Who are we and how did we get here?

Learning that Matters is a project from FutureNowEducation.

Our Supporters

• • Our families

  • Our students and school communities

  • Paul Leather and the Center for Innovation in Education

  • The Assessment for Learning Project - Thank you Tony Siddal and Sarah Lench!!

  • Shannon King, Battelle for Kids, Overall Assessment Guru, and Loving Friend

  • Our friends and co-conspirators across Virginia and DC

Our Process: (see more detail in historical context below)

• As Frederick Douglass said, "Agitate. Agitate. Agitate."

• We had an idea for a book that would highlight the students' voices as the real data and evidence of the lasting impact of the Capstone Project and other meaningful performance tasks on student's post-high school lives.

• We got together to brainstorm our project and begin planning our book.

• We reached out to former students to ask them some general impact questions and see if they would be interested in being involved. (All said yes!)

• We created some general questions about the impact of learning experiences in high school to ask former students.

• We offered a webinar time to discuss the questions as a group.

  • Webinar transcript (very rough) - click here

• We followed up with students to access more stories, reflections, bios and learning artifacts to begin to curate the student stories and our Legacy of Learning gallery.

  • We asked each student the same questions and to provide the same data - click here

• We each reached out to specific students to get the data and artifacts, then linked the student's thoughts and artifacts into the gallery.

How the project is being shared:

• • • The Assessment for Learning Conference - February 11 - 13, 2020 - San Diego, California

      • Interactive Presentation & Discussion: Where do We Go from Here? New Ways of Thinking in VA and Nationally about Evidence of Learning in Systems of Assessment

Historical Context

• 2001 - Eliot starts teaching at Oakton High School

• 2005 - John Banbury becomes principal of Oakton High School

• 2006 - Beth starts teaching at Oakton High School

• 2007 - Katie starts teaching at Oakton High School

• 2010- Erich starts teaching at Oakton High School

• Summer 2011 - a cross-curricular team of teachers create a 9th grade Portfolio Program (quarterly reflections on Habits of Mind questions)

• Years 2012 - 2014 - John Banbury provides a Leadership Course at OHS to support innovation and 21st Century Learning outcomes for all students

  • The Habits of Mind and Cross-Curricular summer meetings continue. The Habits of Mind and cross-curricular skills will end up aligning very closely to the FCPS and VA Portrait and Profile of a Graduate attributes.

• Spring 2012 - "Miserable American Experience" 11th grade project in English and US History

• June 2012 - a team from OHS goes to High Tech High

• School Year 2012 to 2013 - Implementation of Exhibitions of Learning for all freshmen at Oakton High School

• Spring 2013 - Beth and Erich pilot an AP Language mini-Capstone project around student choice topics. Simple Task: Learn about something you care about. Do something. Share what happened when you tried to do something. Be honest."

• June 2013 - a team from OHS goes to PBL World in CA

  • A small group creates a "Capstone Project Experience for seniors"

• School Year 2013 - 2014:

  • Pilot Capstone Experience for all students through Advisory

  • Students in Eliot's Government class who had Beth and Erich as teachers the prior year continue their mini Capstone with the pilot Senior Capstone project.

• School Year 2014 to 2015: Development of official Capstone Experience for juniors and seniors - all juniors complete a project

  • • Cool point: At this point, all juniors had had two years of Habits of Mind portfolio reflections as a basis for their reflective practice from freshman year - sophomore year cross-curricular discussions and collaborations.

• School Year 2015 - 2016: All juniors and seniors are completing a two-year Capstone Experience project

  • Summer 2016 - Beth moves to Central Office for FCPS to support PBL, FCPS Capstone initiatives and VA Student-led Assessment Networked Improvement Community (11 school districts in VA collaborating to infuse student-led assessments across our districts)

• School Year 2016-2017 - Five students pilot the sophomore Capstone (English, Social Studies and Chemistry final exam project)

• June 2017 - John Banbury becomes an FCPS Region 1 Superintendent. Erich Heckel moves to DC Public Schools.

• School Year 2017-2018 All sophomores complete a one-year capstone ("Sophstone") project.

• April 2018 - Jamie Lane becomes principal at Oakton

• August 2019 - Beth Blankenship returns to teaching (Madison HS) and Beth, Erich and Eliot begin to develop the Legacy of Learning book.

• September 2019 - First outreach to former Oakton High School students to share project ideas and plans.

• October 2019 - First Webinar with former Oakton High School students. Two-and-a-half hours of amazing, honest reflections and conversations.

• December 2019 - Project website template created by Beth Blankenship, inspired by Paul Leather's idea to present at ALP.

• January 2020 - Meeting with students to begin curating project site. Katie Hovanec gets talked into joining the team.

• February 2020 - Assessment for Learning Project Conference. Sharing our thinking and collaborations with students to date!

• March 2020 - Get surprised by the pandemic and all that came with that. Try to do our best as educators, parents and community members to keep our self and others safe, and help our students deal with the major shift of learning online.

• Summer 2020 - Reconsider our project and process. Consider if our book should be the primary focus, or wonder if we have another way to engage with and change education beyond our classes. Revamp our book and write more(bad) chapters.

• Fall 2020 - Try to stay true to our educational values amidst a global pandemic. Experiment with student-centered learning through individual conferences, learning portfolios, reflections and assessments that connect with the world beyond the classroom.

• Fall 2020 - Expand our vision and student exemplars to include more than capstone projects.

• October/November 2020 - Decide to launch a podcast. Wrestle over an appropriate name.

• December 2020 - Episode 0 of What's the (Learning) Matter? is recorded as a dry run. We agree to proceed.

• January 2021 - What the (Learning) Matter? debuts. Five terrific alumni and students join us as guests for the first episode.