Justice over achievement

Image via https://twitter.com/lunchbreath

One of my big takeaways from COVID-19 is the importance of equity. Our society, including our educational system, has been built on a model that values overall achievement over equity. In other words, as long as you are enabling your top students, or at best, most students, to achieve at high levels, you are doing a good job. But this is wrong. I've been wrong. I have historically had it backwards, idolizing human potential and achievement and neglecting equity. Here's what I'm learning:

1) Prioritize equity: Better to live in a just society than an advanced one. If forced to choose between a just society or school and a high achieving one, choose just.
2) Don't teach or test in a way that disadvantages some students.
3) If that means the quickest won't progress as fast because you can't support those who are less ready, then that's how it will have to be until we can get better at supporting and challenging everyone. "Do no harm" is the guiding principle.
4) Challenge every student, but not more than they can actually handle. Set the bar high. Let them try. Then adjust it, always trying to challenge them and inch it higher.

So how can we actually do this in the COVID-19 world?

Let's take a look at the primary hinderances kids are dealing with, and some possible solutions.

Access to technology

Problem: Many students of low socio-economic status lack fast, stable internet or computers. This can lead to an inability to participate fully in Zoom calls, especially if webcams are required.

Possible solutions: Don't require webcams. Provide asynchronous options for learning, and extended deadlines. Bring these students in to school, in-person and full time, if possible.

Homelife

Problem: Many students have home environments that are not conducive to participating in live classes. Some are caring for siblings. Others have distracting activity all around them. Others may be embarrassed to show their homes or families.

Possible solutions: Same as above, plus multiple opportunities for learning and success. In other words, mastery-based learning. They need flexibility. They need to be able to take or submit an assessment when they are ready, not on a deadline. They may also need extra academic help and social-emotional resources and instruction.

ADHD, sleep issues, low conscientiousness, low SEL skills

Problem: Many students attempting to learn from home are hindered by a lack of non-cognitive skills: the ability to get up on time, stay awake during class, manage their sleep, schedules, and tasks, stay focused, manage depression or anxiety, etc. These things prevent them from accessing the curriculum.

Possible solutions: Same as above, mastery-based learning, with a focus on explicit instruction in social-emotional learning and 1:1 SEL support. Instruction, assignments and assessments that target SEL skills separately from content skills.

Lack of readiness

Problem: Many students lack the pre-requisite academic skills and knowledge to access the curriculum.

Possible solutions: The mastery model. Extra academic help and support. 

As you can see, I keep coming back to the mastery model. I think it's really going to be the only way forward if we want to keep standards high and value equity. The impact of COVID-19 is going to ripple out into the coming decade, with students entering each successive year less ready than they would have been--and less equal. COVID-19 has disproportionally impacted at-risk students, so we can unfortunately expect gaps to be wider. 

Moving forward, we can either be driven by the fear of losing some imagined edge or status as a individuals, schools, country or society, or we can be driven by compassion and a desire for a just and equitable society. 

2020 was a unique and challenging year, and it's been hard to accomplish much, but one thing we can do is learn. Unfortunately, in our society we have a history of valuing some people over others. We have the opportunity to learn better and change.

Tracking student progress in a mastery-based system

"She won't be happy until her progress report is 100% green." That's what one of our teachers told me about one particularly driven student. She was talking about our new Google Drive-based progress report system.

One of the challenges of mastery-based learning is tracking and reporting student progress. Our new system allows students, parents, and teachers to see it all at a glance, so students can get the support they need, see their growth over time, and get quick feedback.

At The Depot, we measure student progress toward mastery of six competencies: Communication, Information, Media, and Technology, Career Skills, Life Skills, Critical Thinking, and Creativity and Innovation.

They work on these skills in various blocks during the school day: Pick-me-up, Advisory, Math Block, Book Teams, Project Block, and Fitness, and at their internships.

Teachers rate student performance on the six competencies using our Competency Rubric, and then enter the data in a spreadsheet like this:

A separate "progress report" spreadsheet for each student reports the data out to students, teachers, and parents, like this:

They see a graph of their progress toward each competency, plus a color-coded matrix that indicates their progress by subject area and block. It also reports attendance, credit issues and their accumulated "chips" (a new incentive system we are using this year). Red and orange squares indicate areas of concern. Yellow shows emerging growth, and green indicates competency.

The system also shows progress on a standard sequence of required tasks (the "non-negotiables"), their current credit status, and a worksheet that shows where their subject area credit is coming from this year. 

The system allows us to better identify students who need specific supports, and we are seeing increased use of the progress reports by parents and students. Our hope is that they will find it not only useful, but also motivating, as they see their growth over time. Our end goal, after all, is not only competency, but self-confidence.

Making a habit of autonomy, mastery and purpose

My differentiated biology class is based on the concept that humans are most powerfully motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose--a concept I got from Daniel Pink's powerful book, Drive.

But another powerful book has gotten me wondering lately whether I'm missing something: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

Duhigg breaks down habits like this: Habits consist of a cue (a trigger, like stress), a routine (like biting your nails or drinking), and a reward (dopamine).

But Duhigg emphasizes that it's really not a habit until you start craving it--until your brain starts expecting the reward every time it sees the cue.

I'd like to help my students form new habits, but at first the idea of habit seemed contradictory to Pink's trinity of intrinsic motivators.

Then I realized how the two ideas fit together:

1. Motivation is a craving. 
2. Autonomy, mastery, and purpose are routines that can produce rewards for your brain (dopamine). 

Some students crave good grades. Others don't.

Some develop the habit of doing their homework. Others don't.

We could focus on teaching them to crave grades and fear penalties, do their homework, and turn stuff in on time.

But I want to aim higher. I want to help my students develop habits of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

I want to help them crave the reward that comes from those things.

Because that's the essence of intrinsic motivation. 

Quality vs. success

In her book, The Rise, Sarah Lewis contrasts the "momentary nature of success and the unending process required for mastery."

That process, she says, is what's important--not the goal of success, which forever retreats into the distance.

It got me thinking about whether I'm more focused on "success" than mastery, perfection than the process, and recognition than relationships.

It made me wonder if slow is better than fast, cultivation, than harvest, learning, than winning, growth, than achievement, creativity, than conquest.

And I forced myself to sit in the yard under a tree for an hour on Sunday and watch my bees.

And today as I hiked to Wolf Den again, I wondered if it's really more about the quality of each step than about how fast I make the round trip.

An engaging experiment

One of my goals for my differentiated, mastery-based biology class is to increase student engagement. It doesn't look much like a traditional high school science classroom. And this unfamiliar picture often makes me question this strategy and whether it allows too much idle time. 

This week, it occurred to me that it would be very easy to get a rough measure  of engagement, or at least "on-task behavior" (I hate that phrase). I'd just walk around the room at regular intervals and make a check mark for each student who was actively engaged in working on his or her assignment, then divide that number by the total students. This should approximate the percentage of time they are "engaged."

My data so far, base on three separate measurements per class period:

Wednesday:  53%
Thursday: 57%
Friday (a double period): 62%

Today I started getting worried when I was getting ready to do my last count and it looked like I had about 30%, but then realized class was over in 5 minutes, and they'd been working for two hours.

50-60% may not seem to good, until you consider Microsoft's survey of 38,000 people that revealed that "people work an average of 45 hours a week," but "they consider about 17 of those hours to be unproductive." People estimate they're only productive for 63% of the time.

And I wonder what you'd find if you could measure "engagement" in the typical whole-class-instruction setting. You'd have a hard time measuring it, because looking at the teacher is hardly a reliable indicator of engagement. But my guess is you wouldn't get any more than 50%. And even if they're listening, according to Hattie and Yates, "there is no such things as passive learning,"so we have to ask whether they're learning at all in an environment like that.

The expectation of the quiet, docile, passive, teacher-directed classroom, assumes that having 80% of the students looking toward the front is better engagement than 50% working on projects.

I doubt it.

But neither am I satisfied with 50%. (I'm planning to do some experiments with the effect of various motivation efforts. I'll keep you posted.)

And neither am I satisfied with my measure of engagement. I need something that will tell me if they are really engaged, not just typing, looking at their books, or drawing on a poster. Though I think these are better indicators than looking toward the front, they're obviously not foolproof.

I need a better way to gauge it. Maybe by including a rating from my "Depth of Engagement" scale. Let me know if you have any tips.

In any case, I can't fault my students for an engagement level that approximates that of the American workforce, but I can certainly encourage them to aim higher. And I think we can get it higher by using sounder principles of motivation than are used in the typical American workplace (or school)--by using autonomy, mastery, and purpose instead of penalties and rewards.

Key issues in making mastery learning a reality

I've been working towards a mastery-based learning model in a few of my classes over the past few years, and it's a daunting task. Here's why:

First, my effort is based on several premises:

1. Any scores or grades should clearly measure a learning outcome so that a student or parent or school can look at the scores and know what the students are learning, so that they can adjust and improve their strategies. If we take this to its logical conclusion, we end up with standards-based grading, rather than averages and percentages.
2. Anything we measure (grade/score) we should also explicitly teach. For example, we shouldn't be penalizing kids for things like late homework is we're not teaching them the skills required to manage their time and tasks.
3. Scores and grades are part of an external reward and punishment system, and if we want to motivate students towards real learning and creative productivity, we need to motivate them with autonomy, mastery, and purpose (A.M.P.), rather than threats and penalties and competition with their peers.
4. Zeros are bad. Not only do they skew averages and have a devastating effect on a students average, but they don't actually measure learning at all. They are really just missing data points.
5. The same goes for late penalties. They obscure the measurement of the students' mastery of a concept or skill.
6. If mastery of the skill or concept is the goal, then there is no reason not to allowing multiple attempts on assignments. In fact, this could help teach perseverance and quality.
7. There is no reason we couldn't measure things like responsibility, punctuality, and good social skills, as long as we intentionally and explicitly teach them and keep them separate from content mastery scores. And simply doling out penalties does not teach them.

So here are the key issues that have arisen:

1. We don't have a standards-based grading system, so the student's grades are just "averages of their mastery," at best.
2. Without zeros and without a standards-based system, our only recourse when a student is falling behind is an "incomplete," which has implications for things like honor roll and sports eligibility.
3. Without late penalties and other external incentives for quick work, we run the risk of falling behind the curriculum, too relaxed of an atmosphere in class, and too much off-task behavior unless we do a good job with autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Solutions I'm working on:

1. Selling students on the idea of mastering the art of learning quickly and producing quality work--a key life skill.
2. Providing a complete course of assignments that must be mastered before credit is earned, so the students can see how their pace is affecting their progress toward credit. Working on this today.
3. Providing more meaningful and interesting assignments, to tap into the "purpose" aspect of A.M.P.

And why I care:

1. I don't teach just for the kids who already know how to learn, turn things in on time, and behave appropriately in school setting. I teach for all students.
2. My goal is not to be a filter, measuring students and judging whether or not they are fit for a diploma, college or career. My job is to actually get them ready.
3. No it's more than that, it's to help them learn how to learn.

Problem, probe, product, pronto

My biology class this year is designed around the thesis Daniel Pink outlined in his book, Drive: That the best way to motivate people is not with carrots and sticks, but with autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

I'm trying not to use threats of poor grades and penalties to keep my students working. Instead, I'm focusing on giving them as much choice as possible, allowing multiple attempts for mastery, and making assignments as meaningful and interesting as possible.

So how's it working?

I've been pleased with the quality of their work, and with their desire to revise it for a better score. And I'm hoping they are learning about quality and perseverance. But their motivation and engagement levels vary. There are really good days, some pretty good, not so good. And we've fallen behind the curriculum.

I'm convinced I can get a higher and more consistent level of engagement, and do it without threats and penalties, if I can just keep the levels of autonomy, mastery and purpose high enough.

Maybe this is too idealistic, but 1) I'm not sure the traditional model is any better, and 2) Pink's book was pretty convincing, and I'm figuring if there's a problem here, it's not with Pink, but with my implementation.

So here's my latest tweak:

I started thinking about the mastery part of motivation and what exactly I could hope they would want to master.

Here's what I came up with: Our goal is to master the process of researching a problem, learning about it, and then producing a product, and doing it quickly.

it to produce a high quality product. If they can master the skill of researching a concept or problem, learning quickly, and then producing a quality product, they will have a killer skill for the future.


I'm hoping this is something they can sink their minds into.

Let's see.

Theory Y teaching

More confirmation for the autonomy, mastery, and purpose based classroom today while reviewing Bolman and Deal's classic, Reframing Organizations for an assignment.

Doesn't sound like an exciting read, I know, but it's probably the most important book I've read in my program. And today, in a chapter on the "human resources frame" I noticed how the Theory X vs. Theory Y leadership concept relates to my biology class.

Theory X believes that people are basically lazy and naturally resist change. Leaders in this case either opt for control, rewards, punishments, and authoritarianism, or else they just try to avoid conflict. But Theory Y leaders believe their job is basically to provide the kind of structure people can naturally thrive in, and let them do the rest. In short, they believe people naturally want to hit the high levels of Maslow's hierarchy: mastery and self-actualization. 

Theory X sounds a lot like the traditional approach to school.
 
Theory Y sounds a lot like Pink's view on motivation: people are naturally motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

I'd certainly rather work in a Theory Y environment. I'm guessing my students would, too.

Bolman and Deal go on to lay out the typical response of workers under a Theory X-type environment:

1) withdrawl, absenteeism, quitting
2) apathy, indifference
3) resistance and sabotage
4) escape to higher positions in the hierarchy

Sounds spookily like traditional school, to me.

And not only does Theory Y lead to better performance, but by reducing conflict, it leads to better relationships. And this, I was reminded by Hattie and Yates yesterday, is super powerful in the lives of kids.

Negative teacher student relationships produce school avoidance and anti-social behavior. Positive teacher-student relationships predict reduced levels of anti-social behavior, buffer at-risk students from adverse home-lives, and can change the whole trajectory of a students life. (They also make teaching a whole lot more enjoyable for teachers.)

So I'll opt for a Theory Y approach.

Well, that performance didn't go so well. Now what?

The guitar playing got progressively worse as the song went on. I could tell when I glanced out at the faces in the audience, which I couldn't do too much, because I had to focus so hard on my playing and singing, which was going downhill fast.

I knew what was happening. The adrenaline was kicking in, and the fight-or-flight response was draining the fine motor control from my fingers. I was powerless to stop it. I also knew it didn't sound too good, so later I felt this sense of failure. Even a desire to quit and not try it ever again.

Then I realized that was just my fixed mindset talking--the belief that abilities are fixed. The fixed mindset makes us want to avoid situations in which we might fail, because that would mean we're no good. It's especially powerful when we believe we are good at something, because then that belief is threatened by failure. It's what's behind the common belief that effort is bad, because it means you're not naturally smart or talented enough. It believes that success should be instant. And breeds a fear of failure.

The growth mindset, on the other hand, is the belief that success always requires effort, failure is a necessary part of the process, and growth is always possible.

While I have a growth mindset in some areas, I  have fixed mindset in others, like my singing. I guess maybe it's because I grew up being told how good I was at singing, and so it became a part of my identity, and I guess failure threatens that.
But it's time to approach musical performance like any other challenge: failure is just the by-product of pushing the envelope.

So bring it on.  I'll keep working on the self-accompaniment as long as there are folks patient enough to put up with my failures.

Come to think of it, that's a big part of my role as a teacher--to put up with my students failures, and not just to put up with them, but encourage them, because failures are necessary stepping stones to success.

Making differentiation practical

I feel like differentiation is often viewed by teachers as pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Sure, it sounds great that we would tailor instruction to individual students based on pre-assessed readiness, interests, and motivation, but how does that really work when you're trying to get 20+ kids in one room through the common core in time for the SBAC?

But I feel like I've cracked the code in my biology class,or at least I'm close to it.

I call it a differentiated, mastery-based approach. In a previous post, I described the whole framework, but right now I just want to focus on the way I think this approach makes the goal of differentiation actually attainable by real people.

For every sub-unit the students choose among assignment options according to their readiness and interests and work individually or in small groups at their own pace. The assignment options are learning activities that require the students to read their text, watch posted videos, or do online research to answer the essential question. As they work, I am constantly circulating from student to student, group to group, asking questions, monitoring progress, and delivering individualized direct instruction as needed.

It's a sort of "divide and conquer" approach, I suppose, though there's no conquering involved. Set the students out to learn on their own and then walk around and deliver personalized instruction.

And by using student choice rather than teacher decision to differentiate, it saves a boatload of teacher time and effort while at the same time boosting student autonomy, which is a huge motivator.

Are we more concerned with assessing mastery or producing it?

Sometime in the last few years, I underwent a paradigm shift in my thinking about teaching and learning. I've been trying to put my finger on exactly what the difference in my thinking is, and I think I've finally boiled it down:

It was a shift from an emphasis on assessing mastery to producing mastery.

When presented the mastery-model and the concept of allow students multiple attempts at mastery, one of the primary objections is that this will not distinguish between the students who master it quickly and those who take a longer amount of time to master it. The emphasis here is on assessing or evaluating mastery, as if our job is about identifying the "strongest" or best students. But is it really?

Another objection that often comes up is that the mastery model will not teach them responsibility. But this objection assumes that punishing students with grade penalties teaches responsibility, which I doubt. As I've mentioned here before, all F's do, all zeros do is slam self-efficacy, further destroy confidence, squash any last glimmer of interest in learning, and send kids further down the doom spiral.

If you want to teach responsibility, then teach it. Don't imagine that simply slapping kids with poor grades will accomplish that.

So how can you teach it? How can we teach students to set goals, work hard to meet them, and produce quality work?

The mastery model. That's exactly what it is designed to do--teach grit and perseverance and attention to quality.

Providing students with multiple cycles of feedback and revisions until they master a skill or concept is not teaching them laziness and irresponsibility, it's teaching the opposite. If you want to teach kids to focus on just passing, or worse, if you want to crush their motivation altogether, keep slamming them with Fs, and let the beatings continue until morale improves.

Motivation without due-dates

Today in mastery-based biology:

BOOM.

And it had nothing to do with chemicals. 

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been concerned this week that my recent slackage in grading and feedback on their assignments was causing them to slack a bit on their work. Slow feedback = demotivation.

Feedback is key for generating flow, so today I went into the 2-hour double block with a very simple plan: Give extra-rich feedback as I could to every student as many times as I could during the period. (I wanted to see if that alone would make a difference.)

I can't say for sure, since I also reviewed the list of assignments that were under way, and reminded them of the impending quiz next week. But one thing I do know is that they worked more steadily than I have ever seen them work. And that's pretty good, seeing as they are usually around 60% (in terms of time on task).

About a third of the way through the two-hour class today, noticing that they were all working hard, I said something like this, "Here's how I see it, if you work hard for 75% of the time in a two-hour period, that is pretty darn good."

So I watched the clock nervously about 1.5 hours through. They kept going. Right to the end.

And this is without any deadlines except a quiz date, and I even told them I might change that if they weren't ready.

As they left class today, I said, "Good job today, folks. You all worked hard."

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: So far, it really seems like this system works.

Find common purpose, and strategies are just details

Lately I've been part of a new initiative at my school. Surprise, surprise. Any of you familiar with American education will know that new initiatives are nothing new--they're the like an addiction.

But this one, I really do like. It's about using mastery-based performance tasks to measure students' progress toward broad, practical graduation standards like communication and problem solving skills.

But, frankly, to many teachers, it is just one more thing (and for some, it's the straw (after the straw after the straw) that broke the camel's back).

That's why my ears perked up when I heard the following. I've been listening to Crucial Conversations during my morning commutes (and sometimes afternoons, though those are usually reserved for blowing off steam with my favorite Dutch DJ, Armin van Buuren). And yesterday they were covering their C.R.I.B. Method for establishing a mutual purpose (C.R.I.B. stands for Commit to seek Mutual Purpose, Recognize the purpose behind the strategy, Invent a Mutual Purpose, Brainstorm new strategies.) 

When we are in disagreement with someone, one of the most important things we can do is seek a common purpose. Instead of arguing about strategies (like mastery-based learning or performance assessments), what if we first found our common purpose? Maybe it would be something like: 

"We all want to see all students succeed."

(BTW, I hope it would be exactly that.)

Once we establish that all of us want every student to succeed, then the only question is how best to do that. And then the details are really minor issues in my book. We can work them out together. Whether the strategy we use in the end is mastery or the old fashioned lecture, as long as we agree that the goal is to get every child to succeed, and as long as we measure our progress and really do progress toward that goal, I'm satisfied.

And I think the same thing goes for so many relationships and issues in life. If we can establish a common purpose (and if we have trouble with that part, that's what the C.R.I.B. method is for), the rest is just details.

Will the mastery-model require too much time?

I've been having lots of success with the mastery model, and the best part has been that it makes my teaching time (and my students' days) less stressful and (I believe) more productive and effective.

But I've been struggling with whether it really does just take too much time. if you allow studentsto revise and resubmit everything, that multiplies the time requireed for grading. And if you need ot redesign assignments to fit the mastery model, that multiplies planning time.

And while there may be some teachers who go home every day at 2:30 and don't work weekends, I don't know them. In other words, they don't have a lot of extra time during the school year to spare. And as I've mentioned before, U.S. teachers already work half-again as many hours as the OECD average.

But here's what I'm thinking:

1) I don't do mastery because it is convenient, but because I believe it works for more students.

2) I'm not convinced it will mean extra time in the long run. After the initial redesign phase, the extra planning time will be a non-issue. And I think the extra grading time can be partially balanced by, a) automation and, b) replacing some formal scoring with informal teacher feedback and/or peer- and self-assessment.

I believe that quantitative, objective-as-possible scoring (i.e. data) is essential to real instructional improvement, but not every activity needs to be scored in this way, and some could be automated (as I currently do with short content quizzes).

This is exactly what I've been working towards lately with my new system: employing more informal feedback before the students submit an assignment, and using student self-assessment as a supplement to my own assessment of their work.

Though a switch to the mastery model will take more time up front, I think it might not require more than the traditional model after it's fully implemented.

The trick is, how do you create this massive paradigm shift and support this large initial spike in input to get the change to take place?

Autonomy, mastery and purpose works

Today I started class by making some points about their Gattaca responses--most of them had some revision to do. I had thought about just giving them credit so they could move on to the next assignment without revision. Decided against it. I want all of their work to be quality work. Nothing just for credit.

Same thing went for their cancer prevention assignments. A few had been turned in, so I had seen that they need to go for more depth on their explanations and use of reliable references. So I touched on that as well in my daily de-briefing.

Then I introduced our new +Starr Sackstein-inspired system for setting goals and self-grading for the next assignment (the discovery of DNA). I told them they would grade themselves afterwards and I would only change it if I felt they had over or underscored themselves.

Then they got to work.

And they worked steadily for the entire first period... and most of the next. The first to drop off and disengage did so a full hour and a half into the two-hour period. That's 75% engagement. And that was the minimum. And that was 1.5 hours of fairly steady, largely self-directed work. Couldn't expect more form a room full of full-fledged adults like myself. No threats. Just autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

I moved from group to group, discussing cancer, their projects, people we knew who were affected, discussing what it means to explain how something prevents cancer, discussing nutrition, a mix of student-initiated and me-initiated conversations.

As he finished his project near the end of class, one student asked, "Do plants get cancer?"

"I don't know," I said, "maybe when they get those growths--burls on them. Maybe that's cancer, but I don't know."

He opened a chromebook to find out.

He reported back later, excited: "Yes, they can get cancer, but it doesn't spread like it does in humans, because their cells don't move."

And that... that is what it's all about. Why am I surprised this works?

Awesome job guys!

Seeing engagement... and success

A student teacher observed my mastery-based class today.

(Most students were working on their Gattaca responses or cancer prevention posters, while a couple were wrapping up previous assignments.)

What most impressed him, he said, was how engaged the students were.

That's funny, because that has been my biggest concern. In the absence of external motivators like hard deadlines and constant threats of point deductions, I worry about how to motivate and engage my students.

But this student teacher's viewpoint is encouraging. It validates the fundamental philosophical foundation of this whole approach: provide autonomy, opportunity for mastery, and purpose, and that will produce engagement.

And it made me realize something: Sometimes all I see is my failures. I envision the "perfect" classroom, and I focus on the shortcomings, problems, issues, and challenges. I hone in on what's wrong, and miss all that's right.

Not good. My students need to know how well they're doing. (And so do I.)

I did the same thing with their Gattaca responses. My first response was to notice what they missed--what they didn't do, instead of noticing the way they all authentically engaged with the content in their own way.

My perfectionism rears it's ugly head more often than I would like. And it is kind of ugly. Though it does have a few redeeming qualities, I'd rather focus on (and enjoy) the good stuff.

And for goodness sake, Bill, this is working. They are working. They're enjoying the class. They're learning. And that's what's important.

It may be a bit messy along the way. Some targets may be missed. A few vocab words may fall by the wayside. A few details forgotten. A few minutes spent playing fantasy football when they should be working. Who cares. More will be spent learning to enjoy learning.

That elusive motivation

Ever since reading Drive, I've been trying to change my approach to motivating students. I no longer want to motivate them with threats of point deductions and lures of higher grades.

But is it really realistic to expect they will be motivated to do their school work simply because I tap into their desire for autonomy, mastery, and purpose?

I mean, what would they do if there were no grades or accountability at all--if they just came to class and didn't have to do anything?

Ahh, that's the crux of the issue, isn't it. Something's wrong with school because learning is supposed to be inherently interesting and fun. But it's not, and why?

Is it just because we ask them to think too hard, as Hattie and Yates suggest?

Or is it because we really don't supply them with sufficient autonomy, opportunity for real mastery, or purpose?

If that's it, then I guess it is realistic to suppose that autonomy, mastery, and purpose could be sufficient, if...

If we provide them enough autonomy, enough time to master things they consider meaningful, things that have real purpose.

Unfortunately, these three things are not easy to provide in the current system (which is why it needs to change).

Until then, my plan is to minimize the credit/grade-based penal system, maximize autonomy, mastery, and purpose, and work towards a more authentic, more human system.

Students determining their own grades

I've been inspired by +Starr Sackstein to work towards a system in which students help determine their own grades. In this video, she describes how she set up a Google form the students could use to self-assess, and in this one, she reflects on their self-assessments.

Hattie's work pointed to "students self-reporting grades" as the greatest of all influences on learning he investigated, so there's little doubt this will be a powerful strategy.

Of course, it's combined with lots of teacher feedback.

Today, as the #blizzardof2015 wound down, I revised the student "Learning Plan" form I've used with my biology and geology classes and combined it with the self-assessment form I've used to make one form students and I can use to track their goals and self-assessments.

I've got it set up so the same form is used for their goal-setting and self-assessment. When they visit the form, they're asked whether they are starting or finishing an assignment. The course is project-based: every assignment is a project designed to allow them to demonstrate mastery of a short list of learning objectives. They always get to choose among options for their projects: posters, essays, animations, labs, etc..

On the new form, they'll record the essential question and standards they are working on, and also what they are shooting for in terms of their rubric score on each standard. After they've finished the project, they return to the same form and use it to assess themselves on the standards. My plan is to make a copy of the form for each student so they can view the summaries of their responses with the Google forms summary feature.

My goal is that they could chart their own progress through time. That will be awesome. And I'd love to allow students to have  a voice in their own quarter grades, like Starr is doing.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Comprehensive semester exams need to go

When the goal of learning for learning’s sake runs smack into the wall of semester exams...

That’s what it felt like today in my mastery-based class. I’ve been doing my best to use autonomy, mastery and purpose to motivate students instead of grades. But how do you do that when you’re up against a comprehensive semester exam?

If that exam is not based on standards that are inherently meaningful to students--if the exam itself does not tap into autonomy, mastery, or purpose, then you’re stuck. It becomes an irritating parenthesis in an otherwise increasingly authentic learning experience.

Solution: Get rid of comprehensive exams and replace them with a more authentic assessment.

What collaboration is all about

Today I got to give a little presentation about our voluntary PLC that's been meeting once a month to work on differentiation and mastery-based instruction.

As I prepared for it, I was mainly thinking about how I might motivate other teachers to get on board.

Though I did originally have a slide about the meaning of a collaborative culture, my main intent was not to send that message.

But maybe that's what happened. For one thing, as I talked, that's how I felt. As I described what we do:

It’s not about showing off.

It’s about troubleshooting, sharing, experimenting and improving.

It’s about collaborating.

That's what I was feeling. And as I described what some teachers a have already shared at our meetings, and one teacher in particular who had run into serious challenges as he tried to implement the mastery model, I felt the need to reiterate:

That's what this is about. It's not about starting with the assumption our strategies will work. It's about facing the facts, whatever they are, and improving.

I needed to hear that.

And looking out at the crowd, I thought I sensed everything from resistance and fear to agreement and encouragement. And I guess all of those feelings are in me as well. The tendency toward isolation and every-man-for-himself educational survivalism in which we all have to pretend we all have it all together gets to me.

Afterwords, a colleague said, "Thanks for the pep talk."

I hadn't thought about it as a pep talk, though it turned out to be one for me. 

Time I got more serious about being vulnerable and open, facing brutal facts, and being fully committed to improvement, whatever the implications to me.