The Grading Podcast

TIP and teaching with kindness

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Sharona: So I think giving maybe some opt-out options for some of the more extreme situations might be good. But yeah I think there’s some elements in there that are behaviorists that I’m like, eh, I don’t know.

Boz: Yeah, I dunno. But it’s definitely interesting looking at some of these trauma-informed practices and looking at this specific one and seeing how many of these things we were actually taught to do. So we’re actually being taught to do trauma inducing practices.

Sharona: Yes.

Boz: Welcome to the grading podcast, where we’ll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students’, learning from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We’ll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our student success. I’m Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist, and instructional designer. In the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.

Sharona: And I’m Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach and instructional designer. Whether you work in higher ed or K 12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach, or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week, you will get the practical, detailed information you need. To be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.

Boz: Hello and welcome back to the Grading podcast. I’m Robert Bosley, one of your two co-host, and with me as always, Sharona Krinsky. How you doing today, Sharona?

Sharona: I am doing very well I would say. I’m finally, I’ve been talking about this for a couple weeks, but it’s really hitting that I’m not quite as packed as I often am, even though I’m behind. I have some reviews, the papers that I really have to get done today, but I’m feeling like I got a little bit more breathing space and I’m loving, I know everyone listening to this who’s in the ice that is all over the country is gonna hate us, but we’ve got some gorgeous sunshine today. Yeah.

Boz: Although I think most of those areas are starting to thaw out a little bit. I at least know Oklahoma is ’cause talking with my mom who’s still back there. Yeah. They finally had a few days in the upper forties and lower fifties, which compared to what they’ve been having as absolutely gorgeous.

Sharona: And despite the fact that we didn’t have any weather, we had some major technical issues last week.

Boz: Yeah. So we do wanna apologize to our listeners. We had an episode, actually the episode we’re gonna record today. We had planned out, we tried to record it, and I don’t know if it was the internet. I don’t know if it was the site that we used to record these, but something just wasn’t working.

Sharona: No. And it was really bad. It was so bad that we couldn’t compensate. And so we noticed and we said, you know what, we’re just gonna throw up another one of our favorite episodes, and we figured that you guys would forgive us. So we apologize. We had an unexpected replay. We just couldn’t get it recorded.

Boz: But we are back now and this is always some of our most enjoyable times of the week when we get to sit down virtually together in the studio and record.

Boz: A actually, I wanna go back real quick to the abstracts. A question that I’ve been getting, because this is a higher ed kind of focused conference, but we are getting more and more K 12 educators in it. And if you are a K 12 educator and you were thinking about possibly submitting and you weren’t sure, please do. Yes. Like I said, it might be focused on higher ed. But grading is something that, it is a bridge that goes from K through 16, so encouraged my fellow K through 12 educators to also submit.

Sharona: And there’s no reason this conference can’t be both things. And as it grows, we may introduce some tagging and tracking things because there are some differences, but like you said, grading. It’s not universal, but it is pervasive. Like grading is everywhere. We just might do it a little differently with some administrative constraints. So that’s been the case. Oh, and institutions shout out to anyone who has institutional money. We take institutional registrations. It’s $600 for an institutional registration that includes up to 16 participants included with that, and then the participation above 16 are at a discount. But if you’re an institution, and by the way we define institutions lightly. If you’re a society or a group or whatever, feel free to, to reach out, send an email to info@thegradingconference.com and we’ll get you set up with an institutional registration, single credit card payment by Stripe. And that’s how that works.

Boz: Yeah. Last year I think we hit, our all time high with institutional registrations. But for this year we’ve already got several. And I think it speaks to the conference. That a lot of the institutional registrations that we already have are ones that have been institution registrations in the past as well. So it’s great not just seeing, these institutions coming in and bringing a group, but coming back and we’ve had a couple that I think it’s is their third time, like they’ve, every time we’ve done the institutional registrations, they’ve been part of it. So yeah if you’re a CTL, person at your institution or just have some access and you’re interested in bringing more than just a couple of people. It’s a great and affordable way of doing it.

Sharona: What I like about that too is that it begins to bring a group of people together. At that institution or at that group that can continue the conversation beyond just the conference.

Boz: Yeah, we’ve seen it happen more than once where, people on the same institution have been doing a lot of work in this area and didn’t know the others existed. So coming together with this institutional type of registration and then from there, being able to build that onsite community to continue the work and continue your paths it’s a great way to do this ’cause it’s so much easier to do this work in groups than it’s individuals.

Sharona: And our keynote speakers are announced. I don’t know if, I think we’ve mentioned it maybe once on the podcast. Oh, we have. But just a reminder we’ve got Sarah Silverman talking about alternative grading and neurodivergence. We’ve got Brie Tripp from the University of California Davis. She teaches in neurobiology physiology and behavior. She’s gonna be talking about her work and then Jesse Stommel. Who is a faculty member in the writing program at the University of Denver, and the co-founder of the Digital Pedagogy Lab and Hybrid Pedagogy is gonna be talking and he of course, has a major book out on the topic of grading practices. So we are really excited for the keynotes this year. Just thought I’d put in that pitch.

Boz: Oh yeah. The keynotes are always fun.

Sharona: We’ve had some fabulous, all the keynotes have been fantastic, but some of them have just blown me away. Oh, you don’t wanna miss it. Okay, so we got the intro part out of the way, Bo, what are we talking about this week?

Boz: You know what we’re talking about. We came across a few different things that led us to that pathway, and I think we wanna talk a little bit about. What led us to what’s going to be the bulk of this episode. And one of them really started with one of our favorite places to gain some inspiration, the Grading for growth blog. So they had one that came out on January 26th, so one of the really recent ones teaching through trauma.

Sharona: And what I love is the subheader on this one. So the subheader says How grading for growth helped save my sanity. So the trauma, and I wanna just shout out, that’s Acacia Ackles. She was forthright and vulnerable in sharing in this blog post that her courage in sharing this just hats off. It was an incredible post to read. We will link it in the show notes. Highly recommend it. But what was amazing about this is she already was doing a lot of this work intentionally for her students. So she was looking at alternative grading practices and talking about trauma-informed pedagogy, but then she ended up needing the grace herself and I just, that resonated with me, especially considering what my work has been like the last year and a half. So there was so much in here. I don’t know, do we wanna just start with her three principles, or do we wanna share a little bit about the article itself? What do you think?

Boz: We can look at some of the principles ’cause even though this led us down our pathway, this isn’t going to be the bulk of this episode, but yeah. What were some of those principles that you were referring to?

Sharona: In about the middle of the post, she says, I made a few deliberate choices when designing the course influenced by both trauma-informed pedagogy and grading for growth practices. And the three most salient were flexible deadlines. Explicit identification of failure as a learning objective and language in the syllabus, which acknowledged their humanity. We’ve talked a lot about the first two on this podcast, and there’s lots more to say, but the one that struck me was the language in the syllabus, which acknowledged their humanity. So she references things that recognizing the class might not be the most important thing in their lives and. Conversations from her sick policy. But at the same time, that made me remember the work that Cate Denial does on the pedagogy of kindness.

Boz: Yeah.

Boz: Yeah. In fact we had done a a couple of our episodes really talking about this new semester because you are going back into the classroom, which you haven’t been because of the coordination for what, about three semesters and having to do a few things that maybe weren’t really your first choice to do. So we, we started looking at that and. I actually do want to hear some more about your class because especially since we ended up having to take last week off unexpectedly. Like how is your journey with this course going.

Sharona: Before I go into where I am right now, because that is where I wanna go. I wanted to go back though to right before the semester started, and that’s why all of this syllabi language stuff was hitting because I was handed. Some language that I found really difficult to adopt and I wanna share what was written. Because one of the things that we’re getting is we’re getting a little bit of a backlash against some of the policies that I put in place when I was the coordinator.

Boz: And it’s not just that, it’s also some backlash against ai, which we are seeing national wide, there’s a lot of different reactions from, fully trying to embrace it and say, okay it’s here. We’re gonna change things around the way I do my classes to fit ai. Then you get the polar opposite of, okay, I’m gonna do everything I can to lock my class down and guard it from any possible AI use. And there’s not a lot in between. It’s one extreme or the other. And the institute where that you’re at is going the latter way, or at least the department? I shouldn’t say the institution.

Sharona: Yeah. I would say the institution is actually pushing the use of ai. The department is fighting against it, but actually this particular policy was about calculators.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: So one of the biggest pushbacks I got is that I tried to require calculators on the exams to require that students be allowed. So this is what I was handed. It says the only devices you are allowed to use during our class time are your scientific calculator, computer or iPad to access the assignments we do in class. At the time, phone earbuds and AirPods using are not allowed during class calculator, tablet or laptop are not per permitted during quizzes or exams, texting, emailing, listening to music, watching videos, YouTube playing games, or doing anything. Not for our assignment purposes are prohibited. Of you who violates this electronic equipment policy will be strictly disciplined. You will be banned on using your devices in class for the day by putting your devices on my desk until the class ends. As a result, I will project the assignment on the board for you to copy it on your notebook. Then you’ll have to complete the assignment on your computer later at home. No exceptions. Okay.

Boz: So after reading this and then starting to look at this, this third pillar of language in the syllabus, which acknowledge their humanity and what do our syllabi really say about us? And took us down this path of teaching and trauma and teaching with kindness.

Boz: Yeah. So those two examples that you just read are saying the same thing. It is just the intentional way of toning it in that, in comparing these and looking, especially at that second one at how much more kindness and open and welcoming the language of that second one is compared to the first one.

Sharona: Yeah. And it’s just, it’s heartbreaking that we are treating our students with such suspicion. That we can’t allow them to listen to music. We can’t allow them to have their earbuds in. What are we trying to control here? What are we trying to force? If a student shows up to my class, of course I want them to engage. And of course I don’t want them to have distract either on them or be distracting, but there’s a way to approach it with kindness. And I have to admit I do a little bit. I could not use that electronic policy as it was stated. I just couldn’t do it. I, that just was so opposed to what I believed, but I didn’t go far enough yet. I still have some distrustful academic honesty and conduct policies in my syllabus, and so I have not I probably will go in and change them, but here’s what I am gonna say. About what I did put in that I’m proud of. So I said the use of ai, the use of AI or artificial intelligence tools such as Chat, GPT and Gemini has upended many of the ways we operate, both in our daily lives and in our classes. As such, the use of AI raises ethical as well as practical concerns. How do we learn to use ai? When does the use of AI hurt us rather than help us? These are important questions that we will tackle as a class at the beginning of the semester. We will weigh the various options open to us and work to come to agreement on AI’s use in our course. So that’s where I started

Boz: And there’s a key part of that. I think touches on not just the teaching through kindness, but a lot of the other things we talked about. And that is that sentence that this is something that we will figure out together, that we’ll work through as a class.

Sharona: Exactly. And I think that’s what I’m starting to find is I knew going into my class that I wanted to create, and we talked about this, a safe environment where people. Could trust each other and could communicate together and feel safe to speak to me. Obviously I don’t wanna be disrespected, but I want them to feel comfortable talking to me. I want them to feel comfortable being able to bring issues to me and to bring what they don’t know to me. And I just hadn’t thought about the actual syllabus language. I thought about that more in terms of the way I present myself. And so I have some work to do because some of my academic honesty stuff, quite frankly, it’s more like that first one that Cate Denial has in there.

Boz: Yeah. We all want our students to read the syllabus. It’s something that, it’s, and even some not only want, but expect to. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had professors in the past that on our first exam would throw things on that exam that was from the syllabus that had nothing to do with any of the instruction that had gone on it at all in class. And if you had not read their syllabus in detail. You were screwed on those questions.

Sharona: And we have a syllabus quiz in statistics, but it’s not a Gotcha.

Boz: Yeah, it’s not a Gotcha.

Sharona: That was more about getting them to understand it.

Boz: But yeah, we all, so we all want and expect our students to read it, but how much time do we spend in writing it? I know, especially early on in, in my career as a K 12 educator. I took one of my syllabus from my master teacher when I did my student teaching copied and pasted a lot of that. Made a few adjustments and basically reused that syllabus for 10 years. I couldn’t tell you the details of the language. I definitely hadn’t ever gone through and read it and looked for tone. Which is funny ’cause that’s, I’m working with a couple English teachers, that’s what they’re working on right now is the tone of the author. How many of us have ever gone through and looked at the tone of our syllabus?

Sharona: Exactly. I. It’s just, I actually had, in statistics, I had looked at the tone. I I did a lot of stuff, but I didn’t, for me, the academic integrity pages were throwaway pages. I assumed that students were not gonna read them. So they were like there, and I didn’t pay too much attention to them. And they still say some really not great stuff. There’s a phrase in my syllabus about Chegg now. The good news is AI has completely decimated Chegg, like Chegg is going away because AI has flattened it. But at the time, I literally put in bold. Chegg is off limits. You may not post any questions or screenshots of in all caps, anything in this class to Chegg. Do not use it for homework help or help on the assignments or quizzes. Posting anything to Chegg will be reported as a violation of our academic honesty policy and you will have consequences up to and including failing this course and that’s still in there. I’m so sorry to my certain students, but I’m gonna work on that. But going back to creating, an classroom environment, like I’m starting to see the benefits of that. So I’m, we had our first AI conversation this week, but before I talk about that, one thing I do is I go table to table, and I ask students questions. And part of what I’m asking them is when they get an answer right, I ask them, why do you say it’s that thing? Can you explain it to me? They’re so used to getting asked that question when they’re wrong, that they clam up. They clam up. They’re like, oh I guess it’s wrong. That’s their first reaction.

And so I told a story in class this week because I did that to the AI, I don’t know if you remember this, but we were having a debate in one of our statistics, norming. About what the right answer was. The instructional team was having a debate about what the right answer was. So we dumped the question into chat and it chat GPT, and it gave us an unexpected answer. It wasn’t a wrong answer, but it was unexpected. So we wanted its thinking. So I put in there, could you please explain why you said this? And it said to me, I’m so sorry I got it wrong. Let me change my answer and tell you why I did this. So then I asked chat, why did you assume I said it was wrong? And it goes, oh, I’m so sorry. I misinterpreted your question. I wasn’t wrong. So like it literally acted like a student. It changed its answer twice.

So my students are getting used to me, finally, slowly, that just because I asked them to explain doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. But I have a student who I walked up next to on Friday. Who looks at me and he had gotten the right answer and I said, okay, why? He looks at me, he won’t say anything. I’m like, why are you not talking? He’s you scare me because he’s looking at me. He is you scare me. And I looked at him, I’m like, why do I scare you? He’s you’re scary. So I asked him to talk to my kids who are in college because I said to him, I said, I don’t scare them at all.

Boz: But Okay. You say that and I’m sure there’s, at some level there is some honesty there. But the fact that the student actually told you that says something about the environment you’ve set up in your class because, I’ve had professors that I was scared of and most of the time in the environment of those classes, unless it was a math class. ’cause I was an arrogant, but there is no way I would’ve actually said that to ’em. Yeah. So the fact that they felt comfortable, even if there was some truth to that, they still felt comfortable enough to say it is saying something about the environment that you’ve set up?

Sharona: Yeah, I’ll say I was actually pretty happy to get that response because he clearly was telling the truth. I do scare him. And he’s comfortable enough to tell me that I scare him. So it’s just, it’s interesting. I’m really thinking a lot about the distinction between what I’m saying in class and what I’m putting in my syllabus, because there’s a group of students who are actually gonna see more of me in writing than they might experience in class if they’re having attendance issues.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: So I really wanna think about that tone. Of how I communicate, not just personally, but in writing

Boz: And oftentimes, especially at the higher ed level, maybe not so much at the K 12, but the first point of contact that our students have with us is the syllabus. Usually the syllabi are, put up somewhere, whether it’s digital or not, but put up somewhere. Before our classes start. So that is often the first point of contact that our students have with us.

Sharona: I really like what Dr. AOLs or Kels, I apologize in the pronunciation says in her post about trauma-informed pedagogy, because she’s showing how the two practices dovetail and some places that grading for growth doesn’t really touch on. So it’s interesting to me to try to bring, and this is something I’ve said a lot, is that for me, grading practices were the fire blanket that was smothering all of the effective pedagogy. And now that we’re taking it off, it’s helping everything else. But I still think that grading practices and the intentionality that we’re using with our practices can then and does then inform intentionality in our pedagogy. So one of the things that. I do is I use team-based inquiry learning and part of team-based inquiry learning. Sometimes you get groups that disagree with each other, and you wanna ask those groups to explain to the class how they’re getting the answers that they’re getting. Trauma-informed pedagogy recognizes that cold calling is a extremely anxiety producing event sometimes. So marrying the expectations of TBIL, which is supported by the grading and the trauma-informed pedagogy, has also made me think, okay, if I’m doing a practice, like a revision, like a retake or like cold calling on a group, because of team-based inquiry learning, if I communicate that ahead of time, that lowers the anxiety for my students. And I did that this week. We had our first checkpoint quiz, and I, before we took the quiz, I brought up, okay, what does it mean in this grading practice? If you do not do well, what does it mean? And that is coming from the trauma-informed pedagogy, but it’s also to reinforce that if you don’t do well on this first exam, this first quiz. All it means is that you’re gonna have to try again. That’s literally the only consequence is you’re gonna have to try again. Yeah. It just doesn’t count towards the grade.

Boz: Which we’ve talked about in some of our other episodes that, that is a way of lowering the student’s anxiety. And as we were going through a lot of this. Being an educator where I am and the environments that I teach at, I was aware of some of the trauma-informed pedagogy. I had never really seen this teaching with kindness. And again, looking at the syllabus, it’s first, these two things definitely go hand in hand, but it really is interesting. Just looking at how that the language, both written and verbal that we use can have such a huge and often unintentional impact on our students.

Sharona: Yeah. And how much further we each have to go when we’ve implemented, we were just talking about this in another situation that it’s like pulling a thread. If we pull a thread on this grading. It just unravels and uncovers so many things built into our classrooms, and I really strive to make changes every semester that are going to continue to create a classroom where these grading practices can flourish. The students can flourish because we have the grading, but we also have the pedagogical practices that really make it an environment where students want to come into. They want to be there because it’s so nourishing and it means that they get to learn some really cool math. That’s the other thing I’ve been noticing these last couple weeks, is I feel like the pace of my classroom. Is much, much slower, but yet we’re still covering the content we need to cover. But there’s so much emptiness where students are thinking emptiness of sound where the students are really thinking or they’re talking quietly to each other, trying to work out those problems. And I had a mistaken assumption going into the class. That this class was gonna feel to the students, like it was just repeating a bunch of stuff that they already should know. But because of the space we’ve created, we’re actually going in conceptually much deeper, and it’s as if a lot of this material is really new to them, even though in theory. It’s not

Boz: No I would disagree. I would say a lot of it is very new because, and we’ve talked about this before, part of what I think is a major issue with the way we teach mathematics in this country. Is it is all on the procedural, it’s all on the mechanics. It’s not on that deeper conceptual understanding. So your students are seeing some similar topics, but you’re getting more into that conceptual understanding. So it is new material. Yeah. ’cause yeah they’ve looked at, and this is why, you can teach something in Algebra one, and then when you see the students again in algebra two, they’re like, I’ve never seen this before in my life. Or when you get ’em in, your freshman year of college in a pre-calc class, and they’re like, oh yeah, we’ve never seen this one. In fact, we’ve been doing it since eighth grade. That’s why, because they see the mechanics. They do the mechanics without really understanding. Just, monkey see, monkey do and there’s no real learning there. It’s just mimicking.

Sharona: Well, and I think because this group of students is the ones for whom the mechanics did not stick.

Boz: Exactly.

Sharona: These are the students for whom the mechanics are not working. So they’re, I think, open to looking at these conceptual things and doing the activities the way they are designed. Because sometimes when you have a student who’s really good procedurally, they’ll just default to the procedure. They’ll go I recognize this and I understand that you’re trying to get me to do this way, but I’m just gonna go and do it the way I know. And these students don’t have that ability because their procedures are not great. And that’s really fun and exciting. I just, I didn’t expect these first few weeks to be as rich mathematically as they are and for the students to be engaging as much as they do. So I’m really excited. I’m having a great time. I am having some attendance issues, which that’s challenging, but.

Boz: But also, honestly, there is some things in the political realm where we’re teaching that. Can be maybe some of the fault of those, that absenteeism that you’re seeing.

Sharona: So I did wanna, yeah, I agree. The absenteeism, I don’t think it’s that students are just not coming. I think that my students are facing a lot. Yeah. Unfortunately, there’s only so much I can do if they’re not gonna be in class. So I’m just gonna, I wanted really to have a class that had a very high pass rate. If a third of my class is regularly not coming, it’s gonna be tough, but I’m just working on acceptance. I did wanna dive in a little bit more though, to some of the principles of trauma-informed pedagogy, because they line up so well with grading for growth. And I’m referencing on this one, there’s a page from the University of Oregon in their Center for Effective Teaching the Office of the Provost, teaching support and innovation where they have the principles into teaching practices. And I love this translation because so much of this is already in grading for growth. So if it’s okay with you, I’d like to dive into some of that.

Boz: Okay.

Sharona: So they have listed on this page seven principles of trauma-informed pedagogy. So the first one they list is physical, emotional, social, and academic safety. Foster an atmosphere that respects individuals’ needs for safety, respect, and acceptance, including feeling safe to make and learn from mistakes.

Boz: So that’s one of the pillars of alternative grading is eventual mastery is what matters. If we can, use feedback loops and things to learn from our own mistakes, it shouldn’t affect our grading. So yeah, that

Sharona: and multiple opportunities.

Boz: Multiple opportunities,

Sharona: That’s literally what they say. Offer low risk, repeatable opportunities to demonstrate knowledge.

Boz: Now there is one of those, so it lists these practices or these principles, and then it lists specific practices that are aligned to those principles. And there is one that is a little odd to me, and I shouldn’t say odd, but it’s a little uncomfortable. And that’s the use of cold calling.

Sharona: Acacia Ackles explains this a little more in her post. Some students may have outsized reactions to cold calling, and so instead what she says is, instead of direct cold calling, first of all, tell them to think about it for a few moments and then tell them that you’re gonna call on somebody. So it’s more, it’s not that you minimize cold calling itself, but you wanna minimize the surprise aspect. Of the cold calling.

Boz: That’s just it. It’s not really cold calling. If I’m telling you ahead of time, I’m gonna call on you.

Sharona: But the problem is there are some people based on their background for whom surprises are really bad.

Boz: Yeah. And I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying looking at some of my other trainings, cold calling is often. Something that we’re told is a good way, a good thing to use for certain issues. And that’s the one that I’m looking at and I can see the trauma based or trauma informed practices. I can see where that’s coming from and I’m looking at my own practices and I’m like, okay, so cold calling does have some benefits. So how do I still get those benefits without, inducing this or triggering this trauma that so many of my students do come to me with.

Sharona: So what are the benefits you think that cold calling gives you?

Boz: So what are the things that, we’re often taught in, at least our K 12 world, is if you’re doing cold calling and the students know that you’re going to be doing cold calling. Like saying, okay, here’s this, I’m gonna give you guys 45 seconds to ink down what you think I’m gonna give you then some time to talk with your groups to come up with. And I’m gonna be calling people randomly so I’m not seeing what’s the benefit. Benefit is it gets more student participation. Because if they know that they’re getting, they’re gonna be called on randomly, it’s not gonna be. I volunteer an answer, then there’s a chance I’m going to be called on and therefore I need to be prepared.

Sharona: So it’s behavior control?

Boz: It is it is To degree be behavior behavior and just, yeah, getting that participation, getting, making sure that the students aren’t just sitting, especially once they get to the groups and sitting back and letting someone else do the work in the group. So Yes, it

Sharona: is it’s behavior control.

Boz: Yes.

Sharona: So the issue is do you remember that one student you had a couple semesters ago where no matter what you do, she would not speak to you?

Boz: Yes.

Sharona: Do you remember that?

Boz: Yes.

Sharona: So the problem is with this behavior control is we’re trying again to force the students to participate. As opposed to creating an environment where they desire to participate.

Boz: All the things that I talked about leading up to the actual cold call is that, is try, like doing the T.I.P.S, doing the, okay, I’m going to, I’m telling you now I’m, here’s the issue, here’s the problem. I’m gonna give you some time to think about it. Now I’m gonna give you some time to write down those thoughts. Now you’re gonna get some time in your groups to refine and complete if you didn’t complete it to check to see if you were on the right path or not. Like it, it wasn’t just, okay, I’m throwing up this, first find the first derivative of this crazy function and now I’m cold calling across the room. What’d you get?

Sharona: Yeah, so I think what I would say is I would distinguish that what you’re doing, maybe it’s lukewarm calling instead of cold calling. It’s it, the idea is it’s not a total surprise and you might also give students an option to come to you privately and say, Hey, this is just not gonna work for me. My brain is gonna shut down in these types of environments. So I think giving maybe some opt-out options for some of the more extreme situations might be good. But yeah I think there’s some elements in there that are behaviorist that I’m like, eh, I don’t know.

Boz: Yeah, I dunno. But it’s definitely interesting looking at some of these trauma-informed practices and looking at this specific one and seeing how many of these things we were actually taught to do. So we’re actually being taught to do trauma inducing practices.

Sharona: Yes. I wanna move on now to the second principle. They list trustworthiness and transparency, and that’s about clear expectations and things exposed, and we do so much of this, right? The purpose of activities and assignments, that’s those clear and measurable learning outcomes, right? Using the transparency in teaching and learning framework. Giving clear instructions and having predictable deadlines. Like we’ve talked a lot about in alternative grading practices, you actually need often more structure rather than less. And so those deadlines, like we are doing a lot of these things and maybe we just didn’t know where it was coming from.

Boz: But I would also add on to that of having the predictable deadline, but also having some leniency and some grace in those deadlines. And we’ve talked a lot about, because the deadline is a big topic when people are first introduced to alternative grading practices, especially what’s now being grouped together as equitable grading practices. And the misconception of that means no deadlines. So we’ve had a lot of deadline discussions. I think we’ve had a few just full episodes about exactly about those. But regardless of what you end up doing, I think the key part of that is making it clear to the students as soon as possible.

Sharona: Yeah, exactly. I’m not gonna do all seven of these, so there’s a couple more though that I really wanna. Talk about one thing it says here is collaboration and mutuality. Create opportunities to provide input, share power, and make decisions. Act as allies rather than as adversaries to reach common goals.

Boz: And what’s the very first thing that they are? The very, the last bullet point of how do you do this?

Sharona: It says omit grading curves.

Boz: So, we actually, and we left this out at the beginning. We came to this by first looking at another article that we might actually do a another full episode on, but about grade deflation or grade inflation and that too many people are getting A’s, yeah, that sets up this kind of competition. Within the classroom that as much as I love competition I am a big sports person I believe that a level of competition is a great way to, harden, steal. But yeah, the, these kind of matching students up against each other as part of their grade, as part of their grades. Is a terrible way to build collaboration, which by the way, for all of my fellow K 12 educators is one of the 21st century skills that we’re supposed to be teaching in our classes. So again, another example of academia, not mirror real life or not mirroring business life. But you skipped one of those principles that I wanna go back to.

Sharona: Okay.

Boz: And that’s that support.

Sharona: We’re gonna do all seven, huh?

Boz: No, I’m not necessarily gonna do all seven, but I was surprised you skipped this one. The support and connections connecting students with appropriate peers and professional resources to help them succeed. Normalizing help seeking. Making it okay to have mistakes and being okay with needing additional resources and additional supports that we talk about this I think you see it more than I do, but the levels of differences that our students come into us with for so many different reasons, but yeah, normalizing that peer group help normalizing, just seeking help is, yeah, I think a key thing in trauma informed practices.

Sharona: And originally I skipped it ’cause I’m like, oh, this doesn’t seem very grading related. But now that you said that, I’m thinking that because we have the feedback loops.

Boz: Exactly.

Sharona: Where you actually have an opportunity to improve your grade. If you don’t understand the feedback, you may need help to understand the feedback. So that’s how it, that’s why I skipped it. I’m like, oh, this is just good teaching. It’s not necessarily grading, but if you don’t have feedback loops, why would students seek help on something that is already passed?

Boz: Exactly. And again, normalizing that, seeking help, making those feedback loops as effective for our students as possible.

Sharona: Yes. And teaching them how to use feedback that’s part of accessing resources. Where’s the feedback? How do you see it? How do you interpret it?

Boz: Yep.

Sharona: How do you read it? I wanna go on now to, there’s one called Voice and Choice, designing opportunities for Choice and Exercise of Agency so students can develop confidence and competence. And one of their recommendations is design choice into assignments and in class activities. And we’ve definitely tried to do this and I have done it successfully, but this idea that this assignment that I’m going to grade to check to see if you have learned the content, I want you to learn. The more that I can give you the opportunity to express yourself in demonstrating that evidence, the more authentic evidence I’m gonna get.

Boz: And I actually, I’m surprised. I thought you were okay. I’m not surprised you went to Voice and Choice. I thought you were going to go down to the third bullet point practice though normalizing variety of participation in coworking behaviors. That’s our Triple PI mean, when we talk about so for those that don’t know what the Triple P is, one of our learning targets is about participating in preparation and practice. We call it our Triple P. It’s all the things that we do in class that build towards mastery. But aren’t necessarily assessing for it.

Sharona: And not just in class, but also before class and after class.

Boz: So all of those things. The way we do it and the way that, we’ve actually done a lot of PD on how we do this. We set up, it’s the only time we have any kind of points in our class that’s not built on an average. It’s built on an accumulation of points. You get so many in this whole big bucket and you’ve got enough, you’re done with it. But. We make it to where there is a lot more points than what you actually need. And the reason we do that is because we break it into things you do to prepare for the class. Prepare, whether it’s, a team, a TBL type of class, a flip class, a lecture class, whatever you do before it, whatever you are doing during it, whether it’s using group work or clicker slides or note taking. And then what you do after. If I’m a student that needs to be prepared for the class, I need, I find more benefit from that. I can choose to do mostly that and ignore some of the other and be fine, because that’s what’s helping me. That’s that in normalizing variety of ways of participating. I find which one of these three things help me the most. And no, I can’t just do that. I’m gonna have to get some points other, but really normalizing that, hey, it’s okay if the homework’s not helping me. That point of homework is to build towards mastery. If that’s not what’s building towards my mastery, then I shouldn’t be spending a ton of time doing it. I should be doing what is gonna help me.

Sharona: Exactly. Exactly. And not just what helps me, but sometimes what works with my life. So I might be somebody for whom in class participation actually works really well, but I have hospitalizations going on. I have work related things. I can’t get to class. You can do other things. So it’s not just what helps me, but also what helps my life.

Boz: Yeah. And

Sharona: I really like that.

Boz: And you brought up earlier my cold calling as being part of the behavioral control. And some people say, this is too, but you know what? And what we’ve experienced from doing this for, like seven years and our stats class, eight years, seven years, most of our students, once they hit that threshold. They don’t stop.

Sharona: No, they go past it.

Sharona: For the grade.

Boz: Yeah, for the grade. And again, it was because we normalized it to say you do what helps you do the parts that are helping you be successful on what does count for mastery. So if it’s helping them, they don’t stop just ’cause the point stopped or ’cause they didn’t need.

Sharona: And we’ve tried to minimize the behaviorism in it in two ways. One is we’ve reformulated. The point of the Triple P, what we tell students is we’re trying to help you learn how to learn. So there’s a goal for this stuff other than just do what we say. And secondly, you can get any grade you want without it. You could dump the whole thing and still get an a. It’s not very likely because you need the work to actually get the math. But the point is you can opt out of the behaviorism as a student.

Boz: Yeah. So we are coming up on time and I definitely want to hit this last one ’cause I, yes. I think it’s,

Sharona: I saw that,

Boz: yeah.

Sharona: Resilience and growth. So yeah, it says emphasize strength and resilience over deficiencies and pathology. Ground feedback in the belief that the student can succeed and in the goal of facilitating growth.

Boz: So I love what it says about the feedback specifically and their first bullet point on practice that that aligns to this belief that. Be clear verbally and in action that you know all students can succeed in your class. The growth mindset versus the fixed, this is the cornerstone, not just the cornerstone, like this is the backbone of alternative grading. The fact that we do believe all of our students can, and we set up our grading system that encourage not only encourages, but allows students that. If they need a little more time to get there, they can still do that. And in fact, I know in my classes, I think you do the same thing at about week 6, 7, 8, I will bring up the grading conversation again with my students to point out the fact that, hey, at this point, if you’ve not gotten, proficiency in any of our quizzes or anything at this point. You still can succeed in the class. There’s still time to get an A in the class.

Sharona: Yeah. We don’t start locking students out of A’s until like week 10 or 12 . You’re is when, and even then usually there’s ways to recover

Boz: And you’re really not locked out into the, until the very end of passing.

Sharona: Exactly. I also love what they say here. Share feedback that is oriented to both student goals and towards what is needed to reach the next level of skills or knowledge the students might aim for. So we say specific, timely, action oriented.

Boz: Yep.

Sharona: That’s what we need for those feedback. So even without really knowing a whole lot about trauma-informed pedagogy personally. I love the fact that it is so integrated into the grading practices like they’re, they just fit hand in glove. So I really appreciate what Dr. Kels said here, and I also especially appreciate in her article, just to tie it back. She needed this grace too. She had a very difficult semester with some hospitalizations and other things. So the grace that she gave her students and the environment she set up allowed her to accept grace from her students. And I thought that was beautiful.

Boz: And that’s also funny that what’s one of the advices that we give when we’re doing trainings and helping groups or departments go through this kind of changes. Allow grace and this, and learning from your own mistakes, just like we’re saying for our students, give yourself the same grace that our grading system is trying to give to our students.

Sharona: Because we’re all human.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: We all make mistakes.

Boz: All right. Like I said, we are coming up on time. Is there any last minute things that you wanted to refer back to?

Sharona: I just wanna take a minute to, first of all, thank you for giving us the grace with the replay last week because it was our thing, but also just some gratitude towards our community, towards our listeners, and towards all the people in the alternative grading community who are helping us all become better educators, because I really think. This is my way of trying to change the world is student by student, teacher by teacher, community member by community member. ’cause it’s a dark time out there and this is just a ray of hope. How about you?

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: Any thoughts?

Boz: I just wanna mimic that’s something that I don’t think we see everywhere, but in this community we are very willing to showcase our mistakes, showcase our failures and the people that we’re showcasing it to, take it in and take it with grace and give that kind of support and love back to us. I just, I can’t thank our communities enough for being as, as open and as willing to be raw and vulnerable, that as so many of them are, thank you for that. I hope to be able to, do that in my own practices but. This has been fun. We are coming up on time, so you have been listening to the grading podcast with Boz and Sharona, and we’ll see you next week.

Sharona: Please share your thoughts and comments about this episode by commenting on this episode’s page on our website, http://www.thegradingpod.com. Or you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram if you would like to suggest a featured topic for the show or would like to be considered as a potential guest for the show. Please use the Contact us form on our website. The Grading podcast is created and produced by Robert Bosley and Sharona Krinsky. The full transcript of this episode is available on our website.

Boz: The views expressed here are those of the host and our guest. These views are not necessarily endorsed by the Cal State System or by the Los Angeles Unified School District.