PBA is not about grades One common misconception about proficiency-based learning (competency-based learning) is that it is about changing a grading system. In particular, when people discuss proficiency-based assessment, they immediately start discussing the one through four scales for measuring learning. The 1-4 scale of measuring achievement came from the creation of learning scales meant to help students understand where …
This year, I was very lucky to have the opportunity to teach entrepreneurship. I used the opportunity to experiment and reflect on proficiency-based assessment as it relates to project-based learning. The driving question for this semester long course was what businesses make the best Shark Tank pitches? This overarching idea was broken into four parts. I developed a learning scale …
This week, I worked with a student who will be piloting a gradeless transcript through mastery.org next year to organize her evidence-based assessments. It became very clear to me that this process is cumbersome and being thoughtful about how we organize the process might help to focus our efforts on the learning rather than the collection of evidence. There are …
If you are someone who thinks kids should just suck it up and do school because it’s just part of the process, you won’t want to read this post. I believe every kid deserves to have meaningful school experiences. I think that it is entirely possible that we have no clue what these kids are going to need to know …
What We Ignore About Learning I’m not sure why this is but it seems as if administrators and teachers forget all they know about learning when it comes to designing and participating in their own learning experiences. Professional development opportunities are generally set up as one time events, very often with no real-time relevance. In-service schedules are set up to …
In his recent book, Atomic Habit, James Clear digs into the idea of habits and how we make and break them. There were a few ideas that stuck out to me and are related to innovation coaching. Because teaching is so complex, it is easy for people to revert back to old and comfortable ways when things get busy, complicated, …
Creativity is such a fun disposition to develop. I never thought of myself as creative because I’m not terribly artistic and in my experience, most people go straight to art when you start talking about the topic. Creativity is about thinking flexibly. Many people think you are either born creative or you aren’t but there are many ways to learn …
Innovation, not achievement The focus of instructional coaching is to improve teaching practice and student achievement. The focus of innovation coaching is to foster the types of dispositions needed by teachers in today’s classrooms in order to prepare learners for an unpredictable future. The focus is on learning and growing rather than academic achievement and test scores. There is a …
Every day, I hear teachers and kids alike, complaining about the meaningfulness of school. Teachers complain that kids are not engaged. Kids complain that they are not engaged because their learning is not relevant. We can fight this tension. We can continue to argue that kids don’t know what they don’t know. We can argue that they can’t possibly do …
Back off… During the last day of class before Thanksgiving break, I handed out written feedback to my Entrepreneurship 1 students. The feedback specifically identified next steps based on a reflection they had written. I watched as several discussed their formal dance plans for the coming Friday. One played a game on his phone. Two other students were finishing up …