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Welcome to the Schools Out podcast with Michael Miles.
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Long time educators Mike Ditsenberger and Miles O’Shea discuss educational issues to
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provoke thought and encourage solutions.
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The potential of public education is limitless.
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We must work together to overcome obstacles to realize that potential and create new structures
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that work for everyone.
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The system is broken.
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Everyone deserves better.
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We can get there together.
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School is out.
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Now let’s get started.
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Hey, it’s Mike and Miles.
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My name is Mike Ditsenberger.
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Long time teacher, 14 years, short time principal.
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Love my job.
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Passionate about it.
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But think that we could talk about how we could possibly make some changes.
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Miles?
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And I’m Miles O’Shea, also a long time teacher, now principal as well.
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And Mike and I have had some great philosophical discussions over the years.
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I’d say so.
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And what we want to do is make this podcast about bringing those conversations to a larger
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audience and hopefully present problems that we know exist and also help everyone in finding
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solutions to them.
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Yeah, I’d say that some of the problems that we’ve had, they don’t apply just to
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that.
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I guess the solutions to the problems don’t necessarily apply just to teachers, to administrators.
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It’s a community issue.
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I think parents could definitely engage with the things that we talk about.
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Students definitely, teachers.
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A lot of people could engage with what we talk about.
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And one thing you taught me a long time ago, Mike, and what your focus is always is students
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first.
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And I think that’s probably what we’ll come back to always in this podcast is how do we
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improve the experience for students or learners, take all the other stuff and it’s secondary.
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And the learning and what happens to the students is always the most important thing to us in
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the conversations that we have or the solutions that we seek.
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I agree.
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I think when we, in the education world, when we use the term engagement as a buzzword,
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we forget that engagement really means students first.
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So that’s exactly what engagement means.
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Okay.
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So we can wrap up this first intro and we can go right into our first topic.
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The topics that we talk about, they’re maybe going to be a little edgy or maybe a little
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controversial, but that’s because we don’t just accept the status quo.
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We feel like there is something better out there and we want to work on getting to it.
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Yeah.
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So here we go.
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Our first topic right out the bat is all grades are fake.
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Mike, you say grades are fake.
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What do you mean by that?
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I was going to get right into it.
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You have to feed your family, don’t you?
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I do.
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So when you’re making a grilled cheese, right?
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Because grilled cheese is a good Sunday afternoon brunch or whatever you want to call it.
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On your scale, your percentage scale.
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All right.
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Let’s go from like 10% to 100%.
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How would you rate your grilled cheese?
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I mean, if you were to give yourself a grade on making grilled cheese, what would you say
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your grade is?
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Well, you know what I like to cook.
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I’m giving myself about 95.
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95?
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I mean, do your kids eat the grilled cheese?
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They eat it.
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Do they smile?
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They love it.
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Really?
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Not 100?
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Not 100.
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I can always do better.
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So I’m saying 95.
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All right.
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Well, I’ve had your grilled cheese.
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I’d give it an 80.
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Oh, you got a rubric for that?
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No, I don’t.
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I’m just, I say you have room to improve too.
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And I just think room for improve means 80, not 95.
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Did you ever have my grilled cheese?
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No.
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Room for growth, and that’s fake.
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The 80’s fake.
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The 80’s fake.
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The 95 is fake.
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The grilled cheese serves a function, does it not?
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Do you know how to make a grilled cheese?
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I do.
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There you go.
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And people eat it.
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And people eat it.
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It feeds my kids.
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And once in a while, they’re happy about it.
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They’re always happy about it.
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Who doesn’t like a grilled cheese?
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Let’s relate that to math really quick.
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I mean, math is something that everybody else can kind of conceptualize.
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So let’s talk about addition.
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Do you know how to add?
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I do.
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Yeah.
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So if you give a grade to a third grader on addition, so I mean, there’s so much room
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to talk about that.
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Are we going to just add single digits, double digits, triple digits?
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And then how do we assign a grade as to whether or not they do it?
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Do we give them 40 problems and they get so many right out of 40 and then we divide the
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top over the bottom and we give them a grade?
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You get five points for the grade, 10 points for the grade, 100 points for the grade?
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Right.
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I don’t know.
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But are we grading the concept or are we grading how many they got right?
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And is that the grade they get for the nine weeks?
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Because that’s fake.
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Right.
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Because do they know how to add?
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Sure they do.
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They showed it to you how many different times.
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Even on a 40 problem assignment, they showed it to you how many times.
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But no, we’re going to give them a grade for that.
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Right.
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And I think the reason why we came up with this idea or the phrase grades are fake, because
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we’ve experienced the fakeness of grades on a whole lot of different levels.
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We’re going to talk about that.
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But we see the damaging effects that those numbers can have on the whole of education.
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And I don’t think COVID did anything to help that out.
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And I think we were having conversations during COVID and we were watching what schools and
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students did with percentages and grades during that time.
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And we came up with that phrase, grades are fake during that time.
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And I watch schools say, we can’t assess anyone right now.
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And we can’t really teach you.
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So we’re going to give you either a hundred or an 80 or a failure.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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Which was interesting to me.
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I thought it was hilarious too because then where does the failure come from?
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Well, you didn’t log on enough times.
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Enough times for what?
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Right.
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So right there, it’s like, okay, let’s just be subjective about throwing grades around.
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And at the same time, we watch schools say, we can’t teach you right now or we can’t
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teach you the way that we did.
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Everyone passes.
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Yeah.
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Everyone passes with a hundred.
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So then for actually hundreds of years, the numbers that we put associated with assessment
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and learning became fake.
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And we took the veil off and we said, surprise, these have always been fake.
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We have always given you numbers very subjectively based on a lot of other things different than
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did you learn or didn’t you learn?
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Do I like you?
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Are you nice in class?
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Have you done what you were supposed to do?
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Have you been present?
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Not have you learned?
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Exactly.
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And we told everyone they’re really fake at that time.
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And then if you watch kids come back from COVID education and people do less for a number
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on a piece of paper, don’t ever ask why they’re doing less.
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Because we told them directly at that time, they’re fake.
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A lot of smart people already realized they were fake a long time before that.
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But that COVID situation really put a magnifying glass on them.
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Yep.
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I was just talking to my wife last night and I said to her, because I had to bring this
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topic back up to her.
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She did very well in school because that’s the kind of person she is.
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She’s the type of person that wants to do everything right for herself.
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She’s not all about doing it half ways.
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Everything is very meticulous to her.
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And I said, do you ever remember in high school where you were offered extra credit for something
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because you wanted to bump your grade?
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And she goes, yeah.
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I said, do you ever remember getting a 95 or something like that?
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Because I know her, she wants to 100 all the time because she’s very perfectionist like
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that.
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Do you ever remember getting a 95 and then being offered an opportunity to bump that
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up a little bit?
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She started turning red in the face.
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She started getting mad because then she started saying names.
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I remember when Corey got a 98 and I got a 95 and I knew the whole time during that lesson,
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I knew as much as him, I worked with him.
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We both did the exact same thing and I didn’t write a problem or I forget what it was.
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She made a typo or a clerical error on a quiz or whatnot and she got dinged a point for
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it and it brought her down and she’s like, no, I got the same exact thing and it was
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concept based and she was mad.
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It hit her hard.
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And I think everyone who’s gone through school and everyone has experiences very similar
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to that.
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And what we’re getting at here is that that number on a piece of paper, if you’re going
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to assign a number to someone, their grade on an assignment or their grade for a class,
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it should let everyone know this is what has been learned.
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And about 100% of the time, it is something different than that.
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What did you do when you took college classes?
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I’ll tell you what I did.
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I got the syllabus on the first day.
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I looked at the section where it told me how I was going to be graded.
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I looked at that and I determined exactly what I needed to do in that course to get
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whatever grade I wanted.
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I wanted it every time.
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I want 100% every time.
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But I looked at whatever that professor had laid out to get the grade.
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I didn’t open up that syllabus and say, what am I going to learn in this class?
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Absolutely.
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Never once thought of it.
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I opened up that syllabus and thought, what do I need to do to get the A?
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Yeah, I’d say my journey in college was a lot the same.
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I’ll say my graduate experience was much different than my undergraduate experience.
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My undergraduate experience was a lot like that.
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Look at the syllabus, determine the grade that I want and cut everything out that I
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didn’t want to do or didn’t need to focus on lectures and all those things.
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If I found out really quick that the lecture had nothing to do with the exam or the quiz
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or whatever it was that was giving me my grade, I cut that out because it was already teaching
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me, don’t learn this, learn the grade.
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So I focused on the grade and then for me it was kind of like the end justifies the
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means.
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Just get the grade.
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Right.
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And that’s something and we took a look at the history of grading and how we got to the
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system right now and that’s something that they were talking about as a concern with
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grades as early as 1846.
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And Horace Mann said, if we assess people this way, people are going to see that the
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number is important and not the learning and we shouldn’t do this.
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But like most things, we’re going to talk about an education even though almost everyone
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can see that whatever we do has problems with it and there are concerns about it, we’ll
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just keep doing it.
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Why do we keep doing it?
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Because it’s super easy.
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It’s easy and I guess inadvertently our system keeps encouraging this.
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How can we say that we’re being effective if we can’t give a number to somebody who’s
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doing something and show that they’re doing what we expect them to do?
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We’re not measuring growth per se, we’re just measuring outcome.
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So I think when we’re talking about grades are fake, we can dive into a little bit of
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how we got to where we are.
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And Mike, we did a little bit of research on how we got to this grading system right
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now which I think is interesting and we talk about questions or issues in education.
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I like to look at the history because when he talked to some people, it’s as if it’s
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just accepted that we have what we have because what we have and it’s just always been that
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way.
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But it’s kind of fun to look at the historical roots of that and look at where we are now
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based on decisions that were made in the past.
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So we asked, hey, how in the world did we get this A through F grading system in the
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first place?
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We found out that the first time that you can really see a grading system at all is from
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1785 and Yale Institute of the Grading System.
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And what they did was they wanted to create different levels that their students had achieved.
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And before that, if you can picture people going to university or college or whatever
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that is, students went to classes, they learned, and they moved on.
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And then in 1785, for some reason, Yale wanted to differentiate between the students who
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were the best in whatever class that was and the students who weren’t the best in whatever
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class that was.
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I love the word differentiate because to me it sounds like exclude.
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They wanted to separate the whatever, the top from the middle to the bottom.
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And yeah, prior to that, think about what they were doing.
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I mean, if I had something to teach and you didn’t know that, I’m going to teach it to
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you.
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I’m going to think, do you know it now?
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Okay, great, you do.
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Let’s move on.
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Oh, no, that’s not good enough.
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Now, how well do you know it?
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And do you know it better than someone else?
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Why is that important?
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Well, it was back then and we carried that forward to such a degree that we can break
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down by percentiles where you fit and how well you know something.
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But it’s gotten away from that.
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Now it’s not even about whether you know something.
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It’s more about how much did you do?
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How much effort did you put in?
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And does that make a huge difference?
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Well, that gets a little bit silly right away.
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Back when we were building America, it was, can you do this or can you not do this?
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I need to figure out your strengths and your desires.
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Now I need to figure out where you fit in society based on a number that you’re going
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to achieve and whether or not you’re going to do something and how well you’re going
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to do it.
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And what’s your motivation and do you accept responsibility and all those things?
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Those are all fine things, but now we’re putting a percentage on that.
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We’re putting a letter on that.
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We’re separating you into a category that could forever determine where you’ll be.
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Right.
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And we’re going to get into a little bit later how we think we can change that a little bit
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or maybe some places where it’s already been changed.
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But the first time we found that this A through F system that we currently have was employed
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in the 1940s in America.
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Just so happens, pretty big event was going on during that time.
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Getting ready for World War II or preparing people for World War II.
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I’ve always kind of thought it was funny that they skipped E in the grading system and went
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right to F.
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Just like we know none of these other letters corresponded with anything we could stick a
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word on, but F, that means failure.
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So we’re going to skip E.
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We’re going to go right to F and we’re going to call you a failure.
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Miles, no fake.
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I had E in my high school.
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Did that?
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00:14:53,960 –> 00:14:54,960
Yeah, we had E and F.
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What grade band or what percentage was it was E for?
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E was 50 and F was just no.
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You were below 50.
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00:15:01,680 –> 00:15:02,680
Yeah, you were below 50.
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You were way down there.
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Yeah, you’re way down there.
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That means you didn’t do anything.
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Okay.
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You had to try to get an F.
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All right.
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00:15:10,160 –> 00:15:17,280
Well, we know that IQ tests were used a lot during the lead up to World War II.
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And I think that if we looked at the historical system that was being used in high schools
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at the time where they implemented this A through F system for the same kind of reason,
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we can easily classify people.
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We can easily sort you out.
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You’re the best.
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You’re in the middle.
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You’re bad and you have failed and you are not fit for whatever we’re going to put you
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through during World War II.
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But that system, very militaristic in nature, very quick, still exists today.
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00:15:50,200 –> 00:15:54,880
And with this history, I don’t think I’ve shared this with you before, Mike, but I was
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going through a box of stuff in my dad’s attic a few years ago and I found a report
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00:16:00,640 –> 00:16:10,000
card from my grandmother and it was from 1939, her junior high report card.
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00:16:10,000 –> 00:16:17,440
And it looked almost exactly like report cards that go home with the students in my school
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today or that my kids bring home from school, almost exactly.
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There was a grid.
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They were handwritten.
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They were made by a computer.
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But they were letter grades associated with each class that my grandmother took in the
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1930s.
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00:16:31,960 –> 00:16:39,040
And it just struck me as I looked at that report card, how much has changed?
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How much more we can do as far as teaching and learning and technology and information?
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And still, the best we can do with assessing what’s been learned in a class or a classroom
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is one letter and a number on a piece of paper.
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Being almost a hundred years.
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Let me bounce off that for a second.
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00:17:04,240 –> 00:17:06,320
So interesting you said that.
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I remember a conversation I had with my dad one time and he was telling me because I don’t
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00:17:11,480 –> 00:17:16,640
know what our conversation led into, but he was telling me that when he went to school
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00:17:16,640 –> 00:17:22,680
rural northwest Pennsylvania and he said, I remember in high school, if you didn’t get
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00:17:22,680 –> 00:17:27,440
the endorsement of the guidance counselor on your report card, so they had handwritten
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00:17:27,440 –> 00:17:28,760
report cards.
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00:17:28,760 –> 00:17:31,280
He was born in 44.
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So you do the math and figure out where he was in high school.
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00:17:33,600 –> 00:17:39,880
But if you didn’t get the signed endorsement of a guidance counselor on your report card,
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you might as well kiss any opportunity of being in industry.
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Goodbye.
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Kiss and goodbye.
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So if the guidance counselor didn’t sign your report card, you were not going to be a tradesman.
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You had no chance of it.
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You were going to be something lower than a tradesman.
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And he said, we all knew that was the kiss of death.
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So imagine if the guidance counselor didn’t like you and he even said that he goes, you
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needed to be good with the guidance counselor because you needed that endorsement or it
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was over.
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So you didn’t need a college education to become a family man, to provide for your family.
354
00:18:14,880 –> 00:18:16,000
But what did you need?
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00:18:16,000 –> 00:18:20,120
You needed a report card with the endorsement of the guidance counselor in order to get
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00:18:20,120 –> 00:18:21,920
into like where he worked at Westinghouse.
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00:18:21,920 –> 00:18:28,920
That was the only way he was going to become a journeyman, a signature from a man who respected
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you or did not respect you.
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00:18:31,440 –> 00:18:36,240
And I think that story might prove the exact premise that we’re starting with and that
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we have in this episode.
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Grades are fake.
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00:18:39,760 –> 00:18:44,080
If grades weren’t fake, all you would need on the report card were the grades and the
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00:18:44,080 –> 00:18:45,080
numbers.
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00:18:45,080 –> 00:18:46,080
They were fake.
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00:18:46,080 –> 00:18:50,360
But that tells me that that school couldn’t just trust the grades.
366
00:18:50,360 –> 00:18:51,360
Exactly.
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00:18:51,360 –> 00:18:53,920
You had to have a final endorsement from another person.
368
00:18:53,920 –> 00:18:54,920
Why?
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00:18:54,920 –> 00:18:56,560
Why wouldn’t the grades be enough?
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00:18:56,560 –> 00:18:58,920
And we have that right now today.
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00:18:58,920 –> 00:19:02,120
Schools and universities, colleges don’t trust the grades.
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00:19:02,120 –> 00:19:05,520
Think of how many high schools exist in the United States of America.
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And what did the colleges and universities say?
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00:19:08,600 –> 00:19:11,000
We don’t know what those numbers mean on paper.
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00:19:11,000 –> 00:19:16,640
You could have one teacher on the East Coast given a number for this and a different teacher
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00:19:16,640 –> 00:19:22,360
on the West Coast given a completely different number for something that’s almost the exact
377
00:19:22,360 –> 00:19:23,360
same.
378
00:19:23,360 –> 00:19:24,360
Absolutely.
379
00:19:24,360 –> 00:19:25,360
What do we need?
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00:19:25,360 –> 00:19:28,400
A standardized test because grades are fake.
381
00:19:28,400 –> 00:19:32,960
We have to give you another test to see how you’re going to do in college because all
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00:19:32,960 –> 00:19:37,440
these kids that are coming to our schools and universities with all of their grades,
383
00:19:37,440 –> 00:19:41,520
those grades aren’t enough because people have such a wide variety of grades.
384
00:19:41,520 –> 00:19:44,720
And that in itself is a laughable joke because think of this.
385
00:19:44,720 –> 00:19:47,840
What if I’m in third grade and can take the boards right now?
386
00:19:47,840 –> 00:19:48,840
Right.
387
00:19:48,840 –> 00:19:49,840
No, no, no.
388
00:19:49,840 –> 00:19:50,840
You can’t take the boards right now.
389
00:19:50,840 –> 00:19:54,800
You have to go to a bona fide institution and get the grades and then take the test.
390
00:19:54,800 –> 00:19:58,400
You can’t take the test first without the bona fide institution.
391
00:19:58,400 –> 00:20:02,440
Which I think is like the funniest thing of all actually.
392
00:20:02,440 –> 00:20:04,400
Like that idea is so funny.
393
00:20:04,400 –> 00:20:07,280
Like think about the boards then.
394
00:20:07,280 –> 00:20:08,280
Okay.
395
00:20:08,280 –> 00:20:10,480
Why does the bar exam exist?
396
00:20:10,480 –> 00:20:14,480
I’m sure that every law school in the country, not that I’m a lawyer, not that I’ve gone
397
00:20:14,480 –> 00:20:18,520
to law school, has accreditation.
398
00:20:18,520 –> 00:20:21,200
They have to be accredited as a law school.
399
00:20:21,200 –> 00:20:26,640
It’s not good enough to become a lawyer in any state that you just graduated from law
400
00:20:26,640 –> 00:20:27,640
school.
401
00:20:27,640 –> 00:20:30,040
You also have to take this test.
402
00:20:30,040 –> 00:20:33,440
Once you pass this test, then you can become a lawyer.
403
00:20:33,440 –> 00:20:37,800
You can’t take the test unless you’ve gone to an accredited law school.
404
00:20:37,800 –> 00:20:43,480
Why wouldn’t it just be if you can pass the bar exam, you can be a lawyer?
405
00:20:43,480 –> 00:20:45,560
It’s very, very strange to me.
406
00:20:45,560 –> 00:20:47,920
It’s like any of those other things.
407
00:20:47,920 –> 00:20:52,600
This is the test you have to pass that proves you know everything that you need to know
408
00:20:52,600 –> 00:20:54,880
to become a lawyer.
409
00:20:54,880 –> 00:20:57,920
But you can’t take it unless you do this program.
410
00:20:57,920 –> 00:20:59,760
The program’s not good enough.
411
00:20:59,760 –> 00:21:01,480
The test isn’t good enough.
412
00:21:01,480 –> 00:21:02,480
You need both.
413
00:21:02,480 –> 00:21:03,480
Why?
414
00:21:03,480 –> 00:21:04,480
It’s fake.
415
00:21:04,480 –> 00:21:05,480
It is fake.
416
00:21:05,480 –> 00:21:07,160
Let me tell you how fake it is on the way here.
417
00:21:07,160 –> 00:21:10,320
So I’m driving here and I’m thinking of a story when I was teaching.
418
00:21:10,320 –> 00:21:14,560
So it was a few years ago and Duncan, if you’re listening to this, if you ever listen to this,
419
00:21:14,560 –> 00:21:17,720
you’re going to smile because you’re going to be like, how do you remember this conversation?
420
00:21:17,720 –> 00:21:19,320
Well, there’s things I do remember.
421
00:21:19,320 –> 00:21:21,160
We should send this to Duncan.
422
00:21:21,160 –> 00:21:22,160
We should.
423
00:21:22,160 –> 00:21:23,160
We should.
424
00:21:23,160 –> 00:21:24,680
So I was having a conversation with Duncan.
425
00:21:24,680 –> 00:21:25,680
He’s in my Spanish class.
426
00:21:25,680 –> 00:21:28,800
I’m like, Duncan, man, you can do so much better than this.
427
00:21:28,800 –> 00:21:30,160
And he’s like, he shrugged his shoulders.
428
00:21:30,160 –> 00:21:32,680
He’s like, I just don’t feel, I don’t want to.
429
00:21:32,680 –> 00:21:34,160
I’m like, come on, man, you got more.
430
00:21:34,160 –> 00:21:35,520
You can do this, man.
431
00:21:35,520 –> 00:21:37,080
Don’t just settle with this.
432
00:21:37,080 –> 00:21:38,280
And this was what I was young.
433
00:21:38,280 –> 00:21:39,280
You know, I’m learning.
434
00:21:39,280 –> 00:21:42,000
I’m growing my trade and everything like that.
435
00:21:42,000 –> 00:21:44,680
Duncan looks at me and he, I mean, he hit me hard.
436
00:21:44,680 –> 00:21:45,680
I’ll never forget this.
437
00:21:45,680 –> 00:21:50,040
He goes, listen, Mr. D, you guys, you know my dad’s a lawyer, right?
438
00:21:50,040 –> 00:21:51,040
I’m like, yeah.
439
00:21:51,040 –> 00:21:52,720
I mean, his name’s in town.
440
00:21:52,720 –> 00:21:53,720
I see it.
441
00:21:53,720 –> 00:21:58,440
He goes, my dad got C’s all through high school and all through law school.
442
00:21:58,440 –> 00:22:00,360
So, I mean, right.
443
00:22:00,360 –> 00:22:06,560
And that hit me hard because before that moment in time, I never thought of like lawyers getting
444
00:22:06,560 –> 00:22:12,080
C’s or even like doctors, lawyers, those top echelon professions that we’ve always considered
445
00:22:12,080 –> 00:22:16,880
top echelon professions, getting C’s and then occasionally D’s or whatever, they passed
446
00:22:16,880 –> 00:22:17,880
the bar.
447
00:22:17,880 –> 00:22:18,880
It was a desire.
448
00:22:18,880 –> 00:22:20,080
They didn’t want, they did what they wanted to do.
449
00:22:20,080 –> 00:22:23,840
They followed their own journey to get where they got, but they still got to that.
450
00:22:23,840 –> 00:22:24,840
Right.
451
00:22:24,840 –> 00:22:25,840
It was just fascinating to me.
452
00:22:25,840 –> 00:22:26,840
Right.
453
00:22:26,840 –> 00:22:31,840
And I think the idea of those tests, they exist for lawyers.
454
00:22:31,840 –> 00:22:34,040
They exist in a lot of other professions.
455
00:22:34,040 –> 00:22:35,720
They exist in education.
456
00:22:35,720 –> 00:22:39,000
The idea of those tests is really funny.
457
00:22:39,000 –> 00:22:44,800
Everyone works really hard to make sure this program, whatever it is, is on the up and up.
458
00:22:44,800 –> 00:22:50,880
And then these grades are on the up and up, but somewhere someone can’t trust that the
459
00:22:50,880 –> 00:22:55,320
program is on the up and up and the grades are on the up and up because then they have
460
00:22:55,320 –> 00:22:56,800
to have a test.
461
00:22:56,800 –> 00:23:01,200
Why do they have to create a test, a praxis test in the state of Pennsylvania and they
462
00:23:01,200 –> 00:23:06,000
exist in almost every other state now to be a certified teacher?
463
00:23:06,000 –> 00:23:08,480
Because that didn’t just happen.
464
00:23:08,480 –> 00:23:10,920
Someone just wake up and say, oh, I’m thinking I’m going to make this test.
465
00:23:10,920 –> 00:23:14,280
I mean, they benefit a lot of people financially and things like that.
466
00:23:14,280 –> 00:23:15,280
Sure.
467
00:23:15,280 –> 00:23:19,360
But people said, wait a second, all these kids are coming out of education programs.
468
00:23:19,360 –> 00:23:22,720
They all have A’s and B’s, but they’re not great teachers.
469
00:23:22,720 –> 00:23:26,840
I need to make a test to see if you can be a great teacher.
470
00:23:26,840 –> 00:23:29,200
The grades are fake.
471
00:23:29,200 –> 00:23:30,200
Yeah.
472
00:23:30,200 –> 00:23:31,520
But the test is fake too.
473
00:23:31,520 –> 00:23:32,520
Absolutely.
474
00:23:32,520 –> 00:23:33,520
That’s the problem.
475
00:23:33,520 –> 00:23:34,520
Yeah.
476
00:23:34,520 –> 00:23:36,960
And Duncan taught me such a valuable lesson at that moment of time.
477
00:23:36,960 –> 00:23:40,440
He’s like, Mr. D, don’t get Ben at me because I don’t feel like doing your homework.
478
00:23:40,440 –> 00:23:41,440
Right.
479
00:23:41,440 –> 00:23:44,200
And Duncan already knew about the game education.
480
00:23:44,200 –> 00:23:45,200
Absolutely.
481
00:23:45,200 –> 00:23:47,200
He had it figured out as a tenth grader.
482
00:23:47,200 –> 00:23:48,200
Absolutely.
483
00:23:48,200 –> 00:23:52,400
I don’t want to offend any institutions out there, so I’m not going to mention any
484
00:23:52,400 –> 00:23:58,400
institutions, but like, should we all wear a pin that represents the level of learning
485
00:23:58,400 –> 00:24:00,320
or effort that we put into our education?
486
00:24:00,320 –> 00:24:02,440
I tell you an interesting one here too.
487
00:24:02,440 –> 00:24:06,840
So I reference my wife every now and again because she’s fascinating to me and how she
488
00:24:06,840 –> 00:24:08,900
learns things.
489
00:24:08,900 –> 00:24:15,880
So she graduated top of her class, top of her life, valedictorian in high school.
490
00:24:15,880 –> 00:24:16,880
Okay.
491
00:24:16,880 –> 00:24:17,960
Well, that was a shared role.
492
00:24:17,960 –> 00:24:20,640
There was three valedictorians that year.
493
00:24:20,640 –> 00:24:24,560
So again, I’m treading some thin ice right here because if people listen to this, they’re
494
00:24:24,560 –> 00:24:28,160
going to be like, okay, I see where you’re going with this, Mike.
495
00:24:28,160 –> 00:24:33,840
So she always, she’s very adamant about how she got valedictorian.
496
00:24:33,840 –> 00:24:36,880
Of course, she had a grade point average of 4.0.
497
00:24:36,880 –> 00:24:43,360
We didn’t have weighted grades where we went to high school, but not only did the grades
498
00:24:43,360 –> 00:24:48,840
stigmatize like being valedictorian over everyone else and getting a pin or whatever
499
00:24:48,840 –> 00:24:54,480
you want to call it for her achievement, but the other two valedictorians had something
500
00:24:54,480 –> 00:24:57,000
on her that she didn’t have.
501
00:24:57,000 –> 00:25:00,920
And she still to this day, she is very cautious in talking about it.
502
00:25:00,920 –> 00:25:06,040
She doesn’t like it because in third grade, she took some kind of assessment, some kind
503
00:25:06,040 –> 00:25:13,480
of written exam or whatnot, and it put her in a track for math and it put her in a lower
504
00:25:13,480 –> 00:25:14,640
track.
505
00:25:14,640 –> 00:25:20,080
So by the time we went to high school and you were attracting this, this whatever path
506
00:25:20,080 –> 00:25:25,720
for, for math, she did not get to take calculus as a senior.
507
00:25:25,720 –> 00:25:26,720
Okay.
508
00:25:26,720 –> 00:25:28,640
Cause that was the track that the smart kids went in.
509
00:25:28,640 –> 00:25:32,560
So the two other valedictorians, they were tracked in third grade, were able to take
510
00:25:32,560 –> 00:25:35,440
calculus and I think, I think it was third grade.
511
00:25:35,440 –> 00:25:36,600
Don’t, don’t quote me on that.
512
00:25:36,600 –> 00:25:37,600
I could be wrong.
513
00:25:37,600 –> 00:25:39,920
There could be people like vet in this and say, you’re wrong about that.
514
00:25:39,920 –> 00:25:43,240
The point is she did not get to take calculus as a senior.
515
00:25:43,240 –> 00:25:46,520
She only got to take pre-calculus.
516
00:25:46,520 –> 00:25:47,520
Guess what?
517
00:25:47,520 –> 00:25:49,800
She got a 4.0 just like they did.
518
00:25:49,800 –> 00:25:56,680
And there was a comment made, you’re not the same valedictorian as the other two.
519
00:25:56,680 –> 00:26:00,800
Did they have like a different color tassel or something like that?
520
00:26:00,800 –> 00:26:02,400
You think she ever forgot that?
521
00:26:02,400 –> 00:26:03,400
No.
522
00:26:03,400 –> 00:26:06,720
So she had to be pigeonholed for being valedictorian.
523
00:26:06,720 –> 00:26:07,720
Right.
524
00:26:07,720 –> 00:26:11,080
Like, come on.
525
00:26:11,080 –> 00:26:12,080
Come on.
526
00:26:12,080 –> 00:26:16,440
So you’re talking about the competition that exists in education because of grades and
527
00:26:16,440 –> 00:26:18,440
because of the system that we have.
528
00:26:18,440 –> 00:26:23,680
We’re still talking about what is the problem, but we’ve identified a bunch of factors that
529
00:26:23,680 –> 00:26:25,680
make it a problem.
530
00:26:25,680 –> 00:26:27,360
Competition is definitely one.
531
00:26:27,360 –> 00:26:32,120
And we’re going to move on in a second, but in our research on the history of this problem,
532
00:26:32,120 –> 00:26:36,440
we also found a quote from Horace Mann 1846.
533
00:26:36,440 –> 00:26:42,400
And these are his words as to incur moral hazards and delinquencies.
534
00:26:42,400 –> 00:26:49,400
He was worried that if people put more emphasis on the grade and less on the learning, that
535
00:26:49,400 –> 00:26:53,680
there would be competition and that that competition would ruin the learning.
536
00:26:53,680 –> 00:26:57,280
I don’t think there’s anyone that’s been through school that can’t see the ways that
537
00:26:57,280 –> 00:27:02,760
competition within a classroom or within a school damages the learning.
538
00:27:02,760 –> 00:27:07,400
You see movements across the country and high schools to get rid of valedictorians and things
539
00:27:07,400 –> 00:27:08,560
like that.
540
00:27:08,560 –> 00:27:11,640
But all of those structures still exist.
541
00:27:11,640 –> 00:27:13,360
People still grade on the curve.
542
00:27:13,360 –> 00:27:18,000
People still know in any classroom, this person has the best grades.
543
00:27:18,000 –> 00:27:21,000
This person has the lower grades.
544
00:27:21,000 –> 00:27:25,360
And if you think about the true nature of what we’re trying to do, think about what school
545
00:27:25,360 –> 00:27:28,760
was like at Yale or any of those other places.
546
00:27:28,760 –> 00:27:30,080
I’ll never go close to Yale.
547
00:27:30,080 –> 00:27:31,080
I know that.
548
00:27:31,080 –> 00:27:41,480
In 1875, a group of people going to a place to learn and get better together.
549
00:27:41,480 –> 00:27:46,120
An idea that I always like to talk about is that all learning is social.
550
00:27:46,120 –> 00:27:51,800
And we know through research that people learn best from their peers.
551
00:27:51,800 –> 00:27:57,880
And the reason why online education fails a lot is because there are no people to learn
552
00:27:57,880 –> 00:27:58,880
from.
553
00:27:58,880 –> 00:28:01,560
You have information and you have you.
554
00:28:01,560 –> 00:28:06,120
And the idea that all learning is social, even like this conversation right now, we’re
555
00:28:06,120 –> 00:28:11,200
learning a ton just from this conversation because we’re bouncing ideas back and forth
556
00:28:11,200 –> 00:28:12,760
between the two of us.
557
00:28:12,760 –> 00:28:17,880
If we could open this conversation up to eight or 10 people, we’d learn exponentially more
558
00:28:17,880 –> 00:28:20,680
because of the ideas that exist together.
559
00:28:20,680 –> 00:28:27,840
That social nature of learning is damaged every time you introduce elements of competition
560
00:28:27,840 –> 00:28:30,200
into whatever system you have.
561
00:28:30,200 –> 00:28:36,320
Not that we’re going to learn this or accomplish this together, but instead that I’m going
562
00:28:36,320 –> 00:28:42,560
to assess this group and see who’s the best and see who’s the worst.
563
00:28:42,560 –> 00:28:47,440
If we can move away from this idea that I’m just going to throw this information out.
564
00:28:47,440 –> 00:28:49,080
We’ll see who’s really good at it.
565
00:28:49,080 –> 00:28:50,840
We’ll see who’s awful at it.
566
00:28:50,840 –> 00:28:57,720
Two, we’re going to learn this together or acquire this skill together.
567
00:28:57,720 –> 00:29:03,160
Then we get away from this idea of grades and definitely the concept that they’re fake
568
00:29:03,160 –> 00:29:04,960
and we get to something that’s better.
569
00:29:04,960 –> 00:29:05,960
Absolutely.
570
00:29:05,960 –> 00:29:07,240
What is learning?
571
00:29:07,240 –> 00:29:08,800
Learning to me is not competitive.
572
00:29:08,800 –> 00:29:13,440
It’s comparative, but not comparative to other people, comparative in time.
573
00:29:13,440 –> 00:29:16,320
What do I know now versus what will I know tomorrow?
574
00:29:16,320 –> 00:29:19,440
And if I can show a difference, I can show learning.
575
00:29:19,440 –> 00:29:22,080
That’s the idea behind true learning for me.
576
00:29:22,080 –> 00:29:28,040
Not necessarily do I know 88% now and 90% after I do a worksheet.
577
00:29:28,040 –> 00:29:29,040
Right.
578
00:29:29,040 –> 00:29:35,040
That idea, even though you’re talking about your wife, people I feel like a lot of people
579
00:29:35,040 –> 00:29:36,400
are competitive in nature.
580
00:29:36,400 –> 00:29:38,360
They want to do the best.
581
00:29:38,360 –> 00:29:40,080
We create the system.
582
00:29:40,080 –> 00:29:46,960
If we create a system where to this day your wife feels like she was not as good as other
583
00:29:46,960 –> 00:29:53,960
people because of this competitive aspect that we put into the system and that’s damaging
584
00:29:53,960 –> 00:29:55,360
in some way.
585
00:29:55,360 –> 00:29:56,760
But we create that.
586
00:29:56,760 –> 00:30:01,440
But instead, you want people to desire to do whatever you’re asking them to do.
587
00:30:01,440 –> 00:30:04,880
I want to do my best on everything I do, at least in this point in my life.
588
00:30:04,880 –> 00:30:10,080
If I see value in it, I want to be doing it as best as I possibly can.
589
00:30:10,080 –> 00:30:15,400
But it doesn’t have to be better than the other people around me to the point where
590
00:30:15,400 –> 00:30:18,520
I am damaging them to get ahead.
591
00:30:18,520 –> 00:30:20,880
And that’s what happens all the time in school too.
592
00:30:20,880 –> 00:30:21,880
Right.
593
00:30:21,880 –> 00:30:23,760
Or even damaging myself not to do something.
594
00:30:23,760 –> 00:30:27,920
I mean, you’re already creating a mindset of, well, I can’t do that because I’m not
595
00:30:27,920 –> 00:30:28,920
at that level.
596
00:30:28,920 –> 00:30:34,280
So you’re excluding people from something they may want to try and even fail at before
597
00:30:34,280 –> 00:30:37,480
they ever, ever get close to the concept itself.
598
00:30:37,480 –> 00:30:39,800
Well, I’m not smart enough to be a scientist.
599
00:30:39,800 –> 00:30:41,360
I’m not even going to try.
600
00:30:41,360 –> 00:30:42,360
Exactly.
601
00:30:42,360 –> 00:30:43,360
And who taught you that?
602
00:30:43,360 –> 00:30:44,360
We did.
603
00:30:44,360 –> 00:30:45,360
Right.
604
00:30:45,360 –> 00:30:48,440
So we’ve talked a lot about what the problem is.
605
00:30:48,440 –> 00:30:52,640
I think the next step in this podcast and what we’ll always do, talk about why it’s
606
00:30:52,640 –> 00:30:56,600
a problem and then how we think it could change or we could solve it.
607
00:30:56,600 –> 00:30:57,600
Yep.
608
00:30:57,600 –> 00:31:04,040
Let’s get back to a conversation that we had just a little while ago about getting what
609
00:31:04,040 –> 00:31:06,920
you want out of the system.
610
00:31:06,920 –> 00:31:12,680
So if you, let’s just, let’s assume that, that school is a game.
611
00:31:12,680 –> 00:31:13,680
Okay.
612
00:31:13,680 –> 00:31:18,880
So if I assume that school is a game, how do I get the most out of the game that I want?
613
00:31:18,880 –> 00:31:20,520
First I have to determine what do I want?
614
00:31:20,520 –> 00:31:22,880
What do I want out of this?
615
00:31:22,880 –> 00:31:25,560
And how is what I want?
616
00:31:25,560 –> 00:31:29,520
Has that been programmed into me by the game itself?
617
00:31:29,520 –> 00:31:32,080
Or have I been taught this or should somebody teach me this?
618
00:31:32,080 –> 00:31:34,600
I think that’s what we’ll get into a little bit later.
619
00:31:34,600 –> 00:31:35,600
So what do I want?
620
00:31:35,600 –> 00:31:41,000
If I want the grade, that’s something entirely different than I want to learn something from
621
00:31:41,000 –> 00:31:42,840
my experience here.
622
00:31:42,840 –> 00:31:45,880
So I think we were talking about a kid in class.
623
00:31:45,880 –> 00:31:52,800
If we have a kid in class and, you know, and smiles at me or, you know, is kind to me,
624
00:31:52,800 –> 00:31:57,640
maybe you know, to fulfill the analogy, brings me an apple and sets it on my desk.
625
00:31:57,640 –> 00:32:01,840
Do you think that kid is more apt to get a better grade than the kid who doesn’t smile
626
00:32:01,840 –> 00:32:06,960
at me, maybe doesn’t talk at all, maybe scowls, maybe does whatever?
627
00:32:06,960 –> 00:32:10,920
Do you think that the kid bringing me the apple is more apt to get a better grade than
628
00:32:10,920 –> 00:32:11,920
the other?
629
00:32:11,920 –> 00:32:12,920
It’s possible.
630
00:32:12,920 –> 00:32:13,920
I say it’s worth impossible.
631
00:32:13,920 –> 00:32:14,920
Absolutely.
632
00:32:14,920 –> 00:32:15,920
Right.
633
00:32:15,920 –> 00:32:19,240
I mean, think about that.
634
00:32:19,240 –> 00:32:23,240
I’ve got a kid in the back of the classroom, maybe in the front of the classroom.
635
00:32:23,240 –> 00:32:28,600
However you want to picture a kid in your head, it’s again, these are edgy conversations
636
00:32:28,600 –> 00:32:29,840
and they can be disturbing.
637
00:32:29,840 –> 00:32:34,640
But imagine a kid who’s clean cut and comes up to me and says, hi, Mr. D. How was your
638
00:32:34,640 –> 00:32:35,640
day?
639
00:32:35,640 –> 00:32:37,520
You know, and I’m thinking, oh my gosh, this kid is so kind.
640
00:32:37,520 –> 00:32:43,480
I’ve automatically bumped that kid up a level in my head and said, okay, I see what’s going
641
00:32:43,480 –> 00:32:45,880
on here versus the kid who walks right past me.
642
00:32:45,880 –> 00:32:46,880
I’m having a bad day.
643
00:32:46,880 –> 00:32:48,080
I don’t feel like saying hi to you.
644
00:32:48,080 –> 00:32:51,480
I’ve never been taught to address my elders or whatever you want to call it.
645
00:32:51,480 –> 00:32:57,080
And somewhere in my head, I’m like, oh, I’m scowling now at myself at this kid.
646
00:32:57,080 –> 00:33:03,720
I’m probably going to do less for that child than for the first one as far as I’ll help
647
00:33:03,720 –> 00:33:04,720
him out.
648
00:33:04,720 –> 00:33:11,440
And I think you’re talking about a little of this idea, Mike, of unconscious bias.
649
00:33:11,440 –> 00:33:17,080
And we’ve been there in different aspects of education or how we look at people.
650
00:33:17,080 –> 00:33:22,680
But if there is unconscious bias and we know that that does exist and we have a subjective
651
00:33:22,680 –> 00:33:29,720
system of grading and assigning numbers and letters to hopefully what has been learned,
652
00:33:29,720 –> 00:33:35,560
we then know that the teacher can always manipulate that grade.
653
00:33:35,560 –> 00:33:37,060
Let’s be honest.
654
00:33:37,060 –> 00:33:38,060
You’re a teacher.
655
00:33:38,060 –> 00:33:39,580
You open up your grade book.
656
00:33:39,580 –> 00:33:43,080
You can manipulate grades on a daily basis.
657
00:33:43,080 –> 00:33:44,080
Yes.
658
00:33:44,080 –> 00:33:49,200
And we haven’t even talked about the difference between in whatever system you’re in.
659
00:33:49,200 –> 00:33:56,240
If 90 is an A, the difference between an 89 and a 90 or the difference between a 69 and
660
00:33:56,240 –> 00:34:03,160
a 70 or go all the way down to that failure rate and say that 60 is a pass and you move
661
00:34:03,160 –> 00:34:11,760
on and 59 is not, the difference between one percentage point in an entire course or the
662
00:34:11,760 –> 00:34:19,200
scope of someone’s entire education and what a teacher can do to manipulate that one number.
663
00:34:19,200 –> 00:34:22,360
I think we’ve already kind of proven that grades are fake.
664
00:34:22,360 –> 00:34:27,680
And if they’re fake, who’s faking them and then what does that do to the people on the
665
00:34:27,680 –> 00:34:29,080
other end of them?
666
00:34:29,080 –> 00:34:30,080
Absolutely.
667
00:34:30,080 –> 00:34:35,160
I’ve seen their fake in my own grading as a teacher.
668
00:34:35,160 –> 00:34:41,900
Hopefully I did my best to make them represent what was learned in a class.
669
00:34:41,900 –> 00:34:47,080
But I know that early on in my teaching career and even in the middle of that, always had
670
00:34:47,080 –> 00:34:49,800
direct control of what those numbers said.
671
00:34:49,800 –> 00:34:53,880
But I’m going to tell you something to be very, very honest.
672
00:34:53,880 –> 00:34:58,280
My goal was to always have my students have all A’s.
673
00:34:58,280 –> 00:35:02,120
I’m going to tell you something funny that happened to me in my teaching career.
674
00:35:02,120 –> 00:35:08,400
I started teaching courses that at the high school where I was teaching, the courses were
675
00:35:08,400 –> 00:35:17,080
ranked and certain classes, students could take a course and if they got an A grade point
676
00:35:17,080 –> 00:35:21,360
average, why is that equals a 6.0 on a scale?
677
00:35:21,360 –> 00:35:22,360
Right.
678
00:35:22,360 –> 00:35:26,640
Then some classes were given a rank of this is a little less important.
679
00:35:26,640 –> 00:35:33,320
They get a 5.0 if they get an A. Then this class is a little less important or a little
680
00:35:33,320 –> 00:35:39,120
less rigorous and those students get a 4.0 if they get an A. Don’t even want to delve
681
00:35:39,120 –> 00:35:43,240
into the fakeness of that system, but I just want to explain that for the point of this
682
00:35:43,240 –> 00:35:44,240
story.
683
00:35:44,240 –> 00:35:49,280
I started teaching A equals 5.0 classes.
684
00:35:49,280 –> 00:35:57,040
The end of that year, the majority of the students that I had in that class had an A.
685
00:35:57,040 –> 00:36:02,840
Principal came to me and said, how could these students all have A’s?
686
00:36:02,840 –> 00:36:06,840
My response was they all did what I asked them to do.
687
00:36:06,840 –> 00:36:10,040
It was a product driven class.
688
00:36:10,040 –> 00:36:13,400
I had a product that I wanted to do.
689
00:36:13,400 –> 00:36:14,920
They all did it.
690
00:36:14,920 –> 00:36:19,600
They did exactly what I asked them to do and they all had A’s.
691
00:36:19,600 –> 00:36:22,280
He said, I’m dropping that class to a 4.0.
692
00:36:22,280 –> 00:36:31,120
It took me back, but it just illustrates the fact that grades are fake because that person
693
00:36:31,120 –> 00:36:36,320
couldn’t accept the fact that everyone in my class could have an A. It could no longer
694
00:36:36,320 –> 00:36:37,320
equal a 5.
695
00:36:37,320 –> 00:36:39,520
It couldn’t be that important to be a 5.
696
00:36:39,520 –> 00:36:41,400
It could never be a 6.
697
00:36:41,400 –> 00:36:45,200
But it had to be a 4 because he knew from that point forward I was going to give most
698
00:36:45,200 –> 00:36:46,520
of my kids A’s.
699
00:36:46,520 –> 00:36:50,880
I knew that I was going to give most of my kids A’s before going into that class, not
700
00:36:50,880 –> 00:36:55,360
because I was going to hand out grades, but because I knew I was going to get them to
701
00:36:55,360 –> 00:36:59,960
the point that they were going to do everything I expected them to do and they were going
702
00:36:59,960 –> 00:37:02,600
to create this product that I wanted them to do.
703
00:37:02,600 –> 00:37:06,160
All teachers should want every single kid to have an A every time.
704
00:37:06,160 –> 00:37:10,120
We shouldn’t have some A, some B, some C, some D’s and F’s.
705
00:37:10,120 –> 00:37:11,520
Most everyone thinks that.
706
00:37:11,520 –> 00:37:13,880
We’ve talked about this bell-shamed curve.
707
00:37:13,880 –> 00:37:22,520
We know it exists, you know, everything, but the curve should end at A. The curve should
708
00:37:22,520 –> 00:37:24,680
end at 100%.
709
00:37:24,680 –> 00:37:26,480
It should be one grade.
710
00:37:26,480 –> 00:37:32,480
You get 100 because I’m going to get you to do what it’s my job to get you to do.
711
00:37:32,480 –> 00:37:37,960
The other way of looking at it is I’m assessing where you are on this scale.
712
00:37:37,960 –> 00:37:44,120
And why does it always come to be that everyone comes out the way they came in?
713
00:37:44,120 –> 00:37:45,120
Exactly.
714
00:37:45,120 –> 00:37:48,960
We don’t ever have someone who we expected to get a 60, get a 100.
715
00:37:48,960 –> 00:37:50,040
You can predict.
716
00:37:50,040 –> 00:37:51,400
They have software programs.
717
00:37:51,400 –> 00:37:57,400
The state of Pennsylvania will tell you this is how this kid’s going to do this year.
718
00:37:57,400 –> 00:38:01,440
Let’s talk about, you know, a full disclosure to anybody who might listen to this.
719
00:38:01,440 –> 00:38:08,240
I worked in that same district, both as a teacher and as an administrator, and as an
720
00:38:08,240 –> 00:38:12,000
administrator I found out a hard lesson really quick too.
721
00:38:12,000 –> 00:38:16,440
When they dropped your course from A equals five to an A equals four, what did that do
722
00:38:16,440 –> 00:38:18,200
to your enrollment?
723
00:38:18,200 –> 00:38:25,640
So you’re then not going to get the best, highest achieving students in your school
724
00:38:25,640 –> 00:38:27,440
because of the competition.
725
00:38:27,440 –> 00:38:32,960
If those students see that your course is an A equal four, they can’t take it if they
726
00:38:32,960 –> 00:38:34,800
want to have a good class rank.
727
00:38:34,800 –> 00:38:35,800
Absolutely.
728
00:38:35,800 –> 00:38:39,720
And how many of those kids that you think didn’t take your course because of the weight
729
00:38:39,720 –> 00:38:43,440
deficit that they would have faced were interested in what you had to offer?
730
00:38:43,440 –> 00:38:45,440
Probably 100% of them.
731
00:38:45,440 –> 00:38:46,440
Absolutely.
732
00:38:46,440 –> 00:38:51,000
And they would come to me and you know that they would go to other teachers too and say,
733
00:38:51,000 –> 00:38:56,000
I can’t take your class because it’ll negatively impact my GPA.
734
00:38:56,000 –> 00:38:57,000
Absolutely.
735
00:38:57,000 –> 00:39:00,560
And they already had it charted out before they ever entered high school, the courses
736
00:39:00,560 –> 00:39:06,720
that they had to take to have a chance to be valedictorian or the top 10% or whatever
737
00:39:06,720 –> 00:39:07,720
that was.
738
00:39:07,720 –> 00:39:12,720
And those kids would come into my office and say, my goal is to be in this percentile
739
00:39:12,720 –> 00:39:14,360
before I graduate.
740
00:39:14,360 –> 00:39:19,440
I want to rearrange my schedule and I put my hands on my head and I’m going, what is
741
00:39:19,440 –> 00:39:21,520
going on here?
742
00:39:21,520 –> 00:39:26,000
You are dropping classes you are clearly interested in because they aren’t weighted appropriately
743
00:39:26,000 –> 00:39:27,000
for you.
744
00:39:27,000 –> 00:39:28,960
And do you know what we did as administrators?
745
00:39:28,960 –> 00:39:34,400
We had enrollment so low in some of those electives.
746
00:39:34,400 –> 00:39:36,040
This is ridiculous.
747
00:39:36,040 –> 00:39:37,840
We considered them unweighted.
748
00:39:37,840 –> 00:39:38,840
Right.
749
00:39:38,840 –> 00:39:40,880
We had to or else nobody would take them.
750
00:39:40,880 –> 00:39:41,880
Right.
751
00:39:41,880 –> 00:39:43,800
And that’s what happened to my classes then.
752
00:39:43,800 –> 00:39:47,680
Some of those classes at the top or whatever and it does not super important, but this
753
00:39:47,680 –> 00:39:52,000
could happen to anybody in some crazy high school that employs a system like this, but
754
00:39:52,000 –> 00:39:56,080
all what we are talking about, the game of education, you are teaching an unweighted class
755
00:39:56,080 –> 00:39:57,280
in a high school.
756
00:39:57,280 –> 00:39:58,280
Okay.
757
00:39:58,280 –> 00:39:59,600
You know what that really means?
758
00:39:59,600 –> 00:40:03,000
The grade means nothing.
759
00:40:03,000 –> 00:40:04,000
Absolutely nothing.
760
00:40:04,000 –> 00:40:06,160
Which helped me so much as a teacher.
761
00:40:06,160 –> 00:40:07,480
Yep.
762
00:40:07,480 –> 00:40:12,280
Because the kids coming in, a lot of times then we are high achieving students in other
763
00:40:12,280 –> 00:40:17,800
classes, but I could tell them on the first day, this class isn’t about your grade.
764
00:40:17,800 –> 00:40:19,640
It’s about what we will do.
765
00:40:19,640 –> 00:40:24,400
Like every class should be, but every single day I could deemphasize the importance of
766
00:40:24,400 –> 00:40:25,800
the grade.
767
00:40:25,800 –> 00:40:28,000
What do I need to do to get this grade?
768
00:40:28,000 –> 00:40:32,120
And instead make it, this is what we are going to do together.
769
00:40:32,120 –> 00:40:35,400
And how did you see that impacting students?
770
00:40:35,400 –> 00:40:39,600
Students I bet you in your classes because they did it in my class, it was sadding to
771
00:40:39,600 –> 00:40:44,720
me for a long time, but I bet you students in your class had a hard time accepting the
772
00:40:44,720 –> 00:40:49,360
change that you were putting in front of them because they came into your class immediately
773
00:40:49,360 –> 00:40:52,160
saying what do I got to do to get the grade?
774
00:40:52,160 –> 00:40:55,040
They were coming into my class saying can you just give me the worksheet?
775
00:40:55,040 –> 00:40:56,040
Right.
776
00:40:56,040 –> 00:40:57,040
Just give me the worksheet.
777
00:40:57,040 –> 00:40:58,160
I want the grade, that’s all I want.
778
00:40:58,160 –> 00:41:00,920
I don’t want to hear you, I don’t want to hear what you have to offer.
779
00:41:00,920 –> 00:41:04,200
You might have something that you know that I don’t care.
780
00:41:04,200 –> 00:41:05,520
I just want the worksheet.
781
00:41:05,520 –> 00:41:08,040
I’ll figure it out, turn it in, get the grade.
782
00:41:08,040 –> 00:41:09,040
Right.
783
00:41:09,040 –> 00:41:11,360
And you want to do another funny experiment?
784
00:41:11,360 –> 00:41:14,000
And I did this a lot when I was teaching different classes.
785
00:41:14,000 –> 00:41:15,680
Someone come to you.
786
00:41:15,680 –> 00:41:17,600
Mr. O’Shea.
787
00:41:17,600 –> 00:41:19,400
I have an 89.
788
00:41:19,400 –> 00:41:21,560
I should have had a hundred on this.
789
00:41:21,560 –> 00:41:24,680
Okay, just write down on this piece of paper whatever you think you should have.
790
00:41:24,680 –> 00:41:25,680
Yep.
791
00:41:25,680 –> 00:41:27,320
Well, wait a second, why are you doing that?
792
00:41:27,320 –> 00:41:32,120
Because you’re already telling me that my assessment of this isn’t important to you.
793
00:41:32,120 –> 00:41:34,080
You tell me whatever number you want.
794
00:41:34,080 –> 00:41:39,280
I’m telling you already, this is what I gave you, but I’m also telling you that number
795
00:41:39,280 –> 00:41:40,560
isn’t most important.
796
00:41:40,560 –> 00:41:43,240
What you did in the class and what you learned is most important.
797
00:41:43,240 –> 00:41:46,000
Put whatever funny number you want on the paper, I’ll put it on this paper, we can all
798
00:41:46,000 –> 00:41:47,920
play the game together and move on.
799
00:41:47,920 –> 00:41:48,920
Absolutely.
800
00:41:48,920 –> 00:41:50,560
I used to call it something different in my classes.
801
00:41:50,560 –> 00:41:55,240
I’d open it up and I’d say, anybody open for great negotiations?
802
00:41:55,240 –> 00:41:58,440
And I did it all the time.
803
00:41:58,440 –> 00:42:02,360
Because if my assessment of what you did in this class doesn’t match your assessment of
804
00:42:02,360 –> 00:42:05,480
what you did in this class, we better meet somewhere.
805
00:42:05,480 –> 00:42:11,640
Because in my mind, your value of what you took from the class should equal my value of
806
00:42:11,640 –> 00:42:14,040
what I gave to you in the class.
807
00:42:14,040 –> 00:42:17,320
If we can’t meet somewhere in the middle, then it is fake.
808
00:42:17,320 –> 00:42:18,600
It is absolutely fake.
809
00:42:18,600 –> 00:42:21,480
You came here and I came here for two different reasons.
810
00:42:21,480 –> 00:42:24,520
I came here for a paycheck, you came here for a grade.
811
00:42:24,520 –> 00:42:26,120
That is so fake.
812
00:42:26,120 –> 00:42:28,280
That is so fake, it’s appalling.
813
00:42:28,280 –> 00:42:33,280
And you asked me a question, how long it took students that I had in those unweighted classes
814
00:42:33,280 –> 00:42:34,760
to get used to that?
815
00:42:34,760 –> 00:42:39,800
It probably took them at least nine weeks before they would even lighten up and start
816
00:42:39,800 –> 00:42:47,920
to create and do without fear or worry of a number or a letter grade.
817
00:42:47,920 –> 00:42:55,760
But you can get there as a teacher, but you’re operating within this whole system that everyone
818
00:42:55,760 –> 00:43:02,640
is telling that person this number and this letter is most important.
819
00:43:02,640 –> 00:43:08,240
And that’s the really hard thing to do, is to break free of that as a teacher, an administrator,
820
00:43:08,240 –> 00:43:10,400
a parent, whoever.
821
00:43:10,400 –> 00:43:13,400
You’re a parent, you want your students coming home, you want your kids coming home with
822
00:43:13,400 –> 00:43:14,920
good grades.
823
00:43:14,920 –> 00:43:16,160
For sure.
824
00:43:16,160 –> 00:43:18,920
If they’re not good, then you think something’s wrong.
825
00:43:18,920 –> 00:43:23,480
Or if you came to my open house and I was teaching and I stood up on the first day and
826
00:43:23,480 –> 00:43:28,440
said, hello parents, first thing I want you to know about my class is grades aren’t important.
827
00:43:28,440 –> 00:43:32,280
You’re going to think about a schedule change because you’re going to think this guy’s a
828
00:43:32,280 –> 00:43:36,880
little off and grades are important because of everything I know for my whole life.
829
00:43:36,880 –> 00:43:40,520
I want to know what grade my child’s going to get.
830
00:43:40,520 –> 00:43:43,560
First thing, how does every parent teacher conference start off with?
831
00:43:43,560 –> 00:43:45,480
These are your grades.
832
00:43:45,480 –> 00:43:48,960
And then all of a sudden someone is standing in front of me telling me these grades aren’t
833
00:43:48,960 –> 00:43:50,040
important.
834
00:43:50,040 –> 00:43:54,960
And that goes to a lot of things I think we talk about, that we’ll talk about, of challenging
835
00:43:54,960 –> 00:43:55,960
norms.
836
00:43:55,960 –> 00:44:01,000
And as soon as you challenge the norm, you’re floating in a place that a lot of people are
837
00:44:01,000 –> 00:44:02,000
very, very uncomfortable.
838
00:44:02,000 –> 00:44:03,000
Absolutely.
839
00:44:03,000 –> 00:44:04,440
I’m going to make them even more uncomfortable.
840
00:44:04,440 –> 00:44:07,240
I’m going to take your example and go on the other end of the spectrum.
841
00:44:07,240 –> 00:44:11,720
So walk into, for all the parents out there, walk into an open house right now and listen
842
00:44:11,720 –> 00:44:14,160
to the teacher go, okay, hi parents, how are you?
843
00:44:14,160 –> 00:44:16,200
Hey, I have 20 kids in this classroom.
844
00:44:16,200 –> 00:44:21,080
I’m just going to let you know first day of class, you know, 10% of the kids are going
845
00:44:21,080 –> 00:44:22,960
to get A’s, 10% of the kids are going to get F’s.
846
00:44:22,960 –> 00:44:28,800
I’m going to evenly distribute the rest of the grades among D and B.
847
00:44:28,800 –> 00:44:30,800
I don’t care what they learn.
848
00:44:30,800 –> 00:44:32,160
That’s how I’m grading.
849
00:44:32,160 –> 00:44:35,840
And does it become acceptable to do that at the college level or any other level?
850
00:44:35,840 –> 00:44:40,280
Heck, I’ve had high school teachers do that simple grading on a curve because we’re going
851
00:44:40,280 –> 00:44:41,680
to have a bell shaped curve.
852
00:44:41,680 –> 00:44:45,560
And like you said before, they’re going to leave the same way they came in, but that’s
853
00:44:45,560 –> 00:44:46,560
how it works.
854
00:44:46,560 –> 00:44:51,320
There’s going to be 10% A’s, there’s going to be 10% F’s and everywhere in between is
855
00:44:51,320 –> 00:44:52,840
everywhere in between.
856
00:44:52,840 –> 00:44:53,840
Fake.
857
00:44:53,840 –> 00:44:54,840
It’s fake.
858
00:44:54,840 –> 00:44:55,840
It’s fake.
859
00:44:55,840 –> 00:44:59,040
And you touched on something that’s even more fake, the concept of grading on the curve.
860
00:44:59,040 –> 00:45:01,240
Why would you have to grade on the curve in the first place?
861
00:45:01,240 –> 00:45:06,000
Go back to the idea that I said that I believe every teacher should have a goal of every
862
00:45:06,000 –> 00:45:09,920
single student in their class having an A. That’s your job to have those students do
863
00:45:09,920 –> 00:45:14,600
or learn whatever it is you’re tasked with teaching them.
864
00:45:14,600 –> 00:45:22,160
But the whole idea of a curve came about because the competition and someone hasn’t learned
865
00:45:22,160 –> 00:45:25,240
at the top what they should learn.
866
00:45:25,240 –> 00:45:29,680
So to make this look better, I can’t as a teacher have no one with A’s, but I gave
867
00:45:29,680 –> 00:45:33,440
a test and the highest grade was a 76.
868
00:45:33,440 –> 00:45:39,840
So I’m going to make that more fake arbitrarily, make that point the 100.
869
00:45:39,840 –> 00:45:43,640
And then I know I got to have the bell shaped curve because that makes me feel good.
870
00:45:43,640 –> 00:45:48,600
And I’ve got to assess everyone and have the 10% at the top and the 10% at the bottom
871
00:45:48,600 –> 00:45:51,200
and fill in the nice middle.
872
00:45:51,200 –> 00:45:59,640
And I just made it arbitrarily more fake instead of saying 76 was the best.
873
00:45:59,640 –> 00:46:05,600
There’s a lot that I have to reteach here because there’s a whole bunch that was not
874
00:46:05,600 –> 00:46:06,600
learned.
875
00:46:06,600 –> 00:46:08,240
Let’s play devil’s advocate for a second.
876
00:46:08,240 –> 00:46:12,640
Let’s go back to the concept of grading on the curve because if I’m devil’s advocate,
877
00:46:12,640 –> 00:46:16,400
maybe I’m that person in the community going, yeah, well, our system is designed for that.
878
00:46:16,400 –> 00:46:17,400
You know what?
879
00:46:17,400 –> 00:46:18,400
You need to do that.
880
00:46:18,400 –> 00:46:22,640
You need to grade on the curve because that’s what the SAT does because if too many people
881
00:46:22,640 –> 00:46:26,120
get a very high score in the SAT, what do they do?
882
00:46:26,120 –> 00:46:30,440
They make it harder so that they resume the bell shaped curve.
883
00:46:30,440 –> 00:46:34,840
If not enough people get a good score on the SAT, they make it easier because they constantly
884
00:46:34,840 –> 00:46:36,360
shift that curve.
885
00:46:36,360 –> 00:46:38,200
That’s what society does, Miles.
886
00:46:38,200 –> 00:46:40,680
So that’s what I want you to do as a teacher.
887
00:46:40,680 –> 00:46:41,680
Right.
888
00:46:41,680 –> 00:46:42,680
And we’re stuck there.
889
00:46:42,680 –> 00:46:48,680
We’ve been stuck there for two or 300 years and we’re stuck there right now.
890
00:46:48,680 –> 00:46:50,760
It makes people feel good.
891
00:46:50,760 –> 00:46:51,760
Right?
892
00:46:51,760 –> 00:46:52,760
Yes.
893
00:46:52,760 –> 00:46:53,760
People will tell you.
894
00:46:53,760 –> 00:46:54,760
There’s winners and losers, Mike.
895
00:46:54,760 –> 00:46:55,760
Yep.
896
00:46:55,760 –> 00:46:57,240
There’s losers here too.
897
00:46:57,240 –> 00:47:04,400
But if we don’t fundamentally change the thinking of the students who are coming into schools,
898
00:47:04,400 –> 00:47:08,560
if we do nothing, if all we do is assess and that’s really all we’re doing, we’re putting
899
00:47:08,560 –> 00:47:12,320
them on the curve somewhere and then we’re passing them on to the next group.
900
00:47:12,320 –> 00:47:13,320
Absolutely.
901
00:47:13,320 –> 00:47:16,920
And then the next group is doing the exact same thing and passing them on.
902
00:47:16,920 –> 00:47:19,920
And that’s how we get the people at the top, but we already knew they were going to be
903
00:47:19,920 –> 00:47:22,600
at the top because they were at the top when they came.
904
00:47:22,600 –> 00:47:23,600
Yep.
905
00:47:23,600 –> 00:47:24,600
Then we got the kids in the middle.
906
00:47:24,600 –> 00:47:27,840
We had the people in the middle and we had the people down low that we know that you’re
907
00:47:27,840 –> 00:47:32,240
never going to do anything anyways and you have lost.
908
00:47:32,240 –> 00:47:33,240
You know what?
909
00:47:33,240 –> 00:47:36,720
I don’t know why I want to do it, but I think right now is a good time to dig a deep hole.
910
00:47:36,720 –> 00:47:40,840
It’s going to get deep because you might as well go there.
911
00:47:40,840 –> 00:47:41,840
You know what?
912
00:47:41,840 –> 00:47:44,320
There’s going to be winners and losers and that’s just the way it is.
913
00:47:44,320 –> 00:47:45,320
Okay.
914
00:47:45,320 –> 00:47:46,800
Okay, let’s talk about that for a second.
915
00:47:46,800 –> 00:47:50,840
So we have doers, we have don’t doers, we have A’s and we have F’s.
916
00:47:50,840 –> 00:47:53,680
You know, if you don’t do it, you’re going to fail.
917
00:47:53,680 –> 00:47:58,640
At what point does a school say, wow, I’ve got a lot of people failing?
918
00:47:58,640 –> 00:48:00,560
Well, if they fail, they fail.
919
00:48:00,560 –> 00:48:01,560
Okay.
920
00:48:01,560 –> 00:48:07,680
At what point does a school say, I’m turning loose a lot of failures into our community?
921
00:48:07,680 –> 00:48:12,080
And at what point does the community start to say, this isn’t a good community to live
922
00:48:12,080 –> 00:48:13,560
in anymore, son.
923
00:48:13,560 –> 00:48:14,560
You know what?
924
00:48:14,560 –> 00:48:17,440
When you make it, you’re going to get out and do something with yourself and you’re
925
00:48:17,440 –> 00:48:19,640
never going to come back.
926
00:48:19,640 –> 00:48:21,600
When did that become acceptable?
927
00:48:21,600 –> 00:48:25,800
I think it became acceptable when we started looking at our communities and saying, it
928
00:48:25,800 –> 00:48:27,440
wasn’t like it used to be.
929
00:48:27,440 –> 00:48:31,280
It’s, I wish it were like it used to be.
930
00:48:31,280 –> 00:48:33,280
Wonder if we’re contributing to that.
931
00:48:33,280 –> 00:48:34,280
Seriously.
932
00:48:34,280 –> 00:48:35,280
Right.
933
00:48:35,280 –> 00:48:37,200
And that’s a hard thing for people to face and to think about.
934
00:48:37,200 –> 00:48:39,800
Think about it how it looks on a bigger scale.
935
00:48:39,800 –> 00:48:44,960
We’re sitting in Pennsylvania and we have districts funded by property taxes.
936
00:48:44,960 –> 00:48:46,120
Okay.
937
00:48:46,120 –> 00:48:51,120
And now you know that people live where they can afford to live.
938
00:48:51,120 –> 00:48:55,360
And the schools that they go to are based on where they live.
939
00:48:55,360 –> 00:49:03,120
And if you’re teaching or leading a school that has a high percentage of people that
940
00:49:03,120 –> 00:49:08,240
don’t have very much, they all look the same.
941
00:49:08,240 –> 00:49:10,360
They sound the same.
942
00:49:10,360 –> 00:49:13,200
They may be even achieve the same.
943
00:49:13,200 –> 00:49:20,640
We can all feel comfortable somewhere in that system that everyone’s just not very good.
944
00:49:20,640 –> 00:49:22,520
This is what we’re left with.
945
00:49:22,520 –> 00:49:28,520
All the people that were at the top of the curve, they, like you said, moved away.
946
00:49:28,520 –> 00:49:32,960
If we do find some more people at the top of the curve, we want to encourage them to
947
00:49:32,960 –> 00:49:39,400
move away too to get some place with the other people that are successful and can do better
948
00:49:39,400 –> 00:49:42,960
than the majority of people who were left with.
949
00:49:42,960 –> 00:49:48,280
Now we’re taking the idea of student grades and classroom grades and we’re now making
950
00:49:48,280 –> 00:49:49,680
it more global.
951
00:49:49,680 –> 00:49:52,120
And let’s talk about that for a second.
952
00:49:52,120 –> 00:49:56,160
In the state of Pennsylvania, schools get grades too.
953
00:49:56,160 –> 00:49:58,840
Now I’m a person and I’m on the move.
954
00:49:58,840 –> 00:49:59,840
Right?
955
00:49:59,840 –> 00:50:02,040
I’m a professional and I’m going to move somewhere.
956
00:50:02,040 –> 00:50:04,760
Do you think I’m going to research schools for my kids?
957
00:50:04,760 –> 00:50:07,880
Well, I am because that’s important to me.
958
00:50:07,880 –> 00:50:09,920
How people educate my children.
959
00:50:09,920 –> 00:50:13,040
I don’t have children, but if I did, how are they going to educate my kids?
960
00:50:13,040 –> 00:50:14,440
It’s going to be very important to me.
961
00:50:14,440 –> 00:50:19,880
Am I going to move to a community with a school who has a grade of whatever?
962
00:50:19,880 –> 00:50:21,240
Whoa, hold on a second.
963
00:50:21,240 –> 00:50:22,960
What grades do they use for the school?
964
00:50:22,960 –> 00:50:23,960
I forget.
965
00:50:23,960 –> 00:50:25,960
They’re still using the same letter grades.
966
00:50:25,960 –> 00:50:26,960
They’re still using the same.
967
00:50:26,960 –> 00:50:27,960
We’re all using.
968
00:50:27,960 –> 00:50:28,960
That’s good.
969
00:50:28,960 –> 00:50:29,960
That’s convenient.
970
00:50:29,960 –> 00:50:30,960
I like that.
971
00:50:30,960 –> 00:50:31,960
Super convenient.
972
00:50:31,960 –> 00:50:32,960
Hey, you know what?
973
00:50:32,960 –> 00:50:35,920
Our problem is, is our schools aren’t achieving the way that they should be.
974
00:50:35,920 –> 00:50:40,600
And so the few kids that are achieving within our school are moving out, nobody’s coming
975
00:50:40,600 –> 00:50:42,680
in and our school has a poor grade.
976
00:50:42,680 –> 00:50:48,160
We’re just contributing to the wheel of disillusionment of despair.
977
00:50:48,160 –> 00:50:52,040
I mean, we’re creating our own problem.
978
00:50:52,040 –> 00:50:57,200
So we’re still talking about the why of the problem.
979
00:50:57,200 –> 00:51:00,880
We could probably talk about this forever.
980
00:51:00,880 –> 00:51:09,400
Talk about how the gamification of learning and the way that we assess damages students,
981
00:51:09,400 –> 00:51:17,320
you started off this session talking about if we acknowledge that it’s a game, we need
982
00:51:17,320 –> 00:51:21,000
to change the system a little bit.
983
00:51:21,000 –> 00:51:22,320
Let’s say it’s a game.
984
00:51:22,320 –> 00:51:23,320
I would love to.
985
00:51:23,320 –> 00:51:27,400
And let’s say that we’re going to assess students on a number.
986
00:51:27,400 –> 00:51:32,800
We need to make the number match exactly what we want.
987
00:51:32,800 –> 00:51:38,080
And I think I’m going back to your idea of gamification of education.
988
00:51:38,080 –> 00:51:40,680
I mean, I can’t get away from this in my own mind.
989
00:51:40,680 –> 00:51:43,640
And I know there’s going to be a lot of argument out there.
990
00:51:43,640 –> 00:51:46,200
There’s people listening to this are going to be like, well, you just want everybody
991
00:51:46,200 –> 00:51:47,200
to win.
992
00:51:47,200 –> 00:51:48,520
Everybody can’t always win.
993
00:51:48,520 –> 00:51:51,440
And I’m like, yeah, but everybody can’t always lose too.
994
00:51:51,440 –> 00:51:52,920
I mean, that’s learned helplessness.
995
00:51:52,920 –> 00:51:53,920
We all know this.
996
00:51:53,920 –> 00:51:57,760
Well, we might not all know, but the study of the rats, you put a rat in a cage and you
997
00:51:57,760 –> 00:52:00,480
constantly shock it before it can get fed.
998
00:52:00,480 –> 00:52:03,480
Learned helplessness is a cruel, cruel sight.
999
00:52:03,480 –> 00:52:06,680
It’s an awful vision.
1000
00:52:06,680 –> 00:52:11,480
Why can’t we have everybody win when we consider learning, winning?
1001
00:52:11,480 –> 00:52:13,800
There’s nothing wrong with that.
1002
00:52:13,800 –> 00:52:17,720
If we call learning, winning, everybody should be winning.
1003
00:52:17,720 –> 00:52:20,560
And the idea of a game is that we win.
1004
00:52:20,560 –> 00:52:21,720
I want to win.
1005
00:52:21,720 –> 00:52:22,720
You want to win.
1006
00:52:22,720 –> 00:52:27,480
Why can’t everybody win that game or at least experience what it’s like to win and then
1007
00:52:27,480 –> 00:52:29,320
be driven to win?
1008
00:52:29,320 –> 00:52:34,040
And if winning equals learning, be driven to learn.
1009
00:52:34,040 –> 00:52:35,680
There shouldn’t be something wrong with that.
1010
00:52:35,680 –> 00:52:37,480
I completely agree with that.
1011
00:52:37,480 –> 00:52:42,200
I was also thinking about some other things ahead of this podcast that I find to be really
1012
00:52:42,200 –> 00:52:44,000
interesting.
1013
00:52:44,000 –> 00:52:50,920
In K through 12 education, you have this grading system of A to F. In undergraduate education,
1014
00:52:50,920 –> 00:52:52,480
you have the same system.
1015
00:52:52,480 –> 00:52:57,280
By the time you make it to graduate education, and I believe it’s this way pretty much universally
1016
00:52:57,280 –> 00:53:02,880
across the country, you have A through C basically.
1017
00:53:02,880 –> 00:53:06,760
If you get a C, you haven’t done what’s expected of you.
1018
00:53:06,760 –> 00:53:13,120
You still have A and B. Then you have a doctoral level of education, and it’s very similar,
1019
00:53:13,120 –> 00:53:18,340
but everyone knows in that system, if you don’t have an A in the course, you haven’t
1020
00:53:18,340 –> 00:53:20,880
done whatever it is that’s expected of you.
1021
00:53:20,880 –> 00:53:22,720
There’s basically one grade.
1022
00:53:22,720 –> 00:53:31,680
So as you go up, they take away the layers of however they’re assessing somebody.
1023
00:53:31,680 –> 00:53:38,280
If that is the top, why can’t that be through the whole system?
1024
00:53:38,280 –> 00:53:44,400
You get to a much more binary system that way of, we’ve achieved this, we haven’t.
1025
00:53:44,400 –> 00:53:50,480
Mike, you showed me what I think is a really cool concept of education and a system that
1026
00:53:50,480 –> 00:53:53,120
uses achievement badges.
1027
00:53:53,120 –> 00:53:57,280
Students can prove what they have done or their goals, and they just get out there and
1028
00:53:57,280 –> 00:54:05,120
say, I can do this or I can’t, rather than I can do 84% of whatever it is I’ve been
1029
00:54:05,120 –> 00:54:08,680
asked to do, which I think is a really cool concept.
1030
00:54:08,680 –> 00:54:09,680
You know what?
1031
00:54:09,680 –> 00:54:12,520
I’m not going to own this concept because many old school districts did this.
1032
00:54:12,520 –> 00:54:16,640
I’ve seen their presentations on it, so a big shout out to them, but something similar
1033
00:54:16,640 –> 00:54:23,280
came to me prior to me seeing what they actually did, and it hit me like a meteor falling from
1034
00:54:23,280 –> 00:54:25,160
the sky.
1035
00:54:25,160 –> 00:54:30,520
I was walking into a kindergarten classroom and the kindergarten teacher said, hey, don’t
1036
00:54:30,520 –> 00:54:33,560
you want to be a part of the shoe tying club?
1037
00:54:33,560 –> 00:54:35,320
It hit me so hard.
1038
00:54:35,320 –> 00:54:37,600
I’m like, the shoe tying club?
1039
00:54:37,600 –> 00:54:41,960
You mean you get to be a part of a club when you learn how to tie your shoes, and all the
1040
00:54:41,960 –> 00:54:46,320
kids were all about like, yeah, I’m going to be a part of the shoe tying club?
1041
00:54:46,320 –> 00:54:49,080
I’m like, whoa, sweet.
1042
00:54:49,080 –> 00:54:51,720
Could I be a part of the addition club?
1043
00:54:51,720 –> 00:54:56,720
How about part of the phonics club, or how about part of the I can read club?
1044
00:54:56,720 –> 00:55:01,840
Those are checkpoints in our system that represent so much more than a letter grade
1045
00:55:01,840 –> 00:55:07,360
or a percentage grade, and why can’t that be a system that we use all throughout our
1046
00:55:07,360 –> 00:55:09,280
educational experience?
1047
00:55:09,280 –> 00:55:10,800
It’s the 100%.
1048
00:55:10,800 –> 00:55:13,080
It’s the I can do it club.
1049
00:55:13,080 –> 00:55:15,080
But Mike, you’ve told me that you love talking to analogies.
1050
00:55:15,080 –> 00:55:16,080
I sure do.
1051
00:55:16,080 –> 00:55:17,080
I need to talk about education.
1052
00:55:17,080 –> 00:55:20,160
Let’s use shoe tying as an analogy for this.
1053
00:55:20,160 –> 00:55:25,280
So you encountered this teacher that has the shoe tying club.
1054
00:55:25,280 –> 00:55:28,120
You can tie your shoes, or you can’t.
1055
00:55:28,120 –> 00:55:31,080
Everyone who ties their shoes has done exactly what we want them to do.
1056
00:55:31,080 –> 00:55:32,160
They can tie their shoes.
1057
00:55:32,160 –> 00:55:33,800
They have the skill.
1058
00:55:33,800 –> 00:55:38,760
I would say in an idea, and I’m just going to present this right now, that there are
1059
00:55:38,760 –> 00:55:41,240
two forms of education.
1060
00:55:41,240 –> 00:55:47,000
There’s natural education and learning, and there’s formal education and learning.
1061
00:55:47,000 –> 00:55:49,080
Just stay with me on this.
1062
00:55:49,080 –> 00:55:50,680
What all occurs in the natural world?
1063
00:55:50,680 –> 00:55:52,240
How you learn to do something?
1064
00:55:52,240 –> 00:55:54,280
How humans learn?
1065
00:55:54,280 –> 00:55:59,440
Formal education is artificial that school has created for whatever reasons we have to
1066
00:55:59,440 –> 00:56:00,760
have a system.
1067
00:56:00,760 –> 00:56:02,320
Go back to shoe tying.
1068
00:56:02,320 –> 00:56:04,200
The kids can tie their shoes.
1069
00:56:04,200 –> 00:56:06,280
Tie your shoes and move on.
1070
00:56:06,280 –> 00:56:08,080
That’s natural learning.
1071
00:56:08,080 –> 00:56:12,520
We put it in school, which then makes you think, this is really cool.
1072
00:56:12,520 –> 00:56:14,280
It’s not fake.
1073
00:56:14,280 –> 00:56:23,400
But how would school assess shoe time in the formal education setting?
1074
00:56:23,400 –> 00:56:29,320
They would then say, they would put maybe a rubric on it, or they would put some levels
1075
00:56:29,320 –> 00:56:30,320
on it.
1076
00:56:30,320 –> 00:56:33,120
Well, we don’t just need you to tie your shoes.
1077
00:56:33,120 –> 00:56:37,160
We want to see who’s the best at tying your shoes.
1078
00:56:37,160 –> 00:56:40,560
We want to see who can tie their shoes the fastest.
1079
00:56:40,560 –> 00:56:46,600
Regardless, if some people’s five motor skills are better or not, we want to see who learns
1080
00:56:46,600 –> 00:56:48,120
this fastest.
1081
00:56:48,120 –> 00:56:52,960
And if you can tie your shoes the best, we’re going to praise you, and you learn that super
1082
00:56:52,960 –> 00:56:54,040
fast.
1083
00:56:54,040 –> 00:56:56,520
And now you get to move on to something cool.
1084
00:56:56,520 –> 00:57:01,560
And the kids who are struggling, we’re going to make you feel like you’re not quite as
1085
00:57:01,560 –> 00:57:04,920
good as those kids over there, because they did it faster.
1086
00:57:04,920 –> 00:57:09,560
Even though everyone who learned how to tie their shoes can just tie their shoes, that’s
1087
00:57:09,560 –> 00:57:10,560
it.
1088
00:57:10,560 –> 00:57:11,560
Stop there.
1089
00:57:11,560 –> 00:57:13,400
But school would make that artificial.
1090
00:57:13,400 –> 00:57:17,800
And then they would give you a grade based on how fast you learn how to tie it, maybe
1091
00:57:17,800 –> 00:57:22,760
how it looked, maybe how pleasant you were while you were doing it.
1092
00:57:22,760 –> 00:57:27,360
Maybe if you listened to the teacher and did it the first time and complied, and we would
1093
00:57:27,360 –> 00:57:33,280
take all of those factors and put it in a number that we would send home.
1094
00:57:33,280 –> 00:57:35,160
It’s not just shoe tying.
1095
00:57:35,160 –> 00:57:37,960
This is your grade on shoe tying.
1096
00:57:37,960 –> 00:57:38,960
It’s fake.
1097
00:57:38,960 –> 00:57:39,960
Absolutely.
1098
00:57:39,960 –> 00:57:40,960
It’s fake.
1099
00:57:40,960 –> 00:57:45,680
And how soon do kids learn, if I do it this way and play within this confines of the game,
1100
00:57:45,680 –> 00:57:47,280
I’ll be successful?
1101
00:57:47,280 –> 00:57:48,760
Or when do they learn it?
1102
00:57:48,760 –> 00:57:51,360
If I don’t do that, I won’t be successful.
1103
00:57:51,360 –> 00:57:54,160
And at what point do they give up trying?
1104
00:57:54,160 –> 00:57:56,680
And let me take that one little step further.
1105
00:57:56,680 –> 00:58:04,640
Let’s say in that formal education setting, this student didn’t get it the first time,
1106
00:58:04,640 –> 00:58:06,080
so they went home.
1107
00:58:06,080 –> 00:58:10,000
And their parent showed them a different way to tie their shoes.
1108
00:58:10,000 –> 00:58:13,600
And then they went back into school and they had to take the shoe tying test.
1109
00:58:13,600 –> 00:58:19,480
And they followed different steps to tie their shoes to get to the same results.
1110
00:58:19,480 –> 00:58:25,160
But their grade would be less because they didn’t use the system that the teacher taught
1111
00:58:25,160 –> 00:58:29,480
them, even though the only goal is to tie their shoes.
1112
00:58:29,480 –> 00:58:31,440
And let’s not leave out some other kids too.
1113
00:58:31,440 –> 00:58:35,480
What about the kids that came in on the first day and already knew how to tie their shoes,
1114
00:58:35,480 –> 00:58:38,800
that sat through the lessons and learned what?
1115
00:58:38,800 –> 00:58:41,920
Nothing at all because they already knew how to tie their shoes.
1116
00:58:41,920 –> 00:58:44,280
Am I talking about those kids that we call gifted?
1117
00:58:44,280 –> 00:58:45,280
Sure I am.
1118
00:58:45,280 –> 00:58:46,280
Sure I am.
1119
00:58:46,280 –> 00:58:51,000
I’m saying they’re leaving the same way they came in, at the top, at the bottom, and in
1120
00:58:51,000 –> 00:58:52,000
between.
1121
00:58:52,000 –> 00:58:55,560
And I’m not trying to blow up the whole analogy, but I just thought of some other stuff.
1122
00:58:55,560 –> 00:58:58,240
What about the students that have flip flops on?
1123
00:58:58,240 –> 00:59:00,400
And they never want to tie their shoes.
1124
00:59:00,400 –> 00:59:03,160
And what about someone that doesn’t have arms?
1125
00:59:03,160 –> 00:59:05,280
How are we going to teach them how to tie their shoes?
1126
00:59:05,280 –> 00:59:08,480
We, it doesn’t fit in the system, right?
1127
00:59:08,480 –> 00:59:09,480
Doesn’t fit in the system.
1128
00:59:09,480 –> 00:59:15,320
You go into a different area where you learn something else about shoes, but not necessarily
1129
00:59:15,320 –> 00:59:18,320
how to tie them, or even that you can tie them.
1130
00:59:18,320 –> 00:59:19,320
Sure.
1131
00:59:19,320 –> 00:59:20,320
Right.
1132
00:59:20,320 –> 00:59:26,160
And I think we’re getting to the point that we’re seeing this system as big.
1133
00:59:26,160 –> 00:59:34,440
We want to get to a more skills aligned or binary focused.
1134
00:59:34,440 –> 00:59:37,640
We are teaching people how to do this.
1135
00:59:37,640 –> 00:59:41,200
We don’t care about assessing on different levels.
1136
00:59:41,200 –> 00:59:44,560
We want people that can do things and think things.
1137
00:59:44,560 –> 00:59:48,520
And that’s what we want our assessment system to reflect.
1138
00:59:48,520 –> 00:59:55,640
And if it’s the other way, if it’s opposite, everything that we do always becomes about
1139
00:59:55,640 –> 01:00:00,240
the letter grade or the number, and not about all the important stuff that we’re doing with
1140
01:00:00,240 –> 01:00:01,240
our kids every day.
1141
01:00:01,240 –> 01:00:06,440
And I don’t think any of this conversation is intended to bash anything that is being
1142
01:00:06,440 –> 01:00:07,440
done in schools.
1143
01:00:07,440 –> 01:00:08,440
No.
1144
01:00:08,440 –> 01:00:14,240
It’s just that we have aspects of our system, including assessment that are off and we need
1145
01:00:14,240 –> 01:00:15,240
to fix them.
1146
01:00:15,240 –> 01:00:16,240
Absolutely.
1147
01:00:16,240 –> 01:00:20,640
And I don’t want to, I definitely don’t want to bash systems out there, but there’s a lot
1148
01:00:20,640 –> 01:00:26,160
of this conversation that becomes very real, even in the world.
1149
01:00:26,160 –> 01:00:30,480
Why does the system of grading ABC, 90, 80, 70?
1150
01:00:30,480 –> 01:00:35,920
Why does it all of a sudden end when the professional aspect of your life begins?
1151
01:00:35,920 –> 01:00:41,600
So are you graded on your job with a 190, 80?
1152
01:00:41,600 –> 01:00:43,800
There may be areas in the world that you are.
1153
01:00:43,800 –> 01:00:49,800
Maybe it is very competitive in certain fields, but I’m saying overall, if I go to work, am
1154
01:00:49,800 –> 01:00:54,600
I graded on anything within my salary?
1155
01:00:54,600 –> 01:00:55,920
Am I graded on my attendance?
1156
01:00:55,920 –> 01:00:58,280
No, I’m given so many days off and whatever.
1157
01:00:58,280 –> 01:01:01,000
Okay, so am I graded on my punctuality?
1158
01:01:01,000 –> 01:01:02,760
No, I can get a warning.
1159
01:01:02,760 –> 01:01:04,440
Well, hold on a second.
1160
01:01:04,440 –> 01:01:05,440
Hold on a second.
1161
01:01:05,440 –> 01:01:07,040
That’s not what we were taught in school.
1162
01:01:07,040 –> 01:01:10,080
We were taught that if you miss one out of 10, you get a 90.
1163
01:01:10,080 –> 01:01:13,760
So if you’re late one day, you don’t get docked and pay.
1164
01:01:13,760 –> 01:01:15,880
That’s not how it exists in the real world.
1165
01:01:15,880 –> 01:01:21,600
It only exists in school with formal education and then it goes away.
1166
01:01:21,600 –> 01:01:22,600
How real is it?
1167
01:01:22,600 –> 01:01:29,320
I mean, if we get back to where we can say you’ve learned something and this represents
1168
01:01:29,320 –> 01:01:33,440
that you learned it, I think we’re better off.
1169
01:01:33,440 –> 01:01:35,560
And you’re heading into dangerous territory.
1170
01:01:35,560 –> 01:01:41,720
We know that because if the two of us walked into a school today or a school district today
1171
01:01:41,720 –> 01:01:47,760
and said we are eliminating letter grades and percentage grades, we’d have a whole lot
1172
01:01:47,760 –> 01:01:50,720
of trouble right now, today.
1173
01:01:50,720 –> 01:01:53,200
You’d have trouble on so many different levels.
1174
01:01:53,200 –> 01:01:55,800
You’d have trouble for college admissions.
1175
01:01:55,800 –> 01:01:57,480
You’d have trouble with parents.
1176
01:01:57,480 –> 01:01:59,720
You’d have trouble with community members.
1177
01:01:59,720 –> 01:02:01,560
There’d be a lot of heat coming your way.
1178
01:02:01,560 –> 01:02:06,080
But I think that in the next section, we can point to systems that have already done this
1179
01:02:06,080 –> 01:02:11,680
and maybe talk about how teachers can do this in their individual classrooms or how principals
1180
01:02:11,680 –> 01:02:16,080
can work on changing the systems in their schools or whole school districts can change
1181
01:02:16,080 –> 01:02:20,200
so we can get closer to that ideal that we’re talking about.
1182
01:02:20,200 –> 01:02:22,280
And I think that’s the key moving forward.
1183
01:02:22,280 –> 01:02:29,720
How do we then as a school system push for that intrinsic motivation in our grading system,
1184
01:02:29,720 –> 01:02:33,600
in our high schools, in our elementary schools, how do we connect?
1185
01:02:33,600 –> 01:02:34,600
There’s the key word.
1186
01:02:34,600 –> 01:02:38,320
How do we connect with our students to get them to want to learn?
1187
01:02:38,320 –> 01:02:40,720
And I think it is in that word connection.
1188
01:02:40,720 –> 01:02:46,480
How do we make it meaningful for each and every student in school?
1189
01:02:46,480 –> 01:02:50,920
And part of that has to be the deemphasis of that letter grade.
1190
01:02:50,920 –> 01:02:51,920
I agree.
1191
01:02:51,920 –> 01:02:58,800
The emphasis on the learning and the doing and probably creating a new system of reporting
1192
01:02:58,800 –> 01:03:01,360
assessment to get there.
1193
01:03:01,360 –> 01:03:06,880
Just like I talked about my grandmother’s report card from the 1930s looking exactly
1194
01:03:06,880 –> 01:03:10,720
the same as report cards today, we can do better than that.
1195
01:03:10,720 –> 01:03:15,080
We can do better in having conversations with our students about what they’re learning
1196
01:03:15,080 –> 01:03:16,600
and what they’re achieving.
1197
01:03:16,600 –> 01:03:22,560
We can do better in reporting to parents as to what their children are doing in school
1198
01:03:22,560 –> 01:03:23,720
and how they’re learning.
1199
01:03:23,720 –> 01:03:25,720
We can do so much better than that.
1200
01:03:25,720 –> 01:03:28,160
And I will say there are even systems in place.
1201
01:03:28,160 –> 01:03:34,480
I know in Pennsylvania we toss around this, it’s called Act 339.
1202
01:03:34,480 –> 01:03:39,920
And I think that there’s not enough emphasis on it where I am in particular because think
1203
01:03:39,920 –> 01:03:40,920
about this.
1204
01:03:40,920 –> 01:03:47,360
If we have in Pennsylvania Act 339 where students from early elementary schools start
1205
01:03:47,360 –> 01:03:54,800
to think about and talk about what they want to become as a member of our community and
1206
01:03:54,800 –> 01:03:58,200
they do it all the way through their senior year.
1207
01:03:58,200 –> 01:04:05,040
But if we deemphasize that process, then we’re not allowing them the idea to explore where
1208
01:04:05,040 –> 01:04:08,560
they need to go for themselves in their own education.
1209
01:04:08,560 –> 01:04:14,920
So if I want to be profession A, maybe I’ll steer away or toward certain things in my
1210
01:04:14,920 –> 01:04:21,440
education and it won’t matter so much the grade I get, I put more value in the learning.
1211
01:04:21,440 –> 01:04:27,920
I love Act 339 because it really drives people to think about what they want to become within
1212
01:04:27,920 –> 01:04:29,360
our community.
1213
01:04:29,360 –> 01:04:33,520
And when we don’t focus enough energy on that, when it just becomes a check mark, yeah, we
1214
01:04:33,520 –> 01:04:34,520
did that.
1215
01:04:34,520 –> 01:04:37,720
I went into the classroom, I did a presentation, they filled out a survey.
1216
01:04:37,720 –> 01:04:44,200
When we do those things, we are not giving due credit to the process that it was designed
1217
01:04:44,200 –> 01:04:45,200
to do.
1218
01:04:45,200 –> 01:04:49,720
I think we really need to hone in on that to really give value to kids and what they want
1219
01:04:49,720 –> 01:04:50,880
to do.
1220
01:04:50,880 –> 01:04:52,080
I think you’re right.
1221
01:04:52,080 –> 01:04:54,440
And I think there’s a way to do that.
1222
01:04:54,440 –> 01:05:00,960
And I think at the same time that we or anyone else who’s moving in that direction would
1223
01:05:00,960 –> 01:05:02,880
try to accomplish that.
1224
01:05:02,880 –> 01:05:07,320
Everyone has to be mindful of the forces that keep the system in place that currently exists.
1225
01:05:07,320 –> 01:05:09,960
Okay, so let’s say I have a magic wand right now, Mike.
1226
01:05:09,960 –> 01:05:11,360
I give you the magic wand.
1227
01:05:11,360 –> 01:05:13,560
We got this huge problem, Grenzer Fink.
1228
01:05:13,560 –> 01:05:16,480
In your school today, magic wand, boom, how do you fix it?
1229
01:05:16,480 –> 01:05:23,320
I’m going to tell you right now, my advice is where you are, do what you can do for the
1230
01:05:23,320 –> 01:05:24,880
people in front of you.
1231
01:05:24,880 –> 01:05:29,640
And I know there’s an author out there that says lead from where you are, but think about
1232
01:05:29,640 –> 01:05:30,640
that.
1233
01:05:30,640 –> 01:05:32,200
I had a classroom full of students.
1234
01:05:32,200 –> 01:05:34,240
I had 25 students at a time.
1235
01:05:34,240 –> 01:05:41,160
I had six periods of the midday and I was already as a young man trying to teach kids,
1236
01:05:41,160 –> 01:05:44,080
connect with them on a personal level.
1237
01:05:44,080 –> 01:05:45,560
That was number one.
1238
01:05:45,560 –> 01:05:50,240
Number two was have them take value of the grade that you have to give them because I’m
1239
01:05:50,240 –> 01:05:52,280
in a system that gives grades.
1240
01:05:52,280 –> 01:05:57,360
Give them power to talk about their learning and then somehow form a rubric in your mind
1241
01:05:57,360 –> 01:06:02,160
and share that with them so that they are meeting you where you are meeting them.
1242
01:06:02,160 –> 01:06:06,480
So in essence, they came into this class to get something.
1243
01:06:06,480 –> 01:06:08,800
You came into this class to give something.
1244
01:06:08,800 –> 01:06:10,240
Where did you meet?
1245
01:06:10,240 –> 01:06:12,520
That needs to be an open conversation with your students.
1246
01:06:12,520 –> 01:06:15,320
Okay, so now I’m the principal of a building.
1247
01:06:15,320 –> 01:06:19,240
Have that conversation with your teachers and maybe that trickles down.
1248
01:06:19,240 –> 01:06:23,280
Sorry, that’s the term I know, but maybe that trickles down to the students then.
1249
01:06:23,280 –> 01:06:25,240
So you’re a principal of a building.
1250
01:06:25,240 –> 01:06:28,840
You’re having that conversation with teachers still working within the system because a
1251
01:06:28,840 –> 01:06:31,440
principal can’t change the system per se.
1252
01:06:31,440 –> 01:06:36,680
Okay, maybe now I’m a superintendent and I have these conversations with my entire faculty
1253
01:06:36,680 –> 01:06:39,000
or with our administration team.
1254
01:06:39,000 –> 01:06:41,120
Let’s meet kids where they are.
1255
01:06:41,120 –> 01:06:43,040
I’m coming into this situation.
1256
01:06:43,040 –> 01:06:44,680
You’re coming into this situation.
1257
01:06:44,680 –> 01:06:45,880
I’m giving something.
1258
01:06:45,880 –> 01:06:47,120
You’re taking away something.
1259
01:06:47,120 –> 01:06:49,040
Where do we meet there?
1260
01:06:49,040 –> 01:06:50,280
What were my expectations?
1261
01:06:50,280 –> 01:06:51,560
What were your expectations?
1262
01:06:51,560 –> 01:06:53,200
Where do we meet?
1263
01:06:53,200 –> 01:06:54,880
That’s very, very important for me.
1264
01:06:54,880 –> 01:06:58,880
That’s how I’m going to change whatever the way of thinking is.
1265
01:06:58,880 –> 01:07:00,720
That’s how I’m going to fix the problem.
1266
01:07:00,720 –> 01:07:04,080
It might be in my new fix, but that’s where I am.
1267
01:07:04,080 –> 01:07:05,320
That’s always how I’ve been.
1268
01:07:05,320 –> 01:07:06,320
Right.
1269
01:07:06,320 –> 01:07:09,160
And I think, like you said, lead from where you are.
1270
01:07:09,160 –> 01:07:15,040
You’ve got to be able to control your space and figure out how you can influence it, that
1271
01:07:15,040 –> 01:07:17,760
which you desire to change right in that one area.
1272
01:07:17,760 –> 01:07:18,760
Yes.
1273
01:07:18,760 –> 01:07:21,400
But you just outlined it for three areas.
1274
01:07:21,400 –> 01:07:26,560
And then if people listening to this on this topic or anything else start to change their
1275
01:07:26,560 –> 01:07:31,240
one small area, the system begins to change from within.
1276
01:07:31,240 –> 01:07:36,120
We’re not going to restructure grades and the assessment system has been in place for
1277
01:07:36,120 –> 01:07:40,120
hundreds of years today or even with this podcast.
1278
01:07:40,120 –> 01:07:41,120
No.
1279
01:07:41,120 –> 01:07:42,120
No.
1280
01:07:42,120 –> 01:07:46,820
And I think future podcasts will focus on areas of assessment, on areas of standard
1281
01:07:46,820 –> 01:07:50,880
space assessments, even on areas of core curriculum.
1282
01:07:50,880 –> 01:07:54,840
None of those things I will ever argue and say are horribly, horribly wrong.
1283
01:07:54,840 –> 01:08:01,480
But if you understand and can identify where you are and how you address those things with
1284
01:08:01,480 –> 01:08:05,120
the people who are in front of you, you will be successful.
1285
01:08:05,120 –> 01:08:08,600
And let’s say there are people listening to this right now who maybe agree with some of
1286
01:08:08,600 –> 01:08:11,320
the things that we’ve said just a little bit.
1287
01:08:11,320 –> 01:08:16,880
If you’re a classroom teacher, I would recommend making this statement to yourself first and
1288
01:08:16,880 –> 01:08:22,280
then to your students at the beginning of whatever course it is that you’re teaching.
1289
01:08:22,280 –> 01:08:30,560
I am going to ensure that your grade represents what you have learned and what you can do.
1290
01:08:30,560 –> 01:08:32,360
Think about that statement for a second.
1291
01:08:32,360 –> 01:08:33,360
Absolutely.
1292
01:08:33,360 –> 01:08:39,480
The grade that I give you will reflect what you can do and what you have learned.
1293
01:08:39,480 –> 01:08:40,480
Nothing else.
1294
01:08:40,480 –> 01:08:42,480
I’m not going to give you extra credit.
1295
01:08:42,480 –> 01:08:44,640
I’m not going to grade on the curve.
1296
01:08:44,640 –> 01:08:49,960
I’m not going to make this some fake charade of getting a number.
1297
01:08:49,960 –> 01:08:53,760
I think that your assessment is vital to me.
1298
01:08:53,760 –> 01:08:56,360
We have not said that we don’t think assessment is important.
1299
01:08:56,360 –> 01:08:57,640
It’s essential.
1300
01:08:57,640 –> 01:09:06,720
But we are going to make your grade represent what you can do and what you have learned.
1301
01:09:06,720 –> 01:09:07,720
Absolutely.
1302
01:09:07,720 –> 01:09:10,800
That sounds different than wherever you are in a school system.
1303
01:09:10,800 –> 01:09:14,440
So at an elementary level, that’s going to sound different than at a high school level.
1304
01:09:14,440 –> 01:09:18,960
Speaking from experience, I would talk to my students at the high school level and say,
1305
01:09:18,960 –> 01:09:20,760
what do you need from this course?
1306
01:09:20,760 –> 01:09:22,000
Let’s be honest.
1307
01:09:22,000 –> 01:09:23,760
It’s Spanish one.
1308
01:09:23,760 –> 01:09:25,280
What do you need from this course?
1309
01:09:25,280 –> 01:09:27,280
And kids would say, I just need the credit.
1310
01:09:27,280 –> 01:09:30,800
In my response to them, then I’m going to get you that credit.
1311
01:09:30,800 –> 01:09:34,840
Then let me help you get that credit.
1312
01:09:34,840 –> 01:09:37,560
That’s important to have that open conversation.
1313
01:09:37,560 –> 01:09:38,800
What do you need from this?
1314
01:09:38,800 –> 01:09:43,920
I need to learn as much Spanish as I possibly can because I want to be an international
1315
01:09:43,920 –> 01:09:50,040
lawyer that I’m going to teach you as much as I possibly can, but I’m also going to teach
1316
01:09:50,040 –> 01:09:52,800
the kid as much as I possibly can who just needs the credit.
1317
01:09:52,800 –> 01:09:55,560
I’m not going to fail you as a student.
1318
01:09:55,560 –> 01:09:58,080
I’m not going to fail you as a student.
1319
01:09:58,080 –> 01:10:01,040
I’m going to meet your expectations.
1320
01:10:01,040 –> 01:10:04,000
I want to talk about how you’re now going to meet mine.
1321
01:10:04,000 –> 01:10:08,600
My expectations are that you learn what I have to offer and mine are that I can teach
1322
01:10:08,600 –> 01:10:09,600
you what you need.
1323
01:10:09,600 –> 01:10:12,120
And you’re touching on something that a lot of people miss.
1324
01:10:12,120 –> 01:10:17,400
A lot of people talk about education from one side or the other, from the teacher side
1325
01:10:17,400 –> 01:10:19,080
or the student side.
1326
01:10:19,080 –> 01:10:20,080
It’s both.
1327
01:10:20,080 –> 01:10:21,080
Yes.
1328
01:10:21,080 –> 01:10:26,520
We’re always in control as educators of what we do and influence the thoughts and actions
1329
01:10:26,520 –> 01:10:29,920
of students, but it’s always two.
1330
01:10:29,920 –> 01:10:30,920
It’s not one.
1331
01:10:30,920 –> 01:10:31,920
Right.
1332
01:10:31,920 –> 01:10:32,920
It’s together.
1333
01:10:32,920 –> 01:10:36,320
I mean, think about it as a principle, Miles.
1334
01:10:36,320 –> 01:10:41,200
What does my community need from me as a principle?
1335
01:10:41,200 –> 01:10:43,160
They need two things too.
1336
01:10:43,160 –> 01:10:48,800
Mr. Ditsenberg, I need to know that you’re teaching my kids.
1337
01:10:48,800 –> 01:10:53,880
I also need to know that my kids are going to come home happy and safe.
1338
01:10:53,880 –> 01:10:55,380
Okay.
1339
01:10:55,380 –> 01:10:56,520
They have said this to me.
1340
01:10:56,520 –> 01:10:59,840
I’ve had open conversations with our parents about this.
1341
01:10:59,840 –> 01:11:02,160
Do you think parents are mad when their kids come home mad?
1342
01:11:02,160 –> 01:11:03,160
Sure they are.
1343
01:11:03,160 –> 01:11:04,160
I would be too.
1344
01:11:04,160 –> 01:11:07,640
My kid had a really bad day and that’s a problem for me.
1345
01:11:07,640 –> 01:11:09,080
Let’s talk about that.
1346
01:11:09,080 –> 01:11:10,180
Let’s work on that.
1347
01:11:10,180 –> 01:11:12,920
That’s a big component of elementary education.
1348
01:11:12,920 –> 01:11:17,360
Kids coming home happy and safe and knowing that they’ve learned something too.
1349
01:11:17,360 –> 01:11:20,640
I mean, you’ve got to meet your community and your community has to meet you.
1350
01:11:20,640 –> 01:11:26,120
I’m going to provide for you what you expect from me and you need to meet me where my expectations
1351
01:11:26,120 –> 01:11:27,120
are too.
1352
01:11:27,120 –> 01:11:28,120
Right.
1353
01:11:28,120 –> 01:11:30,120
And you’re all going to go to a new place together.
1354
01:11:30,120 –> 01:11:31,120
Yes.
1355
01:11:31,120 –> 01:11:32,720
You’re not going to go there separately.
1356
01:11:32,720 –> 01:11:33,720
It’s not possible.
1357
01:11:33,720 –> 01:11:34,720
Right.
1358
01:11:34,720 –> 01:11:37,800
You need to have a goal and both parties need to go there together.
1359
01:11:37,800 –> 01:11:38,800
Right.
1360
01:11:38,800 –> 01:11:41,640
I mean, it’s leaving my school with more than a report card.
1361
01:11:41,640 –> 01:11:45,720
So then think about grades and assessment like this before we wrap this thing up.
1362
01:11:45,720 –> 01:11:52,240
Think about the fact that if the students don’t learn, achieve, or accomplish whatever
1363
01:11:52,240 –> 01:11:57,160
the goal is, the teacher has failed them.
1364
01:11:57,160 –> 01:11:59,960
That’s backing this thing up one step.
1365
01:11:59,960 –> 01:12:01,840
But you have to have both.
1366
01:12:01,840 –> 01:12:06,480
You have to have the education system, the teachers, and the students.
1367
01:12:06,480 –> 01:12:11,960
But if you had students walk into your classroom that just refuse, you can look at it that
1368
01:12:11,960 –> 01:12:12,960
two ways.
1369
01:12:12,960 –> 01:12:14,400
I can’t teach them.
1370
01:12:14,400 –> 01:12:16,120
They have failed themselves.
1371
01:12:16,120 –> 01:12:17,880
Or it’s still my job no matter what.
1372
01:12:17,880 –> 01:12:23,520
You have to do whatever it takes to get that person to open up and want to achieve and
1373
01:12:23,520 –> 01:12:24,520
then achieve.
1374
01:12:24,520 –> 01:12:25,520
Absolutely.
1375
01:12:25,520 –> 01:12:29,880
One of the most powerful things that ever happened to me in my experience was I was
1376
01:12:29,880 –> 01:12:31,960
getting ready for student teaching.
1377
01:12:31,960 –> 01:12:37,880
I was nervous even though I had been through the whole education program at my university.
1378
01:12:37,880 –> 01:12:39,880
But I was nervous about going into student teaching.
1379
01:12:39,880 –> 01:12:43,920
And they had this big seminar with all the people getting ready to student teach.
1380
01:12:43,920 –> 01:12:48,480
And we’re all sitting in a lecture hall in the head of the education department was talking
1381
01:12:48,480 –> 01:12:52,160
about how if you don’t do this and this and this and this, you’ll get a B and C in your
1382
01:12:52,160 –> 01:12:53,160
student teaching.
1383
01:12:53,160 –> 01:12:54,160
And that will doom you.
1384
01:12:54,160 –> 01:12:56,840
And you’ll never be a teacher or whatever that was.
1385
01:12:56,840 –> 01:13:01,760
And I was coming off that meeting and I sat down with a professor who I still communicate
1386
01:13:01,760 –> 01:13:04,480
with to this day and respect greatly.
1387
01:13:04,480 –> 01:13:08,880
And she sat with myself and two other people who she was going to supervise.
1388
01:13:08,880 –> 01:13:13,720
And she said, you guys will get an A.
1389
01:13:13,720 –> 01:13:21,760
Now she didn’t say that saying, I’m going to hand you an A. What she was saying was,
1390
01:13:21,760 –> 01:13:30,720
I will not let you do work that is less than the best together with you.
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01:13:30,720 –> 01:13:36,680
You will not get a B. You will not get a C. You will get an A. But we’re going to do
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01:13:36,680 –> 01:13:38,600
that together.
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01:13:38,600 –> 01:13:41,400
She didn’t say all those words, but that’s what she meant.
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01:13:41,400 –> 01:13:45,520
And she proved it every single day that she worked with me during that semester.
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01:13:45,520 –> 01:13:48,720
When she came in, we had meaningful conversations.
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01:13:48,720 –> 01:13:52,760
While other people were struggling as student teachers and maybe out there on a limb and
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01:13:52,760 –> 01:13:57,880
the professor was just assessing how they were doing, she was actively working with me
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01:13:57,880 –> 01:14:02,760
throughout that semester to make me the kind of teacher who she knew that I could be.
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01:14:02,760 –> 01:14:07,160
It’s the exact same thing we need from our teachers, from our administrators, from our
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01:14:07,160 –> 01:14:08,920
system every day.
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01:14:08,920 –> 01:14:12,240
Our goal is for everyone to have a hundred.
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01:14:12,240 –> 01:14:13,240
It’s binary.
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01:14:13,240 –> 01:14:17,440
If you did or you didn’t, how are we going to do it together?
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01:14:17,440 –> 01:14:18,440
Absolutely.
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01:14:18,440 –> 01:14:22,320
We must have had great teachers growing up in intercollege experiences because my student
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01:14:22,320 –> 01:14:25,200
teaching supervisor said something very similar to me.
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01:14:25,200 –> 01:14:30,480
And I think we owe those teachers a debt of gratitude because they saw the bigger picture
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01:14:30,480 –> 01:14:35,960
way back when, and I think they were trying to teach us, hey, Miles and Mike, keep going
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01:14:35,960 –> 01:14:38,360
with this idea that this is good teaching.
1410
01:14:38,360 –> 01:14:40,120
This is how you get good learning.
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01:14:40,120 –> 01:14:45,720
Because he said to me, Mike, you already have the A. Now show me how you got it.
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01:14:45,720 –> 01:14:47,440
Blew me away.
1413
01:14:47,440 –> 01:14:49,960
I was like, oh my God.
1414
01:14:49,960 –> 01:14:51,240
That’s the exact same thing.
1415
01:14:51,240 –> 01:14:54,080
That’s the exact same thing, right?
1416
01:14:54,080 –> 01:14:57,560
And I think that in classrooms, we did that for our students.
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01:14:57,560 –> 01:15:01,280
I hope that as administrators, we’re teaching teachers to do that.
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01:15:01,280 –> 01:15:02,280
Yes.
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01:15:02,280 –> 01:15:08,640
But the message I want to give to everyone is it’s okay to have all A’s.
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01:15:08,640 –> 01:15:09,640
Yes.
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01:15:09,640 –> 01:15:11,320
That’s the goal.
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01:15:11,320 –> 01:15:13,880
The goal isn’t to measure.
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01:15:13,880 –> 01:15:17,200
The goal is to get everyone there together.
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01:15:17,200 –> 01:15:18,200
Right.
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01:15:18,200 –> 01:15:22,000
To my teachers or the teachers who work in my school, they’re not my teachers.
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01:15:22,000 –> 01:15:24,400
They work at the school where I work.
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01:15:24,400 –> 01:15:28,120
You have my permission to give all A’s.
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01:15:28,120 –> 01:15:29,120
Yes.
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01:15:29,120 –> 01:15:31,880
You better work real hard to get everyone there.
1430
01:15:31,880 –> 01:15:33,480
That’s actually an expectation.
1431
01:15:33,480 –> 01:15:34,480
Right.
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01:15:34,480 –> 01:15:36,880
Everyone does it and does it really, really well.
1433
01:15:36,880 –> 01:15:37,880
Exactly.
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01:15:37,880 –> 01:15:41,800
Imagine if every kid was on a salary schedule.
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01:15:41,800 –> 01:15:43,360
You’re already getting paid.
1436
01:15:43,360 –> 01:15:45,520
Show me what you’re doing to get the paycheck.
1437
01:15:45,520 –> 01:15:46,520
Right.
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01:15:46,520 –> 01:15:51,960
Because of what it comes down to it, it’s our job to get that job done together.
1439
01:15:51,960 –> 01:15:52,960
That’s our job.
1440
01:15:52,960 –> 01:15:58,720
Our job isn’t to assess and just tell people what they already know about themselves.
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01:15:58,720 –> 01:16:04,880
Our job is to transform the actual lives of people who come before us every day.
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01:16:04,880 –> 01:16:07,360
And that’s where it should rest.
1443
01:16:07,360 –> 01:16:09,840
I think that probably pretty much wraps up this podcast.
1444
01:16:09,840 –> 01:16:10,840
Yes.
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01:16:10,840 –> 01:16:12,080
We talked about the problem.
1446
01:16:12,080 –> 01:16:13,880
We know it’s a problem.
1447
01:16:13,880 –> 01:16:15,760
There’s a lot of fakeness in grades.
1448
01:16:15,760 –> 01:16:18,320
We talked about why there’s a problem there.
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01:16:18,320 –> 01:16:21,920
We talked about some easy ways that we would work to fix it.
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01:16:21,920 –> 01:16:27,960
The badge system that you have explored and we’re going to put the link to that on our
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01:16:27,960 –> 01:16:30,800
website is something super powerful.
1452
01:16:30,800 –> 01:16:34,400
And I think we can take a ton of lessons from that and explore it in the future.
1453
01:16:34,400 –> 01:16:39,400
We’re going to keep exploring questions as we move through this podcast and hopefully
1454
01:16:39,400 –> 01:16:40,840
help some people along the way.
1455
01:16:40,840 –> 01:16:41,840
Agreed.
1456
01:16:41,840 –> 01:16:42,840
And I welcome arguments too.
1457
01:16:42,840 –> 01:16:48,320
Not only arguments but fruitful discussion on all of what we talked about.
1458
01:16:48,320 –> 01:16:50,840
So please feel free to pipe in.
1459
01:16:50,840 –> 01:16:51,840
We’ll be ready.
1460
01:16:51,840 –> 01:16:52,840
All right.
1461
01:16:52,840 –> 01:16:53,840
All right.
1462
01:16:53,840 –> 01:16:54,840
Thank you.
1463
01:16:54,840 –> 01:17:09,240
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Schools Out podcast with Mike and Miles.
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01:17:09,240 –> 01:17:13,040
Our goal is to shed light on education and the issues that impact students most and work
1465
01:17:13,040 –> 01:17:15,800
to find meaningful solutions to them.
1466
01:17:15,800 –> 01:17:19,880
Please come back for future episodes as we continue the conversation.
1467
01:17:19,880 –> 01:17:20,880
School is out.
1468
01:17:20,880 –> 01:17:21,880
What’s next?
1469
01:17:21,880 –> 01:17:42,920
I’m Mike, Douglas.
1470
01:17:42,920 –> 01:17:51,620
I’m Mike.
School is Out! 