The Grading Podcast

96 – Role of Admin

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Boz: The one thing that I do think is universal, no matter what the situation is, no matter if you are in K 12 or higher ed, when you talk to your admins or anyone else. And I am actually, I’m actually gonna just read this line ’cause I’m almost quoting it word for wording, anyway, so this is one of the lines from Robert Talbert’s blog that we were talking about when talking to administrators or anyone else about alternative grading, be excited. There’s good reason for this excitement. There’s a reasons we’re doing this. Show that enthusiasm because it’s a lot easier for people to buy in and to get curious and to want to support something when it’s being presented in a way that it sounds exciting. You can see and feel and you know, hear that, that excitement in the person that’s talking to you about it.

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

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

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

Sharona: Well, I’m alive. This is a good thing. I didn’t think I would be at 1:00 AM couple days ago when I was still writing final exams. And I have a couple more to just like finish tweaking and formatting, but we’re going into finals week and I’m so close, I’m so close to being done with this academic year, so.

Boz: Yeah, that’s not fair. I’ve still got a whole other month in my K 12 world.

Sharona: Yeah, but the bigger problem with your next month is how much you don’t have to do ’cause it’s so much testing and then ending up the year, like .

Boz: Yeah, but we’ve got a lot of planning for next year. The division that I work for has got this big training that’s coming up that we’re planning for, plus a lot of things that we need to prepare for either over summer or before the school starts. So yeah, there, there’s not a lot of in class observations and coaching that I’m doing at this point, but it’s a lot of planning a lot of meetings, a lot of working with people on trying to put all these, these training modules together. So it’s, it’s not, yeah, actually lightened up much.

Sharona: It’s not, but I mean, as poorly as teachers get paid, you get paid so much more than I do because you work an actual full-time job that actually lasts for 10 months, that I don’t have a lot of sympathy, sorry. Love you but. That being said though, I do wanna mention at the top of the show the schedule for the grading conference just got posted this week on the website. So we finally have all of the incredible speakers and the abstracts. We have little tweaks here and there, but if you haven’t yet registered for the conference, now is the time, ’cause it is coming up in one month.

Boz: Yeah, we are just a month away at the time of this recording, aren’t we? Mm-hmm. Wow. It seems so far away.

Sharona: Just in case you didn’t have enough to do. Yeah. So how are you doing other than you still have a bunch of trainings and stuff to do?

Boz: Yeah. You know, like I said, it’s a weird shift because it is, yes, I’ve always done summer trainings and things, but not to this level and the amount of different people I’m meeting and trying to coordinate with. It’s a different shift. It’s is, you know, something, something new that I’m getting used to with this new position.

Sharona: Well, and then I’m also got a couple more presentations coming up. So I’m gonna be presenting in Canada next week at Queens University Smith College of Engineering. So if you’re in the area and you wanna go to a competency-based assessment symposium, go check that out with Queens University ’cause we’re gonna be having some fun up there. And I think you also are unhappy that I’m getting to travel, so I’m just, I’m getting in trouble today.

Boz: I’m not unhappy you get to. I’m unhappy I don’t get to.

Sharona: This is true. So I’ve got that one and then in July, I’m speaking at the Transforming Undergraduate Education in the Molecular Life Sciences conference. That’s in Minneapolis, St. Paul, I believe in July. So that’s another place. Those of you in the Molecular and Life Sciences, we’d love to see you there. So.

Boz: That sounds like fun.

Sharona: You’re like, yeah. Anyways, so my question though, Boz, is we’re here, we’re sitting in front of each other. Favorite thing to do all week. What are we talking about today?

Boz: Well, you know, last week we did an episode that was kind of centered around elementary education, and that was prompted by a question from an old friend, a colleague of mine, I. And us really looking at and realizing, you know, we’d really kind of neglected elementary. So that got me thinking about what other areas have we maybe neglected a bit. And I’ve, I’ve got a couple, so they will be our next couple of episodes, but the first one that came up really was the role of admin. You know, what, what do admin play in this? Now if you are listening to this and you’re an educator, don’t turn us off. We’re actually going to be talking Yes, about some of the things that admin could and should be doing, but also about how you as a educator might talk to your admin about this.

‘Cause I mean, I’ll be honest, and I know it’s fun to joke and give admin grief when you’re a teacher or an educator, but honestly, in 20 years, I’ve only worked with one bad admin. I’ve worked with some that were ineffective, but really only one bad one. And most of the ones that were ineffective were ineffective ’cause they didn’t know what you as the educator needed from them. So if you are an educator, don’t, don’t, don’t turn the episode off thinking you don’t need this one. ’cause like I said, we are gonna wrap this one up by talking about how you approach and what you can do to get that support that you need from your admin while you’re trying to especially when you’re trying to shift to alternative grading.

Sharona: Well, and one of the important things we’re also gonna talk about is. We mean both K 12 admin and higher ed admin. Because as a university professor, and still until I started doing things like course coordination and trying to make institutional change, I didn’t give two shakes of a lamb’s tale, as they might say. ‘Cause I can’t swear on this podcast about administrators because as higher ed faculty, we feel that we have a, a ton of independence in our classrooms. And there’s some rules in the faculty handbook about what the final grade looks like. But other than, and then some institutions do have rules that go into the classroom, but like at Cal State LA we have almost none.

Boz: So. Well, I think that’s probably a good place to start then is just defining, because this is one of the areas where I think there is a huge difference between K 12 world and the higher ed world. So, when we’re talking about admin in the K 12 world, it’s pretty, you know cut and dry. It’s our principals, it’s our assistant principals. But in the higher ed world, how, what does that structure look like? Or especially if you’re, if you’re talk, if we’re talking about supporting in a course redesign or a, change in grading system, who is that in your world?

Sharona: So the answer is, it’s complicated because we clearly have administrators such as the provost, the vice presidents, the deans, the associate deans, right? Most of those people have no actual control over an individual classroom. Like it’s actually because of academic freedom and the way that things are set up. It’s considered invasive. If they try to directly control what happens in the classroom, they can incentivize, they can suggest they can provide trainings, but it’s kind of like go away. Right? In general, however, as a lecturer, I am aware that I actually don’t have complete control. And by a lecture, I mean I’m an adjunct. So there’s also this extra line of tenure line faculty versus adjuncts. And what I’ve recently become more aware of is the role of other faculty acting essentially as administrators within my department. We have a committee called IAC and I never remember what it stands for, it’s instruction and assessment or something like that in instructional something or other committee. And they actually do have a lot of things that they can make as departmental policies that doesn’t violate academic freedom. Faculty governance is really what academic freedom about the faculty to a large degree are allowed to say, especially in courses that are taught by multiple instructors in different sections. So we have this IAC committee, we also have the department chair and the associate department chair who are technically considered both faculty and administrators. So they actually have an administrative role that is more than I realized.

Boz: Yeah. Okay. So let’s say I am a lecturer, an adjunct lecturer at a new college, and I want to bring with me my alternative grading systems into the course. Who would I need to, you know, I don’t know if get permission from is the correct word, but who would I most directly be dealing with in a situation like that? Or is there anyone, is it just, Hey, it’s your class, it’s your choice.

Sharona: So it’s, again, it’s gonna vary dramatically and it’s changing. So 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you pretty much, it depended on the individual institution, but you would get handed a textbook, you might get handed a syllabus you had to follow, which could include a grading scale. It’s gonna be very contractual. At Cal State LA we have a union. So there are certain limitations to what the department can do, even with a lecturer, which is why at Cal State LA we have these addendum that lecturers have to sign if they’re gonna work in a coordinated course. And it’s up to the department to decide what the rules and policies and procedures are. When I started here, there was none of that. I barely got a sample syllabus. So I was able to just kind of do whatever I wanted as an adjunct coming in. But then I know of some of our faculty members in other parts of the country that really have almost no control and even tenure lines who have almost no control because of the coordination. So it’s very patchworky and very complicated.

Boz: And it’s very dependent on your actual university setting. ’cause I know we’ve had conversations with one of our favorite people, Dr. Kate Owens, and in her interview she talked about some of the workarounds that she would do because there were policies that she did have to adhere to, like a final being a certain percentage of the grade. Exactly. So it, it can be very institutional, institutionally dependent.

Sharona: So what I would say in the shorthand is at the higher ed level, you could have a course coordinator. You definitely have a department chair. You might have a instructional committee in your department, you will have university senate or faculty governance guidelines. But people like the Dean’s office, the provost, they’re not supposed to have a lot of say historically, and it, but again, tenure and academic freedoms are actually under attack right now too. So it’s super complicated. But there are administrators and you do have to have, it’s ideal if you can get them on board and help if you’re an instructor.

Boz: So if you are a higher ed educator, and you’re listening to this, when we say admin, think of whoever it would be that would have the closest contact point to you and what you are actually doing in your class, whether it’s your department chair, whether it’s a dean, associate dean, whoever that is, and I imagine smaller colleges probably have the higher up admin, probably have more of a contact than, like you said, a provost at Cal State LA who has several different campuses, thousands and thousands of students. So, but yeah, if you’re higher ed, as we were talking through this episode, think of who is most directly contacted with you and your classroom.

Sharona: And we’ll talk about more of that later as well.

Boz: So, what can the admin do? What should the admin do to support in alternative grading? So, what are I, I know my first big one, like the first thing that if you’re an admin and in an environment where you know the trend is going that way or you’ve got a group of educators wanting to move that way. What is the biggest role and responsibility that you have? My first one is you actually, the admin need to have a base understanding of what this is. You don’t have to have a complete working knowledge. You don’t have to be able to, put together your own system, but having a base understanding without you, you, there’s no way you’re gonna su be able to support your staff or support your teachers with, ’cause you just won’t have the, that base knowledge.

Sharona: And do you mean like they should have a base knowledge as if they were still a teacher? Is that what you’re saying?

Boz: I don’t know if it even has to go that high. I mean, it would, it, the better, the better informed you are as an admin, the better support you’re gonna be able to give. But you would, so I don’t know if it even needs to be that high, but you at least need to have an understanding of what does the term mean? What makes it alternative versus traditional? What are some of the aspects of alternative grading and how it’s different.

Sharona: And I guess it also depends on where you’re coming at it versus where your teachers are. So if a teacher brings it to you and wants to try it, that’s a different level of knowledge that you might need than if your district or you are the one trying to introduce. Like, those are coming from some different arenas, wouldn’t you say?

Boz: I would agree, but even if it’s, you know, coming bottom up from teacher up, I still think you’ve, you’ve gotta educate yourself. You’ve gotta have like I said, a base level understanding. So you’ll, otherwise, there’s just no way that you can support your teachers. And that is one of the biggest thing admin roles is supporting your teaching staff. So.

Sharona: And this occurs to me that there have been two books that I’ve looked at recently that said something to the starting point with a lot of this stuff is this purpose, right? So I was just looking in a book, through a preview of a book I have not yet read that I’m planning to read, called Grading from the Inside Out by Tom Schwimmer. And in the book they note that a lot of times when people are asked what the why is, they’ll say the why is that they want to go to standards based grading. But standards based grading is a what. Exactly. It’s not a why. So what’s the purpose that you’re trying to learn about alternative grading? And a lot of times that purpose is because we wanna get to a level of clarity, transparency, and consistency in what we want students to learn, how they’re gonna, we’re gonna know if they learned it and how we’re gonna communicate that.

Boz: So, and, and that brings up kind of one of the next areas of roles and responsibilities that I see admin having. And that is, if this is happening at your school site, if you’re having teachers that are starting to go in and redesigning their courses to use alternative grading, and it’s more than just a couple of teachers, whether it’s a whole department, whether it’s, you know, just a critical mass of teachers or if it’s the whole school, your role as an admin is to communicate those, you know, be part of the communication of those changes, especially to parents. Again, here’s another huge difference between my K 12 world and your higher ed world. We have this whole stakeholder group to deal with that you don’t. And if this change is happening at your school site and it’s more than just a couple of teachers, then it really should be the admin’s role to be at least part of that communication, explaining these changes, how the new system works, why we’re doing it. So that’s another big role of admin.

Sharona: We mentioned this book that I got in trouble for not sharing with you last week standards based grading, a school district’s pillars to Student Success. And in there there’s a chapter by an assistant principal who had the benefit of being the person on the ground in a previous school district to who went through this transition. Mm-hmm. And he said that in this new school district, they spent a bunch of time as an administrative team, but also involving teachers, coming up with what they were gonna do. And the very next step, even before doing it, was to talk to parents and to start bringing parents in and having town halls and writing letters. Because your parents in K 12 are gonna be a valuable asset if you can get on them on board. And one of the biggest roadblocks if you can’t.

Boz: Exactly. And that is a roadblock, that it really should be tackled first at the Admin. And so I, I completely agree with that chapter and with what that administrator was saying, that I, I love that that was their first step is going directly to communication with parents.

Sharona: Okay. So we’ve said that admin should educate themselves. Mm-hmm. At probably a deeper level of detail. That they should be involved in communicating with parents. What else should a K 12 admin be looking at here?

Boz: Here’s probably the most important, like educating themselves is, one of the first steps, but one of the biggest steps because if this is happening more than just a teacher or two, if we’re really trying to make a more systemic change and a larger change, it is the admin’s role and responsibility to set up a system to that will allow the teachers time, resources, and training on this. Time, and we’ve talked about this in a couple other episodes, time is one of the biggest limitations and biggest commodities that a teacher has. So your role as an admin, if we’re trying to take a department or whole school through this change is to set up a system that allows teachers to get that support, to have that collaboration time, to be able to go to those trainings and getting resources that are needed.

And also to understand and know this is not a one week change. This is not something that we’re, we’re gonna come in on a Tuesday staff meeting, say, Hey, we’re gonna do this next Tuesday we’re gonna train, and the Monday after that, we’re gonna start evaluating you to see if you’re doing it. Like understanding that understanding it does take time and it does take continued support. So setting those structures up to allow that.

Sharona: And by time, I mean the time is often measured in years, not weeks. So we really mean time, but time, not just passing time where every week or every month you’re working on it. Like it’s just, it’s a lot to do. That’s why it takes so much time.

Boz: And putting up some structures to help that process and to support that process when it does hit a speed bump, whether it’s, you know, doing some, some research on their own, providing some training, whether it’s going outside and looking for trainings like there, there’s one really good one that I, I wanna plug. If I was an admin and I, especially if I was at a school like an L-A-U-S-D school where we just had this grading policy change back in February that although does not force alternative gradings, strongly recommends it. I would be looking for trainings to send my teachers to start getting them to understand and ’cause again, as an admin, I’m probably not an expert in this, but trainings like all the All means all Institute from Solution Tree or their PLC trainings also from Solution Tree because PLCs and any kind of major changes like changing your whole grading system go hand in hand. Like this work becomes so much easier when it’s not an individual, but it’s a group of people working towards the same goal.

Sharona: Exactly. Are there any other things that you wanna bring up about K 12 admin at this point? Things you think that they can and should be doing?

Boz: So, a couple of things that I definitely think they should be doing is. Once this is up and going, once you’ve got this going, you, you’ve got some trainings in the work. Maybe you’ve got some teachers that have, that have already started to redesign you being a person of contact and being able to answer some of the questions and concerns that might be coming from other teachers, other staff members, again, parents or students. So admin are, as a point of contact, which is another reason why you have to have at least a base level understanding of it, because beyond just the communication at the beginning, continuing to be that person of, you know, answering and dealing with some of the, the concerns that might come up.

Sharona: Well, and then another role that I would think of, although you’ll have to tell me if this works the same way or works this way in K 12. Your teachers are gonna be a little bit exposed because this is such a challenge to traditional ways of thinking that you’ve gotta be ready to back them up, especially with parents, is what I’m thinking. So knowing enough to be able to, to really support your teachers as they’re trying to do this.

Boz: Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, that’s what I was referring to. And, and I don’t think it’s backing your teachers up. I think it’s, you should be the first person of contact, especially if it’s coming from outside like parents. You don’t need to back up your teachers. You should be the shield of the teachers. Right. Guess what? I’m should be expressing those, those concerns and things first, right now. Details you’re gonna need to get from the teachers and stuff, but yeah, you, you, you should be there as. Your, your staff’s shield from outside concerns.

Sharona: Right. And I guess the way I look at it is I see sometimes when administrators do put the first contact out, but then they expect the teachers to do all the subsequent, and I’m saying that even in the subsequent, the teachers need to be able to say, or the teacher need to be able to come to you and say that they’re having some sort of an issue and you can go back in with this communication

Boz: Absolutely. Absolutely. And this isn’t just for, you know, grading reform. This should be for anything. But that goes, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna go down that rabbit hole.

Sharona: Right. But grading reform is, you know, we’ve been dealing with this in math education forever, and I don’t know about other disciplines, but you’re not teaching it the way I learned it. It’s so huge in mathematics. Why are you making them do this weird new math? Why can’t they just calc, you know? And you ask a parent, well, how do you feel about math? They’re like, well, I hate it. I’m like, why do you want us to do that to your students? I don’t know if that’s as common in the other disciplines, but this is gonna be the same thing. Why aren’t you just grading them the way you created us?

Boz: Well, when it comes to instruction, I, I would say math gets, it gets a lot of

Sharona: hate?

Boz: No, I was gonna say kind of a lot of airtime when it comes to this, but since Common Core came and there’s a lot of disciplines that instruction looks different than it was before. Common Core. Is there, and maybe it’s because I’m in the math world, is there a lot more heat? Maybe that comes on math, but I would not say it is exclusive to math. But yeah, that.

Sharona: No, but if you look at all the internet memes and everything and all of the pictures of parents going, God, this is my kids’ homework. And what are they teaching in schools? It’s almost always math. It’s almost always math. So I’m just saying be there. Be ready. ’cause I do think that grading is potentially gonna get the same level of hate grading reform. Will that math reform does the or worse?

Boz: Is there any doubt? Yeah. Or we get that from the educators.

Sharona: Okay, so let’s switch over for a few minutes if you’re ready to leave.

Boz: No, no, no. There, there’s one more really big one. Okay. There’s one more really big one. And I might get a little bit of hate from some of my educator colleagues from this one. All right. But you and I both know that doing a redesign for alternative grading can actually produce a more damaging system than what was there to begin with. I don’t think we’ve talked to almost anyone, maybe one person that got it right the first time or, or got it decent the first time. Like we’ve had dozens and dozens of stories about how bad we screwed this up the first time we tried it.

Sharona: Yep.

Boz: So one of the roles, I see it as an admin, and I apologize to my colleagues for this one, but they should be looking at what these changes did. Looking at and doing data analysis and evaluations about these changes and did it have the effect that we were trying to have? Did it have the effect size we were trying to have? And if not, going back and looking at and trying to help their staff and their educators find those areas that maybe need to be rethought, that maybe need to be, you know, tweaked or completely changed. That ongoing monitoring that comes with support, ongoing support as well, don’t get me wrong, but yeah, that is a role of admin and it’s an important role.

Sharona: It’s definitely not a fix it and forget it process.

Boz: Yeah, and like I said, it going back now to why they need to be educated on it. ’cause you can’t really do data analysis and evaluation if you don’t understand it. So, but yeah, I, I think that one is, is an important one that us educators don’t always like to, to see and hear, but

Sharona: I agree. I agree completely. All right. Let’s switch for a minute to higher ed and the role of admin in a little more detail, because my job over the last couple years has given me a lot more exposure to what’s possible in both a positive way and just how far behind higher ed is in some of these conversations about what happens in the classroom, like not just with grading. Okay. The amount of debate and disagreement over different sections of the same course teaching the same thing and actually talking to each other about it is kind of shocking to me in this day and age. I know it.

Boz: Shocking in a good way or a bad way?

Sharona: It’s shocking in a bad way of how hard it is to get faculty who teach the same course in the same department in the same semester to talk to each other about what they’re teaching, let alone how they’re teaching it, let alone how they’re grading it. Coarse coordination is just beginning to take off, and it is painfully hard to do.

Boz: See, and that goes to those structures I was talking about earlier. If you don’t have someone in some sort of supervisional role, putting those structures in place that are giving the time and space and expectation of people coming together and having these conversations. I don’t have to imagine how difficult it is ’cause I’ve been hearing about how difficult it is from you for the last.

Sharona: You hear me complaining about it every week. So when it comes to admin at the university, I’m gonna say one very, very unpopular thing. The number one thing you can do is find money to support this. Because there is no expectation at most of the universities I’ve taught at. And if there are other universities that are different, shout out to you for doing it better, there’s no expectation and people are not paid to meet. To meet and talk about this stuff. Like tenure line faculty have an expectation of serving on certain committees. Those committees meet once or twice a month for an hour, but they do work for the entire department. So it has actually been a battle just to get faculty who are teaching together in the same course, to agree to meet five to six times over the course of a 15 week semester. Additionally, faculty are not paid at all to meet in the summer. Like I know that in K 12 mostly you don’t meet, but often you’ll have some required trainings that are part of your contract towards the beginning of the school year or like right before the beginning of the school year.

Boz: Yeah. We have some that are optional, some that are required. In L-A-U-S-D we call those buyback days and pupil free days depending on if they’re required or if they’re optional, but get paid extra.

Sharona: Yeah. So my institution doesn’t have any of that. So one of the things admin can do is absolutely find money. Right now they’re finding money just to even have course coordination. And another way they can support it is like deans and associate deans and stuff. They are the ones that have to teach and train department chairs that this is part of the department chair’s job because again, a department chair at a university is one of the faculty that agrees to do the administrative work of the department. They’re not necessarily trained or expected to actually provide educational leadership, even though that is supposed to be part of their job.

Boz: Yeah. Which is a, a huge difference between, I. Admin at the K 12 world and admin at higher ed. Again, just like difference between the educators, we’re, we’re trained on actual pedagogical theory and our admin actually do have to go through and get a whole separate either degree or certification about being an administrator.

Sharona: So would you consider department chairs at K 12 to be administrators? Because you don’t need an admin degree for that?

Boz: No, I would absolutely not. Even though we have some roles of facilitation, maybe sometimes of coaching there, there might be some logistical things, but no, ’cause if. I disagree, or I, let’s say I’m department chair and I disagree, don’t like, you know, think one of my teachers is doing a bad job. There’s nothing I can do other than going to the administrator and you know, giving them stuff to say, Hey, can you go, you know, evaluate. Like these are the things I think is going on. Like, there’s nothing else. So no, I would not say a department chair at an admin level or at a K 12 world is an admin role of any sort.

Sharona: So there seems to be some lack of clarity in my world about that stuff. ’cause a lot of our department chairs don’t really think it’s their job. Like if they disagree with course coordination, they feel free to say it, but yet there’s no one else that could bring my department in line. ’cause the dean’s office can’t, they literally don’t have the power. So that’s been another challenge we have. So if you are someone trying to make at more of an institutional level change at the university level, getting administrators, including department chairs involved is, is important. And several years ago, Robert Talbert wrote a blog post about this where he really went into some of the different ways that you can talk to admin, which we’re gonna get to in a couple minutes. But I think that even an administrator could read that blog post and say, oh, if someone’s gonna come and talk to me, what frame of mind do I have to be in? Yeah. And again, at the university, it’s highly budgetary.

Boz: And again, it sounds like where it is a very clear path in K 12, it is not a straight, clear or consistent path in higher ed because again, depending on your institutional setting, it might be one of a dozen different people. So it does sound like it is a much muddier confusing path of who to go to and, and who should be supporting this at the higher ed world.

Sharona: Now I wanna mention one last thing that comes from my perspective of not only having been in the classroom 35 years, but being second generation, having watched my mom in the classroom for even longer. We said that in the K 12 world, these changes take time, give it at least a year. I’m seeing these changes take decades in the university, but that’s not a reason to not do it because some of the seeds that were sown for me a decade ago from my center of teaching. Are coming into fruition now.

Sharona: And I love the first paragraph because it gives some examples of what he calls admin, like your department chair, your dean, your president, all of whom could end up essentially asking you what the heck is going on in your classroom.

Boz: So he reiterates the point you made earlier about it’s not a clear path in in higher ed, where it is much easier to identify what we mean by admin in the K 12 world.

So I didn’t tell anyone. I did not tell anyone, and it was fine. I got away with it for many years. Actually. I got away with it for two years to be clear. And then I had this opportunity to redesign statistics and I wasn’t gonna do it ’cause I was afraid. I was like, I was being so secretive about it. And then I had to sit down with my co designer Dr. Silvia Heubach, because I went to hear Uri Triesman speak about innovation and that the only innovation that sticks is disruptive.

So I took that to heart and sat her down and said, okay, let me pitch this to you. And she said, yes. So, but I did have to do that essentially, even though she wasn’t technically admin, as an adjunct and her being tenured and a former department chair, she was a huge piece of the success of me getting this done the first time. Yeah. So anyway, so going away from the do what I say and not what I did, what would you say are some of the important features in, let’s start with K 12 again.

Boz: Well, so first I, do think that the level in the way you communicate this with your admin is going to be different. If we’re talking about, I am doing this as, you know, Mr. Bosley in my Algebra two, three, you my three periods of algebra two versus I am as department chair coming to my whole math department and trying to get, you know, department wide change. So I do think the communication is a little bit different with admin depending on what level we’re coming at. Is this coming, actually coming down from a district expectation? But the one thing that I do think is universal, no matter what the situation is, no matter if you are in K 12 or higher ed, when you talk to your admins or anyone else.

I’m actually gonna just read this line. ‘Cause I’m almost quoting it word for word anyway, so. This is one of the lines from Robert’s blog that we were talking about when talking to administrators or anyone else about alternative grading, be excited. There’s good reason for this excitement. There’s a reasons we’re doing this. Show that enthusiasm because it’s a lot easier for people to buy in and to get curious and to want to support something when it’s being presented in a way that it sounds exciting. You can see and feel and, you know, hear that excitement in the person that’s talking to you about it.

Sharona: I completely agree and I don’t know where in the blog post that line is, but I have another line that I highlighted because it’s been a pain point for me this semester. It says, if you’re having some issues, invite those who take issue with your practices to talk with you. Parentheses actually talk, not trade emails there. So you can’t convey excitement. You’re gonna fall outta your chair. You can’t convey excitement and persuasion and your intent in an email you, because people put their own layer of interpretation on your words when it’s written. Something like 92% of communication is body language and tone of voice, not the words you say.

Boz: Yeah, I, I was just about to bring up that, that exact same thing. I. I think it is David Novak that states that non-verbal clues and communication is about 93% of total communication. So yeah, this is not, this is definitely something that needs to start with face-to-face conversations. I would not ever start any of this with any kind of written communication other than saying, Hey, I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.

When can we meet? Like, that’s the most I would do. Now, can, once you get it going, can you communicate, you know, through written? Sure. But yeah, the early stages of this absolutely should be in person.

Sharona: And I do wanna, as a side note, remember that most statistics are made up. So the 93%, don’t quote us on that. ‘Cause I think even David Novak has walked that back, but nonetheless, okay. Yes, nonetheless people do layer their own interpretation on your written communications. And I have been buried in email hell this semester, so I’ve, that’s why, that’s why Bosley almost fell off his chair when I started talking about it.

So definitely communicate with people either ahead of time if you have the capacity or when you’ve already gotten yourself in trouble. But, it’s gotta be. Now you wanna have notes and you wanna have supporting documentation, but the communication itself has to be verbal and, and things. And that’s, honestly, that’s one of the reasons I am kind of shocked that we don’t have more podcasts on this topic because there’s a ton of books out there now, but I don’t know of too many other podcasts that are specifically dedicated just to grading reforms.

Boz: No, there, there’s a lot of education ones out there and a lot of them have an episode or two, or maybe even a series that addresses it, but you’re right.

Sharona: Now another thing that’s in this blog post, which is probably true for both K 12 and higher ed, and I am so guilty of doing this wrong, is throwing research at people.

So I tend to use the word research a lot when I’m talking to people. But. Robert Talbert says it’s a tactical error to think that people who are skeptical or op oppositional to alternative grading are fully rational actors that will change their minds if there’s enough data.

Boz: Okay, now I have a little, ’cause I read that too, and I understand where he is coming from. I have a little bit of, I don’t wanna say disagreement, but nuance to throw on that. Okay. So if you’re dealing with someone who is skeptical or are actively fighting against this, I think he’s absolutely right. If you’re dealing with someone who is just uneducated about it, who just doesn’t know and is not skeptical or pushing back, but just doesn’t understand the issues. Then I do think that research and those books like Grading for Equity pretty much anything from guskey, like those can be very, very important tools and I fact I would recommend that if I’m going to talk to my admin about getting their support for this, one of the things I’m gonna have in my back pocket is some of these educational tools, because like I stated earlier, I think the admin having a base level understanding and, and education on this is so important.

Be there, ready to provide it. Say, hey, this is what I’m wanting to do. The admin has no idea even that this was a thing. Well, okay, well here’s some readings on what it is, why it’s so important, so.

Is it a great tactic to take with someone who is openly opposing and actively fighting against it? No, probably not. But there you’re gonna find a lot more people that are just simply uneducated about it than you’re going to find that are actively objecting to it. At least in my opinion.

Sharona: I would agree. There’s a difference between a complete unawareness and a marginal awareness that has already put you in opposition. Those are two different types of people.

Boz: Yeah.

Sharona: The other thing that I would say, and this is coming from my new position as a course coordinator, that I didn’t understand literally until like two weeks ago. So I’m a year into my job, so this is maybe talking more to coaches and things like that.

Understand your administration’s goals. Be able to speak to how what you’re doing is gonna help them meet their goals. Right. So for me, I was trying to figure out, I didn’t really think about why is the dean’s office willing to fund course coordination. Like, yes, they wanna improve our DFW rates. But they may have identified a problem that they can’t fix from their position, but if they fund someone else like a coach, they’re hoping the coach or the course coordinator can help get traction on that problem.

And I don’t know if that’s as true in K 12, but I suspect it is that if you have an admin that is frustrated with a department, for example, who’s not open to some of these changes, if the, if that admin can get one of the instructors to start making those changes and they’re willing to throw some resources at that person.

If you’re the person, think about why the admin is doing, have conversations. Why, what, what does the admin wanna get out of it?

Boz: And then I, I think the other thing that’s really important when you’re starting to have these conversations, and maybe you’re not completely supported by your admin and either setting, is do be willing to compromise.

Now does that mean compromise on the core changes that you want or really compromising on the four pillars? No. But do be willing to compromise. Be willing to try to make deals. Okay. You don’t think this is a good idea for the whole department? Can I try it with, you know, a couple of my classes?

Can I show those results to try to change your mind later? But be willing to, to compromise, even though you might be gung-ho and it might really hurt to not just go headfirst into the deep waters. Sometimes that’s the path you have to take.

Sharona: Exactly. But I think it, it definitely depends on your context for.

Boz: And then here’s another thing that I think that anyone that’s going to be having these kind of conversations should be willing to do, be willing to have these conversations with more than one person.

I mean, when, when I say admin at the K 12 world, I might be, be wanting to have this conversation with the admin that is directly over my department, but I also might need to be having this conversation with the head principal if that’s a different person or even a, a, a principal that’s over a different department.

Like be willing to have this conversation with more than one person. And that kind of sounds like the old you trick you play as a kid, you ask mom, then you go a go and ask dad. And yeah, it kind of is, but you’ll also have different levels of support and getting multiple admin only will be beneficial to you.

Sharona: Well, and another way to think of it though is you could really call it shopping for an advocate. Yeah. Because there’s a difference between Ask Mom, get a no, ask dad and ask mom and mom’s like, don’t bother me, and then go ask dad. Those are two different responses. And yeah, if your AP is like directly, no, you might get in a lot of trouble if you go to another one.

But if you know that your assistant principal may not be the most receptive. Another one might be more, start there. Find your team. Find your advocates. Yeah, that’s, that’s a little bit different than I got an answer I didn’t like and I went the other way. Because usually your AP iss not gonna say, well, what did your AP say?

Not usually, as far as I know. Usually they’re just too busy.

Boz: So do you have any other advice to an educator that’s wanting to, to do this? How to or how to, when to, or what should they do when approaching their admin?

Sharona: I think something that I just said is gonna be critical. Figure out who your support team is.

If you’re wanting to do this, is there another teacher that you could at least bounce ideas off at either your school or another school? Is there an admin, you know, at another school that you could approach for some coaching about how to talk to your admin? Is there, you know, there’s. You wanna build a network.

This is not something that is most effectively done in isolation. Again, do what I say, not what I do. But I did find my team, and it’s called the grading conference and the organizing team. But yeah, that would be my main point of advice is find a support group first so that you’re not looked at as like the crazy person.

Boz: And then I think this is the, the other thing that I would want to leave people with is, you know, I said this at the top of the show. I have been in L-A-U-S-D as as a teacher for, this is my 20th school year, about to complete. In that time, I have only had one person that I would consider a bad admin. I have had some ineffective.

So when you go to talk to those admin, know the kinds of supports that you need and that you’re looking for. Because if your admin knows what you’re, what you’re needing from them, I think they’re more likely to give it. ’cause again, I, I, I don’t think admin are unsupportive of teachers because they’re, they’re bad admin.

I think a lot of times when they’re not supportive, it’s because they don’t know how to be supportive. So, take some of these things that we talked about, you know, in the first half of this episode, what are the ones that you are really needing? Or are you really needing, you know, for those structures to be put in place so your team can meet on a fairly regular basis?

Then let them know that if you’re looking for training, let them know that. Let them see if there’s budgets that the they, you they can use to send, you know, you and your team. But know what kind of support you want from them. Tell them directly.

Sharona: And know that you’re not alone. You know? You’re not. There’s thousands of us doing this around the country.

Reach out to us, we’re happy to help you talk to your admin.

Boz: That’s, that’s true. And there’s a lot of other sources of commu of community. You know, we, the Slack channels, the, the grading conference, join those, be part of them. Encourage your admin to look at some of those so they can see that this isn’t just your crazy idea that you’ve come up with.

That this really is a real educational reform wave that is starting to build.

Sharona: So, do you have anything else you would like to say as we, whether on this topic or anything else as we wrap this one up?

Boz: So, again, I, I invite our listeners if you are an admin and you’re listening to this and I. You, you think there’s things that we missed or if you, you know, wanna come on and talk about how you’ve done some of these things, we’d love to, we’d love to hear from you.

Would love to get you on. If there’s, if you’re an educator and there’s things, levels of support that we didn’t mention, you know, again, right into us, call into us, join us on the, on the podcast. We’d love to have you.

Sharona: I’m actually gonna throw an email address out there at the moment because one thing I just recently learned and I have not been able to fix, is the Contact us form is not working properly on our website.

Oh, no. So feel free to email us at info@thegradingconference.com. You’ll get directly to us using that email and we’re gonna try and get that contact us form. I have no idea why it’s not working. So apologies. But feel free to email us at info@thegradingconference.com and they will forward that to us and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Boz: Do, do we have any idea how long that’s not been working?

Sharona: I do not, I got an email last week that it was not working, so.

Boz: All right. So if you’ve, if you have reached out to us and we haven’t responded, know that that might be one of the reasons we’re, we’re not ignoring and we do apologize. And we will see what we can do about getting that back up and running properly as soon as possible.

Sharona: Exactly. And of course, you can also go to the website centerforgradingreform.org. You can also go to the grading conference website directly, thegradingconference.com. We are so excited about this year’s presenters. I think we have something like over 80 of them. So you really are not alone.

Boz: All right, well that’ll do us for this week. So thank you for listening and we’ll see you next time.

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 Sharon 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.