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I define Disarm as...

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To be included in the Padlet conceptual Framework

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To be included in the Padlet conceptual Framework

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1. Each phase has to be included
2. Top 3 questions per phase
3. 1 sentence on how you describe each phase.
4. Tangible artifact of how you use the phase in your work in the Learning Commons (picture, document, article, etc.)

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Career & Academic Advising Collaborations

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Career & Academic Advising Collaborations

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Cuevas, A. P., Jaunarajs, I., Forche, B., Bloom, J., & Mather, P.  (2021, February). Career coaches and academic advisers, unite! NACE Journal, LXXXI(3), 11-22.

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How faculty can impart hope to students when feeling hope-depleted themselves (opinion) | Inside Higher Ed

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A year to the day after writing about hope, Mays Imad reflects upon how faculty can experience and impart hope to students even now -- when many are, in fact, feeling hope-depleted themselves.

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Generating, Deepening, and Documenting Learning (Ash & Clayton, 2009)

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Generating, Deepening, and Documenting Learning (Ash & Clayton, 2009)

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My Teaching & Learning Philosophy's Conceptual Framework

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My Teaching & Learning Philosophy's Conceptual Framework

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Covid-19 made this spring - well, you know the words: unprecedented, uncertain, weird, insane, scary. But it posed even more challenges for professors who teach in 10-week quarters. After all, those of you on the semester system had already met and connected with your students when campuses began shutting down over spring break. At least you could use the remaining weeks of the semester to build on what you had started in person.

Those of us on the quarter system didn't have anything to build on. We came back from spring break to entirely new courses in virtual classrooms filled with new students, many of whom we'd never met. We had to create community from scratch.

How that played out in my own courses, which just wrapped up this month, may be of use to faculty members looking for ways to better connect with students online in the fall. My biggest surprise was the effectiveness of personal essays in building relationships in a Zoom classroom. I teach creative writing, but this kind of writing assignment could achieve the same ends in teaching any subject.

One of my spring courses was a graduate nonfiction class. It was fairly easy to build community in that course because I knew most of the students and they knew one another. We all agreed that, except for sharing snacks during class and liquid socializing afterward, class online was much the same as face to face. We met at our regularly scheduled time on Zoom, though for a shorter duration than usual. The students posted their work for others to read and offer critiques.

But trying to build community in my undergraduate course, "Introduction to Fiction," was a different story. The students ranged in age from 16 to 27. They didn't know me or one another. We had to cover a lot of ground to establish trust and sympathy.

Early on I learned they were miserable. They were going nuts living at home after having tasted the freedoms of dorm life. They mourned marking birthdays without their friends. They continued to work jobs that put them into contact with customers who weren't always sympathetic to Covid-necessitated precautions. They were afraid of getting sick and of getting those they loved sick. They watched Tiger King and played Animal Crossing. They drank. A lot. They paid attention to their pets and got high. They spent time with parents who had their own substance-abuse issues. They continued to hang out with friends, even though they worried that it wasn't safe.

I took time at the beginning of each Zoom session to check in with them, but the thing that most helped build community was something I've routinely done in face-to-face classes. Each week, in addition to more traditional academic work, I asked students to write a personal essay - a low-stakes, ungraded assignment - and to post it on the course website on a discussion thread that I call the "sandbox." It's a place to try things out, respond to prompts, practice creative writing.

This spring in the sandbox, students who didn't know one another wrote deeply personal essays - about sexuality, about race, about their moms, about how much they were drinking, about how much they love their siblings and hate the sitting president, about their suicidal thoughts, about their inability to focus and do the reading.

I divided the class into small groups so that students could comment on one another's sandbox essays - not to criticize but to be encouraging. The idea was for students to write free of the fear of judgment. So in their small groups, I asked them to highlight a "gold star sentence" in each essay - the place where the writer really hit the mark, either by using language that sang or expressing an idea that was profound, universal, or just plain delightful.

Over the course of the quarter, they got to know one another by reading those sandbox essays. The writing became more vulnerable, more authentic, and, frankly, a whole lot better. That was a function of learning tools and tricks from published writing, but also of getting more comfortable using their own voices.

Next fall I will continue to use the sandbox. The spring semester taught me other lessons, too, about how to help students adjust to one another in a synchronous classroom, and to a professor they've never met in person. Here are some other things I want to remember to do when we are once again online.

Allow for small-group interactions. My classes were small enough that I didn't break them up into smaller Zoom rooms, but next fall I will. Online, just as in a face-to-face classroom, it's often a tiny group of students who do most of the talking. On Zoom, you can literally see the dominant talkers taking the spotlight onto themselves and away from others. For the shy and reticent, being in a more intimate group can allow them a chance to speak.

Let them "chat" during Zoom class. For those less inclined to speak, encouraging comments in the chat function of whatever videoconferening tool you are using gives students an opportunity to express themselves and also lightens the mood. I resisted that for most of the quarter based on my experience in our university Zoom meetings (lots of inane comments, empty cheerleadering, and self-interested praise of people with proximity to power). But toward the end of the quarter I lightened up and let the Zoom chat fly, and it made things more fun.

Less is just as good, or better, than more. Instead of assigning novels or books, I will use shorter reading assignments that accomplish the same pedagogical goals. That is not giving up on rigor; it's simply recognizing that no one, including me, has the same attention span as before Covid-19. Many of my students complained that they were overwhelmed by the workload in their classes. I tend to assign a lot of reading. The graduate students dug into it. But the undergrads needed less. Next fall: shorter assignments.

Grades don't have to be an additional stressor. I've long used a system called "contract grading." If students do all the work, they get an A. The grade goes down in draconian fashion for work that is late and/or incomplete. But during a pandemic, students often had family obligations or grocery shopping to do, or needed to take care of siblings. So in the spring quarter I decided not to penalize late work. Everyone managed to complete nearly all of the assignments, mostly on time.

Peer review is a great tool. We worked together to come up with a rubric for the required analytic essays, and students gave one another feedback. No grades. In this way, students taught other students and felt invested in their success.

Hold office hours. Except that, when I did this spring, no one showed up. So I emailed individual students and said I'd like to chat with them. Often it was better to do that after class when we were already Zooming. Next fall I will ask each student to schedule an appointment with me during office hours.

Email, email, email. At the risk of feeling like a nag, I reached out by email, especially to praise work from students who may have felt less visible or to check in with those who were lagging behind. I suggested extra reading based on what I perceived as their interests but made it clear that it was not an assignment. Many of the students appreciated the suggestions and recommended them to peers.

Make all assignments due at the same time each week. Just as I do during nonpandemic times, I had everything due at the same time and day of the week. Students told me that they were having trouble keeping track of what was due when for different classes, especially those that were asynchronous.

Identify students who are struggling early. By assigning them an initial written introduction, I had a good sense of each student's relative strengths and weaknesses. I was able to keep an eye on those who were less engaged and just going through the motions and made it a mission to find assignments that could light them up.

Give strong students more responsibility. In a class with diverse abilities, the best students are likely to be bored. I usually deputize a student to take notes in class because I tend to toss off a bunch of additional reading recommendations. These students always write lively recaps so that anyone who misses class knows exactly what we covered. And they earn slobbering gratitude from their peers and me. Often students will ask the notetaker questions about assignments, rather than me.

Meet at scheduled times. Like many faculty members, folks in my English department had heated discussions on the pros and cons of synchronous versus asynchronous courses. As we've all become accustomed to Zoom, it was clear to me, at least, that students who had not explicitly chosen to learn online wanted real-time interaction with me, and, perhaps even more, with their peers in the class.

I found it fairly easy to transition to Zoom discussions, and because I've always required students to post their responses and creative work for all to read, I didn't even have to tweak my syllabus, except to ditch some of the required reading when it became clear that students were too overwhelmed to do it all.

Instead, I worked hard on creating relationships. Students want to be seen, to know that we care about them, to be reminded that we understand that they're struggling. Writing about themselves allowed that to happen and them to express themselves as the flawed, scared, and wonderful humans they are.

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Turns Out You Can Build Community in a Zoom Classroom

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Covid-19 made this spring - well, you know the words: unprecedented, uncertain, weird, insane, scary. But it posed even more challenges for professors who teach in 10-week quarters. After all, those of you on the semester system had already met and connected with your students when campuses began shutting down over spring break.

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He, Y. & Hutson, B. (2017). Assessment for faculty advising: Beyond the service component. NACADA Journal, 37(2), 66–69.

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Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491.

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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix

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Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix

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Advice for how to make Zoom classes energizing and community-building (opinion) | Inside Higher Ed

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Elizabeth Stone shares the strategies she used to transform her recent Zoom class into one of the most gratifying teaching experiences she’d ever had.

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To add in email signatures, Zoom name, and more.

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MyPronouns.org Resources on Personal Pronouns

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In English, whether we realize it or not, people frequently refer to us using pronouns when speaking about us. Often, when speaking of a singular human in the third person, these pronouns have a gender implied -- such as "he" to refer to a man/boy or "she" to refer to a woman/girl. These associations are not always accurate or helpful.

Often, people make assumptions about the gender of another person based on the person's appearance or name. These assumptions aren't always correct, and the act of making an assumption (even if correct) sends a potentially harmful message -- that people have to look a certain way to demonstrate the gender that they are or are not.

Using someone's correct personal pronouns is a way to respect them and create an inclusive environment, just as using a person's name can be a way to respect them. Just as it can be offensive or even harassing to make up a nickname for someone and call them that nickname against their will, it can be offensive or harassing to guess at someone's pronouns and refer to them using those pronouns if that is not how that person wants to be known. Or, worse, actively choosing to ignore the pronouns someone has stated that they go by could imply the oppressive notion that intersex, transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people do not or should not exist.

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What Are Pronouns? Why Do They Matter? - MyPronouns.org Resources on Personal Pronouns

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In English, whether we realize it or not, people frequently refer to us using pronouns when speaking about us. Often, when speaking of a singular human in the third person, these pronouns have a gender implied -- such as "he" to refer to a man/boy or "she" to refer to a woman/girl.

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Appreciative Student Information Sheet Example

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Appreciative Student Information Sheet Example

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Please complete the following information sheet at the end of class! This will help me get to know you and support your goals this semester!

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A Call for Action to Engage in Appreciative Education

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A Call for Action to Engage in Appreciative Education

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He, Y., Hutson, B. L., & Bloom, J. L. (2014). A call for action to engage in appreciative education. Journal of Appreciative Education (Research Paper Section), 2(1). Retrieved from http://libjournal.uncg.edu/index.php/jae/article/view/956/595

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Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780040200800103

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Paulo Freire's pedagogical approach has been applied in many contexts, but it is more than simply a collection of methods or techniques. Here we outline briefly some of the key concepts in Freire's work.

Praxis (Action/Reflection)

It is not enough for people to come together in dialogue in order to gain knowledge of their social reality. They must act together upon their environment in order critically to reflect upon their reality and so transform it through further action and critical reflection.

Generative Themes

According to Paulo Freire, an epoch "is characterized by a complex of ideas, concepts, hopes, doubts, values and challenges in dialectical interaction with their opposites striving towards their fulfilment". The concrete representation of these constitute the themes of the epoch. For example, we may say that in our society some of these themes would include the power of bureaucratic control or the social exclusion of the elderly and disabled. In social analysis these themes may be discovered in a concrete representation in which the opposite theme is also revealed (i.e., each theme interacts with its opposite).

Easter Experience

Paulo Freire says that "those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow for ambivalent behaviour... Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth. Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were."

Dialogue

To enter into dialogue presupposes equality amongst participants. Each must trust the others; there must be mutual respect and love (care and commitment). Each one must question what he or she knows and realize that through dialogue existing thoughts will change and new knowledge will be created.

Conscientization

The process of developing a critical awareness of one's social reality through reflection and action. Action is fundamental because it is the process of changing the reality. Paulo Freire says that we all acquire social myths which have a dominant tendency, and so learning is a critical process which depends upon uncovering real problems and actual needs.

This is a way of gathering information in order to build up a picture (codify) around real situations and real people. Decodification is a process whereby the people in a group begin to identify with aspects of the situation until they feel themselves to be in the situation and so able to reflect critically upon its various aspects, thus gathering understanding. It is like a photographer bringing a picture into focu s.

Banking concept of knowledge

The concept of education in which "knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing".

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Paulo Freire's pedagogical approach has been applied in many contexts, but it is more than simply a collection of methods or techniques. Here we outline briefly some of the key concepts in Freire's work. It is not enough for people to come together in dialogue in order to gain knowledge of their social reality.

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A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning (Fink, 2013)

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A Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning (Fink, 2013)

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https://www.deefinkandassociates.com/index.php/resources/

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https://curricularengagement.com/sample-workshop-materials

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Student version

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Failure has become a trend in the past decade. As a society, we increasingly say "Failure is OK" or "Failure is essential to success." But in this process of normalizing failure, we ignore the fact that failure affects people differently, and that privilege plays an important role in who is allowed to fail - and who isn't.

When I was a sophomore in college, I was enthralled by the world of entrepreneurship. I joined business clubs and attended countless talks from CEOs and start-up wizards. But as time wore on, I realized that the world of business was not for someone from a low-income background, like me. One entrepreneur who gave a talk at my college told us that he had borrowed $50,000 from his parents to launch his first start-up and then proceeded to go bankrupt in his first year. The lesson? Take a risk; it's OK to fail.

The recurring theme of "It's OK to fail" didn't (and still doesn't) resonate with me, because I couldn't afford to fail. I didn't have parents who could lend me $50,000. In fact, $50,000 was more than my single mother could make in three years at her near-minimum-wage job. The lesson I learned was that if I didn't have money to risk losing, I shouldn't be in business.

By my junior year, I had sworn off my business major, focusing instead on communication and education. Although I felt that those fields were more inclusive for someone from my background, I still couldn't escape those dreaded motivational talks, which left me anything but motivated. "It's OK to fail," one professor told the class. "Students worry too much about their GPA." And while I was never one to panic about grades, I did lose a key scholarship after finishing my freshman year with a 2.5 GPA.

Unfortunately, this is the reality for many low-income, first-generation students - those who are in college only because of the scholarships that got them there. If those scholarships are lost, their dreams may be lost as well. More-privileged students don't have those concerns. If they fail courses one year and require an extra year in college, they can afford it.

This imbalance of privilege is found in high school, too, where low-income students tend to fall behind their peers academically. By normalizing failure, we tell them it's OK because they can take remedial courses in college to "catch up," not acknowledging that those courses will burden them with additional costs and time to degree. It's no wonder that first-time, full-time, bachelor's-degree-seeking students who enroll in a remedial course in the first year after high school are 74 percent more likely to drop out of college than their nonremedial peers are.

Instead of "It's OK to fail," here's what we should be saying to low-income and first-generation students:

First, tell them they are good enough, because many of them probably haven't been told that very often. As soon as they step on campus, we need to combat any impostor syndrome - the feeling that one is a fraud who doesn't deserve success - that they might be experiencing. As much as we consider impostor syndrome an individual problem, overcoming it should be a group effort that involves professors, counselors, and administrators.

Second, tell them that they belong, not only when they arrive on campus but throughout their time at college. Low-income and first-generation students face many barriers to graduation, and it is important that institutions continually foster a sense of belonging.

One way colleges can do this is by adding personal touches. For example, one postdoctoral researcher has said that her undergraduate experience as a first-generation student at Hobart and William Smith Colleges was improved by such things as a dean greeting her at the bus station when she arrived in town, and a staff member who sent her care packages in the mail like the ones other students received from their parents back home.

Third, tell the students that they shouldn't be afraid to ask for help - and point them to where the help is. Part of that work for colleges includes removing any remaining stigma associated with using counseling services. Although the stigma has been reduced over the years, largely thanks to such student-advocacy groups as Active Minds, work remains to be done.

Similarly, students often do not learn about or use tutoring and other academic services until it is too late. A 2012 report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement shows that this is especially prevalent at community colleges: More than 87 percent of them reported offering supplemental instruction, yet 82 percent of students said they had never used those services. One idea for getting students to use such services is to meet students where they are and place support centers where students congregate, like in dining halls and study areas.

For low-income and first-generation students to persevere, one of the first steps needs to be inclusiveness. That means acknowledging the privilege that comes with saying "Failure is OK" and realizing that such blanket statements are not only dismissive of some students' struggles but also can actually be harmful to their success.

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Failure has become a trend in the past decade. As a society, we increasingly say "Failure is OK" or "Failure is essential to success." But in this process of normalizing failure, we ignore the fact that failure affects people differently, and that privilege plays an important role in who is allowed to fail - and who isn't.

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Rick Wormeli agreed to answer a few questions about the new second edition of his book, Fair Isn't Always Equal.

Rick Wormeli is a well-known author, workshop leader and educator.
LF: The first few pages of the book offer the best definition and justification of differentiation that I've seen. It's not a fair question, but could you provide a short summary of what you wrote about it? Rick Wormeli:
Differentiation is not a list of recipes to follow, defining levels of RTI, or simply knowing the definitions of terms like, "scaffolding," "tiering," and, "respectful tasks." At its core, differentiation is a principled professionalism made actionable with demonstrable results. When we differentiate, we spend overt time and energy getting to know our students, not just in the first week of school, but ceaselessly throughout the year as they evolve personally and experience each unit of study. This is all a waste of time, however, unless we do something constructive with that knowledge.

So, responsive teaching is often a better name for differentiation; we don't fly blind to the students we serve. We take what we know about students and their learning, and we use that knowledge to inform and create our instructional design, providing a more effective learning experience than could be achieved with a generalized, one-size-fits-all approach. It's this mindset that is key: "What do I know about this student right here and now, and how am I maximizing his learning as a result?" There will be times when we do nothing because the general lesson is working just fine, but are we vigilant enough to notice when it's not working, or when there's a way to make what we're learning more meaningful?

Differentiation is not individualizing instruction or putting students into groups, though we can do that as situations warrant. As differentiating teachers, we are ceaseless pragmatists: We do whatever works, even when it's different than how we learn or what we do with the rest of the class. We accept our charge as educators: To teach so that students learn, NOT to play "gotcha," and think this prepares students for the larger world. This charge includes having the ethical fortitude and genuine and versatile tools to dismantle antiquated, arbitrarily imposed curriculum sequences when they don't work, and provide the lessons and timing that will. We don't blame students who fail to learn on the same, uniform timeline, nor do we claim that staying with the same pace as classmates is a good review for those learning at a faster pace.

Because we're principled and dedicated to students' success, then, we usually design the most effective lesson on today's topic that we can, then we augment and revise sections of that plan as needed, based on what would most help students at those points in the lesson. We realize that student competence in our disciplines is the most preparatory and maturing thing we facilitate in students, and that incompetence is never preparatory or maturing. Differentiation is making sure students really learn what they are studying. As such, it's very demanding of students, whereas not differentiating is, "going soft," allowing students to escape their learning. It all requires teachers to have significant expertise in their subject areas and in teaching in general, and not succumb to hypocrisies that surround us, i.e. policies, structures, calls for, "fidelity," and pacing mandates, and programs that inhibit a teacher's capacity to respond differently to students as needed. It's not for the faint-hearted.
LF: You spend a lot of space in the book talking about the appropriate use of grades. What would be your "elevator pitch" about their effective use? It seems to me that many teachers have "weaponized" (my word, not yours) them - how can we help move colleagues out of that mindset? Rick Wormeli:
Grades are judgement communicated: They are aggregate reports of the summative evidence of student learning as of one arbitrary calendar date, nothing more. They are as clear and accurate as they can be, but accepted as flawed and subjective, never to be used as the sole diagnostic determinant when making a high stakes decision regarding a student's - or a teacher's - proficiency. If they become anything more than communication, such as compensation, reward, validation, coercion, bribery, status symbols, or affirmation, they corrupt the teaching-learning enterprise, and can no longer be used to communicate student learning accurately or ethically.

Grades are rarely used to provide feedback, as they are declarative judgments of summative mastery. Any kind of judgment, positive or negative, can invoke self-preserving ego when receiving feedback, thereby negating its instructive impact. When receiving low grades, for example, students rarely internalize and learn from their teachers' comments written in the margins or the tops of their papers. They feel a stronger need to, "save face." Instead, they make excuses or put up a façade of indifference, so as to mitigate the hurt or painful reality check that contradicts how they see themselves. We've found over and over that judging students' formative work in the early and middle points of their learning process, i.e. grading it or putting percentages on it, not only nullifies the value of those marks, it limits student learning.

This means that we do not formally grade anything that is not the summative, final declaration of mastery. That includes homework, quizzes (yeah, I said quizzes), classwork, notes and notebooks, group projects, labs (unless they are the culminating application of the unit's learning), or any other teaching method that we use to get students to mastery. We grade against standards and learner outcomes, not the routes students take to achieve them. Guided by this principle, stakeholders can trust the integrity of the grade report, at least to the degree it's reasonably accurate.

Given this, grades are never used to punish, motivate, or teach [Insert whatever mature work habit or behavior you seek in students here - self-discipline, collaboration, submitting completed work in a timely manner, following through on goals, etc]. Read every research study you can, dive deeply into anecdotal reports as well - None of them will list, "punitive grading" or grading in general as an effective technique at teaching these important character traits. Educators who promote this fallacy that grades teach these things are demonstrating a lack of training on how to help students build self-efficacy, positive work habits, executive function, and more. Teachers who are not trained in these areas overly rely on the gradebook for classroom management and are less effective as a result.
LF: I have a particular interest in "differentiated grading" for English Language Learners. What would your advice be to mainstream teachers who are trying to figure out how to grade ELLs fairly? Rick Wormeli:
When facing challenges of how to grade English Language Learners in the mainstream class, always go back to your assessment/grading principles. Here are a few that work for me and many others (basing a few from Chapter 2 in the new book):

Just as with any student we serve, English Language Learners have a right to assessments that accurately measure their knowledge of the subject content under review. We protect those rights, even when it requires extended time and energy on our part to create assessments that generate accurate reports of proficiency. We can't knowingly falsify a score or grade. So, if an assessment's over-reliance on using English is the reason a student can't express what he truthfully knows and can do regarding a particular standard, we have to change the assessment format. It's not a choice, nor is it a matter of whether or not we have time or creativity to do it. As ethical assessors, we elicit accurate data and make accurate reports of evidence presented. There's no moral authority for teachers to lie to students or their parents. Making sure a grade is accurate for an English Language Learner's true proficiency takes courage and instructional versatility.

ELL students must not be penalized for errors in English unless the test is specifically evaluating their language proficiency.

If we're not testing English specifically in this standard, we will test the student in her own language. We can choose from among the numerous translation options available to educators.

Report cards communicate performance related only to publicly declared standards/outcomes, not something outside of that. So, if we use an alternative assessment with an English Language Learner that doesn't really ask for the same evidence as what is asked of his classmates, we are providing a false report as well, and this is to be avoided.

We will review all test items for cultural or experiential bias to make sure the student does not get tripped up on context that does not have anything to do with the skills, concepts, and knowledge we are evaluating.

Although we may choose different test formats for ELL students, we will not make the tests less rigorous than those used for native speakers. Maintaining rigor, however, does not preclude breaking the test up into shorter chunks that allow ELL students additional time and focus that it takes to translate their thinking into clear responses for evaluation. We're mindful that trying to play a game to which we don't know the rules is tiring. ELL students are expending a lot of energy to learn English, fit in, avoid embarrassment, learn local customs and procedures, let alone the actual content on which they are being evaluated. Fatigue has already set in before they start the test. Breaking it up into shorter chunks mitigates some of the unhelpful stressors present in long testing sessions without affecting the accuracy of the results.

We will be careful to go through every point in our lessons and assessments and identify academic English terms that we need to translate for the ELL student. A student may get by with conversational English, but academic terms are much more difficult to comprehend.

LF: Your writings about the role of assessment reminded me of a recent Harvard Business Review article that shared research on managers. It found that ones that called "Always On Managers" - those who constantly gave feedback to those who they supervised - did more harm than good. They were always pushing and giving little time for assessment to determine if the things they were pushing were what their employees needed. What's your advice to teachers who want to strategically balance their use of assessments with appropriate instruction? Rick Wormeli:
I'm really hesitant to equate schools to businesses here and elsewhere, as they have very different dynamics with elements that just don't map well to the other. Attributing success or failure of an element in one to the success or failure of a similar element in the other can be misleading. Your question is a real concern in both worlds, however, so here's my thinking: When managers (teachers) constantly give feedback to employees (students) [Wow, I dislike the analogy of teacher as manager and students as employees], they are perceived as arbiters (judges) of quality and the direction of the learning. This is not conducive to coaching and facilitation or to adjusting goals in light of new evidence, which is what most of us aspire to do in our classes.

Constantly giving immediate feedback diminishes students' autonomy and capacity to assess themselves. Both are important skills for academic achievement and life, however. We don't want to make students overly dependent on external validation. Many students already feel like they only have value to the adults in their lives based on tests scores and report card grades. They often don't know how they're doing unless a classmate or teacher tells them they are okay. This creates a passivity in students that counters the active learning and self-efficacy we claim to instill. Combine this concern with the growing emotional issues associated with posting items on social media and nose-diving into depression when no one responds positively within five minutes, and we're setting students up for a major crash.

Feedback should be timely, but that doesn't always mean immediate. For many early-in-the-learning skills and content areas such as basic sentence writing, new physical skills in p.e., art, or music, learning new rules in gaming or new protocols in coding, immediate feedback has great value. It's corrective, seen simply as information that's good to know in order to progress. There's no threat to ego. Gosh, all feedback should be this way. With more advanced material, though, we don't need to rush in with the feedback train right away, if at all. We invite students' critical analysis and reflection instead. We teach them to self-monitor: How am I doing in relation to the evaluative criteria for success? Do I need to change my actions or do I need to change my goal here, and how do I know?

The modern educator doesn't presume to arbitrate and bestow knowledge on passive recipients and declare students proficient when they can parrot back to the teacher what the teacher said in an earlier lesson. As teachers we have to ask ourselves: What am I doing to help students learn independently of me? Does learning and assessment happen only when I'm physically present? In each planning breath regarding assessment, we have to ask, too: How will students get feedback on this other than through me? If, in the majority of assessments, feedback comes only from the teacher, we're not only depriving students of other valuable perspectives that would help them grow, we're giving students another excuse not to own their learning. Where's the joy and maturation in that?

Let's circle in our lesson plans where we help students assess themselves, provide them tools for giving themselves and each other descriptive feedback, then let them act upon that knowledge as they engage in the next steps of learning. In such classrooms, students participate - they have skin in the game.
LF: Is there anything I haven't asked you that you'd like to share? Rick Wormeli:
In this short discussion, I kept emphasizing ethics in several places. This is key, as most assessment and grading practices don't change for the positive unless there is moral imperative to do so. I don't think it's too weird or over the top for a teacher in a department, team, or grade-level meeting to ask, "Is this the moral thing we do?" when discussing a new grading policy. A colleague notices, for example, final grades at the end of the year incorporate scores from the first quarter, but that material was never re-assessed at the end of the year to see if the student carried it forward. The grade, then, is based on a fragile premise, and may not be accurate at all. Does this bother us? Is the student being set up for humiliation, thinking he is competent, but really is not? In another conversation, a colleague says that we shouldn't sacrifice sound assessment practices in high school, thereby jeopardizing students' learning, because some colleges who lack the scale and training regarding those policies don't use those same policies in their coursework. When we widen the lens of what we do, we see clearly, and with moral context, we teach and assess effectively.

We also have to ask to what degree we will allow individuals without professional training to tell us what to do. There are many teachers and principals who know what creates ethical and accurate grading, but they don't employ those practices because parents or school board members are still pushing for antiquated, ineffective practices and they don't want to choose that battle when they have so many others. I get it, and I can't judge these people too harshly because we're all hypocrites from time to time in education. There is a lot at stake here, though, including students' lives, and that's not hyperbole: Students can be denied or accepted to a training school based on one percentage point, scholarships granted or denied based on 1/10,000th of decimal point. Grades better darn well be accurate. What goes unlearned, unachieved in students because we were playing it politically safe and chose not to push for ethical grading? It's worth the extended, hard conversations that have to happen.

The final thing I would ask is for educators to investigate how most professions in the working world that our students will enter when they graduate from our schools assess and evaluate their employees. They will find a remarkable disconnect between traditional grading practices and working world realities. Accurate, ethical, evidence-based reporting has stunning parallels with the post-high school/college world. It's far more preparatory for what's to come.
LF: Thanks, Rick!

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Author Interview With Rick Wormeli: 'Fair Isn't Always Equal' (Opinion)

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Rick Wormeli agreed to answer a few questions about the new second edition of his book, Fair Isn't Always Equal. Rick Wormeli is a well-known author, workshop leader and educator. LF: The first few pages of the book offer the best definition and justification of differentiation that I've seen.