Zach Diamond 0:03 Welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast. Each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other. So this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the modern classrooms project podcast. Hello, and welcome to episode 155 of the modern classrooms project podcast. My name is Zach Diamond, and I'm a middle school digital music teacher in Washington DC. And today I am joined by Kate McGillicuddy high school social studies teacher at Health Sciences charter school in Buffalo, New York. Welcome, Kate. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 0:49 Hello. There are so many things that I think of right away when we talk about those problems statements and like what we're moving towards away from in a modern classroom. One of the things that really stuck out to me is prior to modern classrooms project, I was grading on a zero to 100 point scale, like most high schools in the United States. And why are there 64 opportunities to fail and only 36 to pass? Zach Diamond 1:21 Yeah, yeah, Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 1:23 that really got me Zach Diamond 1:24 Wow, Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 1:25 yes, there shouldn't be more opportunity to fail than to pass my course, Zach Diamond 1:31 I had never thought about it that way. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 1:36 We often like give grades to things that aren't measuring student progress, like participation points, or notebook checks or other things that are super helpful with building students skills, but not necessarily Sara Lee measuring student ability. So I think those once I realized that, I really started to challenge my notions. One of the things I did right at the same time that I was working in modern classrooms project was read a book called On your mark by Thomas Gaskey. And in each chapter, he kind of challenges different grading practices, like percentage grades, plus and minuses and half increments and class rank. And all of that really, like helped me to break my traditional mold or traditional norms of grading, and kind of try to see it from a new way. My school during COVID Move to standards based grading. So that's where I have a lot of experience measuring one standard or several standards for me is content and skills and high school social studies classroom, but I'm measuring those throughout the year. So although I am assigning a one through four grade on their, on their assignments, I am able to measure their progression throughout the year based on where they're scoring on their one through four scale. So much like the modern classrooms project, I am working towards the goal of progressing to mastery and needing the standards for my state as well as for my school. And that has been really helpful in shifting my mindset. In addition, I use a no zero policy. So the lowest a student can get as a 55. And that allows students to have more opportunity to pass throughout the school year. Zach Diamond 3:29 That would I imagine also the that would have an effect on students who maybe miss an assignment and don't want to have their GPA completely tanked by getting a zero on something. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 3:39 Yes, for sure. I was familiar, I would say with what mastery grading was, but I wasn't actually doing it. So I think I was going through the motions or trying to do it without fully being educated or reading or knowing enough when I first started teaching, which is every when you first start teaching, everything is overwhelming. And as I continued on, I was losing my students who struggled academically and struggled to keep pace in a traditional classroom. And at that fourth quarter end of year, many of my students did the math and realize like I can't pass this class anyways, what is the point of being inherently more I'm gonna have to take it in school or I'm gonna have to do it next year, like what's the point in me actually participating anymore? And that is so disheartening as a teacher, and as a student, I wouldn't want to be somewhere where I know no matter what I do this quarter, it's not going to help me and during COVID That really got exemplified and We were able to really like break our thinking on how teaching had to be done since we were doing it from our kitchen tables. So I really think that that helps me to look more into mastery based learning. And my school created a committee, which I served on first standards based grading to read our materials, research it and start to implement it when we were back in person, that ball. Zach Diamond 5:25 Yeah, that's, you know, that story is obviously very sad. Yeah, I think that having currently reading on grading, it's a very good book on grading. And I think that what what that's making me think of right now is like, if that's happening, if the students are looking at the math, like you said, and saying, there's no reason for even for me to be here, like just how much their focus had shifted from learning to grades. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 5:58 It is difficult for students, especially in this when they've been in a traditional system to see those numbers, especially on a zero through 100 scale as anything more than numbers. And one, we're able to shift it towards like this is showing your growth, this is showing your progression towards mastery, they have a lot more buy in and you don't have to be motivated by grades, I was super motivated by grades as well. So that is a difficult shift when your students are like, well, what's the difference between the 67? And the 71? There's not a huge difference in that aspect. Zach Diamond 6:39 Yeah. And I think like, it's, it's, it's moving away from the numbers entirely, that helps students to see the value of the learning. But if those numbers are there, it it's just natural for them to become the focus. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 6:54 Yes, it is the natural progression to focus on those numbers. And that so often, as a teacher, when we see give our feedback before we give the grade, that is something that I'm always striving towards is to be able to give them feedback before they see their point grade. Yeah, Zach Diamond 7:14 yeah, definitely feedback needs to be first 100% Agreed. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 7:22 When my students first come to my classroom, and they don't get graded on their notes, or their practice assignments, they can't believe it. They're like, this isn't fair. I'm doing all of this work. And you're not giving me a grade. And we get to have those conversations. A lot of my students are athletes, many are performers, they love that aspect, or many of them are in drill teams. And I tell them, would you show up to game day without practicing? Zach Diamond 7:55 Right? Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 7:56 There are no I'm not going to do them this I'm going to fail. Or I'm going to lose my game. I love it. And I say well did the score and practice count is that on our record for the school year, and they always been their jaw drops, and they're like, miss, you're right, I should have done. They're like, oh, I need to do my videos, I need to do my practice assignment. And always, like halfway through the year, three quarters of the year, they'll be like, can I just have my mastery chat? And I'm like, okay, but do you think you're gonna pass it? Do you think without doing the video and the practice, you're really going to be able to do a good job demonstrating your understanding? And then they're always like, no, nevermind, I'm gonna go watch my video now. Zach Diamond 8:44 In a sense, those are the easy parts of the class. The practice lower stakes, the practice the guided notes, at least in my class, the guided notes are you just write a couple things down? And it's like, Wait, you're taking away the easy way to get grades. And I have to do the hard stuff now. And you're only grading the hard stuff? That's I don't know if that's true of your class. But certainly, that's how I'm interpreting it in terms of my own class. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 9:07 That is exactly correct. In my class, as well, is that Zach Diamond 9:11 okay, yeah Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 9:11 take I'm taking away the easy points for them. Right. Zach Diamond 9:15 And so it's like, what do you want out of this? You know, I don't my my goal here is not for you to get higher grades. My goal is for you to learn more, to analyze more. And so like, yeah, right, I am taking away the easy stuff, because the easy stuff isn't where you're being pushed. It's not where you're learning. It's just you copying by rote the things I write in my video, like, if I were grading you on that you get all A's all the time. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 9:41 Exactly. That is also to really powerful in our practice assignments is when I get to explain to students both practice and mastery checks, even though my mastery checks are graded, that this is the time to make your mistakes like this is where we're learning more practice. The same we're analyzing this is where in practice, you get to ask your peers or myself or my co teachers for how, and this is the time where we like practice and fail, I don't expect you to be perfect. And being able to shift that mindset as well is like this is meant to be an opportunity for you to practice without any stakes. Three is you've met the standard, and four is you've exceeded the standard, I always tell my students, you should live in three and visit four. Because they many of my students who have been in a traditional classroom, they're like, Well, I want 100 Miss, and I'm like, You're, that's not what it's about, like you're not there yet. You need to practice more, we need more attempts at mastery before you can demonstrate that you're exceeding the standard. And that goes over well, sometimes with my students. Other times, they really just want me to give them a perfect for and that's not gonna happen. Zach Diamond 10:59 Yeah, but that is such a great point, though. It's like, at what activity? Would you just expect to start out for the first time and do it perfectly? You know, I'm a musician, like, Can I pick up and oboe and just be perfect at it? No, of course not. I'm gonna be terrible. If I first pick up an oboe. I've never played an oboe before. Sorry, oboe players, but I chose to pick on you. Like, you know, students want this, like, I want to get 100. And it's like, but you've just started this. Kaitlyn McGillicuddy 11:29 Something that's really interesting that I wanted to add, is when we have opportunities to reflect, and we can look at those standards. And then I tell them, what lessons go with each standard. So I'm like, Oh, you see here, like you didn't get to that last part of the unit. And then that's the part on the test that you didn't perform at your ability on. So let's just redo those assignments, and then retake that part of the assessment. Yes, and it's so overwhelming as a student to get a test back and be like, okay, so I got a 75. Like, what do I do to improve. And when you're doing those standards, and you're linking your standards to your lessons each day, you can say, Okay, you need to go back and do lessons 1.1 1.2 1.3 check those out. Let's re look at those mastery checks, see how we did. And then let's retake the assessment, instead of looking at a whole unit that's overwhelming. I was actually speaking to a co worker about this today, when I was preparing for the podcast, I'm like, I don't know what my goal should be, like I'm working towards I'm a mentor coordinator this school year. So I'll be working with other professionals in my school. So I do want to share the model with them. And see some benefits of PE even pieces of it. Like I am a huge proponent of like mastery checks and rubrics, or PC tracker or different elements of it. So I love to share it with some new professionals. But also in my own classroom, I really want to conference more with my students. That's something that I'm always reaching towards, and it happens organically, but I would really like to plan for it. And my coworker really brought that out to me, she was like, that's something you talk about all the time. So that's what you should be working towards. And that was thank you for pointing that out to me. Zach Diamond 13:28 listeners. Remember, you can always email us at podcast at modern classrooms.org. And you can find the show notes for this episode on the web at podcast dot modern classrooms.org/ 155. Or in your podcast player if you're using a decent one. We'll have this episode's transcript uploaded on Friday, so be sure to check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. And thank you all for listening. Have a great week, and we will be back next Sunday. Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at WWW dot modern classrooms.org. And you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at Learn dot modern classrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modern class proj that's p r o j we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the modern classrooms project podcast.