My Plan's Impetus

What lead me to this focus? Well, I guess I'd have to say that it all started as part of my efforts to renew my National Board Certified Teacher status in the 2016-2017 school year. The process involved a lot of reflective inquiry and self-assessment. I was tasked to pick four professional growth experiences that I have been a part of since my initial certification back in 2008, and to reflect on my ongoing growth as an educator, as well as contributions to the profession. At first I had no idea what to do, or feature, but there were a couple of items that called to my attention. When I first began to reflect, I chose the struggle I have always had with grades and grading. Below is a first draft of one of my reflections, and I can share it here because I ended up using 4 completely different PGEs.

I decided not to follow through with that as one of my final four PGEs because I was still hung up on how to do it. I'd built a new grade book using Google Sheets, hoping it would be superior to the Skyward method of averaging all items into one aggregate percentage. I was determined to make it work.

Somewhere in that process, one month before the renewal portfolio was due, a parent walked into my Creative Writing class, while I was in the middle of one of my many rants about the pointlessness of grades, and she handed me the Columbian article featuring the guys from Woodland.

I read it, and emailed them directly that afternoon. One of the guys, Jason Crowley, in one of our many email conversations that followed, said something that flipped a switch in my mind. He pointed out that what I'd been trying to do, which was find a way to make current grade books fairly and accurately measure learning, was actually not possible.

That was a new idea for me. The moment my brain was ready to accept what was impossible, it was also, finally, ready to understand a bunch of other, different, possibilities. I went on a kind of vision quest from there, which included an eye-opening site-visit with Jason and Aaron Blackwelder at Woodland HS, and tons and tons of reading including these books, and videos, and these articles and other resources.