#380 – Student Motivation, with Tyler Rablin

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• What are your current grading practices?
• How do your students respond to the grades and feedback they receive?
• How can you make your evaluations and feedback more motivating for students?
• How can you make student assessments focus more on assets rather than deficits?
• What is one action step that you can take to change and improve your grading practices in order to make the experience more motivating for students?

• Tyler Rablin Consulting (official website)
• Hacking Student Motivation (written by Tyler Rablin)
• Collected Work on Assessment and Grading (with Resources) (Tyler Rablin)

#380 Student Motivation, with Tyler Rablin

AVID Open Access
46 min

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Tyler Rablin 0:00 Look for those students that they were down about what they could do before, and you see a glimmer of hope in them, or you see a smile on their face when they get feedback that maybe used to bring a frown. It’s not easy work, but when you see the impact it can have on kids, there’s no doubt that it’s important and meaningful work.

Rena Clark 0:20 The topic for today’s podcast is student motivation with Tyler Rablin. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. If you’re looking for fresh ideas, meaningful connections, and impactful strategies, check out the AVID Summer Institute, a professional learning experience where good teachers become great teachers. Registration is open now. To learn more, visit avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the Podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:57 I’m Paul Beckerman.

Winston Benjamin 0:59 And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators,

Paul Beckermann 1:02 and we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 1:07 Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark 1:12 Our quote for today is from our guest, Tyler Rablin, in his book Hacking Student Motivation. He asked the question, “If you’ve never felt successful at something, how do you know it’s possible?” All right? Winston,

Winston Benjamin 1:30 Yeah, that’s a really good point. But for me, I think I’m thinking about it from the student’s perspective: the doubt that they have outlasts our belief in their success, right? So no matter how many times we say we believe in you, it’s going to be up to them to recognize they have that faith in their skills. So it’s continuously to remind them, but that reminder is only as valuable as they can hold that. So, until they see themselves in the place, they can’t really do much.

So it’s upon us to sit there with them. It’s kind of the analogy of: you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. You got to be the dude that’s standing there with the horse in the dry heat, right? Multiple times. So if we’re willing to be that person, I guess students will see success. So that’s what I’m taking from that quote.

Paul Beckermann 2:27 And I’m thinking back to a quote that was really popular when I started teaching. People kept saying, “Success breeds success,” and when you’re successful, it feels good, and people want to feel good, so then they work hard to try to get that feeling back again, and the more you feel that success, I think the more we believe we can get there again and we’re willing to work hard.

But if you never feel that, and you never have that intrinsic motivation to get there, what drives that first leap to get to success? So I think as teachers, it’s up to us to set those kids up for success, not meaningless success, not a token success, but give them the skills, and then give them the opportunity where they can be successful with the skills that they have, and then maybe we can start that upward spiral of success breeding success.

Rena Clark 3:16 I appreciate that. Well, I’m excited to dig into this more today. So we’re diving into a topic that is the heart of many classrooms, I know, with many of the high school teachers I’m working with these days, and that is around student motivation. So we all hear: we want our students to be engaged, we want them to be curious, we want them to be self-motivated learners. But how do we help create an environment that? What really fuels motivation? So I’m excited to help answer some of those questions.

We have our guest today, Tyler Rablin. And Tyler is an educator, speaker, author of Hacking Student Motivation, Five Assessment Strategies That Boost Learning Progression and Build Student Confidence. And his work really focuses on rethinking traditional grading and assessment practices to create classrooms where students feel empowered, capable, and motivated to succeed. So welcome, Tyler.

Tyler Rablin 4:23 Thank you for having me.

Rena Clark 4:26 And feel free to jump in, Tyler, if you want to tell us any more, just a little bit more about your background, so our listeners have a sense of who you are.

Tyler Rablin 4:34 Yeah. So I am currently an instructional coach in the Sunnyside School District out in Washington State. I have been doing that full time for the past couple years. Before that, I was in a high school English classroom. I taught mostly freshmen. I did that for a while. Loved it. Did not think I would ever choose. I figured if I was teaching freshmen, someone would have to force me to do it. And I was shocked to learn that I chose to do it every single year. So that’s what I really love teaching. I did that pretty much full time. It was all freshmen, all day, every day, and it was pretty fun.

This year has been a whirlwind for me. I’ve been doing my admin internship, and we unfortunately had to part ways with the principal at the school I was doing my internship in at about week three, and they said, “Will you step in while we hire someone?” And it’s March now. So that’s kind of where I’ve been at the whole year, trying to figure out how to do my instructional coaching while figuring out what it’s to be a principal full time. So it has been a busy year for me.

Rena Clark 5:38 So lots of lenses to look through. So I know today we’re going to dive in a little bit more into discussing some of the things you talk about in your book. So we’re going to break that down, and anywhere else that we want to wander and talk about. But just to get started, what was the moment or experience that first made you realize when you’re in that classroom as an ELA teacher that traditional grading and assessment practices were not working, and ultimately, that is partially what inspired you to write your book?

Tyler Rablin 6:15 Yeah, I was always the student that didn’t love how things worked in school. That’s partially why I got into education, and so that’s I’ve always had, sort of, the lens of questioning how things have been done. But it really wasn’t until my second year of teaching. I was down in Eastern Oregon. I had kind of two experiences that shaped me quite a bit.

One, I got to tell this story this weekend to a group of teachers. It’s a story that for me, there’s a lot of joy and a lot of pain connected to it. I had a student named Tiff in my class, second year teaching, and she probably to this day, is the most brilliant writer that I’ve ever gotten to work with. I mean, truly, she wrote fantasy and science fiction, which, if you are a writer or love reading those genres, you get how hard those are to write, and she was incredible at it. And I love reading fantasy and science fiction too, so we did a lot of talking about the book she was reading. And I really just was blown away by her work.

And then—so there’s a lot of joy—and then the pain came at the end of the trimester, or I guess I was on semesters in that school. I had to sit down with Tiff and let her know that she was failing the class. Because as much as she was an incredible writer, my grade book was super limited. It was saying, “You have to do X, Y, and Z, or else you’re not successful.”

And what was so painful for me is I remember sitting down with her and saying, I told her, “You’re gonna fail the class. I just want to sit down and talk to you.” And she said she was super—she was the kindest, sweetest person. A smile on her face. She said, “It’s okay, Mr. R, I know I’m not good at English.” And I think in that moment, it was the moment—I use the phrase where I say “grading is communication” a lot—and that was the first time that I recognized that I had no intention of sending that message to her, but I was communicating to a student, in this case, a complete lie. And that was sort of the moment where I started questioning everything.

At the end of that year, I also remember walking my grade book down to the office. We still had the physical grade book that you walked down there, and I was standing in the beautiful building that I was in, but it was over 100 years old. And I remember just looking at my grade book, feeling this practice has been around longer than the building has been around. This is such an outdated [system]. If I were to give that grade book off to another teacher and say, “Use this to support your kids,” they would have so little information that was helpful for them in doing that. And so that second year, the end of that second year, that summer, is where I just really became obsessed with: How do I do this better for kids? Tiff has always been in the background of my mind. Every time I approach trying something new, it’s, “I got to do better for kids Tiff,” that they have so much brilliance that isn’t reflected in sometimes the traditional way we do things.

Winston Benjamin 8:59 I just wanted to let that breathe for a second and hail the wonderful story of how she informed your work, right? I appreciate you bringing that as the “why.” So my question for you is: one of your key strategies talks about creating meaningful assessment that goes back to your story of Tiff. She believed that she’s not a good writer, even though she could [write well]. You argue traditional assessment often fails to motivate students. What makes an assessment meaningful? How can teachers create or design assessment that actually engages students, based on your work? What your goal is to the audience.

Tyler Rablin 9:45 Yeah, so often, to me, the way that we build assessments—the whole goal of an assessment is to give students an accurate picture of where they’re at, right? That’s the point of assessment: Where are you at in your learning? And I realized so often the assessments that I was building, the assessments that I experienced in school, the only thing they were telling me is often what I can’t do. It was telling me, “This is as far as you’ve come, and these are the things you don’t know.” But I was never informed of, yeah, maybe I’m only at a 70% mastery, and all I was hearing was the 30% I couldn’t do.

And so I really started to rethink both in the assessment system, our grading practices, but even just in the assessments we build, how do we help kids get an accurate picture of where they’re at, but that has to include an accurate picture of what they’re already successful at. I don’t care where a student’s at in their learning journey; every kid has something that they can say, “I know how to do this.”

And I think if that is the lens that we approach our grading practices, our assessment practices, how we build assessments, how we sequence instruction—all of that—if we’re really being intentional of saying, “Can every kid see a win,” right? Even if it’s—and I don’t want to give them a fake win. I don’t think kids know when you’re not being authentic—but if I am doing a good job with my assessment practice, even the kid who’s really, really struggling should be able to say, “I don’t know this concept yet, but I can define the words,” right? Something as simple, as straightforward, as beginning as that. There’s no reason every kid in that room can’t find a way to feel that way. And for me as the educator, it’s my goal to structure things so that it’s as straightforward as possible for kids to see that.

Paul Beckermann 11:36 I love that you’re focusing on the asset-based aspect of that instead of the deficit, and I know one of the things that you write about in your book is the shift to redesigning the grade book to focus on growth more than scores, which I think is inherent in that growth outlook. What does that look in practice, and how does that impact student motivation in your experience?

Tyler Rablin 12:00 I feel I have to preface this with saying, “This is what worked for me. And if you are interested, ask your administrator before you do anything.” That’s I have to put that out there.

Rena Clark 12:13 But he’s got that admin lens now.

Paul Beckermann 12:17 That’s fair. It’s fair.

Winston Benjamin 12:19 A.K.A., do it.

Tyler Rablin 12:22 I mean, that’s you could ask any administrator that I’ve worked with. It is pretty common that I go to them after the fact to be, “Hey, I started doing this already. Just want to get you on board now.”

But what I found is as great as some of the online grade books aim to be, and I know there’s more that are pulling in a standards lens, I never found an online grade book that did what I needed it to do with kids. So my approach to it, I actually had two different areas of record keeping. One was a spreadsheet that I organized very specifically to communicate learning to myself and my students. And then again, grading is communication. I also had other stakeholders to communicate with. So there are the caregivers at home, and I also had principals, and I had to think about, what do they want?

So my approach, my spreadsheet, every single piece of essential learning, whether that’s a standard learning outcome, however you want to approach it, had a pretty big section in that spreadsheet with multiple columns underneath it. So, let’s say the skill is identifying a central idea in a text. That’s a section of my grade book. There are multiple columns underneath so that kids get multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency at that standard. What I was finding with the online grade book when I was trying to record keep in there is I would have an assignment here, and then four columns later, another assignment about the same standard, and who knows how many columns later, another one. And it wasn’t communicating clearly. I didn’t know in those three attempts, it was so spread out, it was hard for me to see which student is growing, which student is stuck, what small groups do I need to pull?

And so using the spreadsheet really allowed me to take the information that I was getting and make it usable information. I was able to sit down and have conversations with students that were much clearer about, “Hey, this is a skill you’re doing great at. This is a skill we need to work on next.”

So I would have that. My grade book, I often get the question of, “How did that transfer to the online grade book?” And again, this is where I’ll say, “This is what worked for me. Figure it out for your own practice.” But I had two categories. One was assignments, 0% of the actual grade, and all I did was mark whether it was turned in or not. Sometimes I would add a little note if it was done on time, because that’s data that was helpful for me in terms of determining patterns for students. Because I realized the families that I worked with so often asked, “Are students completing their work? Are they staying on top of their work?” That was my way of clearly communicating that to them.

And then the only other thing that was in my grade book: every skill we worked on for the term had one assignment. I used a five-point scale, so that assignment was out of five, and it was: “At this point in the learning, where are you at?” So by the end of the term, I don’t care if they got one for 10 tries. If they showed growth and could read a repeat of performance at the highest level of mastery of five, that’s the score that was reflected. Because I think so many students, when we average scores over time—which is, if I could wave a magic wand and get rid of one thing, it’s that—so many students get stuck. If you have a student who struggles early, as much as we want to say, “Have a growth mindset. Show some grit, have some resilience.”

Those terms don’t mean a whole lot if at the end of the term, we’re still holding that against the student, and we’re saying, “Yeah, I know you showed a ton of growth, you had a bunch of resilience, but we’re going to hold that against you from early on.” So that’s why I had to change how I did my grade book. I needed something that would get me out of the system of averaging so I could really let a student know, and mean it, when I said, “You started at a one and you got to a five,” and that is 100% of celebration. Before it was 50% of celebration, 50% they’re upset because their grade is really low. So that was how I shifted kind of the logistics of my grade book to be able to really emphasize growth and celebrate that with kids.

Paul Beckermann 16:19 So here’s a related question, because you need to measure the student’s accomplishment in order to put something in the grade book, regardless of what that grade book looks. And I know that you advocate for learning progressions instead of rubrics. Why do you do that? And why do you think that’s a more positive impact on students? I’m kind of curious. Yeah.

Tyler Rablin 16:40 I’ll make a couple distinctions. One, I always worry that I am too harsh on rubrics, and the reason I want to start with that: they serve a purpose. They’re a tool for a certain point in the learning. The biggest reason that I want to make sure rubrics are still in the equation is there’s an infamous study that happened, I think, back in the 80s, where they were looking at implicit bias and grading. And what they did in the study: they took two identical essays, one with a stereotypically Black name, one with a stereotypically white name, mixed them into the stack, and had teachers grade them. What they found is time and time again, teachers graded the student with the stereotypically Black name lower. The only thing they found to combat that was a well-designed rubric that teachers had calibrated around. So every time, I think learning progressions are super valuable, but the rubric has a place and is still very, very important for a specific reason.

What I found with the rubric, though, is everyone told me, “Give students the rubric early on in the unit, and then they’re going to be somehow excited and motivated and know where they’re going.” But, if you look at most rubrics, the first three levels say, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” We phrase it nicer than that, but that’s really what it is. And a lot of the students at the beginning of that unit are starting with a message of, “Yeah, I’m in one of those first three levels. I can’t. That’s where I’m starting at.”

And so I started to really think about, how do I shift that so that even my student, my earliest student, in that learning phase, that learning progression, can say, “I can.” And so a learning progression, to me, if a rubric says, “Here’s one thing, and I need to figure out how good you are at that one thing,” a progression says, “Here’s one thing. Here are,” I use a five-point scale, “here are five different steps along the way of things you can do.”

So, for example, if my standard is the one about character development and central idea, the actual standard might say, “I can analyze character development to determine how it impacts the theme.” That’s where I want students to get, but if I give that to students, especially my students who haven’t been successful in English classes in the past, they’re, “Nope, that’s not for me. I can’t do that. I’m not there yet.”

But if I unpack that all the way back to: if my phase one of that progression says, “I can define protagonist, antagonist, conflict, and plot,” even starting there, every single kid, no matter where they’re at, can say, “I can do it. I’ve got that.” And my next phase might just be, “I can read a text and identify those characters or those elements,” and it just slowly starts scaffolding up what it looks to build proficiency.

So that when a kid’s stuck, it’s not that they have to follow this step by step, but when a student gets stuck in their learning process, my goal is to identify the roadblocks, right? If they don’t know the definitions of these words, they’re going to get stuck. If they can’t identify them in a text, they’re going to get stuck. So when a student does get stuck, they can look at this learning progression and go, “Which phase am I working on right now? Where am I stuck in this process?” And not only is it helpful in terms of me designing my instruction, it’s helpful for the student. We want students to take more ownership over their learning, but often there’s not enough clarity for the student to feel confident enough to be able to try taking that step on their own.

Paul Beckermann 20:09 Yeah, that leads to that “Success breeds success” thing I was talking about at the beginning.

Rena Clark 20:16 Exactly. And you talked about this earlier, so as the teacher, whether you’re using the progressions or rubrics, when you’re providing feedback to the student, how can we do that in a way that is really focusing on assets? How can we do that in a way that is going to motivate students? What does that look? So when you’re pulling out an individual writing feedback, how might a teacher, even if they’re not quite to progressions or anything else yet, how might a teacher take that and use what we’re saying to provide feedback that is motivational and focusing more on the asset base?

Tyler Rablin 20:57 I think the first thing I would say is give less. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, but they’ve done studies after studies of how much feedback can we really process, and a lot of it comes down to a simple limitation of our working memory. But the most commonly agreed amount is on a full essay, three pieces of feedback, and that’s it. And I was the teacher that was guilty. It was a mistake search, right? It was a challenge for me. I had to mark everything. I couldn’t let it go.

And I think the reason that it’s important to give less feedback is we have to recognize that every time we give feedback to students, even if it’s—I guess if we’re identifying the positive, it’s different—but every time we say, “This is a mistake. This is something to work on,” we’re telling students, “This is something you don’t know.” And as those build up over and over and over, if I’m leaving 10 different pieces of feedback, and nine of them are things they don’t know, as a student, I’m finishing that going, “I’ve got way too far to go to be successful.”

And so what I started doing, my most common way of leaving feedback is to give one piece of feedback, right? And it varies. But on a piece of writing, if it’s a shorter piece, I’m leaving one piece of feedback that says, “This is a trend that I noticed. This is the next thing that we need to work on.” And when possible, I used to have a bank of links to YouTube videos. I would link that video in there, because I think even when we leave one piece of feedback, if there’s no follow-up instruction, the student is stuck there in that sense of, “I can’t,” right? “This is something I can’t do yet, and I have to wait, and I have to sit with this feeling, this experience of not being there yet.” Whereas my goal is to say, “Yes, we need real information, right? You this is where you’re at. You’re not ready for this yet. This is what you’re working on. But I don’t want you to sit there for a week while you wait for me to give a small group lesson. I want you to have a resource right now that you can say, ‘I’m here, but I’m going to make progress.'”

Winston Benjamin 22:55 For me, it’s a bit of coaching, right? Figuring out what your particular batter, pitcher, shooting guard actually needs in order to develop their skills, where they can have on their own time to practice, right? “This is where I am. This is what I need to do.”

One of the questions that I have for you is, as a part of your book, you talk about personalizing the learning experience. You discussed it earlier in identifying the learning progressions where students lie as they’re engaging with the process, right? “I can see myself on this line and this step. This is what I need to go before or after.” How do you do learning conferences, and how do they help students take ownership? Because you mentioned ownership in the last position in the learning progress, right? How do you engage in learning conferences?

Tyler Rablin 23:51 And this is where I lean pretty heavily into the learning progressions again, because the way that I typically approach it is, I’ll set up the time. The structure in terms of structuring the time to pull learning conferences off is definitely one of the trickiest parts that took me a while. As an ELA teacher, I feel a little bit lucky. We have sometimes extended periods of independent work, whether it’s reading or writing or small group work. I would use those times to meet with students individually.

And what I would do is, if we’re working on a piece of writing, I may say, “Hey, bring me your best example,” right? “This is our learning progression around developing complex and varied sentences. Bring me what you are most proud of in your writing, and let’s sit down and talk about that.” And so the student and I would sit down, and what I would say is, oftentimes it was helpful to use the learning progression as a guide. So I might go through and say, if step one is “I can define what nouns and verbs are,” before we even look at the writing, I’ll be, “All right, tell me what a noun and verb is.” And they can tell me. And again, we’re starting that conversation with, “I can do it. I’m successful.”

And then I’ll move on. And maybe it’s “I can identify an independent clause.” So we’ll pull up writing and say, “Hey, where’s an independent clause in here?” And we’ll kind of just—the beginning is almost a quick checklist. And as we get more and more complex, that’s where we really start to sit down with the writing and look at it in detail.

And it’s really fun for me. So often—not all my students, but a lot of students—get to the point where they almost get overwhelmed and a little hesitant to say that they can do certain things as we get later on. And then again, it becomes my goal, if it’s there, if it’s truly there, to say, “Hey, you don’t think you’re at this phase yet, but I want to show you a couple things.” Maybe we’re not totally there, but we’re working on it.

And often I mentioned my grade book. There were the assignments with five points. These learning conferences are how we would agree on what the current score in that grade book was. So we’d sit down and really look through their writing together. We’d probably look at some of their previous data too, and I would say, “Hey, this is the trend that I’m seeing. This is what we got in our conversation. Does this make sense?” And I occasionally would have students who would say, “No, I think I deserve a different score.” And in that case, it’s I sit down with the student in that moment to say, “Well, let’s look at it together.” Because so often grading is that power dynamic, and let’s be real, there’s still a bit of a power dynamic even as equal as I’m trying to make that experience, but for a student to be informed and involved in the process of it, and to know that I am listening—at the end of the day, I am the teacher, and have to make the final say—but I’m not just doing this to you. I’m doing this with you.

Paul Beckermann 26:33 I really that personal back and forth with the student, that conversational piece of that, that’s really cool. And now there’s a new player in the game, and that’s artificial intelligence, and it has its own voice. Sometimes it’s kind of changing the way feedback is happening in education. How do you see AI playing a role in assessment and motivation? And what should teachers be excited about, but also maybe a little cautious about?

Tyler Rablin 27:02 I’ll start with the cautious, because I am eternally the skeptic. I think the most: any teacher that’s thinking about using AI feedback should do this. Do a round of it with your students. Use an AI tool to give students feedback and then ask them how they felt about it before you go any further, because what I found with my students in my classroom when it was purely—if it was a process of the student gave me a piece of their writing, I gave them AI feedback, and then we had feedback portfolios—they just recorded that there, and that was the end of the process. Most students didn’t like it, even if the feedback was realistically better than the feedback that I was going to give. I was sending a message to the students that this wasn’t worth my time, because there was no personal involvement from me that they felt.

And so as nice as it would be to be able to just click a button on every kid’s essay and they get all the feedback, and I’m, “Wow, I have a weekend again,” it’s really hard to do that with students, because they start thinking, “Well, what I just did doesn’t matter,” and that’s the last thing that I want to send to students.

So what I started kind of playing around with is, how do we mesh that world of using AI to enhance the feedback, enhance the speed at which we can give feedback, while also personalizing it? And that’s where those learning conferences, the writing conferences, came in, because I could sit down and say, and usually I would just do it on a draft. The final feedback on a final draft was from me, but on a draft, I would be pretty clear with them: “Hey, I can’t give you fast enough feedback for you to be able to write a draft, get feedback, turn around and write a final in a realistic amount of time.” And so I would kind of make sure that they know that this is why I’m using this tool. But then I would also, in the process, make sure that there’s a step where we sit down together and I can say, “This is what I love about your writing,” or “This is what we need to work on,” so they know that I’m still personally invested in you as a learner and in your writing.

So I really think it’s just finding the right balance, and it’s probably different by content area and grade level, but really, if we can save teachers time with AI, we have way too much to do as it is. We should be looking for the tools that will help take work off our plate so we can spend more time with kids, but then we also have to make sure we’re doing that step of spending more time with kids talking about their learning and their work, so that they know we’re invested in it.

Rena Clark 29:25 And then beyond the feedback, I could see how AI might help you if maybe I’m learning to figuring out progressions, or I want more ideas about, “How do I make this more asset based?” I think we were just talking to Catlin Tucker how she was using it to change the language and things, even because I feel we might be able to use that to just alter some of those things that maybe we need a thought partner with, which kind of leads me to my next question.

As we have some educators listening to this, and they’re going, “That’s lovely, Ty. It sounds he can do that, but that seems a bit overwhelming.” What might be one small step, and that sounds great, what might be a small step in the right direction, or that initial step to really help me get towards that longer-term goal? What might be that place to start?

Tyler Rablin 30:24 I have a couple thoughts. One, I took my whole journey of redesigning my assessment practices, and this is going to get kind of meta, but I built a learning progression around assessment practices so that if someone is curious about, “How do I get to this end goal?” there’s a step number one. And step number one is just learn to unpack your standards well. I think that is a super important step. I was involved in a lot of unpacking a standard, things that I did with teachers, and then we created this product, and then we put it in a filing cabinet, and then I don’t know what happened to it.

And so I think what I learned is unpacking standards is step one to being able to say, “Well, how do I communicate this with students in a way that helps them feel?” Because that’s the whole point of unpacking standards. They’re super complex, wordy things that don’t even make sense to the teachers half the time. How do I take those and turn it into something I can put in front of a student and have them go, “Oh, I could do that,” right? So I would say that is step one. Whatever it looks, unpack your standards. Just don’t do all of them. You don’t have enough time to do all of them. Pick a couple that you think are most important and just say, “What is this standard really asking?”

The other thing that I will say, and this doesn’t even require you to change anything: incorporate. I call it a feedback portfolio, but anytime the student gets some sort of feedback, whether it’s feedback from a teacher, a peer assessment, even if it’s just scores from an assessment itself—anything we can use to determine our current level of performance relative to a goal is feedback.

And I would have students, anytime they got that information, it just goes on a document where it says, I would use the “glows and grows” language so, “What are the things I did well? What’s the feedback I got? What are the things that I need to work on next?” The reason that I think that is a huge step any teacher can take: if you’re sick of leaving feedback and kids not using it. That’s honestly why I started doing it, because it suddenly became a document where we would do a piece of writing, I’d leave feedback. Before we started the next piece of writing, I could say, “Get out your feedback portfolios. What is the thing that you’re working on in this piece of writing?” And suddenly, instead of that feedback disappearing, it’s the document in front of students.

The other reason that I loved it—this was sort of, I got lucky, I did not intend to do this—but so many students what they would see in their grow column, the thing that they need to work on, three, four, five, six lines later, all of a sudden, I can say, “Did you notice that that move to your grow column or your glow column?” Something you struggled with early, that was the thing you were going to work on, is now the thing we get to celebrate. And maybe I noticed it, but it became so much clearer to me and my students that they were making progress, even without any sort of numbers or anything. They could see, “I was struggling with this early, and I got positive feedback on it later. I’m getting better at that thing.” So unpacking standards and feedback portfolios, those are the two I think best places to start.

Rena Clark 33:33 Appreciate that.

Winston Benjamin 33:34 I really your idea of being feedback available and accessible often. So here’s I’m going to go back to something you said earlier in our conversation. You talked about walking in your 100-year-old building with your grade book that with a tradition that’s older than the building itself. So that’s 120 year old process, right?

So I got a question: if you can redesign assessment from scratch, boom, you got carte blanche, all of it. What would a truly motivating class, design classroom be? Motivating, truly motivating, driven classroom design be? What would it be? What it would look, what it would sound? The feel of it.

Tyler Rablin 34:22 I think step one is pull out the ability to average grades. I really think when we take so much of the way our classrooms operate, operate around that. Whether it’s the way that we motivate students, “If you don’t do this, you’re going to get a zero.” The only reason that matters is because we’re averaging scores over time, and we’re leaning into a lever that isn’t even the most effective lever we have to supporting productive behaviors in students.

Or, I mentioned earlier, the student that grows a ton oftentimes when we average scores. You mentioned, what does it look and sound? That’s your kid that’s sitting in the back corner with their head down, not trying. Because they’ve recognized mathematically, “Why would I keep trying? I got so many low scores early on, I’m going to get an F, so I’m going to sit here and be quiet,” and that student’s disengaged.

And I really think taking out the averaging forces me to be a lot more careful of what I’m teaching and how I’m assessing it. It really forces me to say, “Is what I’m doing connected to one of the learning outcomes of the course?” Where before I know I was super guilty: I would make this giant test on a book we read, and I was just, “Well, because we read the book, that’s why we have the assessment right now,” as opposed to saying, “No, I know I need to get evidence of learning for whether or not they can analyze how a theme developed. That’s what I need to focus on.”

So to me, if I could redesign assessment from scratch—and this sounds almost mean, because I’m not really giving an assessment system, I’m taking something away—but I think I’m taking away a crutch that I leaned on for far too long: of averaging scores over time. And as soon as I took that out of my mindset, my vocabulary in terms of assessment and grading, all of a sudden, I started looking at things in such different ways that it was somewhat terrifying at first, and then the more that I got into it, the more that I started focusing students on the essential learnings of the course, it really started to take shape in something that I could—if someone forced me to go back to an averaging system in my classroom, I think I would have to walk away. It really became so powerful to not have the average, to not hold students accountable for their early mistakes, to let them grow and help them see really what they were learning and why. All of that came about because I said, “I’m not going to average scores anymore. Now, what?”

Winston Benjamin 36:54 Wow, I love that because you’re forcing me to do something that I can use as a tool later on. You’re giving me several, but it’s time for us to ask the question that all our members of our audience are asking: What are you going to put in your toolkit?

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 37:10 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Winston Benjamin 37:21 So Paul, Rena, what’s in your toolkit? What are you taking away from this conversation?

Rena Clark 37:28 I have lots of things I’m thinking about. I think I’m going to put my toolkit. This comes from Tyler. I love the idea of multiple modalities of feedback. So, of course, I’m going to throw out Tyler’s book so if you want to learn more, you can pick up his book, Hacking Student Motivation, Five Assessment Strategies That Boost Learning Progression, That Builds Student Confidence. But something I the idea of multiple modalities of feedback, especially for secondary friends, that idea of having a link or something else that follows up? Because often we’re, “Okay, that’s nice, but I don’t really understand it. How do I learn more? I don’t know what you mean.” So there you go.

Paul Beckermann 38:13 Those are good. I’m going to kind of reflect back on our conversation with Catlin Tucker, because she was talking about something that overlaps with what you talked about, Tyler. She was talking about the value of unpacking standards too. And she was talking about how powerful AI actually was in that particular process to unpack it because it’s good at dissecting and pulling out the key points and the main threads, and then she used it to revise everything into asset-based language. And if we can get a helping hand in that process, it makes it much more that we’re actually going to go down that road, which, as you pointed out, is kind of the first step. So that’s what I drop in.

Winston Benjamin 38:58 I love that. For me, I’m going to take the idea of breaking out my grade book that allows me to see student growth and change over a standard over a period of time and spiraling back into that actual standard several times to give students opportunities to really see that. So breaking that grade book to really focus in on students learning and growth.

Ty, I apologize. I give everybody a nickname. You my brother. We already we’ve been chilling for an hour, but you my homie, right? So it was good. Ty, what’s something that you’d to throw us in our toolkit?

Tyler Rablin 39:36 I really think just when you’re building an assessment, think about your first couple questions, because a student’s going to approach that assessment, whatever it is, and that first couple questions are going to set the tone for what they think they can do the rest of the test, or whatever the assessment looks. So that’s, I will say, that’s the piece that I really started playing with the last few years. This is, how do I order or structure or tier the questions in my assessment so that, again, students starting the assessment go, “Oh, I got these first couple right. I got some background knowledge. I can do it,” and that, really, I’ve just seen it do so many positive things for students in terms of helping them believe they can be successful on that task.

Paul Beckermann 40:23 That’s brilliant. I love that. All right. Well, now it is time for our one thing.

Transition Music 40:29 It’s time for that one thing. It’s that one thing.

Paul Beckermann 40:38 All right, one thing time. What’s your final takeaway for the day? Winston, do you want to go first? Yeah.

Winston Benjamin 40:45 I’ll jump in. Stop telling students they’re dumb for the first six times before you give them something nice to say to them. I’m not going to want to do anything you say after you told me I wasn’t smart the first six times. I’m sorry to say it in the way that I said it, but I really appreciate the idea of setting it up to where students are being encouraged instead of being told they are not capable from the start.

Paul Beckermann 41:16 Rena, what do you got for a final takeaway today?

Rena Clark 41:19 I love that the “less is more” on the feedback, because for everybody. But I that idea of playing off of Winston best work instead of, my favorite. No, it’s my favorite. Yes. Bring your best work back here, and we’re going to talk about where that is and what you’re doing well. And then how can we scaffold this up from here? But it’s: we’re not starting because this is bad, this is good. We’re just going to make it better. You only you only have it’s: you’re doing great, and we’re going to go up from here. So yeah.

Paul Beckermann 41:55 I’m kind of hanging on this whole conversation about the humanity of the whole thing. You can set up your grade book. You can have your rubrics or your progressions, or all those pieces, but it really a lot of times comes back to the humanity and the conversation, and that one-to-one communication: Am I really communicating to you where your assets are? Am I helping you find your assets? Does that conference work for us? And I loved the idea of making sure you ask the students how it’s working for them, or how they’re feeling about them. I know you used it in the in light of AI, but I think that applies to so many things. The students are the most important people in the room, and we need to get a pulse on how they’re feeling about it. So that whole piece is kind of what’s resonating with me.

Tyler, any final thoughts you want to leave our listeners with today as we kind of close out?

Tyler Rablin 42:50 The thing that popped into my mind is, I know when I started changing my grading practices, I was terrified. It’s such a—it’s so at the core of how we know teaching and learning works. And so I would say, for anybody who tries to make little changes or differences, it’s like any change, there’s going to be some growing pains. But I can just remember, I told you the story of Tiff at the beginning. And right now, there are kids going through my head that I worked with as I began to really change my grading practices that were the reason I kept going on the times where things got hard.

And so I think as you’re going through it, look for those kids, right? Look for those students that they were down about what they could do before, and you see a glimmer of hope in them, or you see a smile on their face when they get feedback that maybe used to bring a frown. So that’s my encouragement. It’s not easy work, but when you see the impact it can have on kids, there’s no doubt that it’s important and meaningful work.

Rena Clark 43:52 I just want to say thank you so much for being with us today, Tyler, and we can tell how much you care about students, how connected you are, really keeping students at the center. It’s about relationship and those impacts, even those small ones, over time, and how the rippling effect, because who knows how far that ripple really goes. We never really get to find that out, but we appreciate all the work and for sharing your insights, and we will have some information in the write-up for this episode. So if you want to see some of the stuff we’re talking about, you can see it there. You can also check out Tyler’s book. And then, Tyler, I know you have a website as well. You can share that now, and it will also be in our info. And what is the website if they want to check that out?

Tyler Rablin 44:40 It’s just Tylerrablin.com. There’s a blog on there that has a lot of my thoughts on it. And right now, I just remember at conferences, when I present, I have a section that just called “Bored.” And if they’re bored, they go there, and I’m a wildlife photographer, so I just put pictures there. So if you just need a bird to brighten your day, it’s on there too.

Rena Clark 44:59 All right. So thank you so much. Hopefully we’ll talk to you again.

Tyler Rablin 45:03 We’ll check back in. Awesome. Thank you for having me on.

Rena Clark 45:08 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 45:11 We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 45:24 We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 45:28 And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 45:32 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 45:34 You make a difference.