(Grade)book review: Grading for Equity

NYC released its grading policy this week. Within this policy is a great amount of flexibility for teachers to shape how grades impact learners. Mastery Collaborative Mentor from active member school NYC iSchool,  Kristen Brown takes on the important questions: Are my grades are fair, accurate, and giving my students the feedback I think they need to really improve? Are my assessments and the way I evaluate students perpetuating an unjust system that disproportionately fails more students of color than white students?

She tells about her experience reading Joe Feldman’s book 2019 book Grading for Equity and how it’s furthered her thinking about assessing students in a fair and non-punitive manner.

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What are my grades really telling my students?

Grading for Equity, by Joe Feldman

I have been trying for the last few years to think about how we can change our education system so it works for everyone. I have attended countless workshops and have read every book I could find about how I could change my teaching practices, my curriculum, and my classroom culture to be more culturally responsive, but I still felt that some of my grading practices and grading calculations were perpetuating inequity. 

A few months ago, I walked into the teacher’s lounge and saw a book called Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman. It is a resounding endorsement of mastery based grading and it has some of the clearest reasoning behind why we must only grade students on what they master in our classrooms and not on who they are or on factors they cannot control. The book reinforced for me that I am a white, upper middle class woman and everything I do in the classroom is filtered through that racial lens, including the way I grade. 

There is a lot at stake in grading. Grades decide so much about students: who gets to take Advanced Placement courses or who receives honors distinctions. Students begin to identify with the labels we give them through grades. Feldman makes the case that we think about grades as objective because there’s a strict formula and calculation, but in fact they are steeped in our own biases and how we view student work and behavior in our classrooms.  Below are two examples of how cultural bias creeps into common grading practices.

“I am a white, upper middle class woman and everything I do in the classroom is filtered through that racial lens, including the way I grade. ”

Cultural bias in grading: 2 examples

1. Teachers often use participation grades as a means of classroom management, but what do we really mean when we say participation? What lens are we using when we evaluate participation? I grew up in a white middle class family in a white middle class suburb, a completely different reality than most of my students. As a student I thought of participation as quietly listening to the teacher speak and then raising my hand if I had a question or comment for the teacher. As a teacher, if one of my students likes to gesticulate or jump in when I’m speaking because they’re so excited about the topic or they have just made a great connection to what I just said, I judge this action through my white cultural lens. I might see his excitement as disruptive, worthy of losing points, rather than as a sign of active participation. 

   When I deduct points, or correct this cultural behavior, will that admonishment embarrass this student? What will he internalize about this interaction? The message this simple act of grading sends is that I, and years of teachers prior, don’t value his opinion, his way of being, or, worse, see him as deficient. Will that student want to participate again and share his brilliant connection or his joy of the subject? Probably not. 

2. Another common way of measuring participation is grading participation in a classroom discussion. But what does that do to the student who is excited about the topic and actively listening, but is painfully shy or embarrassed by the fact that English is not her first language? Will she be able to continue to actively listen to the discussion? Zaretta Hammond tells us that in moments of cultural misunderstanding, students’ flight or flight response is triggered.  Will evaluating the student’s silence trigger this response and leave her unable to focus enough to deeply think about the topic being discussed? Has grading this discussion through my cultural lens encouraged the student or penalized her?

These grades are not objective. I can’t help but put my own implicit biases and my own cultural lens into how I interpret the classroom behavior, which informs my participation grade. If I really stepped back and looked at the last two scenarios, I might realize that those two students were actively participating, just not in the way I would have. Grading behavior is affected by my own cultural biases, and ultimately unfair for many of our students. 

“In order for our grades to be accurate, bias-resistant, and support a growth mindset, we need to stop grading soft skills as part of our final grade calculation.”

None of this means “soft skills” are not important, or that they don’t impact a student’s academic performance. They absolutely do, but when we assign them a point value we are devaluing the ideals of growth and mastery. Feldman argues that we should record soft skills and communicate clear expectations for what students need to do to be successful in our classrooms, but this should only be a tool for us to have a larger conversation about what students need to do to master the content and the skills that we judge important for the 21st century. He rightly argues that in order for our grades to be accurate, bias-resistant, and support a growth mindset, we need to stop grading soft skills as part of our final grade calculation. If we can do this, maybe our classrooms will move one step closer toward an education system that truly works for all students.

Thanks, Kristen, for sharing your thoughts. We love Joe Feldman’s book and its approachable explanation of these issues we care deeply about. 

Kristen teaches high school biology and health at the NYC iSchool and she is a MƒA Master Teacher with 13 years of experience in NYC public schools. She has practiced mastery-based grading for ten years and recently started to co-facilitate the mastery team meetings at her school with the goal of rethinking what practices students need to master to be successful in our current world. In addition to mastery-based teaching, her professional passions include U.S. farm policy, gardening, U.S. drug policy, reproductive health, social justice, and anti-racist teaching. Kristen lives in East Harlem with her husband, two daughters, and their cat, Oliver Twist.

5 Power Shifts of Mastery Based Learning

This summer the Mastery Collaborative was hosted by Turnitin to present on mastery. The MC talked with MC Mentor Ashley Ferrara from Active Member school the Academy for Software Engineering about how mastery based and culturally responsive shifts can be more responsive to students, particularly in a remote environment.

Check out this hourlong conversation below.

The 5 Key Shifts are heavily informed by www.competencyworks.org’s definition of competency education. We believe that each shift represents a youth centered approach to learning—and also requires significant changes in roles and power dynamics, for both educators and learners.

Our pacing shift differs from that of the field at large, valuing responsive pacing more than asynchronous pacing, because we see collaboration and interaction as vital aspects of the learning process.

For more on what the 5 shifts look like in action, check out our MC Framework: bit.ly.com/MCFrameworkShifts.

MC Town Hall on Equitable Grading Practices

The Mastery Collaborative hosted a Town Hall to talk about Equitable Grading Practices in a remote/blended environment. Below, check out the hour long conversation.

How do you grade equitably in a remote/blended environment? The MC chats about the power of learning outcomes, flexible assessments, re-takes, formative feedback, and grading less.

Admin Perspective on the Transition to Mastery

Neil Pergament is a founding Assistant Principal at Brooklyn Frontiers HS, a Mastery Collaborative Active Member. He describes here how he supports experienced teachers who are new to a mastery system.

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Brooklyn Frontiers High School has been doing outcomes based grading since we first opened in 2011.  Having said that, over the years we’ve experienced many of the same road bumps that schools new to mastery encounter. Here’s a bit about how we handle them...

Supporting experienced teachers with practice shifts of mastery learning

We’ve had many experienced teachers join our team who, before working with us, only taught within a traditional grading system.  Switching over to the mastery based approach has been challenging for these teachers, but we do several things to ensure teachers successfully transition to mastery-based teaching.  

• Set expectations: When we hire teachers we let them know that every class in our school is based on outcomes based grading.  

• Establish structures: In our orientation for new teachers we devote a lot of time to our structures and systems for outcomes.  

• Give support: We schedule time for each teacher to meet with other teachers in their department around how the outcomes work in their academic subject area.

• Personalize feedback: I personally meet with teachers to go over their specific course outcomes and to support them in using these outcomes to drive instruction and to grade students.

Supporting experienced teachers with mindset shifts of mastery learning

“The big difference is that, instead of just giving these assignments and grading them, each of these assignments has to be clearly aligned to the specific outcome(s) for the course”

From this work I have a sense of the biggest struggle that experienced teachers have in transitioning to a mastery-based approach: the major concern many teachers express is that they will no longer be able to do many of the things that they found valuable and that worked in their previous schools.

Teachers have expressed concern that in a mastery-based approach they can’t give essays, multiple choice questions, Regents style tests, mid-terms, etc..  I assure teachers that, in our grading system, you can do every one of these things. 

The big difference is that, instead of just giving these assignments and grading them, each of these assignments has to be clearly aligned to the specific outcome(s) for the course.  You need to be clear and purposeful as to what is included in the essay, Regents-style test, or multiple choice questions.  It means some redesign of material.  Instead of simply giving a bunch of multiple choice questions, the questions should all be aligned to the course’s predetermined learning outcomes.  Then, instead of just giving a number grade that averages how many questions were right or wrong, students will be graded according to how well their responses demonstrate understanding of the given outcomes.   A test, essay, or piece of homework is only given if it’s aligned to the outcomes of the course.  

“Once teachers truly see and understand that in a mastery system they don’t have to lose approaches that they know are effective and that positively support students, much of their anxiety and apprehension go away.”

Once teachers truly see and understand that in a mastery system they don’t have to lose approaches that they know are effective and that positively support students, much of their anxiety and apprehension go away.  This process can take a while.  I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve told teachers who are new to our school that they can give a test or an essay in a mastery system, but they still hold off because they still see mastery based grading as somehow different from or incompatible with these approaches.  Once they come around they understand how you can not only do these tasks, but also how in pushing yourself to clearly align them to the outcomes, you make the assignment more purposeful and ultimately more effective in supporting the students.

Neil Pergament, Assistant Principal of Brooklyn Frontiers HS

In 2000 I started working as an English teacher at Bushwick Outreach Center/Bushwick Community High School, a transfer school for overaged, undercredited students.  In 2011 I was part of the team that created Brooklyn Frontiers High School, a high school for students who've been held back multiple times in middle school and for students who are unsuccessful in high school and want to transfer to a new school for a fresh start.  I've been one of the AP's at Brooklyn Frontiers since 2012.  I enjoy reading, movies, music and spending time with my family.

Mastery Collaborative's Online Sessions: Supporting Mastery and Mindsets during Remote Learning

Take the pressure off. Try giving feedback as glows and grows. Establish familiar routines. Make work relevant for students.

This guidance is useful now—among the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and antiblack racism—and always. The MC community has deep expertise in meeting students where they are, teaching the whole student, and using an equity lens on their practice, practices that are in high demand right now. The MC team has shared this expertise through professional learning sessions for more than 3,700 educators across the city. In case you missed it, check out recordings of these hour-long sessions below.

• Mastery teaching moves & grading practices during remote learning

• Learning Mindsets & Motivation during remote learning

The Mastery Collaborative Community moves online. As Joy always says, “Mastery gets all the attention, but it’s the collaborative that’s our super power.”

What else are we up to?

“Turn up is both a moment and a call, both a verb and a noun.”

-Brittney Cooper, Crunk Feminist Collective

The MC community has been gathering online in monthly Town Halls to share best practices, talk through emergent issues, and support each other through this time of change.

While MC teachers have been hard at work honing their practices, students have been flexing their voices as well. The MC has partnered this spring with the wonderful Amallia Orman, the NYC Student Voice advocate, to host student voice summits. Students have weighed in on grading policy, end of year celebrations, and activism.

To stay in the loop with MC events before they happen, join the Friends of MC—you’ll receive our newsletter and be able to join events as space is available.

Mindsets and Motivation during Remote Learning

During a pandemic, what are the most important aspects of online engagement? What are students’ reasons for engaging or not engaging in school—especially remotely? How can we ourselves as educators stay motivated as we grapple with new realities?

Students at MC Living Lab school Urban Assembly Maker Academy collaborating digitally in their classroom.

During this time of upheaval, many educators are reporting students are showing up and engaging less in school. If this is happening in your classroom, a focus on student mindsets could help. Mindsets are beliefs we have about learning and about ourselves as learners, and are fundamental for engagement and motivation in a given context. Three major mindsets are essential for optimal learning: Growth Mindset, Belonging Mindset, and Value Mindset (also called Purpose for Learning). Each of these mindsets is powerful on its own. Combined, they can be transformative.

If students are not attending or completing work, we need to investigate all possible causes: lack of access to technology or resources, a living environment that is not conducive to learning, extra responsibilities to support the household, family stress, illness, or other trauma. We should reach out to students and families in whatever ways we can to find out what is happening, whether it be through calls, texts, emails, anonymous surveys that can help schools see patterns of issues that are affecting students, or other creative means of communication. Once we have a sense of what is causing a lack of engagement and address primary needs as much as possible, we can increase our focus on learning mindsets to support engagement.

Please do whatever you can to take pressure off both students and yourself. It might not be possible to get through the volume of course material at the level of depth that you were able to before the pandemic hit—in fact, trying to do that can be discouraging and demotivating for your students, as well as for you. Be mindful of the variety of acute stresses the pandemic is causing—isolation, fear, lack of security, grief—as well as ongoing stresses many students face—such as structural racism, homophobia, homelessness, and food insecurity. At this time of disrupted daily life and learning, we need to ease additional pressures of school.

It’s especially important in a time of crisis to approach engagement issues in a supportive, non-punitive way in order for learners to feel as safe and at ease as possible. This fosters trust, motivation, and a sense of agency for learners. For example, it is important to provide assignments and deadlines not as inflexible expectations, but instead as structures that can support students to direct their own learning.

Three essential mindsets for optimal engagement and learning

• Growth Mindset: the understanding that one learns through engaging in challenges, that progress is possible with a combination of effort and useful strategies.

• Belonging Mindset: a belief that one belongs—both socially and academically—in a learning community.

• Value Mindset: a belief that what one is learning is meaningful and relevant to one’s life now and in the future, that there is a purpose for engaging in the learning at hand.

Remember: Much of what worked for you in the classroom can still translate now. While we need to be responsive within a vastly changed context, many of the effective practices you already use can be adapted. Trust what you know and apply it. The mindset strategies here can add to your distance learning toolkit, and can help when you get back to school, too.

To see this in one-pager form, check out our mindsets and motivation citywide guidance here.

Mastery-based Teaching Moves for Remote Learning

‘How can I message progress to families without grading everything?’ ‘How can I focus my feedback to be most useful to students?’ ‘How can a mastery-based system help English Language Learners?’ Questions like these are coming up for teachers across the city. We talked about these questions and more at a recent professional learning session about mastery-based principles in remote learning.

Mastery-based strategies can be especially useful in navigating remote teaching and learning. Below we share Mastery Collaborative’s citywide resource for mastery-based teaching moves during remote learning. These ideas can be used and applied by seasoned mastery teachers and new practitioners alike. For a shareable version, click here: bit.ly/MasteryMovesRemote.

Chew it over, see what you think, and stay tuned for Part 2: Mastery Grading Strategies for Remote Learning.

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What is it? Mastery-based teaching and grading focus on students’ progress and mastery of key learning goals in each course (the what of learning). Students are graded on evidence of mastery—and not graded on behavior factors (the how of learning) such as attendance and meeting deadlines. Many schools in NYC and across the country use schoolwide mastery systems—but mastery-based practices and concepts can be useful in any teacher’s work with young people, especially during remote learning.

Why do this? The pandemic is affecting everyone, but not equally. Teachers, students, and families face trauma and stress, and have divergent situations and needs. A mastery-based approach allows us to focus on what matters most: important skills and knowledge learners need in each course. Students build mastery over time. Teachers can support learning this spring by focusing deeply on a few key learning goals, with time for instruction, practice, reflection, revision, and “retakes” that offer students multiple chances to improve. Rubrics offer a roadmap for learning that students can use as they move toward grade-level mastery and beyond. Attendance, timeliness, and behavior cannot be the basis for grades during remote learning—and focusing on the what of learning is more powerful now and always.

Teaching moves you can try during remote learning

Pare down to essentials. This high school course has 7 essential skills for the year.
The yellow arrows point to 2 skills that are the focus of a unit.

Use rubrics as learning tools. Students are evaluated and self-evaluate on a rubric of the most important skills for this geometry unit.

• Pare down to essentials. While apart from your students, don’t try to “cover everything.” Instead, step back and use professional expertise to identify key skills and knowledge learners need to be successful—in your course and the next course. What are 3-5 important learning goals that students will find worthwhile? What can you take off the table, in response to the stress and hardship many are facing?

• Create standards-aligned “I can . . .” statements to communicate key learning goals. Use them as the basis for your lessons, feedback, assessments, grading. Unpack with students, and revise for clarity as needed.

• Don’t speed! It’s tempting to rush when you feel your class has lost time, but slowing down can help students to make faster progress. Investing deeply in a small number of achievable goals/tasks will help students get real traction. Focus here, rather than trying to speed through a large amount of material.

• Build students’ abilities with active practice. Put the cognitive load on students with frequent chances to practice/build skills: collaborative tasks, small-group talks, peer feedback, and other active learning modes.

• Create a coherent plan for formative/summative assessment—and share it with students. Use backwards planning. What do students need to know? What’s the plan for learning, practicing, and demonstrating mastery? How does the pandemic affect the pace of the class? Where can you adjust and streamline content and expectations? It’s wise to make a flexible plan for when students will be ready for assessments.

• Use rubrics as learning tools, rather than primarily as grading tools. You can teach into using rubrics this way. “You’ve made meaningful progress so far, even with all that’s happened this spring. If you’re able to keep at this, there’s every reason to think you will get to mastery. Let’s work on it together over time.”

How to get started

• Consider yourself as a coach of learning. Like a sports coach would give in-the-moment feedback, offer students frequent glows, grows, and next steps they can take. Help them get clear on where they are strong already, and where they can focus. Offering glows and grows without grading helps students take in feedback. You can wear your coaching hat (not literally, though please feel welcome!) with groups or individuals, via email, comments in a Google doc, or whatever methods you already use to communicate.

• Name, teach, and coach behaviors that are the how of learning. Separating the what from the how allows you to offer responsive and useful feedback. A student whose work habits are weak needs feedback like: “Practicing could help you improve. Are you able to put in a few minutes?” “Great job on using time well.”

• Challenge assumptions about how students should engage in remote learning. Families across NYC face many different challenges related to the pandemic. Might you or colleagues be making assumptions about how students and families should interact with the schools that serve them? Create clear and welcoming ways for families to communicate with you. Empathy and a supportive stance are needed at this time.

• Be flexible and encourage students. Express appreciation when students show up and when they do work. Let them know through words and actions that their well-being is important to you. How much can students realistically do in the next month? What can you let go of to do justice to something else?

• Increase support and reduce stress. Create a learning environment with low pressure, frequent chances (but not expectations) to connect with you and other students, and flexibility about deadlines. Students who are facing difficult circumstances will appreciate you. As we are apart because of a state of emergency and global pandemic, our students will remember how you showed up for them as a fellow human.

Want to learn more?

Read this.

• bit.ly/MCFrameworkShifts

• bit.ly/MasteryandCRSE_MasteryCollab

• http:/bit.ly/CRSEFrameworkNYS

Watch this. (short videos with teacher/student voice)

• What is mastery-based learning?

• How can mastery be more culturally responsive?

• Student perspectives: Belonging, culture, and mastery

To share this in one-pager form, see our mastery-based citywide guidance here.

Want to try more?

• Co-create “I can” statements with students to express relevant learning goals in clear, learner-friendly language.

• Take time to create shared understanding. Encourage questions about goals, tasks, and expectations. Some students may be reluctant to ask for clarity. Instead of: “Any questions?” try: “Let’s hear some good questions!”

• Infuse mastery moves into your culturally responsive-sustaining (CRSE) practices.

• Engage vital social dimensions of learning. Learning with others can reduce isolation and support a sense of belonging. Collaboration, presentations, ongoing feedback, and check-ins with teachers, peers, and families are still possible in remote learning. Let’s discuss how.

Ask MC: Missing Work, Part 2

Hello, MC Community! 

As promised, here’s part 2 of a special edition of “Dear MC.” Instead of responding to a question we got from you, we asked teachers to weigh in on a topic that is quite germane and useful during remote learning: How to deal with missing student work.

During a pandemic-related period of remote learning, students face many obstacles in accessing and engaging in academic work. Remote learning and COVID-19 have rekindled and recontextualized conversations about how best to handle missing work. Now and always, what’s the most meaningful and helpful way to support students who are not turning in classwork? 

This issue sits at the nexus of mastery-based and culturally responsive-sustaining education—so the Mastery Collaborative community has a lot to offer. Below, two educators describe their in-school systems for addressing missing work. You’ll see that much of their advice holds in a remote learning context, because their systems are based on equitable, student-centered approaches.

For more, check out Part 1 of the series here.

Thanks again and always to teachers who shared ideas and practices— Meg for the MC program team

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Hi, MC,

I check in individually with students who aren't turning things in. I run my class following the workshop model, so this makes sense for me. I'll also email kids and call families when it might be helpful.

I've experimented with not accepting upgrades (revised work) for late work in the past, but the students who were dealing with that consequence were disproportionately boys, minorities, and/or students with IEPs. It didn't feel right, so I don’t do that anymore.

All the best,

Sam Fetters, Esteemed Mastery Practitioner

In Sam’s classroom, students participate in his version of “The Moth” storytelling to practice personal narratives & small moments writing.

At a recent MC Living Lab visit: students in Sam’s class give each other peer feedback.

Sam has worked with youth aged 8 mos to 88 years, but he really likes middle schoolers. He teaches 7th Grade ELA at MS 442 in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.

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As students encounter obstacles to access and engagement during remote learning, teachers are creating and adapting systems to support them with realistic strategies for undertaking academic work to the extent that is possible, to check on and celebrate progress, and to give feedback to support the whole process. 

Some schools are now looking to next year with new realizations about the importance of supporting executive function. Below, one practitioner walks us through her system for this, definitely for an in-school context—but with implications for next school year!

Hi MC,

So happy to weigh in! 

In our approach to Mastery, our school uses 10 school-wide shared "Outcomes" or skills. These skills are used by all teachers in all grades and subjects. Two of the 10 Outcomes include PLAN and COLLABORATE. Students receive feedback on their ability to "plan" for the process of completing an assignment on time, to "plan" and be ready for a presentation, etc.

More specifically about my classes: Students who are writing an essay will be assessed on two "Plan" Outcomes Targets for Humanities, included below for your reference.

1. From the start, we focus on "Plan: Using the Writing process to improve writing." I teach into and grade the actual PROCESS of the essay: will a student brainstorm, outline, create a draft, peer-revise, give and receive feedback, make edits, etc?  All of these components are mini lessons that I teach into and give students in class time to complete. I use the rubric below to figure out whether students are Meeting or Exceeding the standard in the writing process. 

Rubric for "Plan: Uses the writing process to improve writing”, from MC Living Lab School The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria.

2) I will then focus on another "Plan Outcome: Makes Appropriate Plans ... with attention to Deadline." If a student submits their essay on time they will get a Meeting or Exceeding Standards for the submission. That shows me that the student can "plan for" deadlines and submit work on time. If a student does not submit the essay on time, she will get a "Not Yet" because she "cannot yet demonstrate that she can follow deadlines. However, she still must complete the assignment so that I can grade other outcomes and her actual writing. For example, just because she is "not yet skilled" at adhering to deadlines does not mean that she cannot "Argue, Communicate, Be Precise or Conclude" in her essay (these are other outcomes). In other words, her writing skills have nothing to do with her planning skills. She might have a “Not Yet” in Plan but end up getting a “Meeting Standards” or “Exceeding Standards” in 5 other outcomes. If she does not submit the essay at all, I cannot see how her writing is and therefore I will say this evidence is missing and wait until she does it. If she never does, she can have 6 “Not Yets” which is not ideal for her in any way.

Rubric for "Plan: with attention to deadlines”, from MC Living Lab School The Young Women’s Leadership School of Astoria.

The other part of your question is about whether we allow students to make up work. Yes, of course! Outcomes-based Grading is about MASTERING a skill and having multiple opportunities to show that you have mastery of that specific skill. So, again, if the student does not submit the essay she will get an “Not Yet” but she must "make it up" so other outcomes can get graded. However, the Plan grade won't change. She can't make up that she did not submit it on time, but she can demonstrate that she can submit the next assignment on time and adhere to new deadlines. Ultimately, she has all year to show that she can generally adhere to deadlines in various assignments for an Meeting Standards or Exceeding Standards. 

Xenia Thomopolous is a teacher at TYWLS-Astoria, and a Mastery Collaborative Mentor.

The same would hold true for projects: students are graded on the process of creating the film or presentation or ted-talk or whatever, and also the submission of that final product on the date it is due. Again, if the project is not submitted on time the student needs to demonstrate that she has "met the standards" of the other Outcomes (Create, Communicate, Innovate, etc) or else she will have 5 NYs instead of 1. 

I attached the Plan rubric below, and two other Google Docs - one with the Plan and Collaborate Rubric and one on a project I recently did in my AP Lit. class. 

The general gist is: Teach into the process of planning and then grade the process, and teach into the importance of deadlines and then grade that. The other skills are other skills. 

I hope this helps!! 

Best,

Xenia Thomopoulos, Esteemed Mastery Practitioner

Xenia Thomopoulos has worked  at The Young Women's Leadership of Astoria for  8 years. She has developed and taught curriculum with a Project-based/Mastery-based mindset in an array of secondary courses including: AP Literature, ELA 12, ELA Regents, Filmmaking, Photography, & Advisory. She also acts as a film liaison for her school’s collaborations with TFI, MOMI, & LPZ / HBO. Xenia has been involved with Mastery at TYWLS from the onset of her career, and now mentors new teachers, presents at conferences like NCGS, and hopes to spread her passion nationally and learn from educators who do this work internationally by partnering with them in cultural pedagogical exchanges.

Huge thank you to Sam and Xenia for sharing their ideas. What would you add? How are you thinking about supporting executive function next year?
Drop us a line at team@masterycollaborative.org.

MC/Student Voice Youth Summit: Living & Learning During a Pandemic

Reposted from Competency Works. Written by Eliot Levine.

Living and Learning During A Pandemic is the theme of an online youth summit being organized by the Mastery Collaborative, a network of student-centered schools in New York City that use culturally responsive-sustaining and mastery-based practices. The youth summit is a terrific strategy for centering student voice and community-building during the COVID-19 school closures.

The Spring 2020 Youth Summit is structured as a daily video chat this week on Monday through Thursday from 3:00-4:00 pm. It’s billed as “Conversations, Surveys, and Leadership Training—in a student-centered, collaborative, generative, anti-racist, egalitarian online space.” They encourage students to participate, and “one adult from each school may join to support/listen.”

I exchanged emails with Joy Nolan, Director of the Mastery Collaborative, who shared valuable context and rationale for the youth summit: “The pandemic is hitting NYC very hard right now, and there is a lot of fear. The familiar patterns of daily life are upended, a huge number of people are losing jobs, and many have lost and will lose people they love. Students are taking in all of this while grappling with learning remotely for the first time.

“When you think about everything a day of school means for a young person, one thing missing now is all those interactions with friends and peers, feeling like part of a group, finding ways to express your identity, your ideas, your style, among other young people. Students need a space to be together to talk about and process what they are experiencing. Young people have so much to share, so much that needs saying and hearing. We hope the summit can be a chance to share what all this has been like, hear from others, build on ideas, create some clarity, positivity, and hilarity, and have an hour of conversation that flies by, each day. While we’re veering six feet apart, it is also true that we need to be in this together.”

The summit’s four calls are designed to meet students where they are during the pandemic. The first two calls provide opportunities for students to share their current experiences, coping mechanisms, and feelings about remote learning. The final two calls move on to building students’ leadership skills and supporting their desire to take positive action. Equity is at the forefront of the Mastery Collaborative’s work and informs the summit’s format and substance. The proposed contents of the four calls are:

DAY 1 – What’s Happening?

Our city is battling a worldwide pandemic crisis. What is happening for you, your family, your community? How are you feeling? What issues are on your mind? What experience do you want to share? How are you coping, and what makes you feel better? How can we see our experience in a larger context? Who or what is helping? What do you hope for?

DAY 2 – What and How Are You Learning?

What is remote learning like so far? How is it the same as/different from regular school? What do you get from a day in school vs. from remote learning? What do you miss? How are you connecting with teachers, peers? What equity issues are students experiencing with remote learning? How is mastery helping? How are culturally responsive-sustaining practices helping? How should grading be happening?

DAY 3 – Leadership Skills 1 – Building A Network for Student Voice

What power can student voice have right now? What do students need? What issues are most important to YOU (students)? What equity issues do we want to uplift through student voice? What are our change ideas? How can we build community? What advice/expertise can we share out with each other? What steps can we take as youth advocates? What do decision makers need to hear from students?

DAY 4 – Leadership Skills 2 – Documenting and Sharing Out

How can we create clear goals around the 1-3 issues youth find most pressing? How should we take action? How can youth and adults be partners in making change in our school system, right now? How can we be creative?

Up to 100 students can participate, and they must submit a media consent form signed by parent or guardian if they’re under 18. Speaking of strong equity efforts, the consent forms are also available in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Urdu. Once the consent form is received, participants receive a registration link.

Student Panelists at a Mastery Collaborative visit to Living Lab school, Frank McCourt HS.

For those thinking of developing similar events, some additional logistics are:

• Schools can register students or students can register themselves.

• Registration is first-come, first-served, and ends 24 hours before each session.

• Students can register for any or all days.

• A maximum of 10 students can register from a single school.

• Student registration is prioritized, and “One or two supporting adults from each school are welcome (but NOT needed) to participate as listeners during the sessions. We hope supporting adults can help participating youth to build on their experience in the summits.”

• The registration link asks for the participant’s name, school or organization, email address, grade, age, days they want to participate, whether the consent form was committed, and the questions “Do you have any suggestions for us? Anything we should know?”

The Youth Summit doesn’t say anything about meeting competencies, being assessed, or the usual grammar of daily schooling. Nonetheless, it encompasses many of the quality principles for competency-based education, such as being responsive to student needs, fostering the development of a growth mindset, committing to equity, activating student agency and ownership, designing for the development of higher-order skills, and nurturing a culture of learning and inclusivity. It’s a powerful model that other schools and networks could follow during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

How Do I Even Do This? Surviving the Transition to Online Teaching

NYC schools are shut down indefinitely in hopes of slowing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is hitting across NYC especially hard. Teachers and students are forging ahead with Learn At Home, instead of seeing one another in school.  

This is unprecedented. How do we move ahead in a completely changed context for teaching and learning? We asked MC Mentor Lonice Eversley to share first thoughts, and here you will see her doing what she does best: Supporting teachers in using a student-centered approach, custom-fit to their own context. 

How do we move to strong learning relationships in new online shared spaces? What are culturally responsive-sustaining power moves for Learn At Home? How do we do all the magic our jobs call us to do . . . through a screen? 

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Lonice Eversley, MC Mentor in CRSE
Master Teacher
Careers in Sports High School
South Bronx, New York City

By Lonice Eversley, MC Mentor in CRSE

Everything that we knew and understood about life has changed drastically, over the past couple of weeks. We are worried; we are caring for loved ones who are anxious; we are sheltered in; we aren't in our classrooms; we haven't seen our students in over a week; we are wearing surgical masks to hunt for toilet paper at the supermarket; we are professionals who have understood our roles as teachers, for a very long time, and now we are figuring out how to perform our jobs in dramatically different ways. How do we do all of this?

Take care of yourself.

First and foremost, we need to take care of ourselves. Like financial advisors give us directives to pay ourselves first, during these times (and really—all of the time) we must figure out how we will pour into ourselves in ways that result in "all the good feels." 

For me, it's all about video-conferencing with loved ones with whom I haven't spoken in a while, and sharing morning prayer via conference calls. It's also about cooking and eating with my loved ones. My faith, love and togetherness, are sustaining me right now. No matter what I have to figure out over the course of each day, as it relates to my roles as teacher and coach, I know that I will set aside time to do those things that are keeping my spirits lifted.

Apply learning outcomes to this moment.

Next, I think we can ask ourselves a few questions about what it is that we believe our students need right now, as it relates to their skill development and knowledge of content in our respective subject areas. 

As a Culturally Responsive practitioner, I am asking myself how I will provide space for students to dig in and make sense of information about our current world crisis, in meaningful ways (that obviously won't add to their emotional stress.) 

Within a grade level, there might be ways that students can unpack the dynamics of a pandemic socially, economically, politically, scientifically, mathematically, artistically, philosophically, via fiction and non-fiction reading and writing, analysis of data/statistics, viewing scientific experiments, use of math to make predictions based on observations of trends and patterns, deep dives into historical events, philosophical frameworks and theories, creation of art and/ media content (blogs, podcasts, PSAs etc.)

Furthermore, how might a grade level or other cluster of teachers working together, develop a plan to teach cooperatively, which includes the establishment of guiding/essential questions around specific culturally responsive issues, and the assignment of specific tasks, that provide space for students to do the deep diving and digging, and subsequently demonstrate their learning around the issue? Or, how might teachers working alone or with a co-teacher, use this specific world event, to provide space for students to strengthen critical thinking skills, the development of evidence based arguments, and problem solving skills, that will be necessary for their success on standardized tests?

Education is still a social activity. 

While there are myriad answers to these questions, from my perspective as a Master Teacher, one that is definitely NOT an answer is the worksheet approach, or simple reading comprehension tasks that don't provide ways for students to think deeply or demonstrate and/or show knowledge. 

One of the BEST things we can do for our students right now, is to engage them in ways that activate critical thinking and problem solving. Even via virtual learning, we can still facilitate those experiences. The Google Classroom stream feature provides a wonderful opportunity to give students space to kick around ideas, question each other, and introduce unique perspectives. As facilitators of these experiences, we are able to provide the learning via the posting of readings, data/statistics, videos, images, audio etc. The stream can then become a space for students to share their interpretations and ideas with the community, and respond/question/challenge each other. 

As facilitators, we are provided space to clarify, correct, push thinking and sometimes play devil's advocate, in an effort to stimulate thinking. These exchanges very easily meet the criteria of formative assessments. In the same way that we place value on the experiences associated with sharing ideas inside of our classrooms, students should be assessed when they participate in valuable exchanges that take place in the stream. 

What is also quite valuable about this approach to teaching and learning, is that unlike a class discussion, it is a permanent "fixture" in your classroom, and can always be added to, edited and/or updated as students gain more knowledge. Furthermore, it can also be referenced as a resource. In this way, students can see themselves and each other, as creators of credible content. We can truly elevate this teaching game when our students cite their classmates as sources, in their formal writing.

I want to point out that the Google Classroom stream is quite similar to the Blackboard platform that is used by colleges and universities. Our engagement of this learning mode can provide critical opportunities for our students to ramp up their college readiness which is an unintended benefit of teaching during these trying times. One of the very intended benefits of teaching this way, is the fact that we can more easily engage students by leveraging their interests and expertise in technology, to provide space for them to learn in ways that might feel more familiar to them. The Google Classroom Stream feature is reminiscent of social media formats. Another benefit is that teachers are provided with relatively easy ways to differentiate, as we can intentionally group students, assign varying resources and deadlines etc.

Stay open.

As we plan for this very new and different way of doing our jobs for an uncertain amount of time, we have to keep in mind that our uneasiness will not last forever. Many of us are feeling like brand new teachers, in this moment (and we must acknowledge that for brand new teachers, the challenges are likely much greater, than those of us who are veterans.) But just like we learned through trial and error, as brand new teachers, the potential for learning under these circumstances is limitless. 

While some of us may not consider ourselves technologically savvy, we have the benefit of being connected to a group of people who were all born in the 21st century. Our students are in person as well as virtually, technological experts. Let's ask questions of them, and each other. During this time, we need each other. Let's never hesitate to ask for and provide support. Don't forget to take care of yourselves first and foremost, so that we’ll all have the strength to stand on these front lines.

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Related (and wonderful) resources to support your culturally responsive-sustaining and equitable teaching moves:

• NYU Metro Center Guidance on Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Remote Teaching and Learning (2020).docx

• https://crehub.org/remote-learning

What do students need from us, now and always?

Suddenly and absolutely, it seems everything is different in NYC and around the world.

To contextualize, we are on Day 4 of NYC Schools being closed for several weeks at minimum, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators are reporting to their public school workplaces for the last day, preparing to be gone from their schools for . . . a few weeks or longer? I read somewhere this apt take on the effort to keep up psychologically and tactically: What on Thursday seemed unthinkable, by Sunday seems quaint.

After we wish colleagues well and go off to work remotely, we don’t know for sure when we will see them in person again. We don’t know just when we will see our desks and our hallways again. We don’t know when we’ll see this year’s students in person again, though we hope to see them in April, and we will certainly see many of their faces online as Learn From Home starts next week.

Perhaps you share the feeling of already-somehow-engrained homesickness for daily routines of as recently as a week ago. (Friends came over for dinner. We were so carefree . . . this was just last Saturday, 6 days ago, and also distinctly part of a previous era.)

Perhaps when you are out, staying 6 feet away from everyone, your eyes have become scanning devices for surfaces not to touch. Perhaps your mind sometimes focuses on what’s different (the phone call is back as a way to communicate, every email subject includes the word COVID, time is not behaving normally at all, so many places are closed, newspaper articles begin like this: “If your income has fallen or been cut off completely . . . “, we have gotten advice to avoid gatherings of 500 . . . 250 . . . 50 . . . 10 people)— and discovering that despite massive changes, some things are still the same (the weather is cool and warm by turns, too many too-fast drivers, spring flowers and puppies, street signs, your coworkers’ faces . . . though you see them on Google Hangouts now).

Also echoing through each day, this thing that so far in our society stays the same: that in times of societal disruption, systems of privilege and oppression play out and reproduce, unless we step in to dismantle and replace them with something way better. So we step up our habit of finding ways to join forces with others to look out for our communities—and seeking ways to get stronger and more expert, so we can do more better.

Appreciations to educators who are doubling down on student-centered, mastery-based, and culturally responsive-sustaining practices, as you shift to online interactions with students, and simultaneously grapple with the turbulence of this time.

Below, we share a bit more that is holding steady: some of the human things students need from us. These are requests from students to their theater teacher Lily at MC Living Lab School Flushing International HS. Students name these needs: encouragement, patience, interesting activities, support to overcome shyness, and "food sometimes". Lily keeps her students' requests posted on the wall, for a daily reminder of what they ask from her as they engage in lessons and activities.

Our community has always been spread across the 5 boroughs—and now it is time to figure out and share ideas for how to provide encouragement, belonging, caring, and learning, through a time when we are together in spirit, but not in schools.

We’re here for you, NYC— Joy for the MC team

Drop us a line at team@masterycollaborative.org to share how you’re meeting the needs of students, share your experience of this exceptional time, or share what you need in coming days.

Ask MC: Missing Work, Part 1

Hello, MC Community! 

This is a special edition of “Dear MC.” in which, instead of responding to a question we got from you, we instead asked 3 teachers across our community to weigh in on a specific topic: How to deal with missing student work, a common puzzle for teachers in a mastery-based learning environment. We first share our query to them, and then, here and in the next blog post, we share the thoughtful and varied responses we received. 

Enjoy! And thanks to the teachers for sharing their ideas and practices— Meg for the MC program team

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MC practitioners in the wild—exchanging ideas at the Winter Quarterly.

Dear Esteemed MC practitioners, 

The question we hear most often centers around this question: what do you do about missing work? Sometimes the question takes the form: How do you teach deadlines? Or it lurks in the background of: How do you motivate students? 

New-to-mastery teachers ask as they struggle to input grades. Teachers five years deep in their process ask because they want their mastery system to be philosophically pure. We on the MC team have a variety of answers, and best practices we can relay back, but in your own words: What do you do about missing work?

Love, the MC team

Hi, MC team!

Thanks for asking. I would say this is an issue we grapple with a lot, and while we haven't found the perfect system for handling it, I feel relatively comfortable with how I personally deal with late work.

 First, I would say that philosophically, I believe students having the opportunity to demonstrate mastery of skills and content is my higher priority over meeting deadlines (not to say I don't think deadlines are also important.) Because of this belief, I tend to accept late work for quite some time. My rule of thumb is to accept late work as long as the work is still a valid assessment of the skill or content that I want them to master. 

 For example, we did a case study on the Rwandan genocide that ended about a week before Thanksgiving. I accepted late homework assignments (which are usually text-dependent questions and some evaluative thinking questions) until after the Thanksgiving break—about two weeks after we ended the case study. It was no longer useful for them to go back and read a text we had read a month prior and have them answer questions about it—no longer a valid assessment of any learning targets. I accepted the final assessment—a short essay answering our guiding question—indefinitely, because it is still a valid assessment, although, pretty much every student who will do it had done it by the beginning of December ( this did ensure that almost all students completed the assignment). The final deadline for everything will be about a week before grades are due, so I leave enough time to grade. 

As far as penalties go, the main thing mechanism that could be a penalty for not meeting a deadline is assessing habits of work. These habits of work outcomes (e.g. collaboration, deadlines, participation) count for 30% of a student's grade. (I would actually prefer they counted for nothing or maybe just 10%, but I digress.) Students who turn in work late would get a lower grade on that assignment for their deadline outcome: “I always communicate with my teacher about extensions or supports needed well before deadlines.” Some teachers might also restrict whether or how much a student can revise a late assignment. This is also a natural consequence of turning in an assignment late--there is just less time to revise and get feedback. If students don't turn in an assignment at all, we use "M" in JumpRope, which converts to a 0.

I don't love this and think it would typically be better to just have no grade, i.e. “no evidence of mastery.” But if a kid rarely turns in work and only has one or two assessments of a learning target, they might not have valid evidence of mastery—better to have more data points. It's a bit of a Catch-22 for a few outlier students, but in many of these cases it is moot because the student hasn't sufficiently demonstrated mastery on the few learning targets we have data for.

Kevin Mears, teacher at Leaders High School.

One last thought about this in relation to daily homework/assessments is that I give students the opportunity to self-assess some of these assignments on academic learning targets. Most of my daily assignments are initially just assessed using habits of work learning targets. Students get a grade for completing it in a timely manner. Then, at some point, I ask students to choose 2-4 assignments where they think they have demonstrated mastery of an academic learning target, and to  give themselves a grade on a rubric for that learning target. They have to justify why they earned that grade. I check to make sure their grade reflects what their work shows. I try to do this twice a semester or at the end of a big case study. So they are taking daily assignments that don't actually count for much and choosing their best work to demonstrate mastery of the targets. 

 I hope this helps some, and look forward to hearing what other schools/teachers do.

Best, 
Kevin Mears, Esteemed Mastery Practitioner

Kevin is originally from Denver, CO, and has been a teacher in New York since 2005, and at Leaders High School since 2009. He enjoys eating good food (but doesn't qualify as a foodie) and traveling to interesting places.