🧵My most popular workshop that I've been running this year is around redesigning professional learning structures to be cohesive, centered around teacher autonomy, and driven by long-term collaborative groups focused around pedagogy.

Here's the entire message:

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⬇️⬇️⬇️ 1. Create strands for professional learning that identify a specific pedagogical elements that should be a part of a powerful classroom experience.

It's amazing how rarely schools are able to answer this question: "What does a powerful classroom in your school look like?"

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I know it just sounds like playing with language, but if you mentally shift from saying, "I'm leaving feedback," to "I'm providing advisement," it results in a dramatic shift in what we are providing to students and how we're doing it.

Here's what it changed for me...

1/ First, I started leaving less feedback. Advisement is about helping someone see where they could go next. If I'm listing ten things they struggled with, that overwhelm doesn't lead to productivity.

Instead, I would identify one or two of the key trends the student...

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For teachers who are concerned about the unethical usage of AI in the classroom for assessment, here are a few ideas:

1. Each major assignment should include a memo. This could be a written memo or a screencast where the student explains what they did and how it...

1/ demonstrates the learning they were engaged in. This way even if the student does rely heavily on AI, they are still thinking about the learning. Plus, it's just a good practice overall, regardless of AI involvement.

2. Learning conferences. At some point, sit down with...

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My finals used to be a high-stakes assessment that was make or break for my students.

Now, my final is one last change for the students to choose a couple skills they think they can improve before the end of the term.

The only possibility is that they improve.

1/ I would much rather use a collection of evidence covering all the time we spent learning together to determine how well students have learned something than a single one-time, high-stakes assessment at the very end of a course when there's no chance to course-correct after.

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🧵 My first period had a few extra minutes today, so just sort of out of the blue I asked, "What kind of things could we do in this class that would make you want to do it on your own instead of just using ChatGPT to do it?"

It was really insightful.

1/ One of the first things that came out was a student who said, "Something I care about." I asked what that means, and they essentially said, "Something I get to choose."

The second thing that stuck out was a student who said (not verbatim) something like, "Something that...

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Young people developing their identity are constantly looking for signs of who they are, and in our school system, so often they use grades to determine who they are, which is painful because grades never capture the full story and often lie to students.

For example...

1/ today after school, I sat down with a student to work on a piece that he was writing. It was past the due date, but we had made an agreement about how to proceed.

I haven't seen a ton of writing from him this year, but while I sat next to him, I watched him write...

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🧵Feedback is an area that often unnecessarily burdens teachers and steals too much time.

Feedback doesn't need to require a teacher to sit for hours and write comments on pages. In fact, that's often one of the least effective methods.

Ideas to try instead.

1/ In-class feedback.

While people often think this means a formal, sit-down conference, I actually prefer less formal options. As students are working, I have them write one question they have about their learning, and then I roam the room and answer them.

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I've recently run across multiple experiences that remind me that research is intended to make generalities about large groups of people, which are absolutely helpful, but we can't forget that each individual is different.

The example I've run into is regarding...

1/ ADHD and extrinsic motivation. Research around grading often oversimplifies the issue into "extrinsic bad, intrinsic good" with the idea being that we should remove extrinsic motivators and help students rely on intrinsic motivation almost exclusively.

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Another round of memes from chapters 1-4 of Lord of the Flies with my 9th graders today. Here are some of my favorites.

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🧵 There's an art in managing the ebb and flow of a classroom, where you balance between releasing students and pulling them back together. As students seem to struggle with longer periods of focus this year, here are a few that have helped me and become part of my routine.

1/ 1) "Share with a partner what you've accomplished in the last ten minutes." Specifically if I'm seeing a slip in productivity, this asks students to pause and reflect. I've also started following it up with, "Now share what you want to accomplish in the next ten minutes."

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Motivation requires a reason to move.

This season of education seems like motivation is one of the trickiest concepts to support in our classrooms.

There is an easy way to do it: fear. Yet, while that will work in the short-term as a one-time approach, it's not...

1/ sustainable, nor does it build positive association with the action.

To explain, imagine I wanted to motivate myself to run. One approach would be to release a wild bear directly behind me on a track. Yes, I would run. However, the instant the bear changed course...

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Just read another article about phones in the classroom where someone was like, "Students distracted by phones? Well, then plan more exciting lessons!"

Like, am I supposed to hire professional dancers to teach symbolism in 15-second dance bursts?

1/ At some point we have to recognize that cell phones are major detriments to classroom learning (specifically said 'classroom' because I know students can learn lots on social media), and an engaging lesson still can't compete with the habitual use of cell phones.

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The burden of grade reform in a classroom, especially early on in adopting new practices, has kept me from encouraging others on here to change their practices lately. I still truly believe there is a lot of power in the change, but with the context of teaching today, I...

1/ am very hesitant to encourage people to make the leap right now. Being in the classroom every day, I know the extraordinary effort it takes just to maintain what we've been doing, but if you need a change and think a shift in your assessment/grading practices...

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This poll and subsequent thread has brought up something important.

Allowing students multiple chances to demonstrate understand and holding them accountable to deadlines doesn't have to be mutually exclusive.

I don't accept late work. Here's why...

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https://twitter.com/sage_stage/status/1584556461635801088

The thinking behind accepting late work is valid and important. It allows students the flexibility to make mistakes without long-term consequences, which is crucial as we're dealing with young people who have underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes that can hinder decision-making.

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I've had a bunch of close friends leave teaching and start working in the private sector. Without fail, every single one of them says they are less stressed, their work/life balance is better, and their mental health is better, even though some are making less money.

1/ For non-teaching friends who don't understand why teaching is so stressful, imagine this scenario. You have to run meetings all day long. You get virtually no time to prepare for the meetings. During the meetings, there are 30 people in the room who are forced to be there.

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🧵 I update grades every two weeks while conferencing with students.

I used to just update grades whenever I put scores in and then would talk about the changes with students later.

Here's why I've switched and the benefits I've found to updating grades LESS frequently.

1/ In terms of student conferencing, I can't emphasize enough the benefit of it, especially if you're switching to a non-traditional system (standards-based, mastery-based, etc.). It gives you time to explain how the system works with the student's own data.

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🧵 One thing always surprises me when we talk about standards-based grading and retakes/redos.

People talk about it like you have to do them, and if you don't, you are doing it wrong.

Here's the deal, I don't give retakes.

Here's why...

1/ The function of a retake is to ensure that prior gaps in learning don't carry long-term consequences in a student's grade if the student ends up learning the content later.

That makes perfect sense. If a student improves, then yes, that should be reflected.

However...

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🧵Feedback was something that felt like a waste of time for me for a long time with my students. It seemed like I would spend hours providing it only to have it be ignored.

I blamed the kids, when I should have been looking at my practice.

Here's what I've changed...

1/ For starters, your feedback exists within your assessment ecosystem and is controlled by the values of that system.

The grading system has to allow for multiple attempts at demonstrating proficiency without penalties for earlier attempts for students to value feedback.

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This year all my students put their phones in their bags and their bags at the front of the room. I hold myself to the same standard.

To any teacher that's like, "Phones are super powerful tech tools, but is the distraction too much?"

It's so much better without them.

1/ One of my students said, "This is the most I've ever known my classmates."

Another said that the only class she doesn't have to put her phone away in is the worst grade she has.

I mean, one even said, "I didn't know my battery could last through the day."

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🧵 Here's a list of random little things I do as a teacher that actually have weirdly strong impacts on student behavior, engagement, and motivation.

I'd love to hear yours in the comments.

1/ Whenever I interact with a student at their desk, I make it my goal to be at the same height as them. I've found that doing this helps the information to be received more readily, whether it's academic support or a behavioral request.

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In case anyone needs a good 15-minute (maybe 20) opening activity next week centered around retrieval practice, here's one of my evergreen go-to activities that works for any content area at any point.

It goes like this...

(Resource for you to copy and use at the end.)

1/ First, we list the major concepts or skills that we've learned so far. I typically make a list of them on the board.

Then, we select (sometimes by voting, sometimes with data from assessments) on the three concepts that we need to review the most.

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