what your life looked like after high school, a certain at AC t score would open college entrances to you, in a way that was pretty singular. So the two students, the first one was Jay, and he didn't perform the game of school particularly well, you can think about late work, you can think about frequent interactions with administration. You can think about negative associations with that student that kind of follow them from year to year to year. And the other student Missy showed up turned in everything on time and was the kind of student who was probably entrusted to bring things back and forth to and from the office. And the student that you would put on a paper when the substitute was there to say, hey, you can ask Missy about this stuff. So in class, the first students J, his letter grades are really low DS knees and the second student Missy, hers are mostly A's and B's. So when the time for the AC T came, there was an expectation that my C score would be one way and Jays would be another. Well, sure enough, there was a surprise, J score was high, high enough to get into some ivy league schools with that score alone. And the other students score Missy was prohibitive, and would have kept her out of many colleges that she would have tried to apply to based on that score alone. So while standardized tests have their own history and issues that we won't get into today, the point of Eric's story is illustrating here is that disconnect between a student's grade and their actual content knowledge, Jay knew a lot of things knew enough things to perform really well on a standardized test. And that was significant. His grades did not reflect that.
Aric Frost:But there's two different kinds of people and so what we created in our district is a letter grade, which in my class is 100% what you can and cannot do academically. And then we have another mark that goes on the report card called citizenship or employability or something that but only reflects their behavior. So Missy in my class got to see, but then got a huge awesome fantastic smiley face and employability and Jay got the opposite. So he failed lots of other classes because behavior was mixed in there somehow. But in my class, he got straight A's, because I just scored him on how he did academically. And then I put a terrible sad face when it came to came to citizenship. So that's kind of the thesis in a nutshell. And then what it looks like in the classroom is things like, like I said, no penalty, no academic grade penalties for late work. No group grades for a project. So what I'm just doing this right now my creative writing class, they're working in groups of four, and they're making menus, they're writing menus and creative descriptions for the foods and whatnot. And then what I'm doing is on their individual rubrics that they're turning in their labeling exactly what they did. So Timmy is in charge of the drinks and Kimmy is in charge of the desserts. So I'm scoring them individually on a group project, things like that. retakes for 100% Full credit 100%, like replacement of the previous one, as long as there's a consequence in between the 10th one and attempt to. So in my class, we just they just did a summative actually. And then if they did all their formative work along the way. And if they did the I excel work that I had them do, then they earned a summative retake, so they do the summative, and that completely replaces their first score. So that's another example. And then a final one, I guess, would be their final final grade, and my class is 100% summative and 0% formative. So their final grade is just however they do on all the summative stuff, and none of the formative. So those are examples and kind of how it looks in the classroom.
Ashley O'Neil:Yeah, it sounds like you. We see this in, in the education world a lot, right? Like a lot of times teachers end up being the kids who love the color coded book and love the highlighters and, and love that was school. And that doesn't always translate. So it sounds like what you're attempting to do is look at this whole child, this whole human and parse apart the pieces to still give families and that student a comprehensive, comprehensive picture. So we're not taking away, you know, we're still acknowledging the fact that work was late, just in a different place. So we can say this is what the student knows. And this is how the student is doing in this class. Like this is how they're showing up. Is that does that seem like an accurate summary? Yeah, absolutely.
Aric Frost:And then, you know, one of the one of the things that I did poorly, I won't speak for other teachers, I'll just speak for myself. One of the things I did poorly when I first started this journey was since summative was the only thing that was reported numerically, I would I did a poor job of communicating learning along the way up to the summative. I have since changed that because there's a whole bunch of formative numbers in the book, except in our grading program. They're all in italic, because they don't count. So they see all the practice along the ways is twos and fours and threes and ones. So they can a parent can see the idea of how they're progressing in their learning. But still, like right now, some of my kids have been turned into summative yet. And their final final grade is dash dash like Na, it doesn't count. Yeah, because it's all practice along the way. So clearly communicating to all stakeholders, how the student is doing along the way is really, really important. And that should not be sacrificed because of any of these practices.
Julie Cunningham:So Eric, sometimes, as a classroom instructor, I might hear that this x, this is extra work for me, right? Like it sounds like, well, I'm letting this child retake a summative exam. And that means I have to potentially grade it twice, or I'm looking at all of this formative work and providing an assessment, right, that is not going to go into the child's summative grade. And yet, I'm providing feedback along the way, right? So some might argue, well, that's my role as a teacher is to do that. And others might argue, well, I can probably do something similar, or when I think of as similar with less effort on my behalf. So how would you sort of feel that question about time, like, how do you feel that the way you may be assessed previously and the way you assess Now, are there? Are there differences in the amount of time that you invest? Or is it just a different place? Or how do you go about sort of explaining that to someone?
Aric Frost:That's a really good question, one that I've gotten as a consultant quite a few times. And the I guess the best answer I can give is with respect to the summative work because when when the first year I did this, and I said I'm gonna give all retakes. I'm For for the kids. And I thought, Okay, I'm gonna have to grade twice as much. Oh my goodness, all the children are going to do retakes. Well, first of all, the retake comes with a cost, you have to do X, Y, and Z in order to earn the retake revision. And so right now, I just got done calculating about calculating it. Only half of my kids did all their formative work along the way and did the I excel stuff I asked them to do like typically math classes, do test connections, or Spanish classes make extra flashcards there has to be a cost, there has to be put in some work to earn. So automatically, that takes half of them away, usually. And then the other half is, no, I'm good. I got a three or four, whatever I don't need to retake. And so what I've found over the years, at least the last decade, is that the the percentage of kids that want to retake a summative assessment is less than 10%, it's less than 10%. It's not nearly as high as I thought it was. So the extra work for me at least, is very, very minimal, as long as I put in a cost in between. And then another thing that takes away from this, this insurmountable extra workload is this last summer that we had, there was four standards, there's four skills they had to do, well, Kimmy in my class got a four, a three, a four, and then a one. So what she's going to do is just redo the vocab part. And that's it. So that automatically cuts my, my workload by, you know, three quarters just by doing that, you know, because to me, it doesn't make sense that if a kid shows me they can do it can do it can do it and can't do it. Why do they even show me they can do it again? Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. And it's extra work for me.
Ashley O'Neil:So at this point, Julie and I both had some questions for Eric, mine were a bit about the hidden behaviors or skills that still seemed baked into the process. What I mean is that students who want to take an assessment have to earn it by doing more work. On the one hand, it makes sense, you want some accountability that students have changed up their strategies to learn material, instead of just retaking and retaking and retaking by chance. So doing a practice sheet requiring that students study or practice in a quantifiable way is reasonable, but it may also skew results. So a student who isn't turning any things on time has to turn in more things in order to do their assessment. This is potentially tricky. Julie's question was along a similar vein, she was asking about the predictable trends with students, meaning we're students who are already good at the game of school who loved the extra credit to do all the extra work, who wanted to gamify it and do the extra I excel and could get A's and B's based on those habits. Are they the only ones taking advantage of the retakes? Or is Eric seeing a variety of students making use of the system?
Aric Frost:No, I think I understand your question. What I think I hear you asking is, Do the kids that do the the consequences that do that do the extra work between attempt one and attempt to to earn a summative? Are they the ones that don't really need to do a retake anywhere? The A and B kids? Or do the kids that probably need it? Do the work in between? Well, the answer is I think it lines up to what happens in a traditional class anyway, right? Because think about the kid that's probably going to get an A A B three or four or whatever, on a test probably have good work habits, right? They probably do. So it kind of lines up but one of the things I do in my room two things I do in my room to help close that gap. that achievement gap is one is every day and I'm not exaggerating every day I say the same thing at the beginning of every single class. Hey kids, so glad you're here check up on the screen here we got our four learning goals for our summative we got vocab reading comprehension author's craft, and grammar of course now those four things are going to be on the summative. And hey, everybody, what do you got to do to revise the summative? Do all your formative work and do your I excel stuff? Yep, you're right. What if you don't? Well, you can't revise the summative. Okay, tell your face partner where you're at how much formative work you have done and how are you doing on your I excel work? Go and they talked for 20 seconds. Okay. Quick hands in your group of who's farthest along this retake path. You You You okay, great, wonderful. Pentas every day, every day.
Ashley O'Neil:This example for me highlights just how intertwined study skills and habits are with academic knowledge and how daunting it can be to truly try and disentangle something that is so connected.
Aric Frost:And then what blows my mind is no kid say Foster said that yesterday. No one says that, like 10 days in they look at me like really? We got to do all had to earn a summative. Like I just said that like every day for the past two weeks. And then today on their summative, they're done. I meet all the kids at the door and I said today the question was all right Did you do all you needed to do in order to earn a summative? Retake, and then go? Uh, what? Oh, my goodness. And there was all these replies like I say it every day kids. So that's one thing. So that's one thing I do is repeat the summative retaken what it takes every day and do a check in, and then meeting him at the door every single day. So every single day, when the kids walk in, I have a 10 to 20 sight conversation with every kid. Hey, Timmy, how's it going? All of your work is done. And you have three exhales done way to go. Hey, Kimmy, I don't have your blue sheet yet. You need to turn that in in order and some of the retake, and you have zero XL is done. Remember, you gotta have 10, up to 80 by October 10, or whatever. And every day they get that conversation. So it's hard for me to think that a kid can go home and say I didn't know, you know, and it's emailed out every two weeks to parents and kids to so that constant clear communication. I hope and I think I have no data to back this up. But But I have anecdotal data that said it closes that achievement gap between the kids that will do the work anyway, versus the kids that might need an extra encouragement.
Ashley O'Neil:Do you feel like this way of grading change how you taught? Or do you think it allows you to teach the way you were hoping to teach, right? So I know that assessment is like the sticky thing that nobody wants to talk about? And everybody needs, like wants to be different in their space? So do you think it changed your practices? Like what drove it for you? That makes sense?
Aric Frost:Oh, that's a yes. And that's a really good question. So when when I first started on this journey, I said, Hey, we're going to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Here's a couple of cute activities. And here's a test at the end that's in the textbook, or that a teacher last year gave me and that's kind of how we went about it. Well, then, when I started on this journey, it was, Oh, my goodness, I have to do I have to do backwards design, I have to start with what standards I want to assess the kids on, then I have to make the summative, then I have to make the formative to backfill. So what it does is it it at the risk of sounding overconfident. My formative and summative practice is 100% thoroughly allied. And it's really, really good. If I do anything. Well, that's what I do well, because I make some of it first, then a backfill formatives. So what it showed me is one time, one of our seniors was theme, understanding the theme of a story. And we did it a whole bunch, we read those stories talked about the theme, and they were doing great. And then we get to the summative. And it was okay, read this short story in this short story and compare the two themes. And they did horribly. Because at no point that I haven't compare themes. I thought, oh, that's another way to go about theme. It wasn't we never practiced it that way. You know, and when I explain it to kids, it's a lot of it's a lot of use a lot of coaching metaphors if you're a so little league soccer coach. And the only thing we're going to do in class is do corner kicks, throw ins dribble the ball, shoot and defend. That's all we're going to do. We're not going to swim, we're not going to swim, because I know what the game is at the end, I already made it, right. And there's no swimming in the soccer game. And there's no, you know, there shouldn't be if there is, too text theme comparison connections, I better practice that along the way, or I'm a terrible coach. I'm a terrible coach, if I don't do that. So yes, this has shown me errors in my teaching that I didn't even know existed beforehand. So it has made me a better a better teacher.
Ashley O'Neil:Sounds like you've really like the scalpel comes to mind, you've really streamlined and every lesson is intentional, every exercise build s towards something you're not wasting anybody's time,
Unknown:I would like to hope not I would like to hope not.
Julie Cunningham:And I just want to just say that that is that is a skill. That's not easy that aligning everything, I mean that starting with your summative and working backwards and making sure everything is aligned, you're making it sound really nice and easy and straightforward. That is not necessarily an easy task. So
Unknown:well, if I'm good at it, I want to say that it took 10 years of screwing it up. But in order to get good at it, you know and I don't know about at Central but at Oakland and at Michigan State University, they don't teach that in any of the classes yet, you know, whatever. So it's not like okay, here's your class on how to accurately choose standards not necessarily choose because lots of times it's it's it's you know, provided for you. But here is a class about highlight the standards for a particular unit. Get resources in order to synthesize an assessment that accurately assesses the students in your room that aligns with those standards, and then do differentiated and scaffolded formative assessments that lead up to this unit And then cutesy fun tech to throw into these formative assessments. And here's how to double check to make sure everything is cohesive. There's not a class like that exists no central wants to create one, I'll teach it. Okay. But what a lot of that is just trial and error and PLC work and us being humble and US relying on our edge do heroes in the social media sphere, in order to do that kind of work. So that's just my take on it. And I
Julie Cunningham:think being really reflective, you're being very reflective write about your last 10 years of teaching, not just to humble, but also really, really reflective. And your last statement made it sound a little bit more nuanced as it really is. So appreciate that. So you mentioned Central and we had the opportunity and the pleasure of working with you last summer when you came into some professional learning part of a professional learning workshop with us at CMU on core teaching practices. And I know you've been involved with Oh, with Tuf and Oakland University for a while now. So how has your work been reflected in core teaching practices? Or vice versa? How do you see yourself your involvement in core teaching practices?
Unknown:Well, I, if you asked me this eight years ago, I would say I don't know. But from having these interns, and being university supervisor and teaching the methods, classes, it is helped show me a lot. The mentor work that I know you all are doing it at Central and definitely happens in Oakland, shows us mentors. Another teacher put it really well. Another teacher put it as with these core teaching practices, you're labeling things that I just instinctively know are pretty darn good. So it's kind of refreshing to say, oh, wait a minute. I already do that. So that's good. Thank goodness, thank goodness, that thing I'm doing is good. Right. So that's, so that's one way it like, bolsters and reassures me that the things that I just thought were good are actually good, because the university and these core teaching practices say so. But another thing it does, is it highlights intricacies of my practice that I wasn't doing through ignorance, that I can easily make better. Like one example I thought of was whole group discussion and the cortini practice of whole group discussion. When when I when I was going through what it entails, and I had to model it for my intern to do it effectively. One little key thing on there is published the results, and words from the discussion and make them available to all the children afterwards. And I went, Oh, my goodness, I I have never done that. I've never done that I've never recorded the words or thoughts from a discussion and then gave it to the kids. Now I do it every time. Now it's either kids doing it digitally on a tablet in the background and back channeling, or I'm up on the board and my interns on the board recording thoughts in some kind of map or something. And we take pictures and throw it in Google Classroom. But somehow, we're publishing the results of a discussion to the kids. And I would have never done that if it wasn't for the core teaching practices. So again, it just accentuates the thing we're doing well, and then give us little tips and tricks on how to improve certain things in class.
Julie Cunningham:Do you feel like this? This thought of mine comes from the when you said the other teacher said it's nice to have a point out what I do well, right? Do you feel like it also gives you a common language or vocabulary? So that was oftentimes I think, in education, we like our lingo, and we like our acronyms. But if you and your mentor teachers are the mentors, and there are other supervising teachers are having the same conversations. I feel like it might give you some terminology that's the same are some experiences that you can talk about that are similar?
Unknown:Yeah, absolutely. Let you know. It's October 9 is we're recording this today. And you know, I've worked with my current intern for over a month. And it now I can say, Hey, why did that lesson go poorly? What didn't I do when it comes to explaining modeling content? He says, Well, you didn't really model the model cog metacognition, I'm like, You're right. So second hour, you want me to try it? Are you to try it? And then they go do it. Or look at this thing you made for designing lessons. What's missing, like, oh, there's not a hierarchy of ideas or the hierarchy of ideas is not clear. And that's an Oakland rubric in in the core teaching practices. So it does give us this, this common language and it almost like expedites the feedback loop between him and I.
Julie Cunningham:That's Those are really great examples. Thank you. Okay.
Ashley O'Neil:Can you speak a little and we talked about this a tiny bit. I think this relates to the question that Julie asked about how this affects different types of students. But can you speak to how a change in assessment practices has influenced equity or could influence equity In a classroom,
Aric Frost:yeah, yeah. But before that to maybe link our core teaching practices conversation back to assessment, we can do it, I think through equity. So one of the things I learned through my work in the core teaching practices is that by doing these core teaching practices, I'm accidentally creating an equitable classroom, I'm accidentally doing little bitty things to try and disrupt systemic inequity. Like, for example, if I'm doing whole group discussion, as the core teaching practices, explain it, every single child has a voice, and every single child's voice is published authentically, regardless of whatever group they're in, which is, you know, equitable. And then, you know, one of the, when I was in training for explaining modeling content, and our Anna was being taught by people way smarter than me what that thing is, they gave the example of what a an emerging teacher did one time and emerging teacher tried to use an analogy to explain an idea. And the emerging teacher said, Well, you know, it's kind of like when you were eight, and you got a shiny new bike, and bla bla, bla, bla, bla, and a lot of us in the room are like, get that's a pretty good example. And then she highlighted for me, yeah, some people don't get a shiny back when they're eight years old. And you know, a lot of us in the room that came up that came up with privilege, you know, are like, Oh, my goodness, just by using that example, we accidentally marginalized a group of kids that we didn't have to, you know. So given the feedback to interns and myself of using ubiquitous, universal examples, like a rainbow or a tree, those probably aren't going to marginalize anyone. Just those little things accidentally make me a more equitable teacher. When it comes to assessment, the same kind of thing can happen when I'm using these healthy grading practices, I'm accidentally being more equitable. In one of the stories I always tell is Miss Vickie's class. And this was like, real for me. When I when I was in ninth grade, we had her class and she was trying to do something so heartfelt. It was during around Thanksgiving. And she said, Hey, you can bring in canned goods that we can donate for extra credit. And so I went home to my mom, who was a single mother of five kids. And I said, Hey, Mom, can I have some canned food for the canned food drive for Mr. gave his class? And she said, No, no, no, no. We need that to feed your sisters. And I said, Okay, no problem, I just wondered. And so I went to class with zero canned goods. And my buddy Dunn, who had lots of extra money brought in a whole bunch. His grade was better because his mom was poor. And that's not right where I'm from. I'm so sorry about the beeps. And in class right now. I'm not in class, but that's the after school bell. So anyway, that kind of inequity, it can easily be fixed just by doing these healthy grading practices. So
Ashley O'Neil:okay, I have a question about equity and grading practices, and how to go back a little bit to some of the language that you use with how you explain your practices to students, because we didn't ask if this was school wide. I'm sure some of this isn't that I'm sure some of this is like an Eric foster special. So as you're explaining these things to students, we talk a lot about when you can separate proficiency from behavior. How does it work for your students, when some of that behavior based language comes back into the proficiency half? Like for example, when you talk about students earning their like retake rate, that is putting a value back in that is a behavioral value. So how do you reconcile those things like if a student when he was like when he was like earning and consequences? Some of those are behavior based languages are often are or get like used in behavior circles? Do you find that that gets muddy? Or does it? Is it clear in your space?
Aric Frost:Clear in my space? I haven't found that yet. And maybe I'll just hung myself and ask you How could I word it differently? How can I set this up? Now? The answer that comes to my head, while you're maybe thinking about an answer is with my own child? I don't use urn and consequence for dessert after supper. I'm like, Okay, after supper, we will eat ice cream. We will, but it just happens after. That's all it just happens after. Well, what if I don't Well, I I don't know what will happen find out and see what happens. You know, like, so I don't use urn language with my, with my own child in my house. And I when I earn it here, I don't I don't see any consequences. Like I don't know if I answered your question. Yeah.
Ashley O'Neil:Well, I don't have an answer either. But I think I think it's something that we talk a lot or it comes to mind when we when we think about equitable practices. And it's because you don't live in a vacuum, right? So the way that you eat earn in consequences is probably quite neutral, right? Like, there are natural consequences to these things. These are the steps you have to do in order to get to the retake. And those are the steps you have to do right. But heard and consequence have meaning outside of the classroom space. Right. And so I guess I just was wondering if that's come up for you, or if you feel like your definition is so clear in your classroom, that those other meanings don't bleed in?
Unknown:I don't think they bleed in especially with the demographic that I worked with. Sure. But but now I'm gonna be extra mindful of that. So thank you. Yeah,
Ashley O'Neil:thank you. I just was I was just curious. I think
Aric Frost:I, it strikes me not that you came here to be analyzed?
Unknown:No, yeah. Analyze away.
Ashley O'Neil:As interviews normally go,
Julie Cunningham:Welcome. No, I was gonna say, I think you're, you're, you're very repetitive like your, your practices, right? Your protocols are very clear and repetitive. I would guess that helps you like you're not changing something from time to time, right? I say this every morning. This is the way it works. For every summative test. It's not sometimes it works this way. And sometimes it doesn't. Like I think, I think children students, really appreciate that. And that feels probably, again, as using Ashley's terms, like value neutral, but also in their minds. Probably very fair, right? Like, Mr. Foster doesn't say this to me and this to someone else. And it's just this and i Everybody gets a 10 to 22nd conversation on the way in and everybody gets a check in and everybody gets reminded, I think probably all of those, which probably feels very repetitive to you, but maybe not to them since they're still surprised
Ashley O'Neil:about right. Yeah. And there's instability, right? Like, yeah, your your practices are dependable. And because you have separated proficiency from behavior, right, it leaves less on your mind. You're not making a judgment call, right? Like, oh, do I let him do the thing. And I know it's late, and I know my practices, but I know his mom. And we talked about the thing, which is inequitable, and then puts it back in the behavior space. So probably just that separation. Yeah. leads to more predictability leads to things feeling. Like they're not like Mr. Foster on high kind of indicating who gets who get who is allowed to do makeups. And who is allowed late work? Nope. This is just the policy. And it's
Aric Frost:right. And I love that you asked that. Did you want me to just keep asking all of the counter argument questions that all the teachers ask when I consult, and then give the give the rebuttal.
Ashley O'Neil:like to hear that slow fade. conversation wasn't finished nearly because the conversation about grading never really is. I felt like the slow fade was appropriate. Eric has found some systems that seemed to work really well for him. And they hinge on a few key things. Let's review them. Number one, on separating proficiency from behavior as much as possible. Number two, giving students explicit path to demonstrate their proficiency through a retake. Number three, using backwards design to make assessments that as much as possible only test students on the skills that they've actually been working on. Number four, only counting summative assignments, students can see what they did in a formative piece, but it does not impact their grade. Number five, practicing those behaviors that contribute to student success. He asks students where they are in their work daily, he checks in on their assignments daily, he asks them to articulate their progress and what they're missing or working on and their plan daily. Remember what I said about this episode, that it's a place to start asking questions and to think about all the consequences to our decisions about grading? Well, it's a place to start because the conversation is never really complete. And it never really should be. Eric admitted to us that he's constantly fine tuning and refining his own practices. And that's what we should be doing as well. So here are the some of the questions that I would like to think about, for what would happen next. What are some of Eric's students perspective on the system? How well do they feel represented? How would this system work or not work in another district? What would need to change? Is it possible to fully disentangle what kids know from their work skills and behavior? Are there unintended consequences to that effort? Thanks for listening to another episode of teach wonder if this episode sparked questions for you, it obviously did for us, we'd love to hear about them. Send us an email or connect with us on social media. You can find the links for both in our show notes. Until next time,