The Grading Podcast

137 – Gabriel Despatie

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Boz: It seems like we do this a lot in K 12, and I have an idea of why, but it sounds like you took your existing assessments at least maybe more, and tried to just force this alternative grading onto that and it didn’t work. So you ended up making a lot of adjustments and a lot of changes to your assessments. Is that a fair interpretation of what you had said?

Gabriel Despatie: Yes, definitely that, I took nine years to do that, that, that assessment and refine ’em. ’cause I’ve been teaching grade seven for nine years now. So I’ve been taking those assessment and refining them every year. So that was the hardest part for me, is just having to look at those and I completely scrapped all of my assessments because there was so much filler.

Boz: Welcome to the grading podcast, where we’ll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students’ learning. From traditional grading to math, alternative methods of grading, we’ll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our students’ 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 Sharonaq 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-hosts, and with me as always, Sharona Krinsky. How you doing today? Sharona?

Sharona: I have no complaints. I have no complaints, which I know is shocking. But yeah, I had a really good week and I’m doing well. I was just thinking about what was different about this week and why it was so good, and I think it’s because I’m talking to my older son every day, which has not happened in a number of years.

Boz: Okay, but why are you talking to him so much right now?

Sharona: So my older son just started his training as a brand newly minted second lieutenant in military police in the Army. And so he went to, it’s called Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. And he’s doesn’t have a girlfriend anymore, and he’s away from all of his best friends.

So suddenly mom is much more interesting to talk to. And so I get to hear about what he likes and what he doesn’t like. And I was talking to him. A couple of days ago and he’s got a four day weekend for the President’s Day weekend and he was telling me his plans and it’s things like, oh, we’re gonna go play pit poker at a whiskey and cigar lounge.

And then one, one of the guy’s wives is coming out and we’re gonna go out with her. I’m like, you sound like an adult. This is so weird. So I think that was just really fun for me to have this interaction. ’cause he’s finally outta school. He is finally not my problem.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: And I’m loving it. How about you? How was your week?

Boz: You know it. I. I’ve talked about this before. I love the Olympics. I become like a huge fan of the most bizarre sports that I only watch every four years. But my youngest daughter has really gotten into curling. So like we’ve been watching curling and it’s funny ’cause that was something that my dad actually loved to watch when the it was one of three winter Olympic sports that my dad would like to watch. So it’s been funny watching and it’s been some good curling. Team US is, it’s one of the few sports that we’re not having a disappointing Olympic run right now. But yeah it’s been fun watching her ’cause this is her first time really sitting down with me and watching and getting into any of the Olympic sports.

Sharona: Yeah, I have not been watching the Olympics. I have been catching some of the news, the news has not been great. But I’m really curious ’cause we have a guest on the pod today who also could be watching the Olympics. I have no idea. But it’s interesting that we actually have this international thing going on ’cause we have another one of our, , of guest from our neighbor to the north in Canada. I’d like to welcome Gabriel Despatie to the pod. Gabriel is a grade seven math teacher at Renaissance Catholic Secondary School in Ontario, just outside of Toronto. And it is a French language Catholic school. And one thing I found very interesting when I was preparing for the episode is in Ontario, the French language Catholic school system is actually publicly funded. So there’s no cost to go and there are no faith requirements to go to his school. So I wanna welcome you Gabriel, are you watching the Olympics?

Gabriel Despatie: Ah, thanks for having me on. I’m really excited to be here. I am really disappointed though because, the Americans just beat, the Canadians and ice hockey the women beat them five, nothing. But we’ll get a revenge in the gold medal match.

Sharona: So I was gonna say, I think that was the preliminary round, right? Yeah. So.

Boz: Although did you see the US women versus Canada and curling? It was the first time we’ve beaten you on Olympic ice in curling.

Gabriel Despatie: I don’t know what happened. We used to be the powerhouse of curling, but it’s nice to see that US is getting a little bit stronger with that.

Sharona: Exactly. So anyways, we are so appreciative you were able to come on. One of the things people, the listeners might know, we got a little bit behind on our contact form, we’re now keeping up with it. But you had actually reached out a number of months ago to share your experience with implementing alternative grading practices in your classroom, and it’s been long enough that you’ve had quite some time now to go another round at it. So I’m really excited to talk to you about it. So thank you for coming on.

Boz: But one of the first things we always like to ask our new guest is just how did you get started in this crazy world of alternative grading?

Gabriel Despatie: Yeah, I was, a couple of years ago, I was standing at my desk. I was flipping through a stack of freshly marked tests and then I stopped. I realized that I was taking off points all over the test for rounding and formatting the things that weren’t actually part of the learning goal. The test was about circles, but I was grading and measuring something else. At the same time I looked up and saw a student who’s had been sick all week forcing themselves through the test. I had another one sitting frozen with an anxiety, and that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t grading the learning, I was really grading everything that was around it. So I started teaching about nine years ago using traditional grading. But up until that moment, I just accepted the way that everything was but after that test, I really couldn’t unsee it. Students would always come up to me and ask me how they can improve their grade, and I honestly didn’t know what to answer. The only thing I could say was do it better next time. And I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how. And that left me confused and helpless. I tried small fixes, adding bonus questions. I gave bonus marks for homework. I let students the dropped their lowest mark. None of that touched the real problem though. How does a student actually get better at this specific thing they haven’t learned yet?

And about that time I started implementing building thinking classrooms. And that pushed me to rethink assessments more deeply. And that’s when I began learning about standards-based grading. So last year I decided to reorganize all of my unit tests to assess standard instead of by task. Like many things in in teaching, and you guys know this way too well, but it didn’t work very well. I had too many standards that were being assessed at once and the students were actually more stressed and confused than they were before. So that’s when I realized that changing what I graded wasn’t enough. I also had to rethink when and how I was assessing.

Boz: I love the fact that you brought the building the thinking classroom. If there’s educators that are listening to this that haven’t read that, or new educators . It’s not about grading, it’s about pedagogy. But yeah, that is one that I think should be required for every new teacher ever from here on out to go and read that.

Sharona: I was just gonna say, it’s very interesting to me with that book, because I didn’t even know it mentioned grading. I had heard of it quite a bit. But I didn’t even know it mentioned grading. And it does.

Gabriel Despatie: And it’s funny because it took me so long to get to that I would, I was always avoiding that grading piece. I was looking at it thinking it’s way too hard and there’s too many things involved. So out of all the 14 practices in the book, that was really the last one that I tackled, but has been the most rewarding for myself and my students.

Boz: And that’s something that Sharona has talked about forever, is that she did, all these practices that she grew up, watching her mom implementing and actually trying to teach on, and then, it had effect, but it never quite came together until. You tackled the grading and that kind of became the linchpin that held all the other good pedagogy together.

Sharona: Yeah. Yeah. Trying to do all those different things without the grading didn’t work for me. But I’m very curious about a couple of things that you said. Because you basically thought that what you had to change were your assessments. And I have said quite a bit, and I believe, and I’m experiencing it now, grading itself doesn’t solve anything. It just gets out of the way of everything else you’re trying to do when you make this change. It I think it forces all the other ones, but I’m curious to see, what was that realization? Because you restructured your tests and it didn’t go well. Can you dive into that a little bit more? Share. Share what didn’t go well?

Gabriel Despatie: So I think my goal since the beginning of my teaching career was to motivate and engage students. And that’s why the things that I mentioned about the adding an extra test or giving bonus marks for homework, like I’m, I was always trying to find a way for the students to want to get better, but I found that was a problem because what I was asking them to redo was not in line with what they actually had to redo. For example, if we go back to that test about circles, I would get a student that maybe would get a specific mark and would wanna improve. I would make them redo the whole task ’cause they wanted to improve their grade, but at the end of the day, the problem wasn’t that they didn’t know how to find the circumference or the area of a circle. They just didn’t know how to round properly. So why am I not just giving them a chance to redo that section of rounding numbers?

So for me that really hit me. And when I’m looking at a grade, for example, like if I’m looking at the report card, I’m seeing a 76 I have no idea what that 76 represents. Whereas now I’ll get to it a little bit a little bit longer in the episode, but now I could see exactly that 76 represents, okay, here are the holes, here are the gaps, here are the standards that are mastered. Here are the standards that are not. So for me and the students before, it was very unclear to what they need to get better. So if I had a parent come to me and ask me, okay the student got X mark, how does he improve? I really had no idea what to say because I just have a picture of the whole test. Instead of just having a picture of, okay, this is a specific thing that needs to be improved. Yeah, for me it was just trying to put that link together. And like you said earlier the grading is not the important part here. The important part is for the students to learn and also to know where they’re going. I feel like on my test before I had so many filler questions and the students were really confused at what I was asking and where they’re going and what to study. And it was hard for me to explain to them before and after how they could get better. I would often use things like, oh, you need to be more organized in class, or do more homework, but that didn’t really solve the problem. Instead of just going back and reviewing a specific content and then when I was giving ’em an extra project or something to review their grades, I was just telling them that what they did before wasn’t really important. I’m just giving something else. It’s a grade that’s important, that’s what it’s implying. Whereas now the way I’m structuring it, it’s okay. Each standard are important, and if you wanna get better overall, here’s. The big picture and here’s how you can accomplish what you want to.

Boz: Yeah I was the same way before I transitioned into alternative grading. Parent night would come, come sit down. How does my son or daughter how improve or do better in your class? And I was always telling them. Things to do instead of things to learn. It was, if they need to get more organized, do more homework, I’ve got tutoring hours they can do. It was always something that the student had to do, not had to learn, and that’s, yeah. A really powerful change. I know our, you and our higher ed listeners don’t have to deal necessarily with this aspect of education, but dealing with parents and parent communication and parents being a partner in the teaching of our students is a huge deal for K 12 educators.

Sharona: I’ve never. Yeah, I’ve never dealt with it on the teacher side.

Boz: Yeah, you’ve been on the other side?

Sharona: I’ve been on the other side, and I still tell this story a lot. I’m not gonna tell the whole story, but where I was having a conversation with one of my son’s math teachers saying I needed to come in and meet with her and my son because we needed to go over a test. And when I got there, she didn’t have my son there. I’m like, why don’t you have him here? And she’s why does he have to be here? I’m like, because we have to go over the test to figure out what he’s doing wrong. And she goes I know what he is doing wrong. He’s not doing his homework. And I literally was like, no, I need to know what math he doesn’t know. Yeah. And so when he came in, I sat down with him to reflect on the test. I had to go in and go problem by problem with my son ’cause he could not tell me what he had done wrong. She left the room and she was out in the hallway. I’m like, and here’s, I’m sitting with my son, who at the time is probably 13 years old. He is way advanced and he’s sitting here telling me, Ugh, I forgot about the domain restriction on the arcsin formula. Okay, that was an error. It was not something he doesn’t understand. So the fact that I would’ve had to look at me as a parent. And say, I, now, I would not have rejected a parent meeting with their son on the math, but I would’ve had the same problem. I would not have been able to say, your child is missing these concepts.

Boz: Yeah. And the power of being able to look at a parent and go. Okay. This is what your son or daughter is struggling on. They’re doing really good on, like the equation solving and algebraic manipulations. It’s the graphing that they struggle with. Across the board, graphed. So here are some things you know, you can have your student do or you can help them with to just work on graphing overall that instead of going, yeah, they need to do more homework or they can come in and see me for tutoring, is a really powerful tool and a powerful way to get the parent behind you in supporting you.

Sharona: So my question then is, can we have you talk then about your first time you implemented it because you said it didn’t go well.

Gabriel Despatie: Yeah. So I think I had lots of good ideas in mind, but since I was new to it, I was trying to do too many things at once. So it became just overwhelming for myself and for my students to have so basically what I only did was take the test and just divide it up into the different standards. So in, in that context, not much change. It’s just added another level of complexity. So I had a hard time with that and this this summer I had some time to think about it. And I decided this year that my students that were going to be assessed one standard at a time one per week. So we have every Wednesday is the test day. And I was listening to a previous episode and somebody was mentioning something about doing a carnival. So I that’s what I call I call it the learning carnival on Wednesdays. So each standard will have three performance levels and each level will have two questions. And I do mastery based grading. So they have to get both those questions correct, to have mastered that standard at that performance level. So the three levels are foundational learning which is basic understanding application, where they know they use what they know in familiar and new contexts and thinking where the students explain their reasoning and tackle more complex problems with my students though. ~Yep. ~

Sharona: Let me get a little clarification before we on, so you have three levels, two problems per level. Does the student have to get all three to complete that particular standard, or can they get like just one of ’em and it’s complete, but it just affects the final grade differently? Like how does that work?

Gabriel Despatie: Ex excellent question. So they, there’s the three different levels. So they need to get both questions for one level to master that level. The levels are backwards compatible. So if you, and with my students, I call the levels mild, medium, and spicy, and they absolutely love that. So the levels are actually backwards compatible. So if a student is able to get the two medium questions correctly, then it shows me that they could also get the two mild questions. But so the students will have that Wednesday to complete those six questions. So let’s say the student will have both questions, correct for mild. One question, correct for medium and zero questions, correct for spicy. Then they have mastered that mild part and they get a chance to retake the medium and the spicy the next week. So after they’re done, the six questions for that specific standard for that week, let’s say it’s multiplying fractions, they can go and retake any performance level from previous standards that they haven’t mastered yet using similar but not identical questions. So say, let’s say a student is done with multiplying and dividing those fractions, they’ll come up in front of the class and retake those two medium questions that they haven’t got both those questions correct. And then if they get both right answer, it counts as they got it right the first time.

So for me, it doesn’t matter if they got it right on the first week or the last week of school that counts for mastery which I find is very empowering. Like I’ve just had a student that wasn’t able to get a mild level question at the beginning of the year and then was able to retry it many months later and just breezed by it. And then he was like, oh wow, this is so easy. And that’s another thing about traditional grading, like we would start the year, for example, with adding and subtracting integers, which is a very pretty complicated subject for students. And they’d have to do the test by the end of September, which I didn’t find was fair because some students just needed a little bit more time. And inherently we review adding and subtracting integers and algebraic expressions and fractions and everything else. So they have a chance to redo those questions.

Sharona: And so what’s the distinction though, like why, if I’m a student, why do I wanna get all three levels. I mean is one level good enough or is there a reason I need to get the other levels?

Gabriel Despatie: So the foundational level is the minimum requirement to pass the course. So let’s say a student would get all the mild questions right throughout the year and no medium and no spicy. That’s the minimum requirement to pass the course, which is 50% here in Ontario. And then if they would get the mild and medium. It would be higher, about 75% and mild, medium and spicy. That’s how they get their a hundred percent. So the students have they have a tracking sheet listing all the standards and all the levels. And when a level is mastered they’ll go and add a smiley face beside it. And it clearly shows them what is mastered, what to study and what can be retaken. And I also maintain a digital version of that tracking sheet that can easily be shared with parents, tutors, and specialized teachers. So in my class the students are always working on something. When they finish a set of questions, they’ll come up to me and get the next one based on their tracking sheet. So they’ll come up to the front of the class with their tracking sheet, and then they’ll look for the two questions that they wanna complete next at the next level. They want to complete. So in a Wednesday period, the students are never done. The work just keeps adjusting as their mastery grows.

Boz: Okay, so you said something about the grades saying a 50% and 75%. ~And I think we’ve talked to an another Canadian before that. That you don’t give, or let me rephrase that. ~Do you give grades like a, B, C, or are your grades actual numbers?

Gabriel Despatie: So when we’re doing the report cards, yeah, our grades are a percentage okay. So that’s why I have to find a way to translate that mastery into a percentage grade.

Boz: Okay. We’ve heard that before. Sharona, do you remember who that.

Sharona: Yeah. So in New York when I was there for the bs, they also do these grades that are numerical in nature. And as we’ve talked about before, I understand that because it’s a ranking and sorting system. But I love the fact that you have found a way, as much as I disagree with the use of percentages overall, when you’re in a system that uses them, you have to use them. But being able to translate directly into the meaning I really appreciate that. So a student who has a 75% either has everything at medium. Or has half of it at mild and half of it at spicy. Or some combination thereof.

Gabriel Despatie: And the important part is that they know where to go and fill those gaps. I believe my students are really enjoying looking at their sheet and looking to see what they can get better at. It’s easy for me to contact the parents and tell them this is the specific type of question. Standard that they need to review. But yeah, I definitely agree with with the percentage. Like I did something this year where I went two months without telling any student their grade. And as soon as I did tell them their percentage grade, like that’s when I noticed that they stopped retaking those questions. So I’m really playing around with that. Like how can I go for the longest amount of time without giving them. That percentage because when they don’t see that percentage, they’re just seeing a sheet with a bunch of blank spaces and smiley faces and they’re trying to complete that puzzle however long it takes them. And they’re just trying to go and they know how to get a hundred percent. If they get all the smiley face, that’ll be a hundred percent. Other than that, like the grades are really meaningless. They’re, like you said, just a way of sorting students.

But again, if I am looking at a report card, I’m seeing a 62. I don’t have, I have no idea what that means. Is it one test that he got a zero on? Is it like you said, half the test he’s doing a little bit of things right. And something so it’s, I’m really trying to find a way to, again, going back to my goal is to engage and motivate the students. So I’m really trying to protect the students’ willingness to keep trying. I don’t want a grade to be the thing that shuts it down, and that’s what I find is a problem with specific students.

Boz: You kept the grade the numeric part of the grade away for a couple of months, but as soon as you were forced to reintroduce it. You saw a drop in some of the students, ~try ~retrying or trying to reassess on the ones that they hadn’t gotten mastery on yet. Yeah. And that’s, that is an unfortunate truth that I think is true at any level. But yeah, there are some students, whether it’s based on, prior experience in the subject, whether it’s based on other traumas, whether it’s based on a thousand different possible things, but their goal is just passing or they see a B or, whatever grade is good enough that, but before, when they just had. The learning targets or just had those goals and those, that tracker sheet it gamifies it and they’re like, Ooh, I wanna get ’em all. I wanna collect ’em all. That’s a shame that, that’s what a lot of our grading system has done, is just, again, it becomes about the number and not about the grade, not about the learning. It’s just about the number and the grade.

Gabriel Despatie: And I really like what you said about the gamify. That’s what I’m trying to do with the smiley faces. And I see the students light up when they show me the two questions, what that they attempted for a second time or a third time. And I just give ’em a little nod with a smiley face. And you you see the fist pump and sometimes they, yell across the whole class and you see the students their friends around them, like congratulating them. Like it’s really reinforcing. Thing for all of the students. And that’s, there’s no grade that’s involved in there. It’s just like I set a goal, which was answering those two questions and I got it right, or I didn’t get it right and I know what to study for the next time. So I really like that idea of gamifying and trying to keep, I think that’s really keeping the students willing to keep trying and, to fill out that, that sheet as much as they can and to have no pressure as well to do it on the first try. They always know that they can do it another time. And I am also trying to find creative ways to let them have a second chance, like the day before the Christmas break. Usually there’s nothing been done, but I put like a poster that said, oh, it’s a two for one deal for today. If I’ll ask you one question instead of two for any mild question that you didn’t, and then you had all the students, I think I had 12 students read their name on the board that wanted to redo. So on the last day of school before Christmas they did some math and a lot of them got the questions right, and I was able to. To add mastery for that level. Just finding small creative ways to engage and motivate the students. I’m really have having fun doing that.

Sharona: That sounds like so much fun. So what are the biggest things that you’ve noticed that you haven’t yet said? So you’ve changed from assessments that had lots of standards on ’em to very focused assessments. Has that bled out into your classroom in any way? Have there been other changes because of the changes to the grading system that you’ve noticed?

Gabriel Despatie: Like I said earlier, with the implementation of building thinking classrooms, I think both of those kind of go very well together. I see a lot more collaboration between the students. So the students they’re not really competitive with each other. They’re trying to push themselves to get better, and that’s thanks to the BTC practices. The students are often in random groups of three. I started doing that since the first day of school, so they’re used to working with different types of people. And I just like you mentioned on the last podcast I can see the thinking in their heads. Like sometimes there’ll just be moments of silence or just moments of they’re really trying. To learn the thing instead of just ticking a box. And I think that’s what we need to do as teachers as well. I had a tendency to want to teach the content instead of teaching the kids. So I was trying to rush through everything, whereas now I’m really trying to take my time. And it’s funny because we go slower at the beginning with BTC, but then at the end, like right now, we’re in the middle of the year and I’m seeing like crazy progress and just the kids are flying through some things. It’s the first year that I don’t allow them access to calculators for the most part of the year, and they’re able to do. The same questions as the kids the previous years that were doing that.

So I’m seeing a lot of different little things. I’m still trying to observe like what is working well and what is not working well. Like I’m trying, it’s a lot of work for me to have to structure the questions in the way. That like at the end of the day I want all my students to succeed. And I find opportunities to maybe chat with them one-on-one if they ha need some help. But I just see them willing to learn, they have a little competitiveness, which is a pro, but also like I’m having a hard time with that a little bit because sometimes the students are very competitive with with themselves. Like they, they, the progress is very visible. So if they’re not doing well they are having a hard time with it, they’re taking it very personally. So I’m really having a hard time with separating that learning from identity. So yeah, there’s lots of moving parts and I’m really trying to observe that’s one thing that I’ve told myself I was gonna do, just try new things, observe give them like different times, like how many tests can I let them do in one session?

Because at one point I was having like 12 different sets of questions and that’s why I started calling it a carnival. ’cause it was, okay, the students are getting this. I’m just trying to organize that chaos as much as I can. And another struggle is just having the kids like, sometimes they’ll be like in the middle of retaking a question, even if they accomplished something before they’re in the middle of a question, the class period ends. So that frustrates them and me as well. ’cause it’s, they were like in the middle of their learning. So I’m really trying to work on what’s the best bet for the students to keep that confidence level up and just. Continue willing to push. That’s my main goal.

Sharona: So on these Wednesdays do you have a bunch of assessments pre-printed or do you print like a on demand assessments or how do you, how are you handling the logistics piece of them being able to retake prior stuff?

Gabriel Despatie: That was the toughest part for me. Like I tried a little bit of everything. I think what’s working well now is like I’ve separated in different units. Each unit will have six standards, so the students can only retake the standards from that unit. So let’s say we’re doing like 3.1. They, that’s the first one. So they can’t retake anything. 3.2, they can go back until, so that’s on the Wednesdays, just for my sanity of not having 20, 27 different types of question. And then for the previous units, like we’re done unit one and two. The students can come up to me individually at any moment if they want to redo something. So they’ll go home and practice and whenever they’re ready they’ll come up to me. So I’ve structured in that way where there’s specific amount of questions available for them and they can come up to me if there’s something from previous units that they haven’t yet accomplished.

Boz: So you had brought up something, earlier and I wanted to go back to it ’cause I think it is a very common error especially K 12, I don’t know about higher ed, but it seems like we do this a lot in K 12 and I have an idea of why. But it sounds like you took your existing assessments at least maybe more. Tried to just force this alternative grading onto that and it didn’t work. So you ended up making a lot of adjustments and a lot of changes to your assessments. Is that a fair interpretation of what you had said?

Gabriel Despatie: Yes. That, I took nine years to do that, that, that assessment and refine ’em. ‘Cause I’ve been teaching grade seven for nine years now. So I’ve been taking those assessment and refining them every year. So that was the hardest part for me, is just having to look at those. And I completely scrapped all of my assessments because there was so much filler. I believe I was trying to find a way to challenge the students. Then I was inventing questions that were not necessarily based on that standard to make it a challenge for them. So I had to remove those questions and really think, okay, if I look at a specific standard, how do I make that question about that specific thing without blending something else in? So I. That’s what I did the first the first time I tried it was I just took those tests and just reorganized the questions, but then I realized lots of things, lots of repetition. I think we’ve all been there where we’re asking the same question like 5, 5, 6 times, and there was lots of redundancy in my tests. So the kids, and now that’s one thing I’m really working on and thankfully I’ve had. Nine years of experience to be able to take a look at a question and how do I give, for example, a multiple choice that really tells me if a student is comprehending the subject. So instead of just having one right answer, it’ll be something like circle all the correct answers. So if we’re adding fractions, for example, there’ll be like, there could be two, there could be four correct answers, there could be an answer that’s like. Three, sixth and you, they need to simplify to one half. There’s different there’s different ways to ask a question and really understand.

That’s really my thing that I have been working really hard on is how can I ask a really good question that is going to tell me if that student really understand the concept. I’ve started using a lot of open middle problems, openmiddle. com has a bunch of these problem where they’re just boxes and you have to satisfy a set of criteria. So instead of asking students to add two numbers, we could ask them to put in two numbers that gives the highest sum or the the biggest difference et cetera. So those have really helped me especially for those application and thinking questions instead of using those long word problems that I really had a hard time with because a lot of students are not understanding the words, and I didn’t find it fair that they were not succeeding because they didn’t understand the structure of a problem. Whereas these open middle problems are, and since we’re doing a lot of them throughout the year, the kids are really used to how they work. And now I’m really grading the math instead of grading the understanding of wording or questions.

Boz: If you don’t know what open middle questions are, what can we put a link to their site Sharona on the show notes?

Sharona: Yeah, absolutely. We love openmiddle.

Boz: Yeah. Open, middle is one of those resources that when Sharona and I first started doing some of our PDs, not necessarily on grading, but just doing PDs on how do we teach in pandemic? ’cause that’s really when we started. And getting authentic assessments and open middle was one of our first and big resources that we, yeah, we love Open Middle

Sharona: well, especially because open, middle and also error correction problems. We were also addressing photo math. At the time. Yeah. So there was that app photo math that could take, and I think it still exists, can take a picture of a problem and do all the steps. And back then, which was pre AI days it could not handle open middle questions and it couldn’t handle error correction problems. So once we were in an environment where we couldn’t lock people away from their technology, we needed new types of problems. So we love open world com.

Boz: But but my point about. Your assessments that I wanted to go back to is, I think that’s one of the biggest errors, especially in K twelves that I see is people just trying to adopt this alternative grading scheme on top of what they already do. And we’ve brought this up before, this connection between grading, teaching and assessing is so strong that a lot of people that we’ve talked to on this podcast and just out in the wild that are in this community, it’s like half of them came because they wanted to adjust their assessments and then realized they also had to change the grading. And the other half came from I wanna change my grading and then realize they had to have changed their assessments as well. So it’s weird that these two things they. They seem almost inseparable. It’s if you are really earnestly trying to change one, you are going to end up having to change the other as well.

Sharona: So I think what you’re saying is so spot on and I have two thoughts that go with it. I think one of the reasons we don’t see it as much at the university is at least you and I teach in an environment where most people give back their exams, at least during the semester. Not everybody keeps their stuff, whereas in a lot of the high schools, they give it back, they look at it, but then they take it back. So I feel like some university professors don’t reuse as much or don’t care that they’re out in the wild. That’s one reason you see it more in K 12. But I think the other thing is, I think the problem really is we don’t know exactly what we’re teaching and I think it manifests in K 12 in the assessments. Are we teaching circles or are we teaching rounding? What?

But in the university it’s because we don’t know what our classes are really about. ’cause I had an experience recently where I asked people to give the elevator speech of their class. And they’re like, it’s algebra. I’m like, okay. And I dunno, algebra, what’s your class about? And they literally couldn’t answer me. So I think you guys have a little more definitional stuff at the level.

Gabriel Despatie: I think that was a very humbling moment for me. I. Because when I started teaching, I was given the lessons. Here’s what you follow, here’s what you teach. Here are the tests from the years before, and I was making some changes and I really took a lot of time to actually look at the curriculum and the wording and everything. And I was very humbled to see that a lot of things that I was teaching and assessing were not actually part of the curriculum. So now I’m able to specify exactly on the things that are worded and just looking back at so we have. The, it’s called Growing Success. It’s our province’s assessment and evaluation policy here in Canada. And in the document, like I, I wrote it down here it says, determining a report card grade will involve teachers’ professional judgment and interpretation of evidence, and should reflect the student’s most consistent level of achievement with special consideration given to most recent evidence. I think going back to not only having specific standards, but giving them multiple chances. That’s why I don’t necessarily agree with exams. Like we’re lucky in grade seven and eight. We don’t have those. But I always had a hard time, if I would give a formative assessment and the students were getting the right answers in the formative assessment, why am I giving them the same exact questions again? Like I already know that they’re able to do it. So that’s one thing like that I struggle with.

But yeah, going back to the standards that was really eye-opening for me to see the things. And I think when you really know what your content is you’re able to go a little bit quicker because you’re not adding these filler things. Just to add more things or to please teachers from the grades above, you’re really teaching what is meant to be taught.

Boz: Yeah. And going back to your point, Sharona, I think there’s a third thing. Of why we see it more in K 12 than we do in the higher ed, at least in this country. And I’m curious to, to get your opinion Gabriel, to see if it’s similar in Canada, but it’s that very quick turnaround between PD and action, like here in the States. It, I’m not joking, it’s, we’re gonna do a PD on Tuesday. We might have one follow up the next Tuesday and we wanna see it in your class following Monday. And Sharon, you and I know we’re about to start a 16 month project with a college there in Canada. This takes real time because it’s not just the grading system. It does end up changing your assessments. It ends up changing a lot of the other structures that you may or may not have in place. So it takes time, and at least in my experience. Granted, I have been an educator for, 21 years. Most of that has been in California, but we just don’t have that luxury. We’re not given that we’re, if we’re given a PD on this Tuesday follow up, we’re expected to be doing that. So I’m curious do you have that same in Canada? Is that just rapid PD and expectation of seeing it implemented immediately? There as well.

Gabriel Despatie: Yeah, I definitely agree. I think teachers are more and more getting burnt out because we’re getting lots of new things added to our plate and here’s a new vision and we want you to to implement this. But if you go back and think about my experience, for example, one of my colleagues asked me like, how long does it take you to. Do these questions. It’s a lot of work to have to, rewrite different questions and different tests every week. And my answer was, it took me nine years of teaching. It’s really it’s really my whole career that I’ve had time to think about this. And the alternative grading, I’ve only started doing for a year now, but I am still at my early stages and you’re always learning something new. And I think that was my big problem too, is I was expecting perfection like last year when I started, okay, I’ve changed this is awesome. The intent was there, but, ~it takes. ~It takes time, it takes practice, it takes you making many mistakes.

And that’s why I think it’s just important to have be honest with with the students and if they can see that I’m willing to try new things and make mistakes and start over. They’re able to do that as well. So I think yeah, we definitely have a big problem here where it’s, we’re expecting certain things like very quickly and just too many things at once. Like we. We need to step back and understand like what’s, what is the goal? What is the goal of teaching? What is the goal of grading? What is the goal of assessing? Let’s take a step back and have a discussion and think what do we want and how can we have a long-term plan where we can slowly implement things and have time to help each other out. I think that’s what we lack the most. Like I have some amazing discussions with my colleagues about grading, about building thinking classrooms, about other things. But these are on our own time. Like we don’t have time to just, talk to each other. And those are when the magic happens like we’re having honest conversations. Like I find when we have our PD meetings, like every week we have, okay, we need to do this and this needs to be done. And okay, we have five minutes. We need five minutes to do this. And I don’t feel like it’s productive ’cause we’re throwing out all these ideas, which are amazing on paper, but then you go, like you said, you go to class and then you completely forget about it or you don’t have time for it. And then we’re back to square one and we’re always revisiting the same things over and over. So how can we just take a step back and take a look at what’s important and what can we do individually? How can we use our strengths to help the students succeed?

Sharona: And that was what I exactly. I was gonna ask you is are you getting inquiries from other people in your building? Is anyone else starting to think about adopting this? Is there any spread at your school?

Gabriel Despatie: Yeah, I’m I am, it’s very promising. I’m having some really interesting discussions with my colleagues and my principals have been on board with what I’m doing, so I’m really happy to have their support. I think the biggest problem, what I’m seeing, I’m, I do a lot of tutoring for students from seven to 12 and I see a lot of students that are very stressed out about assessments. And they are slower and slower at answering the questions. So what I noticed that when they’ll have a session with me they’ll be confident they know everything, and then they’ll go to the test and they’ll be stressed and not have enough time to complete their assessment. So they’re getting a bad grade and their standards not because they don’t know the content, it’s because they just didn’t have enough time to complete. And thankfully we’re starting to create a movement where students are able to take tests like the teachers will separate the test into two days, or they’ll make smaller tests, or we’ve also trying to find different ways to assess. In science, we decided to give them a project where they got to choose between a storyboard or doing an oral presentation or building a 3D model of human impact on ecosystems. So the students were able to choose what they wanted, and I also let them choose their own due date. And I thought I was going to have. Issues with them choosing a date later on in the future, but they all ended up doing their their part within a month and a half. So I think we’re just trying to see like, how can we give students a little bit more a autonomy and choice and how they want to be assessed. Some students prefer to ask questions orally or written or be a little bit more creative. Thankfully we have a lot of teachers that are on board with that and I hope that the momentum keeps going so that we can give students the best opportunity to have top tier learning.

Boz: So I think that’s interesting that you’re doing that in science ’cause that’s. Like after I had been doing alternative grading for a couple of years, that’s one of my biggest personal changes is I will look for and take evidence of learning anywhere I can get it. My fellow math teachers like try to get them to understand that. We can assess and we can take evidence of learning on things other than just test. And it’s, it really is, and I’m sorry to say this, it is specifically my math colleagues that’s just unheard of. What do you mean? No, we can’t. So the fact that you’ve been doing all this work in math and it’s the science that you brought up that’s doing the alternative kind of assessment models cracks me up and surprises me 0%.

Sharona: We are coming up on time. Boz, did you have any last thing you wanted to ask?

Boz: Not last thing I wanted to ask, but there was one point I wanted to bring up with something else you said Gabriel, about teachers not having time to, just sit down and talk and discuss some of this. There is a great time to do that. It’s coming up June 16th through 18th. That is the grading conference. Sorry, shameless plug. I couldn’t resist. But yeah, so time to meet really people around the world. We’ve had educators from 23 different countries last year. So just really coming together and it’s a great time to watch, learn from each other, but also just to talk with each other and find out yeah, some of the issues we’re having are just our issues and some interesting ways to listen to how other people have solved those same issues.

Sharona: ~And ~I wanted to follow on with that with a statement about the conference and a statement about what you said about time. We said this takes time. It takes time to do it well. But you should go ahead and start because you’re gonna make the mistakes no matter how well you plan. If you take a year to plan, or if you take three weeks like I did, your first one’s gonna be full of mistakes. So go ahead and get that over with, don’t wait a year. Just understand that first year’s gonna be super rocky and you’ll really start to get it by the second year. So don’t I don’t want people to think I shouldn’t start because it’s gonna be too far in the future. Go ahead and start, do something, do a lot of things. I did it three weeks after I learned about it. It was hellacious and lovely and wonderful, and here I am 10 years later, so I didn’t want people to think they shouldn’t start. Just understand. It takes time to, to get it to where you want it to be. And the grading conference is a great place to start. Gabriel, any last minute thoughts you wanna share?

Gabriel Despatie: I just wanted to thank both of you for the podcast and for the conference. I think a lot of us have some ideas and think that we’re alone, but you guys have really built a community where people can come together and share their experiences. And you guys are a big part of where I am today in my grading career. And hopefully I can continue to learn. And like you said, just trying that new thing, like going out and just doing one change. Even if it’s in the middle of the year. Just try it out. Do one test that’s a small quiz with six questions and see how it goes. Like you’re never gonna know until you try it. And I think trying it at the end of the year is even better because then you have nothing to lose. You could just say, oh, we’re we’re gonna change things up. We have a couple days left and. Then you can use that for to see how it works. Thank you very much for everything and I really enjoyed being here today.

Boz: Thank you so much for the kind words and thank you for joining us and sitting down with us for the last hour or so. We hope to continue to hear, from you and from our other listeners of just how your progress is going, how the journey’s going. So those of you that are listening and haven’t already reach out to us, let us know, and we’d love to have some more of you on the podcast to talk about your personal journeys. But until then, you’ve 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 future 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.