Student Testimonials
On the Makerspace, Flipped Instruction, and Grade Abatement
On the Makerspace | Students reflect on our use of makerspace ideas and strategies -- the traditional STEAM framework we've adapted for the Humanities -- and how it promotes student-centered work.
On Flipped Instruction | Students reflect on the extent to which the interstitial classroom's flipped, multi-level instruction has changed how they access lessons and developed skills, traits, and information.
On Grade Abatement | Students reflect on the ways grade abatement's use of profiles, skills, and traits has impacted their self-esteem, self-efficacy, and overall success.
More on the Makerspace
A traditional makerspace uses shared experience and expertise to solve shared problems. An example from film is the famous "square peg" scene from Apollo 13.
In a school setting, makers don’t necessarily have a shared background. They aren’t all trained engineers. That makes the focus of many secondary STEAM makerspaces the teaching of those basic skills, usually as a part of solving problems or creating artifacts.
In here, the focus is on learning itself, because learning is the core of the Humanities. This is a makerspace about the skills and traits that support everything we do. The experience and expertise is learning-based; the Humanities element is in the content and expression of that learning process.
The most basic problems a space like this solves are (1) what it means to live a good life, and (2) what it means to be a good person. Most specific units, lessons, prompts, etc., are built on some exploration of those two questions. The course syllabus for 2017-2018 covers this:
Future syllabi should be even more universalized, with the specific studies of the course determined by the age and needs of the students themselves.
More on Flipped Instruction
What we do in here is not properly “flipped,” and even the flipped portions are more interactive and responsive than you’d expect. The idea is to create a student-driven framework for instruction. There should always be more levels to that instruction. Those levels are accessible by all students, with differentiation built into the platforms, but there is also always a much more traditional baseline: Read this text or lecture, complete this assignment, get feedback.
The use of “interstitial” is meant to indicate that the learning can happen anywhere, at any time. It also indicates that learning should happen in the spaces in between the rest of our daily grind. And as these responses indicate, that interstitial approach opens up a unique kind of flexibility.
The essay embedded here was meant to be the first part of an explanation of all this. It's still a good starting point for anyone interested.
More on Grade Abatement
This is an even bigger shift than the shift to interstitial instruction. It’s the process of gutting the weird, arbitrary machinery of grades, and then replacing those guts with clear and consistent logic. The profiles govern assessment, and the profiles are both flexible and precise. A growth mindset is no longer compromised by summative tests or quizzes, because all data, tests and quizzes included, are part of an evidentiary, collective evaluation.
Grade abatement is embedded in every aspect of the makerspace. Exploring the course website, the physical classroom, these student responses, etc., will reveal more and more about the profiles, protocols, and so on. Interested folks ought to start with the current (and likely future) instructional website.
The shortest path to understanding, however, is through the students themselves:
