The Grading Podcast

150 – Dan and Kim

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Dan Guberman: And I think they mentioned briefly right before the conclusion about attendance and the change in students’ attendance from attending for a grade to attending to learn. And I hear from colleagues all over my university and others that we’re in this attendance issue era where really post-pandemic, students just never returned to class in a lot of classes. And I’ve always been intrigued when I teach the ungraded class I’m very clear. There’s nothing riding on you attending other than you need to be able to engage with the material. And I feel like I get better attendance than most of my colleagues.

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 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 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-hosts, and with me, as always, Sharona Krinsky. How are you doing today, Sharona?

Sharona: I am doing well. It is still gray today. I look out my windows and we record in the morning, we’ve got that California June gloom in May thing going on, and I’m like, “Couldn’t we please get some not gray early in the morning?” But that’s okay. And then also, of course I had a big event this week. I put my younger son on a plane to move to New York and try to make it on Broadway, and so I’m feeling a little empty nester, but also not, ’cause I’m still dealing with his apartment here and things. So it’s been quite a week. It’s been quite a week. How about you?

Boz: One thing you didn’t say about your week you’re done. Your semester is done.

Sharona: Okay, but I bragged about that last week, so I was trying not to rub it in your face. But yes, my, my grading is basically done. I have a little bit of last checking cross-checking of some students, but I’m done for the semester. Yeah. Just gotta submit my grades.

Boz: I am really jealous ’cause yes I am still in semester. I’m still working, we’re actually recording this on a Sunday, so I’m going to work tomorrow, and you’re not having to, so I’m jealous.

Sharona: Being done with the semester when I have four jobs does not mean that I’m, like, taking a vacation, okay? I’m still working.

Boz: But you’re still, ’cause I have four jobs also, and they’re all four still going. So I’m still jealous.

Sharona: World’s tiniest violin showing up.

Boz: But this is always one of our favorite times of the week, getting to sit down together and record, and we are not recording alone. In fact, we have two guests with us in the virtual studio. So who do we have with us today, Sharona?

Sharona: I’m really excited. We are welcoming to the pod, for the first time for both of them, the two new members of our conference organizing team. So we have Dan Guberman and Kimberly Ellen Hall with us.

So welcome, Dan.

Dan Guberman: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Sharona: We’re excited to have you, and we’re actually gonna have Dan on an upcoming episode as well, because Dan has a new book out. We’re not gonna talk about that today, but listeners, you’re gonna learn a lot more about Dan and his origin story in a future episode.

But we also wanna welcome on our other new organizer, Kimberly or Kim is a senior lecturer in illustration at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK. And previously she taught at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and Parsons and F-I-T And it’s really exciting. This is amazing. So her work has been recognized by American Illustration and the Society of Publication Designers, and also in profiles in Cool Hunting, Design Milk, and Dwell Magazine. She’s been in residence at Johns Hopkins, Extreme Materials Institute, and the Winterthur Museum and Garden, and she has public murals in places like Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and the UK. So really accomplished artist and part of our team, so welcome, Kim.

Kim Hall: Thank you.

Sharona: And I know I butchered your bio. It’s just people know me. It’s okay. It’s okay. Yes, so we’re excited to have both of you.

Boz: Yeah, so like Sharona was saying Dan, we are gonna have you back on actually really quickly. And we’ll get into your full origin. But Kim I would love to hear just how you got involved in this crazy world of alternative grading.

Boz: So when you said you’re coming to higher educate, where did you start your career as an educator? What school?

Kim Hall: So the first thing that I did– I worked in industry. I worked as a designer, I worked in fashion, and I worked in surface pattern design. And eventually I– but, everything that I did was really craft-based. So I started teaching in community spaces. I taught at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn, and I taught at a place called Third Ward, which was a community center where, they would pay artists to give classes. And that, to me, was how I fell in love with teaching in the first place, because it was this space where I might be teaching a class about millinery or about fabric dyeing, but my students would know other things, and they would teach me something about using chalk pastels or some other kind of technique that I didn’t know anything about that would come up in conversation. So it was this real knowledge exchange, and that’s how I was very first teaching.

Boz: Okay. So where were you when you first got into the environment where the expectation was that you gave some sort of points or letter-based grades?

Kim Hall: So that’s when I was at Parsons. So that was my first adjunct teaching job. I taught a little bit at FIT first, but I was really a guest lecturer and guest critic, and I didn’t assess work. But when I started at Parsons, I was an adjunct there and I was teaching fashion design and I had to set up grading systems, — I was only there for a year. And it was when I moved to MICA, Maryland Institute College of Art, that I was teaching full-time. It was a full-time role. But I was on post-grad. I was on in grad school first, so everything was pass/fail, and eventually they had me picking up some undergraduate classes, and that’s when I had to use points and letters. And the very first thing I did was set up self-grading, and I had all my students filling out forms, just doing their own grading first. And it was, like, magical for me because I realized that at first they needed a lot of feedback from me to figure out how to grade themselves. But by the end of the semester, I found I could say “Yep, I agree with you. I agree with where you’re at with this.” And it just felt like this real magical kind of moment in my classes.

Boz: That’s so unique because it is rare that, we get someone on that was like, “Oh yeah, some form of alternative grading was what I experienced,” not just in some of my classes, but it seems like that was your experience for the majority, if not the whole of your higher education experience as a student, which is amazing.

Kim Hall: I did have to do some like liberal arts classes. I had to do some art history and some requirements that had traditional grading. But most of my classes were with review boards and I just found it was a really powerful way to learn.

Sharona: I wanna shift over. Dan, does any of this resonate with you? Do you ha- one of the things we don’t know from your bio is what’s your disciplinary background? So what’s your experience with anything that, like Kim’s?

Dan Guberman: Yeah. So this obviously not as extreme as Kim. So my disciplinary background is in music. So as an undergrad I went to the Eastman School of Music, which is a conservatory. There’s, 800 students between undergrad and grad in the whole school. And we had grades, most of– If your primary thing is working with one instructor for four years where you’re with them for an hour individually every week, plus other times as well, and basically grades are never a discussion there. I always viewed it, and I think most of my colleagues at the school viewed it as you just expect you have an A in your lessons, and if it’s an A minus, that’s like a passive-aggressive way of saying like they’re upset with you or something. Now, we did have the other classes that were more traditional in various ways, but that was the most meaningful part of your educational system. And then I went to grad school in music history and theory. So as Kim said, I then became the person who taught the classes that had all the grades, which then teaching and as a teaching professor of music history and theory for four years before moving to the teaching center world. I was in that space and I was observing what my colleagues were doing in the performance space that was really interesting. And, at the time, I didn’t really have the capacity to go and explore what was happening. There wasn’t as much discussion for me to, even understand that these other things were possibilities. I actually did do some of like mastery-based things that I didn’t know what to call it then, but I just picked it up from other people here and there.

So I feel connection with what Kim described, although certainly not to the extreme. I will also say when I was in grad school at the University of North Carolina, we did not have letter grades. We had a P, a H, and an L, so pass, high pass, or low pass, which I guess tracks onto A, B, and C, but it like functions differently and you don’t have a GPA. So there was that even, but no one really talked about it much, and I assume they still do that there. I don’t actually know. So yeah, I feel like I’ve experienced some things, but I never– Because I really got into this after switching to a teaching and learning center career, I’ve only recently started to make these connections and think about the implications of that background.

Sharona: I just find it fascinating because, the grading conference started actually specifically in math and then grew to STEM, and then grew to all the disciplines. So we’ve been trying to diversify our disciplinary piece. And so to have two new organizers in the arts, which is amazing, especially because I have this dual personality that, yes, I am in mathematics, but I spent years and years in high school band. It was, like, my defining thing of high school was band. And now I run a theater company too, so I’m all over the board.

Boz: I feel a little like an outcast here between all you.

Sharona: Let’s ask you about dancing, Bosley. ‘Cause of the four of us, he might be the best dancer. Ooh. Just saying.

Dan Guberman: Probably.

Boz: Oh, yeah, but I never once took a dance class. It, my, my dancing experience was learned in kitchens. My mom will joke that I could two-step before I could walk. Yeah … a- and, on sawdust-covered honky-tonks in Oklahoma.

Kim Hall: But that’s the best way to learn, is you learned it because you wanted to, because you’re driven, because you followed the thread of your interests. And that’s what we want when we move away from grades anyways, is for everybody to be, driven in that way.

Boz: I did want to kinda get into talking a little bit about your guys’ experience this past year, because you are both new to the conference organizing team. Now, Dan, I know for a fact because I was part of, the organizing team that supported a couple of your sessions, that you’ve presented a couple of times at the conference itself. Yeah. Kim, I’m not sure. It … I don’t remember if you have because I never-

Kim Hall: I’ve just attended.

Boz: Okay. But-

Kim Hall: And last year I ran one of the social groups.

Boz: So how has this last year’s experience been with you guys being behind the scenes now?

Dan Guberman: Do you want to start, Kim?

Kim Hall: I think for me, one of the things that’s been really great about it is I’m based in the UK now. I’m teaching in the UK, and it’s been really great to see and be connected with the things that are happening in higher ed in the US. I’ve found it really helps me think about the kinds of things that I want to do in my teaching, and it’s been just really great to have a set of colleagues who are thinking about the same kinds of grading or alternatives to how we run our classrooms and how we run assessment. It’s made me feel a lot more connected.

Dan Guberman: I’ll share. For me, it was interesting because I work in a teaching center, I’ve ended up needing to organize a lot of events, and I’ve always said this is my weakness. I’m not good at organizing these kinds of events. And then when I started attending the Grading Conference a bunch of years ago, I found this was, like, the best– It felt to me as a presenter, the best run online conference I had experienced. And it felt like that over multiple years. And when I talked to others, they would say the same thing. And it was also affordable. It was cheap, right? We go to other online conferences that are hundreds of dollars, and it felt like it was constantly struggling to feel engaged and to even get your presentation prepared and done. So when this call came out, and especially when the call said that you wanted people for the arts and humanities, which is so rare that anyone asks for us anymore. I was like, “Oh, this is perfect.” Like both I have interest in a lot of my scholarship has moved towards alternative grading, but also I can hopefully contribute and also learn at the same time. What does it look like to actually run an effective and well-designed online conference? So from that perspective, this has been really rewarding for me as well, just to think about. Which is not to say I want to run like a Purdue Online Teaching conference. I dread someone asking me that. If it comes up again, and I hopefully have one of my colleagues take the lead, I feel like now I can contribute meaningfully and provide, support and guidance in a way that will help it be better rather than us flailing around, which tends to be what has happened in most of the events I’ve organized before.

Boz: First, thank you for that huge compliment about your experience as an attendee and as a presenter before joining the organizing team. But I was curious what has been one of the biggest surprises to you guys over your experiences last year?

Kim Hall: I feel like it’s been super smooth. Like I thought that it would be much more, like Dan was saying, like it’s complicated and messy to run a big event like this, and I’ve just been surprised at how everybody seems to take it in stride, and it’s just every month, we move forward on things.

Sharona: I have to give shout-out real quick to both Katie Mattaini and Drew Lewis, because I think that over the last several years they have developed a comprehensive calendar. They’re very good at follow-up, things that I’m not always good at. So just shout-out to Katie and Drew for a lot of that heavy lifting. Dan?

Dan Guberman: Yeah. I totally value both of what they’ve done. And what I would add that like really impressed me the first meeting I attended was there was a list of all of the notes from the past year of things to think about for the next year. And I say this because both in my own teaching and in working with others, I’m always like, “Oh, I should do this every class. I should like in real time have a list of like here are all the things I’d like to update for next year.” And I tell other people to do it, but I almost never actually do it. It just like falls by the wayside. I might do it for the first two weeks and then forget. So the… Like seeing, coming into that first meeting and being like, “Oh, here’s this big document, and let’s go through all of these things,” and then seeing that be generated in real time in every new meeting this year has been super impressive and makes me feel inspired to actually do that in my own life and career more instead of just saying I should do it or telling other people to do it.

Sharona: I would… And one caution, though. Do not forget that this is the result of seven years of iteration. So don’t think that if you try to replicate this, same thing we do with the alt-grading just because you see a beautifully designed class does not mean that’s going to be your experience the first time out.

Boz: Yeah. We were flying by the seat of our pants the first, actually the first couple of years. Especially the first year, though, ’cause literally like this conference was supposed to be a in-person conference, and-

Sharona: We were hoping- Oh, yeah … to get 30 people to get to Grand Valley that we all knew, and it ended up being 550 people, and we wrote a whole article about it in MAA Focus. So it was a trip.

Boz: Which I’m glad, though, ’cause that’s how I got involved. ‘Cause I was involved the first year with the conference but not the organization, and that really was… I was brought on because it blew up so much and you were like, “I just need someone that is competent at Zoom.”

Boz: Yeah. So something that came out on May 4th in the Grading for Growth blog, which is always one of our biggest places of inspiration was this blog post titled “Grading That Feels Good.” And essentially what this post is talking about is we talk a lot about the benefits of alternative grading to our students, a-and rightfully that students are our focus and should be. But this article really gets into some of the points of joy that these authors, ’cause this was not done by Robert and/or David, this was a guest post from a couple of people I think all in Colorado But just some of the things that they have found that changing to alternative grading has really made their jobs as educators more enjoyable and really helping them to focus on the teaching and learning rather than the grading. So I, I loved this article and I wanted to look at it and see what are some of the things that doing this change has brought joy to us. Because we do. We talk a lot about the students, but education is a hard job, and it’s not a job any of us are gonna get rich doing. So really looking at and finding where we find joy in this, I just– I wanted to see what other people thought about this and where you guys find joy in this.

Kim Hall: Dan, you wanna go first this time?

Dan Guberman: Sure, I can share. This really resonated with me as well as someone who regularly talks to colleagues across disciplines and tries to… I don’t try to push alternative grading on anyone, but, I talk about it if there’s interest. And the first question they always ask me is, “Does this take more time?” Or “will it save me time?” is often how it’s phrased. And the answer I’ve learned to give based on my own experiences, won’t necessarily save you time, but it will change the nature of the time you spend, and it will make the time that is now most frustrating, perhaps maybe not the most rewarding, but at least more rewarding. And in that change, obviously, time is finite it doesn’t create new time but that change, I think, changes how we engage with that time. And for me, this was the biggest thing because when I started alternative grading, like I started with a collaborative ungrading type of system, which is what a lot of them are describing in the article. It was an online class on the History of Rock Music, which I had taught for many years at a previous institution. And back then it was like a thousand points, and you get points for this and this and this, right? And I never felt like I really had a connection to my students. There was just a lot of them in this room and, They would ideally read what I wrote or watch my videos, and then they’d hopefully be able to answer questions or write reflections that, were sufficiently meaningful. And when I changed to this system, the collaborative or ungrading system, it both gave students a lot more flexibility to explore topics that they were interested in as opposed to remembering the things that I wanted them to remember. Because ultimately, the history of rock music, it doesn’t matter if they remember what year The White Album came out ’cause the, if they’re interested, they’ll remember it. And I’ve never been great at years. But it was more like, can they find meaning in this and can it affect their lives, right? So I always value when they say “Oh, this helped me connect. Now it’s my grandparents,” which is weird when they’re like, “Yeah, my grandparents were into Def Leppard.” And I’m like, “Oof, I feel old.” But, then they started writing reflections, and I started more of having a conversation with them instead of giving them points, and that’s exactly what they’re describing. And that made me feel like I was doing something more meaningful, and I was actually getting to know, as much as one can know students in an online class. And that really transformed the experience to be one that was joyful, and I looked forward to the class as opposed to just this is gonna take four hours this week.

Kim Hall: I think it’s really easy to feel like we’re supposed to be working hard and doing the right thing and focusing on our students. But I think there’s real value that comes from caring for ourselves as educators. I really think we learn as much from our students as our students learn from us. And if we’re struggling with, the tedium of grading, then it shows, and they can feel it and it just adds to the anxiety that everybody experiences. Anything that brings more joy to the classroom, I think spreads, and I think it’s contagious. And if we’re more joyful, if we’re enjoying our teaching more, our students are gonna enjoy being in our classes more. And sometimes taking care of ourselves is the best thing we can do for our students.

Sharona: For me, it unlocked my ability to better demonstrate that I care about my students as people. Yeah. I always wanted to be that change your life math instructor because math instructors are quite often the people who change your life in the worst possible way. At least that’s the mantra out there in the world. But I wanted to be the opposite, and I saw my mom be that person. If you read I’ve talked about on the podcast before, but I found her binder that she put together when she was up for tenure, and she had dozens and dozens of letters from former students and colleagues about how she changed their lives, and I just had never gotten that. And so being able to show up that way in the classroom was enabled by my grading change. And that’s what they say in the article here. They ask, “Does alternative grading make us like our jobs more, and if so, how?” Their answer was yes, but it changes more than the student experience. It changed how they showed up in their classrooms. It changed their relationships with their students. That is what has happened with me. That is absolutely … My relationships with my students are different.

Boz: For me I know grading, when I was doing traditional grading, was by far the least enjoyable thing about my job. Now, I’m not gonna lie and say, I love grading now, ’cause I still don’t. But I do not hate it like I used to. I see grading now as part of the learning process for my students, not the evaluation of my students, and it’s a way to help my students grow. So do I enjoy grading? Absolutely not. Do I despise it and just hate it like I used to with traditional grading? Also absolutely not.

Sharona: And what do you mean by grading? Are you talking about the weekly marking and feedback, or are you talking about the end of term grades? What do you, which-

Boz: Yeah. I am specifically talking about, the individual assessments. Not the wrap up final grade, but all the, grading the whether it’s cool downs and warmups in the class, whether it’s grading, homework or the big unit quizzes, that kind of individual assignment grading, which where I would spend so much of my time. That’s really why I started riding the train, is because it gave me an hour both directions that I could grade since I wasn’t driving, that I didn’t have to do at my house, taking time away from my, then infant girl, who’s now 18 years old. But but yeah, I, that’s why, – I always looked for ways… I knew I had to do it. I knew it was important, but I absolutely despised it, and now I don’t. Like I said, it’s not my favorite thing in the world, of course, but it is part of the learning process now. And that’s the other thing, like you were saying, Sharona, it get out of the way of a lot of other stuff. And my students, it might take them a little bit, but my students for the most part also see the grading now as part of the learning. So it’s not something separate, which, yeah it just, it feels like even when I’m grading, it’s still part of teaching instead of assessing

Sharona: And there’s-

Dan Guberman: Can I ask a-

Sharona: Go ahead,

Boz: Dan.

Yeah.

Dan Guberman: I was gonna ask a follow-up question. So thinking about we’re at the end of the semester, and last weekend, my four-year-old does gymnastics. So for some reason, all the dads were at gymnastics last weekend, and three other dads are all complaining about end of semester grading. And I don’t want to be a jerk and be like, “Oh, no, like what I do, like they just tell me what their grade is, and we’re done.” So I’m curious, and I used to be part of that. I u- like we used to bond with peers over like how frustrating grading was. So I’m curious, how do you approach those environments now with your colleagues? Do you rub it in their faces? Do you just stay quiet? Do you like pretend it’s worse?

Boz: It’s weird because outside of my actual colleagues, like most of my social circles aren’t educators. So I don’t have a ton of experiences like that other than when I’m around educators like you guys. And most of the time, if I’m doing that outside of required work We’re all alternative graders so

Kim Hall: I- Yeah, I proselytize, Dan. I’m always trying to convince other people that they should be doing it this way.

Sharona: So I’m known in larger math environments, like math conferences and stuff. I’m the loudest voice in the room on alt-grading, and I’ve I’m trying to let other people step up, but I get dragged in a lot. In mixed environments, I look for opportunities to say something but I really, I, I do best either one-on-one or in very large groups. That medium group is a little bit, like a four to 20 people, it’s a little bit different. But I definitely proselytize. The most effective I’ve been is in one-on-one when I talk about what has made the, this point that I always wanted to be the transformational instructor and that now I get to be. That’s been really effective. And the other thing that I sometimes do is I ask them if they have ever heard of any of the alternative grading methods, because one of the things they say here in the article is they talk about points liberation, and they talk about the amount of cognitive load spent on points. Now, Bosley and I are mathematicians, okay? We’re usually okay with arithmetic. So I can only imagine what non-math people, especially if you have any math avoidance or anxiety, feel about the amount of time with points and percentages. But I also find that a lot of times I can make a joke out of the fact that as a mathematician, I can mathematically prove that mathematical grades are bullshit. And that’s also very freeing for people because they’re like, “Oh my God, I just never really thought about it ’cause I hate the math.” I’m like, “Yeah, I hate the math too because it’s terrible math.”

Kim Hall: I think sometimes talking about how grading isn’t objective, it isn’t what we say it is very freeing. And, I don’t know, it feels good to be able to talk to; I talk to my students about how, we try and be as objective as possible. It’s just not possible. We’re all humans. It’s so much more messy.

Boz: But you were talking about the cognitive load, imagine the cognitive load on our students, ’cause the, and the article brings that up, when it talks about the students asking if this was going to be graded, if this is part of the grade. But that was, really one of the first things that I noticed, and one of the reasons, and I’ve said this a dozen times or more, why I’ve never gone back to traditional grading, is my conversations with my students changed almost immediately because their focus wasn’t on the points anymore. Their focus became on, “Okay, I haven’t shown you that I’ve reached your level of proficiency in descriptive statistics yet. What do I need to do that?” So it freed them from this point, cognitive load to allow them to also spend that cognitive energy on the material that I was trying to teach them.

Dan Guberman: Yeah, that makes me think, they mentioned briefly right before the conclusion about attendance and the change in students’ attendance from attending for a grade to attending to learn. And I hear from colleagues all over my university and others that we’re in this attendance issue era where like really post-pandemic, like students just never returned to class in a lot of classes. And I’ve always been intrigued when I teach the ungraded class, like I’m very clear, like there’s nothing riding on you attending other than like you need to be able to engage with the material. And I feel like I get better attendance than most of my colleagues. And when students don’t attend, they’re more likely to email me and then when they email me, I can say, “Oh, here’s something you can do, so you can reflect at the end of the week like everyone else.” Now I realize that doesn’t apply to every situation but I do think there’s something about, changing attendance from being the thing you do for points, which makes it a decision of this is the trade-off here to something you do as part of the learning process and is expected has a meaningful impact on students.

Sharona: One of my favorite comments this semester was several of my students said that attending my class was the highlight of their week. Like physically attending a math class for students who are under-prepared in mathematics. That’s what my class was. Now they were people who’ve chosen STEM majors, so they’re not quite as math phobic as others, but still they were like, “This is literally my favorite part of the week.” And one of the issues we’re having at my institution is the on-campus experience has rapidly deteriorated. Post-pandemic especially, and I also know that like I had two kids in college, they both graduated in the last six months, but I was watching them and they’re doing their videos for class on double speed, right? So I’m like, they don’t mind that it sounds like a chipmunk. They’re just glad to get through it twice as fast. And this is the world that we’re competing with as instructors, is that if we’re up there in front of the students droning on, they know that there are alternatives So we now, we need to make the classroom vibrant- if we expect them to come,

Boz: i’m curious, Kim because you are in a whole different country, are you guys seeing those same kind of attendance issue? ‘Cause it does seem to be e- everyone- Yeah … we’ve talked to whether, they’re in California, they’re in central of America, or they’re in the East Coast, are having those attendance issues. Are you guys having those over there in the UK as well?

Kim Hall: Yeah. We definitely do. It’s very similar. I think, one of the things I’m talking about with my teaching team is about not just alternative grading, but alternative classroom practice, and doing things that are student-led, that are action-oriented. I have thinking about things like not standing up with lectures anymore. Like, how do we preload the content? How do we make it more of a conversation and less of a lecture? How do we keep things engaged physically, right? How do we get them to use their bodies? Because that’s something that they don’t do enough in their free time anymore, that they’re playing games or scrolling, and their bodies are just still. So if they come to class and we get them physically, doing things they really wanna be there. They don’t always, I think, I don’t know if they can always name what it is that makes them wanna come. But I’ve had a really good semester. I teach a class called Theory and Critique, which for artists is super boring, and they have to do readings every week. But I’ve set some systems so that I hand out paper readings. I don’t give them anything digital if I can help it, and they have to engage with the paper. We do all kinds of things about mark-making and turning it into an artistic practice rather than just reading things which is fun.

Boz: Oh my God I’ve I would’ve played that clip for our friend Joe Zeccola. He is a AP English teacher at high school level, but one of the things he is, he’s also got his master’s in fine arts. I think he was a script writer or I think he was, in, in the thespian side of arts. But looking at one of his big things is having his students mark up texts and stuff, and it really is an art project when you look at it. Yeah. I don’t know if he’s ever pointed that out or made that point to his students, but yeah. I wanna play that to him so he makes that connection and he does that, ’cause his things- Yeah really are, if you ever see one of his students’ novels when they get through.

Sharona: It’s interesting because my theater company is an educational theater company. It’s for all ages, although we work primarily with kids, but we do have a big main stage project that is through adult. And the number of times we get told how much impact we’ve had on these kids because the skills that they are getting, the embodiment that they’re getting from being in our rehearsal spaces they wanna come so badly to rehearsal. They beg their parents. We’ve now added community nights. We’ve added karaoke and board game nights because they so desperately wanna be with the other people in their community, and their parents are paying. This is an upper middle class or middle class California-type activity. These programs are not cheap, although we do have scholarships for more socioeconomically disadvantaged kids. But it’s the amount of my teaching that I bring into the room, because I’m the executive producer, but I’m also the artistic director and the education director. And so it’s really amazing that sometimes I don’t always feel seen or whatever, but I walked into a show last week that we were doing, and I hadn’t been around the whole rehearsal process. The number of students who lit up, who were like, “Oh my God, you’re here,” it was amazing. And so I really wanna figure out how to create that experience, more of it in my mathematics classroom. I don’t- I’m not sure how to do that. I know how to do it with theater

Kim Hall: I think I’ve been thinking about doing some live, a bit like the review boards I talked about in my own undergraduate, but like having our assessments be in person, they bring work and they’re verbal or recorded. Because I like you were talking about before, Bos, like I– it’s just being alone, and even though I might be doing contract grading or some other alternative practice, there’s still a fair amount of time where I’m reading through all that stuff on my own, and I think I just wanna be together. I wanna, hear them talk about it. I wanna have that live exchange

Dan Guberman: So one of the fun things about working at a teaching center, at least where I am, I get to propose whatever class I want to our honors college, and I’ve been successful. So I just actually finished co-teaching a class on embodied cognition. And it was real– So like to me, I had read about it, but it was fun that like, okay, now I get to explore this with students. Much like when I first taught the grading class for whatever years ago, I was like, “Okay, I have a sense of this, but like I wanna learn about this with students,” because ultimately it’s what, how does this impact students’ experiences and how can they apply it? And that was really fun. The, I’ll say, not to get too deep, but the one thing we did was experiment with different ways of starting a class. And the thing that they almost all felt was the most valuable, and this shocked me, was just five minutes of open handwriting about anything they wanted. ‘Cause this was a class where students were not taking notes by hand. No, like I, I have a Kindle Scribe, so I’m writing notes by hand, but no one else is writing anything by hand. But when we asked them at the end, “What do, what way of starting the class, breathing, meditation, yoga, going for a walk, was the most valuable for you?” I would say 75% said, “Just being able to write for five minutes about whatever’s on my mind was like the most meaningful way to get me ready for class.” And I was shocked. Like I did not expect it. But I found it too when we did it, because I was writing also.

Sharona: And that’s one of the things that I worry about with my class is I’ve taken all my assessments back to paper because unfortunately the AI tools have gotten too good, and mathematics is very difficult to do in a typing situation. For me to do it, I have to do it in code ’cause we just don’t have keyboards with math symbols on them, or at least not many. So but I’ve taken everything back to paper, and they struggle to organize and write problems on paper. Like the, their physical structure of a paper doesn’t work anymore.

Kim Hall: I will say one of the big differences in the UK and the US is that my kids who are in high school age, everything is done on paper still. They don’t use computers near the way that they do in the US at that age. It’s really interesting to hear like what effects that you’re finding from that.

Sharona: And it’s interesting because on the one hand for accessibility and access purposes, type- typing is much faster. It is a really good skill to have. But on the other hand, I don’t know that organizing your thoughts, your initial thoughts- Yeah … we used to teach mind maps and all those things, right? And I don’t think that my children can effectively take a pencil and write a clear mind map by pencil. They wouldn’t be able to have the fine motor skills essentially. So I don’t know. I’m… It’s gonna be interesting to see where it goes, but that’s been difficult.

Kim Hall: Some of that is also a lack of arts programming. As you get older, arts becomes optional and you don’t have to do it anymore, and I would argue that it should not be optional.

Boz: As you get older, it becomes optional. When is it not? I’ve got, at least here in, in the US and in California, I’ve got a daughter that is about to start college next year. I’ve got a daughter that is finally transitioning from elementary school to middle school. But I have been a parent at, and I’m not gonna say the school’s name, but I’ve been a parent at this elementary school for the last 14 years consecutively, ’cause it’s K through 6, and both of my daughters went to the same elementary school, and one started as soon as the other one ended. So I’ve been a parent at this school for 14 years, and there is so much of a focus now at the elementary level at, the basic math and literacy skills that there’s a lot of thing… and art is unfortunately one of them. Art and even science to a large degree. Neither of my girls got much science experience until, fifth and sixth grade. But y- you said th- that art gets optional when they get older. The only art experience my, my girls really got was some of their projects they got to do a little bit of artistic-

Kim Hall: Wow …

Boz: parts to it, or the clubs that they opted into that were completely outside of the regular school day, just sponsored by the school.

Kim Hall: Wow, that’s crazy.

Boz: It’s sad. ‘Cause I’m not, I am by no means an artist, never have been, never will be. I-.

Kim Hall: But everybody is. We all have this way of being able to communicate through pictures, through sounds, right? All those artistic things are human things, and little kids do it all the time, whether you instruct them in it or not. But as we get older, like you’re saying, other things take precedence and you’re encouraged to focus on other things. I think it just changes the way you think, and I think math is the same in the sense that humans naturally, we count things, we multiply them, we think about things in a number-y way, and it’s just another format that humans think in.

Sharona: And I think part of this Bosley, is an affluence thing because in the schools my kids grew up in, we were in a very affluent community, and the parents know that arts and science are important, and they also know they’re not funded anymore. So we had parent participation programs where we could go in as a parent with no experience whatsoever, be trained as an art docent on a project, and we would come in and the school made time during the school day for these parent-led, trained they were tr- we had trained artists come in and whole programs, and I learned how to do bubble figures, and then I was able to take a class of third graders. And again, I would not identify as an artist or at least not a visual artist. I would not identify as a drawer or a painter. But they made this available. Any parent was good enough to be able to do this, and we came in and the school made a priority because the parents demanded it. And so when you have this affluence difference where the parents who are highly engaged and have a sense that they know their kids need arts and they science, and we had music programming that was mandatory in the elementary school, and that was paid for by the foundation the foundation for the schools which fundraised millions of dollars a year out of an affluent community.

So it’s also contributing to this discrepancy- Yeah … between the affluent and the non-affluent. So how we can go back, this is a bigger thing, but we see this coming out, and honestly, these types of conversations are coming out in my world because of the alt-grading. Because we’re saying, “Hey, we’ve changed the grading. We’re trying to assess for risk-taking and innovation and entrepreneurship in STEM Oh my gosh. We gotta figure this out. So I just, it’s just really cool. Th- this conversation about grades, I’ve said it a million times, I’ll say it a million more. Traditional grades are the fire blanket smothering the fires of learning. You remove ’em, you reveal the obstacle course that is learning, but it gives you freedom and space to start to play with it. So that’s my new metaphor that I’m in love with metaphor.

Boz: I did want to read something ’cause we’ve been talking about this. Hopefully there’s people listening that are like, “Okay, this sounds like this is gonna make my job just so much better and so great that I’m gonna try it tomorrow.” I do want to read the first sentence or two of their last paragraph of this article, ’cause I do think it’s important.

Sharona: Can you read actually the whole conclusion? ‘Cause I think the whole conclusion is important. So instead of just starting the second paragraph, can we start a little bit on the paragraph before it?

Boz: Go ahead and read y- read your first paragraph, then I’ll read my second.

Sharona: Okay. Okay, so the first paragraph, it says: “When we began alternative grading, we didn’t realize just how much points-based grading had drained the cognitive and emotional energy of our classrooms. Some of us were even questioning whether to continue teaching. Removing points created renewed energy for our work as teachers, and opened doors for students to focus their attention more fully on learning. It’s not the total absence of conflict, but we do value a renewed focus on our actual job and a restoration of our job satisfaction.”

Boz: “To be clear, alternative grading may not make things easier immediately. In fact, it may initially demand more from us: more clarity, more reflection, more communication. But over time, it has changed the focus of our work and made our time in and out of the classroom much more enjoyable. At the end of the day, each of us feel this approach helped us like our jobs more and deepen our motivation to pursue high-quality teaching.” Now, I really wanted to focus on that first line. It might be more work at first, and it really probably should be. Unless you’re doing a lot of the, a lot of those four pillars already and just didn’t know it, hadn’t really, put that kind of, titles and stuff on it. It’s gonna be. It’s gonna be more work at first. Don’t get discouraged. It is very much worth it. It does take a little bit of time, but it is so worth it at the end of that.

Sharona: I would agree. A- and again, I think all these things, what we’re talking about, come from having done that work. If we can do this now, there was one thing we’re– I know we’re coming up on time, but there was one last thing we had asked them to pivot back to the conference. Are we okay with that, Boz?

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: Okay. So I’d asked each of you, is there a session or two coming up at the conference, it could tie to this article or not, but is there something that you’re looking forward to that is gonna make your job as a conference organizer more joyful? Kim, do you wanna go first? Do you have

Kim Hall: a- I don’t have a particular session that I’m really looking forward to. There, but there’s two things that are my favorite things about this conference, and one is the panel talks. I love seeing a whole group of people up there asking questions, talking together, and I love the social hours. I really like that community aspect of this conference because I feel like an online conference can be just hard to be by yourself in a room and everybody else is in the box. But I think the way that this conference is organized with the social hours just makes it so much fun for me.

Sharona: And I’ve looked at the schedule. I think there’s a panel almost every session that’s not a keynote or the closing session. There’s a lot of panels.

Boz: Yeah. And not just ’cause I agree with you, Kim, I really enjoy the panels, but I especially enjoy the panels that have some, if not exclusively filled by students. I love the student panels. I love hearing, from the student point of view of what we’ve been doing. So there’s a couple of those. I know day one the 4:30 slot, there’s a student reflection panel that I’m as- going to assume is mostly, if not exclusively students, so I’m looking forward to that one as well. What about you, Dan? What do you-

Dan Guberman: Yeah student panels are, I– for the past two years I’ve brought student panels, so- Yeah … this year I didn’t teach the graded class that again, so I was super excited to see two student panels, one about Otter’s grading class again, which was really fun to see. And the other thing I’ll call out since we haven’t talked about it here, but we’ll talk about it in the future, is my work on self-determination theory of motivation. And it was really cool to see multiple papers bringing self-determination theory into discussions about alternative grading, which is something I’m really excited about. I’m looking forward to seeing how that gets used in a variety of contexts in the conference.

Boz: All right. So I wanna thank both of you guys for taking the time out of your Sunday morning for you, Dan, and Sunday evening for you, Kim. That’s a, that’s something we didn’t really talk about. Like people always, ’cause our conference, is made up from people around the country. A lot of the committee members think Sharona and I are crazy ’cause we’ll be willing to get on at six or seven o’clock in the morning for us. But y- you’ve been getting on all year, like it’s-

Kim Hall: Yeah …

Boz: nine o’clock at night for you.

Kim Hall: It’s only five o’clock now. But I am, I’m gonna be a night owl this summer, that’s for sure.

Boz: Yeah. Want, wanna thank you guys both for coming on. Is there any kinda last minute thoughts or comments that either of you guys wanted to make?

Dan Guberman: Just wanna thank you for hosting this for so long. It, I’ve really enjoyed. I, I did not listen from the beginning, but I’ve really enjoyed going back and finding lots of really engaging episodes over the years. And, being able to point to something when someone asks me, they’ll say, “Oh you don’t know anything about math.” Which I hate it. I know but I can be like, “Oh, maybe these people do,” right? Or, any other field, you’ve had it covered. So it’s great to be part of this now myself.

Kim Hall: Yeah. Thanks so much. It’s super inspirational.

Boz: Thank you. Sharona, any last minute things before we head off?

Sharona: Just that registration’s open still for the conference, as are institutional registrations. So check out the, centerforgradingreform.org, and go to the grading conference website, and message us if you have any questions.

Boz: All right. And for our listeners, thank you. 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.