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Envision Education is excited to share the culmination of its two-year research project, Pursuing Equity for Black & Latine Students with Learning Differences, which
documents and illustrates the systems, practices, cultures, and supports that are associated with the well being and success of Black and Latine students with learning differences – students with disabilities and multilingual students with disabilities.
In 2023, Envision Learning Partners (ELP) and Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) embarked on a research study to identify and learn from schools that demonstrated positive outcomes for Black and Latine students with learning differences (including students with disabilities and multilingual learners). After a review of data from secondary schools across the country, the study team identified two schools for a more in-depth study, which was conducted during the 2023–2024 school year.
The results of the research are shared through case studies of the two schools that were the focus of the research: 1) Crosstown High: Building a Culture of Inclusion; 2) Capital City: An Inclusive School Community Committed to Whole-Child Learning and Well Being; and 3) An Executive Summary/Synthesis of Findings.
In addition, we have authored four practice briefs based on the findings of the research that provide practical steps that schools can take to create more inclusive environments that support the success of Black and Latine students with learning differences.
This research was made possible through the generous support of New Profit, a venture philanthropic organization, and the Oak Foundation.
Over the last three decades, standards-based reforms have attempted to close opportunity gaps – mostly by tapping large scale assessment and accountability systems. But these assessment systems were not designed to provide real-time feedback to support teaching and learning at the classroom level. We also know that systemic racism is deeply ingrained in the history of assessment in our nation. But we can build and envision different ways of measuring learning, especially by centering students in these systems.
In this keynote, Alcine Mumby of Envision Learning Partners discussed how performance assessment can be a key equity strategy – giving students the opportunity to declare what they know, how they’ve learned it, and how they plan on using that knowledge to change the world.
On May 15 and 16th, 2024 educators from across the country came together in Oakland, CA for a two-day Assessment for Learning (AFL) Deep Dive and focused on student demonstrations of learning.
Together, we continued to pursue AFL’s essential question: What can we learn together about how assessment for learning relates to learner belonging, equity and liberation? Specifically, we explored “How do we build aligned and coherent performance assessment systems that promote learner belonging, equity and liberation?”
The event included background knowledge of Oakland education with ELP Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, and longtime Oakland education leader, Gary Yee, school site visits hosted by Envision Academy and ARISE High School where folks experienced student presentations of learning, new tools were presented, and community connections were strengthened.
The AFL Blog will soon have posts from Storytellers about their experience at the event; learn more as those come out and see previous blogs from other AFL events by clicking here.
A performance task can make no claim to quality if it is not crystal clear on what skill or skills it is assessing. The same is true for a performance assessment system writ large. This is why ELP cares about, and has become a booster for, the concept of a graduate profile (aka portrait of a graduate, learner profile, schoolwide outcomes, etc.). In order to “elicit learning that matters”—a key principle of ELP’s HQPA framework—a learning community must define what matters. That’s what a graduate profile does, and therefore why a profile, or something akin to it, is foundational to a performance assessment system.
To that end, I am excited to announce that ELP’s first ever online workshop series is devoted to developing a high-quality graduate profile. Although this workshop is already booked up, scroll down to learn more about future opportunities.
The launch of this series marks ELP’s commitment to making our work more widely and frequently accessible to the performance assessment movement. We plan to roll out a number of other online workshops, on various topics related to performance assessment, through 2021 and beyond.
Click here for more details.
To ELP partners and friends,
Envision Learning Partners was established to disrupt the systemic inequities created when students are expected to learn and demonstrate their learning in rote, standardized ways. We know that current systems of assessment do not show or honor the brilliance and talents of Black students. When we support schools, districts, and states to create more balanced systems of assessment, one way we define success is the ability to bear witness to powerful demonstrations of learning by Black students. Humbly, we acknowledge that we have more work to do as individuals and as an organization. And we are humbled by the searing reminder of recent events that improving education is not enough.
At Envision Learning Partners, we are taking this time to reaffirm our commitment to supporting our Black students, Black teachers, and Black leaders. We have explicit anti-racist, pro-black strategic goals. We have specifically invested in training and professional learning by Black-led organizations so that we can embody these ideals. We seek to work alongside our partners, in conversation and collaboration, to center the voices of the most marginalized and continually examine how our work as educators can support rather than impede racial justice in schools.
In that spirit, we urge our partners and friends to join us in engaging or recommitting to anti-racist equity work within your organizations. And we ask you to do it with the guidance of expert individuals and organizations, such as those listed below, that were committed and practiced long before 2020 hashtags and uprisings. Consider learning from and supporting any of the following Black-led organizations:
If you’d like us to make a warm introduction to one of these organizations, let us know.
In solidarity and community,
Abby, Alcine, Aragon, Courtney, Justin, Morgan, Rachel, Ruth, and Vinci
Still hot from the forge, ELP’s Virtual Portfolio Defense Toolkit is hereby released to the world. Click the button below to download the toolkit. Use it and share it widely. We hope that it inspires action, saves you time, and helps you find opportunity within this crisis to put students at the center of their learning.
ELP was galvanized by what we are hearing from our partner schools and districts: Rather than backing off from your performance assessment systems, most of you are leaning into them, understanding that students need this now more than ever. This toolkit is ELP’s first answer to your call for help. It is designed for learning communities at all levels of experience, whether you’ve had kids defending their learning for years or see this as your first opportunity to try.
And know that there are more tools on the way. Before the end of the week, we’ll release an accompanying Student Planning Tool, a student-facing organizer to help them plan for their virtual defenses or presentations. (Update: these tools have been released and are available using the link below.)
Next week, Morgan Vien and Abby Benedetto, chief designers of this toolkit, will host a webinar and some virtual office hours so that you can ask questions and get support for implementation. (Update: use the link below to view the webinar recording.)
There is no better time than now to challenge and honor young people with an opportunity to tell the story of their learning.
Cheering you on,
Justin Wells & the ELP Team
Here at Envision, we frequently use the Driver’s License Test analogy to talk about Performance Assessment: it is a clear and familiar example of showing you are ready for a momentous next step by demonstrating what you are able to do (drive) with what you know (driving rules and regulations).
As a mom, I recently had a chance to consider this analogy from a distinct vantage point: the passenger seat. Helping my daughter learn to drive has given me the opportunity to expand on this beloved Envision metaphor with some key observations related to Performance Assessment.
First, it can be abjectly terrifying to drive with an “emerging” driver. In Lola’s first few forays on the road, I had several white-knuckle experiences that will be familiar to any parent of teens. I had multiple visions of catastrophe. I may have screamed a couple of times. And I realized it was the loss of control that really unsettled me. It is daunting to realize there is NO OTHER WAY for your child to learn how to drive except by LETTING GO OF CONTROL. It dawned on me that it must also be hard for teachers to let go of control in the classroom. Of course, classroom performance assessment does not pose the threat of bodily harm the way hurtling over the Bay Bridge on my daughter’s maiden voyage did. But I found it interesting that I struggled to give up control even though I knew she was ready for this important step. I struggled in safer situations too—complete with pressing on the non-existent, passenger side brake—and sometimes found it hard to articulate instructions. It made me curious about how teachers confront and manage this struggle.
Secondly, teacher-student relationships really do make a difference in student success. Lola took the test twice: she failed the first time. The first instructor was dour, unfriendly, and impatient. According to Lola, she gave the directions (turn left, turn right) with very little time between instruction and execution. She wasn’t receptive to clarifying questions. She did not smile. Two weeks later and the difference could not have been more stark: the second instructor was friendly and engaging, immediately introducing herself to both of us. After the successful test, Lola was effusive about how different this second experience was. This instructor took the time to give Lola a friendly overview of what the test would be like. When she noticed Lola was nervous, she offered suggestions for how to relax a little bit. For Lola, having the instructor see and acknowledge her anxiety helped enormously. Out on the road, when Lola made some small mistakes, the instructor said things like “this is a mistake I make sometimes too, so just keep in mind xyz…”. She also gave directions clearly, with time for Lola to execute on them, and was patient with questions. With that kind of assessor in the seat next to her, Lola was able to drive the way she knew how, and of course she passed.
In the days since Lola has been whizzing around the Bay Area on her own, I have thought often about this woman, her skill at her job, and the way she helped my daughter. It strikes me that performance assessment, at its best, is about not only challenging the learner but also creating conditions for her success. And I’m once again grateful for teachers who are practiced in the art of both supporting students and letting them truly show what they know and are capable of.
For more of Monica’s “parent perspective,” check out this 2018 post in EdWeek: The Gift of Portfolio Defense.
The ELP team will have a significant presence around the US this Spring. Take a look at this new page on our website to see where we’ll be!
Last year, ELP merged with SCALE (the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity) and was given the opportunity to inherit the amazing Performance Assessment Resource Bank (PARB) website. PARB is a free resource that provides high-quality performance tasks, portfolio frameworks, rubrics, and much more.
Last month, the website was temporarily down for maintenance but is now back up and running, refreshed, and quicker than ever. We hope you have some time to explore and take advantage of all that PARB has to offer.
Keep an eye out in future newsletters for site updates and improvements!
The pandemic has thrust assessment into the spotlight. Everyone is talking about testing and grading. In the history of education, this is an opportune time to make things better.
School Administrator magazine has focused its May issue on “Grading Beyond the Pandemic,” and I appreciated the opportunity to contribute an article arguing for portfolio-defense: “Reliable Data from a Rite of Passage.” A number of ELP partners are featured in the piece, including Los Angeles Unified, Pasadena Unified, Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, and Kamaile Academy in Hawaii (ELP’s very first client).
In that same issue, you can also read an article by ELP’s longtime partner Susan Dugle, the chief academic officer of Shelby County Public Schools in Kentucky. Shelby has been leading the way in this work for years, and the district’s performance assessment system has proven itself effective and resilient through the pandemic
Turns out that assessment systems built for learning, not for sorting, are not only more just; they also hold up in a crisis. So keep building your system. You are preparing for uncertainty while also doing right by your students.
Your fellow learner
“Inclusive and Personalized School Environments Where Black and Latinx Students with Learning Differences Thrive”
Students with disabilities and multilingual learners are often subjected to exclusion from robust learning experiences and social disconnection. Participants will dive into the Effective Learning Environments for Learning Differences framework, which summarizes systems and supports implemented by four secondary schools that have a track record of success in supporting the thriving of Black and Latinx students with learning differences. The framework highlights inclusive, personalized, and competency-based practices that promote student belonging, engagement, and growth. Drawing on the framework school leaders and students from two schools will share practices, systems, and supports that support thriving among students with learning differences. Participants will use the framework to reflect on their own school learning environments for students with learning differences, challenges, and implications for their own work in schools serving students with learning differences.
The Effective Learning Environments for Learning Differences framework was developed with a central focus on learning and well-being outcomes for Black and LatinX students with learning differences (students with disabilities and multilingual learners), who represent some of the most marginalized and underserved groups in U.S. public schools. We seek to equip school leaders with greater understanding of the conditions under which these students can be successful and thrive.
The Panel will include two school leaders, two students/graduates of inclusive, competency-based schools, and three researchers responsible for documenting the characteristics of the schools’ inclusive learning environments in case studies completed in June 2024.
Learn more about the full event and register by clicking here.
This workshop will dive deeply into the characteristics of High-Quality Performance Assessment. We know that one area where schools can improve students’ experiences is engaging them in rigorous, authentic assessments that provide students opportunities to lead their own learning experiences. Through performance assessments, students learn how to reflect, revise, and communicate in ways that strengthen teachers’ learning outcomes. Performance assessments also re-engage teachers in the craft of teaching, activating their own creativity and love of learning.
Participants will learn the characteristics of High-Quality Performance Assessments (HQPA). They will observe students engaged in a defense of learning and reflect on how the practice demonstrates the qualities of HQPA. We will also discuss examples of performance assessments and consider what teachers and leaders can do on Monday morning to move towards implementing performance assessments across schools and systems. Participants will leave the session understanding what is required to create outstanding performance assessments and excited to either start building new assessments or revising current assessments.
Learn more about the event here
This year, with our seven coaches flying all over the country providing Professional Development to our partners, we decided to take the time to map out the various locations we are serving. Over the coming months, we will continue to profile some of our partners around the country. For now, check out the map below to see the places ELP has active partnerships: we are working with schools, districts, and teachers all over the country, impacting hundreds of thousands of students!
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and educators have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of STEM as it relates to white supremacy culture and STEM education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in in those fields. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles (1: Eliciting evidence of learning that matters & 2: Tight on its criteria for success) as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter. As 2 educators of color, we will create a learning environment that is safe especially for the most marginalized communities to have a voice, and use our expertise as STEM leaders to begin to change the narrative within our school structures. Participants will: have dialogue opportunities in pairs, and small groups, journaling time, creation of personal STEAM projects to help process their trauma, and leave with a plan created to address how the will disrupt STEM trauma in their lives/workplace.
This is an interactive hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies. Through learning stations, participants will explore the what and why of performance assessments and use quality criteria tools to analyze for rigor, learner agency, and authenticity. Then participants will prototype their ideal HQPA, and reflect on their own learning and leadership.
This learning experience is organized around the principle that learning happens when learners’ own ideas are an active focus of the sense-making process. This is true for students who are presented with problems in their math class and being challenged to make sense of the problem, rather than being told an algorithm. This is also true for educators who are being asked to structure learning environments in new ways. This session discusses how one district has redefined what math class is, and how that new definition is framing the ways that students, teachers, and administrators are engaging in learning, including professional learning.This example serves as a focal point for experiencing what a modernized math classroom looks like, sounds like, and feels like. The session begins with a series of questions that encourage participants to reflect on their experiences as mathematicians. Many educators have not experienced learning environments that promote deep learning, therefore, it is important to create safe spaces where participants honestly reflect on how this discrepancy may impact their professional stance. We will explore what matters most in mathematics classrooms and we model how to prioritize deep and robust mathematical understanding. Modern math classrooms seek to both heal the traumas incurred from experiencing systems — math education — designed to sort learners, and establish new routines and practices that center deep and diverse problem-solving. There are a multitude of ways that one could approach the task of healing through teaching and learning, for this session we look closely at mathematics learning environments that allow student ideas to fuel the teaching and learning. We will highlight the ways that this environment supports learners to make their thinking visible, how learners revise their thinking in an iterative sense-making process, and how students use formal and informal mathematical language to communicate their ideas.
Funders have felt that PBL + DL is not worth funding when trying to close achievement gaps for majority BIPOC learners. Others feel that BIPOC students MUST demonstrate that they have the basics they know (usually via standardized tests) before they engage in projects. What we have observed is that educators in the system need to know DL from the inside out. So how do we, as Black leaders, create the conditions for our educators (who are often not Black) to engage in deeper learning themselves? What does it mean to build or talk about a DL school system that dismantles racist + oppressive idealogy?
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and educators have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of STEM as it relates to white supremacy culture and STEM education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in in those fields. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles (1: Eliciting evidence of learning that matters & 2: Tight on its criteria for success) as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter. As 2 educators of color, we will create a learning environment that is safe especially for the most marginalized communities to have a voice, and use our expertise as STEM leaders to begin to change the narrative within our school structures. Participants will: have dialogue opportunities in pairs, and small groups, journaling time, creation of personal STEAM projects to help process their trauma, and leave with a plan created to address how the will disrupt STEM trauma in their lives/workplace.
This learning experience is organized around the principle that learning happens when learners’ own ideas are an active focus of the sense-making process. This is true for students who are presented with problems in their math class and being challenged to make sense of the problem, rather than being told an algorithm. This is also true for educators who are being asked to structure learning environments in new ways. This session discusses how one district has redefined what math class is, and how that new definition is framing the ways that students, teachers, and administrators are engaging in learning, including professional learning.This example serves as a focal point for experiencing what a modernized math classroom looks like, sounds like, and feels like. The session begins with a series of questions that encourage participants to reflect on their experiences as mathematicians. Many educators have not experienced learning environments that promote deep learning, therefore, it is important to create safe spaces where participants honestly reflect on how this discrepancy may impact their professional stance. We will explore what matters most in mathematics classrooms and we model how to prioritize deep and robust mathematical understanding. Modern math classrooms seek to both heal the traumas incurred from experiencing systems — math education — designed to sort learners, and establish new routines and practices that center deep and diverse problem-solving. There are a multitude of ways that one could approach the task of healing through teaching and learning, for this session we look closely at mathematics learning environments that allow student ideas to fuel the teaching and learning. We will highlight the ways that this environment supports learners to make their thinking visible, how learners revise their thinking in an iterative sense-making process, and how students use formal and informal mathematical language to communicate their ideas.
We look forward to learning with you!
ELP hopes to see you at the Deeper Learning Conference in San Diego this March! Learn more about our Deep Dive and Workshop opportunities!
Click the images below to sign up!
Find the rest of the DL2024 sessions on Sched
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Heading: Learn about Kala Stepter
Paragraph: Kala is an educator, cultural strategist, and systems thinker, always rooting her practice in community. For over a decade, she has developed her pedagogy for teaching liberation, justice, and joy. With a dual masters in multi-subject and special education, Kala invites all learners – kids and adults of all backgrounds and abilities – to learn, be curious, and think critically about the ways we show up for one another. From her start in DC Public Schools as a STEM educator to working in DEIB strategy work in Oakland, Kala guides and supports institutions and its leaders to rebuild more just educational systems and practices. Today, she designs and supports the transformation of science and math instruction at Envision Education, a charter school network in the Bay Area. As their Director of STEM instruction, Kala develops structures to ensure that STEM is accessible and joyous for Black and Brown kids. She is most excited and energized seeing our youth innovate to shape our future, and is proud to contribute in achieving sustainable change.
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Heading: Learn about Josette Neal-De-Stanton
Paragraph: Josette is currently an Assessment Design Partner at ELP, Josette has 15 years of experience in education. She has started teaching life science at Elmhurst Community Prep in Oakland, and then spent 6 years teaching, coaching, and leading at ARISE High School in Oakland as well. A highlight, as well as a shift in her career gears came while working at ARISE, as Josette became a Career Technical Education (CTE) Pathway Coordinator and then Coach. With these positions, Josette led the charge to create ARISE’s first Linked Learning Pathway in Public and Community Health. After leaving ARISE, she continued her work in CTE with the West Contra Costa Unified School District, as their District Work Based Learning Liaison. COVID saw Josette transitioning out of the traditional school setting, and needing to feel her work impact a larger audience, which essentially led her to ELP. As a former client of ELP, Josette saw the importance of the work being done, and really wanted to bring her science/CTE background to the organization. Josette is also a part time adjunct professor at Mills College, where she works in the Department of Education, in the teacher credential program as the Math & Science Curriculum and Instruction professor.
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Heading: Learn about Alcine Mumby
Paragraph: Alcine Mumby is a dedicated educator who has spent that last 25 years teaching and leading traditional and charter public K-12 schools all over the country. She currently supports and coaches district and school leaders to develop high-quality performance assessment systems that center student-led demonstrations of learning and metacognition. Prior to coaching Alcine taught Humanities at one of the first small schools in the Bronx where project-based learning and portfolio defenses served as the foundation of instruction. Afterward Alcine became a founding principal of Envision Academy in Oakland an administrator in several small middle and high schools in Atlanta and DC and a leadership coach in DC Charlotte & Philadelphia. Alcine earned her BA in English Education from NYU and a Master’s in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education from Stanford University. When she’s not listening to podcasts or catching a flight Alcine enjoys working toward earning BAE (Best Auntie Ever) status with adorable niece and five nephews.
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Heading: Learn about Sabring "Bri" Moore
Paragraph: Bri currently works for Alameda County Office of Education as a Program Director of Systemic Instructional Review supporting and monitoring the SIR Report for Oakland Unified School District. Sabrina is an Oakland native, and has served as Principal/Instructional Leader for TK-5 in the Oakland Unified School District and is a former teacher. She has a strong desire to lead high-impact initiatives benefiting youth across Oakland, starting in the Sobrante Park community. Her mission is to transform outcomes one neighborhood at a time. She blazed a trail by founding and leading 3Ls Academy. As Executive Director for The 3Ls Academy, she blazed a trail, designing program solutions that focus on technical, relational, social and cultural aspects of complex change efforts focused on educational equity.
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Heading: Learn about Roilyn Graves
Paragraph: Roilyn is a trailblazing advocate for inclusive education and has been in this work for the last 20 years. With an unwavering commitment to equality and empowerment, she has dedicated the past two decades to transforming the educational landscape for marginalized students. Roilyn began her career as a special education teacher for the School District of Philadelphia. After teaching for 10 years, Roilyn transitioned into special education administration and served in schools on the east and west coast in similar capacities. Currently Roilyn works as an Assessment Design Partner and is a course lecturer in the graduate school of education at Stanford University. In her spare time she enjoys cuddles with her dog Sully, chatting with her nieces and nephew, and karaoke (mostly at home).
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Heading: Soraya Ramos
Paragraph: Soraya is joining the Envision team as an Assessment Design Partner. With nearly a decade of experience in education, Soraya has worked to promote and support anti-racist teaching and learning practices through her roles as a teacher and as an assessment designer. Before joining Envision, Soraya served as a Senior Associate at the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE). There she worked in partnership with schools and districts in New England and nationally to design high quality assessments systems that promote equity and engagement. In addition to professional learning and coaching, she led a consortium of districts in Massachusetts in their pursuit of designing an alternative assessment and accountability system. Soraya believes that lasting assessment systems need to be in alignment with a community’s vision and coherent to a district and school’s priorities. Soraya holds an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies and Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
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ELP hopes to see you at the Deep Learning Conference in sunny San Diego this April 2025! Learn more about our Den Talk, Deep Dive, and Workshop opportunities!
When Envision CEO Jillian Juman and Chief Program Officer Justin Wells get on a plane together, they tend to have a deep and lively conversation about assessment. What makes for a comprehensive assessment system, one that truly prepares students to be global citizens that can drive systemic change, and what sustains such a system? Envision Education—known for portfolio-defense and other forms of high-quality performance assessment—has been innovating on assessment solutions for over 20 years. Lately, our talks circle the reflection that our current system is incomplete and not meeting the challenges of the time. Listen in—and join in—as Jillian and Justin bring their ongoing conversation out of the jet stream and into the Deeper Learning Den (to the welcome of Deeper Leaners and to the relief of plane passengers).
This deep dive addresses the problematic relationship students and teachers often have with STEM education, rooted in unaddressed trauma. It focuses on how white supremacy culture shapes science and impacts individuals’ sense of belonging in STEM. Participants will explore ELP’s HQPA principles 3: Open to different learner approaches and 5: A learning experience in itself to design STEM assessments that promote healing. Through dialogue, journaling, and personal timelines, participants will examine STEM trauma and develop strategies to disrupt it in their lives and work. By the end, participants will have tools to address and prevent STEM trauma transference in their classrooms and assessments. The workshop is split into two sections: naming and releasing trauma, and designing with critical hope.
In today’s world, where misinformation spreads rapidly, it’s crucial to equip educators with the tools to create effective, reliable performance assessments.
This interactive session will explore the “what” and “why” of high-quality performance assessments, emphasizing the importance of authentic assessments that foster critical thinking. Participants will engage in a newsroom activity to examine the impact of misinformation on society by sharing current headlines circulating in our ecosystem and practice critical thinking to evaluate the legitimacy of information sources.
Participants will leave with actionable strategies to enhance their assessments, ensuring they not only measure student understanding but also prepare learners to navigate a complex information landscape effectively.
We are delighted to announce the education leaders that have been selected to join Cohort 3 of our Deeper Learning Leadership Forum. The DLLF is a unique leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and sustain a group of well-prepared leaders for the Deeper Learning movement. The DLLF seeks to address the questions and issues of educational inequity, by bringing together education leaders and providing them with learning and networking opportunities to help them lead reform efforts in their local systems and around the country.
Cohort 3 had their first convening in Ferguson, Missouri last week, where they visited schools in the Ferguson-Florissant school district. The purpose was to dive into best practices and get a deeper understanding of the role that their community plays in the learning experiences for students.
Here’s what Adrienne Usher, Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning for Bullitt County Public Schools (Shepherdsville, KY) had to say about the experience:
“The DLLF is already one of the most amazing professional learning experiences I have participated in over my career. This not only inspires me to be a better leader, but also to really push the thinking of all those around me.”
The DLLF consists of leaders who are interested in transforming their districts and networks into centers of deeper learning for every student! Learn more about the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum here.
March 15th and 16th, 2022 was ELP’s first in-person Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) Cohort 5 convening since Covid began and it was a success! These amazing folks have been working together virtually since June 2021 but it’s hard to believe based on the amazing community and connections they’ve built in that time. We can’t wait to continue this life-changing experience with them!
Below are some photos from our time together, beautifully captured by long-time ELP friend, Thai Chu of Alive by Shooting.
Learn more about the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum here.
ELP’s Director of STEM, Vinci Daro, was joined by prior Deeper Learning Coach and math enthusiast, Jim Malamut, for our second Twitter Chat.
Q1: WHY MIGHT SCHOOLS WANT TO DO DEFENSES OF LEARNING IN MATH? WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS FOR STUDENTS?
Vinci- A1: Defenses put students in charge of what they defend – their own way of understanding something, their own learning.
Jim- A1: One benefit is metacognition. In prepping for defenses, students reflect on what they’ve learned in math and how it fits into everything else they know. They also focus on the processes by which they learned.
@tamyraintech– they also allow students to prioritize and therefore hone their quantitative reasoning skills. Quant skills are key drivers for viability in the ever-changing job market.
@Linked_Learning– Defenses allow students to practice critical thinking skills necessary to thrive in post-secondary. With defenses, students get to practice these skills before they get to college or a career opportunity.
Vinci- Thank you for this point – practice with articulating learning creates opportunities to deepen learning – revising and upgrading understanding so often happens when students communicate what they have learned.
Jim- A1: Defenses in math can also promote coherence for students and educators. Students draw their own connections between math ideas. Educators design for coherence as they work towards a culminating defense event.
Vinci- Learning math for so many students is a long fragmented journey through disconnected topic after topic. What Jim is saying about coherence is especially valuable for bringing coherence to a fragmented journey.
Q2: WHAT KINDS OF MATH ARTIFACTS ARE WORTH DEFENDING?
Jim- A2: Tasks where students had to figure something out, make sense of something in a deep way, something that is already or that becomes meaningful to them. Tasks that are well-scaffolded but not where students are passively following a recipe or prescribed set of steps.
Vinci- Tasks that are open-ended enough set students up to develop and demonstrate agency by choosing tools and representations that are most relevant to the approach that makes most sense to the student. Tasks where students get to flex their mathematical practices (reasoning in and out of contexts, justifying, modeling, etc.)
Vinci- A2: Work that a student is proud of. Work on a problem or project that is connected to a big idea of the math course.
@Linked_Learning– For #LinkedLearning students, they may also defend an artifact connected to their work based learning, internship, or industry pathway, deepening cross-subject connections. Work that a student can identify as a demonstration of their own learning. If a student can name what they learned as they produced the piece of work, it’s a good candidate for defending.
Jim- Yes, and tasks where students can decide on their own questions, how to answer them, what quantities are relevant, and how they are connected.
@tamyraintech– A2: Artifacts that require students to reflect on how key math concepts are applied in relevant and meaningful contexts.
Jim- Yes!! I love how this article talks about possibilities for authenticity in projects: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/authentic-project-based-learning-john-larmer
@Linked_Learning– Love this! We know students work harder and dream bigger when their learning connects with them and connects them to the world.
@DealJT- I’m wondering in what ways you are able to make explicit to students the connection between defense of mathematics and the overall defense of learning.
Jim- Hey thanks for joining and great question! I think about the ways in which students and teachers can make explicit connections between math practice standards and overall critical thinking skills.
@DealJT- Thanks! We are just diving in to defenses of learning , but I’m really excited for the momentum we might build with defenses in math – I’m hoping we can both build capacity to successfully defend learning, and also create rich artifacts to use in the defense.
Vinci- Thanks for your question, Jason. The process of formulating the ingredients of a defense, then rehearsing, then articulating to an audience is the same process across the content areas – and has the same effects: metacognition, coherence, agency.
@DealJT- I love the idea of the math practices as an anchor in that connection.
@DealJT- How do you create buy in with students that that process, specifically in mathematics (but also overall), is a relevant and important process to students’ life-sustaining futures and dreams? –the connectedness between mathematics and defense of learning creates really powerful cohesion, but I want to make sure I’m ready to help students make a strong connection beyond that into their futures.
Jim- I think this speaks to a question of how to help students use math as a tool to read and write their worlds.
Q3: WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST HURDLES TO GETTING DEFENSES OF MATH LEARNING GOING?
Jim- A3: Asking students to defend their use of agentic skills using tasks that didn’t give them enough opportunity to use agency. The urge to design lengthy special artifact-worthy learning events that are disconnected and contradictory to how students are learning math daily.
@DealJT- Would this indicate that the “artifact-worthy” events should change, or that daily learning should change so that students are doing more artifact-worthy things every day? Or somewhere in the middle?
Jim- I think learning should be happening every day so we (Ts and Ss) can find artifacts of it. Still can be special events but only getting to practice something like “justification” once or twice a quarter isn’t enough. What are we doing the rest of the time?
Vinci- Often math teachers feel they must create a separate set of assignments or learning opportunities that are in addition to their regular stream of studying, working and learning together. Ideally, a system gets better — math curriculum gets better and math teachers get better — at creating learning experiences that are worth defending as a regular part of the work that is happening in math class.
Vinci-A3: Another hurdle is the reluctance to put ‘shy’ students in the spotlight – but very often these are the students who benefit most from the experience.
Make sure to follow ELP on Twitter @EnvisionSchools and use the hashtag #ELPCoachChat to join our next Twitter Chat!
This year’s Defense Design Studios (DDS), our annual portfolio defense showcases, are all completed! These events might have been the closing for the students who presented but for a lot of the educators who attended, it’s just beginning. Many of this year’s attendees are looking to implement portfolio defenses into their schools.
Two visitors from The Edge Foundation, based in London, attended the DDS at Envision Academy in Oakland and later wrote about the portfolio defense model and their experience at observing our students. Read their reflection here.
ELP hosts DDS at Envision schools in the Bay Area, as well as partner schools in Sacramento and Dallas. There are even a few schools in LAUSD that hosted their own DDS without ELP’s support this year, for the first time! Texas saw attendees all the way from Missouri, Sacramento had teams from Fresno and Colorado, and Envision schools gladly welcomed groups from Wisconsin, New York, and even the UK. All in all, over 100 educators attended the ELP hosted DDS this year.
We’re highlighting some of the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) alumni who are making moves- achieving goals, serving their communities, and impacting the future of education.
ELP has worked with 58 educational leaders from all over the United States since 2016 and we’re excited to open applications for our fifth cohort early 2021!
Tracie Noriega
“Greetings from San Lorenzo Unified School District, where I now serve as the Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services. I started here in July of this year. Since my time with Cohort 2 of the DLLF, I transitioned from the Director of Assessment and Evaluation to K12 Instruction while I was in New Haven Unified.
I don’t know where to start with what I took away, as there was so much! What I really appreciated was the various processes that we experienced as a cohort, which really helped me to structure PD’s for teacher leaders and administrators. I loved being with like-minded Equity warriors and the knowledge that there are so many of us continues to inspire me. Just recently, I used the d.school’s Design Thinking Process for my committee work in our planning to re-open our schools. I hope everyone is well and I remain grateful for my time with the DLLF!”
Rody Boonchouy, Ed.D.
“Since completing my fellowship from Cohort 1, I have been serving as Associate Superintendent of Instructional Services in the Davis Joint Unified School District. Not only did the DLLF experience deepen my understanding of both self and what it means to promote equitable and progressive learning experiences for all students, but it also connected me to life-long colleagues who are (and will be) collaborators throughout my career.“
Terri Holden
“I am now in my second year of serving as the Superintendent of Yellow Springs Schools in Yellow Springs, OH. My time in the DLLF was perhaps the best professional experience I have ever had, and molded me into the leader I am today. As a member of Cohort 1, I was exposed to individuals and ideas that challenged my thinking, and helped me advocate and work for deeper learning with an equity lens for all students. This has led me to my current position where we are examining how to interrupt the systemic inequity of which we are a part to provide access, power and choice to our students, while prioritizing those youth furthest from opportunity.”
Dan Deguara
“As of July 1, I began as the new Superintendent of Belmont-Redwood Shores School District in San Mateo County. I continue to appreciate our thoughtfulness around systems thinking and the change process. As educators it is important that we continue to develop our systems so that we are able to provide authentic experiences that foster deep and meaningful learning for all students.”
Ellen Dorr
“Since DLLF, I’ve continued to grow my capacity as an equity-focused leader. I am in my final year of the Leadership for Learning doctoral program at the University of Washington and serve as the Chief Technology Officer for the Renton School District. During the pandemic, the need for digital equity, which encompasses so much more than access to devices and internet, has come into sharp focus. We are dedicated to building a humanizing, resilient, and equitable school system in order to provide our students and families with the learning, experiences, and futures they deserve.”
Shannon Terry
“As a result of my participation in the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum, my equity lens crystalized from microscopic to macroscopic to megascopic. Through shared learning experiences with DLLF cohort members, real possibilities for eradicating inequities and disparities became clear. I developed 20/20 equity vision. As we learned and served together as equity energizers, evangelists and engagers, we forged ahead during our DLLF cohort years to positively impact our communities. We also forged lifelong bonds. Despite the passage of time, my DLLF cohort remains at the ready to step into the space to partner in the equity work as active participants, thought partners, and experienced experts. Because of the DLLF support system, the opportunity to co-lead racial equity work in the Dallas ISD became a reality in 2019. Leaning heavily on lessons learned as a cohort member, the design, development, and implementation of a five-year racial equity professional learning plan was achieved. Fast forward to present day, I currently serve as a Division Director at the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and was recently tapped to co-lead internal equity work. To my DLLF family, glad I have you on speed dial. You’ll be hearing from me again soon! The equity work continues…always. Infinitely grateful for the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum! Let’s change the world.”
Click here to learn more about the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
A newly published case study from the Center for Innovation in Education (C!E), featuring Envision Learning Partners in Appendix C, highlights Allen County, Kentucky’s multi-year effort to redesign assessment and accountability through Inclusive Design. The report, Better Together, shows how the district co-created their graduation competencies called “Profile of A Patriot” and embedded project-based learning and performance assessments to place students’ passions and real-world skills at the center of learning.
Envision Learning Partners has been proud to support Allen County in this work, and we’re excited to share C!E’s new case study. We’ve partnered closely with C!E through the Assessment for Learning Project, working together to advance learner-centered assessment practices nationally.
The nonprofit, public media station KQED provides educators and young people multimedia content, experiential activities, and professional tools to create learning environments of the 21st century, by promoting media literacy, civic engagement, creative expression, and problem solving using digital media.This partnership enables ELP and KQED Education to:
Learn more about ELP and KQED, and contact info@envisionlearning.org or avaba@kqed.org if you have more questions about the partnership.
One of our long-time partners, SEEQS (the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability) Public Charter School in Honolulu, HI has been implementing their Portfolio Defense system for over ten years now, and they have gone through many iterations refining the process for their school community and sustainability-focused values. Now in their 11th year, they have created The SEEQS Sharing Hub, their in-house professional development service, and have announced a three-part series that offers an in-depth look at all of the structures and steps that lead to a rigorous and meaningful culminating experience for their students. Join them for one, two, or all three of them:
Get an overview of the SEEQS Portfolio Defense process from start to finish. We’ll discuss school structures that make it possible, as well as what it looks like for students. This session would be great for anyone interested in what the SEEQS Portfolio Defense processes look like, whether you’re curious about exploring them for your school or classroom, or whether you’re already implementing them and want to hear details about how another school does it.
Learn about the nuts and bolts of what makes student portfolios and reflections, and how we assess them. Look at student work and practice giving feedback to students who are involved in the process. This session would be great for those who have already started a portfolio defense process at their school and want to learn about the SEEQS portfolio writing, revision, and assessment process (which we do as a separate part of the portfolio defense process).
Experience what our Portfolio Defenses look and feel like in real time. On the first day of this workshop, participants will learn about the entire process and watch an exemplary (live) Portfolio Defense presentation by a current 8th grader. On the second day, participants will observe multiple portfolio defense presentations, the scoring process, and have the opportunity to debrief and reflect with experienced practitioners. Participants will leave with a toolkit of usable materials and structures that SEEQS uses to implement its Portfolio Defense System.
Hear more about SEEQS, including a little bit about our prior work together, on this episode of the Learner-Centered Collaborative Podcast: Keeping Humanity at the Center of Assessment with Buffy Cushman-Patz.
The third cohort of the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) met in sunny San Diego for their second convening, at the end of March. Part of this session included the National Equity Project hosting and engaging cohort members in a focus on educational equity as they unpacked systems of advantage and disadvantage and how each member could return home and lead for equity. Participants made connections to their own local contexts and chose an equity project that they would start addressing throughout the cohort program.
The DLLF convening rolled right into the 7th annual Deeper Learning Conference, held at High Tech High. The DLLF cohort and other members of the Envision team joined educators from all over, who are focused on creating more equitable outcomes by engaging students in deeper learning.
Deeper Learning Coach Alcine Mumby, and Executive Director Justin Wells hosted an all-day deep dive with the help of Roilyn Graves, Envision’s Program Specialist. Deeper Assessment: Rapid Prototyping Portfolio Defense engaged 25 educators in developing the beginnings of a Graduate Profile (GP) for their students. After assembling their GP drafts, they looked at the “why” and “how” of meaningful reflection and explored models from schools that are successfully using a portfolio system aligned to Graduate Profiles, such as Envision’s schools.
Deeper Learning Coach Abby Benedetto, also co-facilitated a deep dive at the conference, Digging Out to Freedom: Education and Liberation; participants explored the intersectionality of structural oppression in assessment, systems design and more, in order to define Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Participants left with inspiration and new tools for self-liberation, to engage liberated learners and advance institutional diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice in their practice.
Historically, education has been the least nimble of all of our institutions. Walk into classrooms across the country and many of them have not changed significantly in 150 years. We are trying to shift the way that schools organize and engage all students in meaningful deeper learning so that every young person has the skills they need to be their most fully expressed selves as they go out into the world. The Summer Accelerator borrows structures that support innovation and rapid prototyping from the tech and business sectors. This will be an intensive, immersive experience during which inclusive school design teams consisting of adults and students will learn, imagine, and plan for how we might redesign school models to better serve all students.
We are using an equity-centered design model for both the experience that the teams will go through, as well as for the lens through which they will be designing. There will be structured learning experiences in the first half of each day, and supported work time/office hours with access to experts in the second half. Each day will end with some type of feedback loop during which teams will present something with which they are grappling and receive thought partnership from the larger group so that they can move forward the following day. By the final day, each team will leave with a prototype of a Graduate Profile, performance outcomes associated with each skill they selected, and a plan for what component of their system they will begin to test the prototype. The school design teams will come from the 5 Envision Education schools: Envision Academy High School and Middle Grades in Oakland, City Arts & Technology High School in San Francisco, and Impact Academy of Arts & Technology High School and Middle Grades in Hayward, as well as from one of our client schools in Madison, WI.
Each school design team is intended to be as representative of diverse voices and perspectives as possible. Schools are required to bring teams that include at least the following: 1 administrator, 2 teachers from different grade/subject/experience levels, and 2 students from different grade/experience levels. Schools may choose to add more to their teams if possible and/or relevant. This will be the first year that we are piloting the Summer Accelerator, so we are wanting to keep the participant list manageable and targeted to schools who are in a similar phase of readiness for transformation.
The mission of Envision Schools is to transform the lives of students – especially those who will be first in their family to attend college – by preparing them for success in college, career, and life. Our high schools were all created with an arts & technology focus in terms of curriculum because we believe that young people need skills of creativity and technology in order to be successful in today and tomorrow’s jobs. Our students primarily come from underrepresented populations in tech – 75% of them qualify for free and reduced lunch, 72% of them will be first in their family to attend college, and 90% are students of color. We are working to create systems of education that allow all students to see themselves in any career of their choosing, specifically encouraging them to consider tech and tech-related fields as vibrant and viable options. The goal of the Summer Accelerator is to situate equity at the center of our thinking and planning at every level such that we work towards creating more inclusive educational systems for students in Oakland and beyond.
The Accelerator planning is being wonderfully lead by ELP team member, Abby, learn more about her in this post, and is being supported by a long-time deeper learning colleague and thought leader around equity in education, Shane Safir.
An exasperated mother once entered my Principal’s Office unannounced and asked for some time to discuss concerns about her daughter. After listening to a barrage of incidents about battles to get to the morning bus, hurled insults at the dinner table, and intense homework rebellion, I asked a question I love to ask every parent: “What are your hopes and dreams for your child?”.
Her answer stuck with me. Without hesitating, the parent shared, “I never want my daughter to experience failure.” No wonder she was exasperated. She might as well hope her daughter never experiences gravity.
Failure is a universal human experience. Failure helps us understand where our boundaries and limits are and defines a path for expanding them. Failure reminds us of our imperfections and inspires us to find colleagues with complementary skills and talents to our own. Failure helps us savor success without slipping into arrogance.
While an important experience, failure should not be defined as an antonym of success. A recent article in The Hechinger Report discusses how important it is that we embrace failure as an invaluable teaching opportunity. The authors share that developing deeper learning competencies requires serious, guided reflection by students about why they failed. Students can then develop a growth mindset that sees failure as opportunities to shine a light on personal development and, over time, celebrate growth. Failure, therefore, can be seen as the dawn of success, not the absence of it.
As a community that cherishes how deeper learning addresses students’ holistic needs, let us encourage our schools to develop safe opportunities for students to learn from their failures and, as a result, accelerate their personal development.
Take care,
Royce Conner, Executive Director
What did you most enjoy about being a coach with ELP?
My favorite thing about being at Envision Learning Partners has been the people. It has been so great to work with a team of people full of such brilliance, integrity, and creativity. Most of the best moments have been during car (or plane) rides between professional development sessions and post-meeting meetings where we’d all talk and argue and learn about each others’ challenges, questions, insights, and strategies for helping schools.
What was your favorite coaching experience?
It is really hard to pick just one favorite coaching experience but, if I had to, it would probably be working with Vinci Daro [ELP’s Director of STEM Learning] and Tamyra Walker [Envision Education’s Director of Math] to build out professional learning programs for the Envision math teachers.
What are your plans now?
My plan is to pursue a Ph.D. in Math Curriculum & Teacher Education so I can, hopefully, learn even more ways to be more useful to schools.
Jim’s Background
As STEM Assessment Specialist at Envision Learning Partners (ELP), Jim played a key role on the ELP STEM team in his work with teachers and school leaders to improve math instruction, connect assessment and learning, and build educator capacity to support students’ language development in the process. Jim came to ELP from Understanding Language/Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (UL/SCALE), which he joined in 2016 after working for two years as a teacher collaborator on SCALE’s PBL curriculum project Learning Through Performance Middle School Mathematics. He taught 6th grade mathematics at East Bay Innovation Academy (Oakland, CA), which uses a combination of blended learning and project-based learning. Before that, he taught at public schools in Philadelphia and in Ghana.
Jim’s experience as a middle school math teacher brings a classroom lens to his work on performance task design, rubric design, analysis of student work, and professional development. Jim’s curriculum development experience includes building language development opportunities into math and science curricula, including the Illustrative Mathematics OER curriculum, and working with the English Learner Success Forum to train curriculum developers in designing materials that attend to both mathematical and language development. His professional development experience includes working with the CALLI (California Language and Learning Innovation) Collaborative project. At ELP, he continued to facilitate professional development empowering math teachers to write high-quality performance assessments. He is also a member of the research team for the Measures of Deeper Learning project, supporting our work with schools engaged in the assessment of social-emotional learning competencies.
Follow Jim on Twitter @JimMalamut.
Abby- A0: One way to check the quality of your graduate profile is to use the ELP Quality Criteria Tool that asks a series of questions to guide your revision process. LINKED HERE!
Suzanne- A0: In my experience so far, there are three key things that make a graduate profile good. It has to reflect skills that needed in many areas of life. It has to be actionable and measurable. And it has to be attractive and accessible to students and stakeholders.
Abby– A0: A great way to check the “Authenticity” is to pull up a current job description from any industry and see how many of your graduate profile skills show up in what businesses are looking for in employees. Fun to have students and adults do this!
Suzanne- A1: Taking a graduate profile from a poster on the wall to an organizing principle of a school means first taking the “Headlines” of the skills and breaking them down into observable outcomes. Once you have involved your community in naming the observable behaviors all students must be able to demonstrate in order to graduate, you can design or redesign your assessment system to support all learners in developing and demonstrating those skills. Once you have some great assessments in place, a reflective school staff and leadership can analyze their whole system through the lens of what kind of culture, structures, other elements, are needed to prepare all students to be successful in those assessments.
Abby- A1: You cannot measure a graduate profile with a fill-in-the-blanks quiz. More authentic demonstrations of learning like portfolio defense, student-led conferences, capstone projects, etc. are necessary to challenge students to demonstrate their skills.
Suzanne- A2: At @BryanAdamsHS a public school in Dallas they designed Portfolio Defenses to measure their Portrait of a Graduate. All their students do 2 before they graduate. 1 big shift was developing advisory to support all students. Ask @MaryAnnSuhl. (MaryAnn is a Coordinator for Dallas ISD and was a teacher leader and then key system re-designer and Coordinator at Bryan Adams)
Read more about our partnership with Bryan Adams here.
Abby- A2: A hugely impactful shift is that a system must make room for reflection when actualizing a graduate profile. Regular moments to pause and make deep connections between the grad profile skills and the work of school and life is a powerful necessity for all.
Abby- A3: As with all good teaching, you want to begin with the end in mind. We think about the process as 3 steps, our Theory of Action. It is vital to involve ALL stakeholder groups every step of the way, especially those most marginalized in your system.We encourage you to assemble diverse co-creators that represent all of the voices in your system: students, families, teachers, community members, higher education, etc. to begin an inquiry process about your definition of success for your young people, and what skills are needed.
Suzanne- A4: The BIGGEST pitfall is doing nothing. Use design thinking: build on your strengths & start actualizing your Graduate Profile today! You have to prototype, test, reflect, revise, and improve, or it will forever remain an abstract idea.
Make sure to follow ELP on Twitter @EnvisionSchools and use the hashtag #ELPCoachChat to join our next Twitter Chat!
Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, was joined by previous ELPer, Abby Benedetto, in Beijing this past August to continue our collaboration with Moonshot Academy.
Learn more about ELP’s previous work with Moonshot in 2018 in their Partner Profile.
Josette chats with ELP colleague, Courtney Katen, about her experience in Beijing.
The first and only other time I have been to Beijing was in 2018. Things were different then – ELP was still celebrating the incredible win of joining forces with our brilliant team members from SCALE, the only notions of a world-wide pandemic were still relegated to blockbuster movies or our wildest imaginations, and Moonshot Academy had not yet welcomed its first class of students…. In fact, the school did not even have classrooms yet (they were still in initial stages of construction for their first location). It was an easy and exciting thing to say yes to such a novel opportunity to travel around the world to learn, witness, and share with educators in China. And the days that Ruth and I spent with the founding team at Moonshot were remarkable in so many ways that pushed my thinking about how learners can lead their own learning journey, and revealed my biases and held stereotypes about education in a country that is not mine. By the end of that trip, teachers had learned about Performance Assessment and Deeper Learning, and I left holding on to really lovely connections with many of the teachers, and excitement about the possibility of this visionary school and the humans who were building it.
Fast forward to last month when I got the call from ELP that we were headed back to Moonshot five years later, and there was a chance for me to participate in this trip. It is fairly well known that teachers often don’t know of their impact on students until many years later if and when a student comes back to articulate how they were changed because of a moment in your class. This feels doubly true as a consultant. After a single workshop or even multi-year engagement, I sometimes wonder what happened with a client or system after I left… did I build enough capacity with the team there? Was there a change in leadership that brought in a new vision? Did anything stick? So to walk through the doors of Moonshot Academy in 2023 and see evidence of performance assessment and deep project-based learning on the walls of the hallways and in the planning documents of teachers and in the systems of the school itself was so inspiring! Students in this innovative school in Beijing are doing portfolio defenses about their learning, and capstone projects that allow them to follow their interests, and are actively working on developing and practicing really important transferable skills such as empathy, self-direction, and social responsibility!
The team at Moonshot is really dedicated to reimagining education for young people in Beijing, and it was really inspiring to learn with and from the faculty and staff. They are actively building a Deeper Learning community in China, and might host the first Deeper Learning Conference over there soon! It was a joy to be able to co-facilitate with Josette and watch the room respond to her magic and genius. I am excited to think about where they might go next as a K-12 school, and the learning journey that their students will be able to experience.
– Abby Benedetto
By Tara Curry-Jahn, Partner, Leadership+Design
A family vacation can be about prioritizing presence and connection, relaxing, doing activities and creating fun memories, while also enjoying good food and conversation. However, in some worlds it can also feel like “forced family time,” because being under the same roof or on a joint itinerary can feel like testing the limits of patience and politeness. While both of those options can be true at the same time and were for me earlier this month, it also reminded me that vacations are experiences ripe to practice experience design. Although, when I found myself on “the balcony” watching myself and my family on “the “dance floor” (a metaphor we use at Leadership+Design (L+D) to help leaders reflect on their role or behavior both while doing something and observing yourself do that thing), it felt like we unintentionally missed a design opportunity, which as an attendee of many professional gatherings feels more common than not.
Think about the gatherings you attend each year. If you were to use the mental model that everything is designed, how many of those gatherings were designed well? How do you decide if it was designed well, what metrics would you use? If you had to guess, what and whom were they designed for? What were the outcomes the planners tried to achieve?
This year at gatherings, I felt deep connection and relationship, disconnection and minor loneliness, high expectations and missed opportunities and both joy and awe. As a human-centered designer (who has a disposition for wanting to connect with other people), it’s difficult for me to participate in things and not use the lens described above and have those questions rattling around in my head. Having both been on the planning and attending side of events, I often wonder if we spend enough time mapping out our intentions and “why” the gathering exists, as Priya Parker asked us to do in The Art of Gathering.
There seem to be three main design categories related to the level of human connection in programs or gatherings:
First, there is being together in person, in community, in authenticity, etc. If this is the goal, likely there has been attention paid to helping people be in proximity to one another and build relationships. It’s not always easy or cost effective, but it is a design tool you can use to achieve your outcomes. I will say though that you can have proximity, but not create a feeling of being together.
Second, there is designing to keep people separate, which is actually not a gathering, but could be a decision when you scope your desired outcomes. This may be a more efficient or cost effective strategy on the surface, but it depends on the type of experience you want to create and are honest about the costs of asking for engagement virtually or for people to work independently.
The third option is the combination of being together physically (or virtually in some instances) but feeling or functionally remaining separate (in practice or mindset).
This year, I have attended well designed experiences that create human connection, a design principle I was looking for. This contributed to my growing awareness of how we conceive and design experiences for humans to gather and whether the true outcome is bringing people together and creating connection, keeping them separate, or bringing them together and still missing the opportunity to help attendees feel belonging, inclusion and connection.
It comes back to the foundational reality in decision making, design matters. I believe that in “our day and age” human connection also matters. If you want human connection, you need to design gatherings with this in mind, including the invitation, the space, the roles, and the schedule so people can find the time to connect. This is true for vacations, conference, book clubs or neighborhood block parties. We need to know who we are designing for, build trust in our communities to ask if we are effective, and realize that while it’s not efficient, sometimes being together and connected will help us as humans and leaders.
What can we do differently?
Below are some ideas on how to build additional human connections through gathering and being together. In addition to my experience at convenings this spring, I have also found some great resources to push my thinking and help my personal “aha” feel more rooted and connected to a larger community of people having a similar “aha” about what will help us as educators, community members, parents, and leaders.
The other day, I discovered an interview by the New York Times with Robert Putnam, author of numerous books including a favorite of mine, Bowling Alone and most recently The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. In the interview he shared how the structures or lack thereof that our culture employs deepen the feelings of loneliness and disconnection. The outcome of this disconnection impacts the level of separation we feel with “the other side” and he asserts that by involvement in community and civic groups we will learn about one another and build trust and connection. Even if we are opposites in our beliefs, if we are together and not separate, our future is more optimistic.
I recently dug into last year’s report by Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation 2023: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community which lays out the true implications on personal and societal health when we are more separate than together.
Putnam also references the level of politically-induced division and how it’s creating a lot of feelings on all sides. Decisions are made about who people are by what we think we know about them. In an effort to personally challenge my own mental models, leveraging tools and processes help.
Organizations like Starts With Us, which describes itself as “a movement to empower millions of Americans just like you — tired of our culture of contempt and energized to foster critical thinking and constructive communication across our lines of difference” can be great resources to locate and practice tools that help us build empathy, and as Putnam suggests, have conversations that build trust and human connection.
Leadership+Design, has taken on a similar cause by developing a human-centered curricular resource, Design For Election Season, to help school communities (both students and adults) practice the skills of being curious and developing empathy and understanding for someone who has a different lived experience or set of beliefs. The “container” for learning is political in nature (not partisan), but it’s rooted in the belief that as humans we need to spend time learning from and listening to one another. The resource shares tools and protocols to help structure that learning.
On recent drives with my 8 year old son, we listen to the book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt. The book focuses on the mental and physical health implications of technology use, specifically on young people. As I reflect on my own feelings about togetherness and separateness, and my time on the patio with my family, it relates to what we are willing to do about the changes we want.
A colleague at Leadership+Design reminded me that while I can only control myself (related to technology use), I can initiate a conversation about how I feel at that moment, share my reaction to being together, but separate. I could share my goals for our time together and enter into a conversion about what brought us all to the gathering. This is something in my control.
All of this to say, let’s do better. Assessment for Learning convening was a relatively small group of education leaders who prioritized designing for connection, but that was a choice we made. In contrast, it felt like my family vacation took a “wait and see” approach. We can also make choices starting with the patio conversations, the armrest airplane engagement and the commitment to looking across “the aisle” to build relationships and trust. We can continue to be told by the media, the Surgeon General, and Putman how bad things are when we don’t have a strong social fabric to care about and not fear one another. However, they and many others continue to remind us, it’s up to us whether we plan our lives, relationships, gatherings and organizations to simply happen or whether we design them to be catalysts for change and improved connection.
This month, Envision Education’s CEO, Gia Truong is our guest blogger, writing about our Portfolio Defense assessment model, it’s impact on students and the work we are doing collectively to improve it. We know that our model is transformative for some, but not yet for all and not consistently for the most marginalized. In order to truly serve our black and brown students, we must find ways to center their experiences and eliminate racist structures within our system, so that all students have access to transformative learning experiences. Read on to learn what we are doing…
Envision Schools’ mission is to transform the lives of students – especially those who will be the first in their families to graduate from college – by preparing them for success in college, career, and life. We accomplish our mission through our Portfolio Defense assessment model, which authentically measures the most important things students need in order to succeed in college and career. Portfolio Defense gives students the academic, social-emotional and leadership skills they need to get into college and persist. One of the biggest problems facing underserved students is educational inequity. Because of this inequity, poor students are far less likely to receive an education that will transform their life trajectory. We know that only 1 out of 10 low-income students earns a 4-year college degree by their mid-twenties, significantly limiting their income potential for their entire lives.
The signature practice of every Envision school is the Portfolio Defense. In 8th, 10th and 12th grades, every Envision student stands before a panel of teachers, peers, family and friends, and delivers a comprehensive presentation that demonstrates how and why they are ready for the next academic challenge. Every defense is both an authentic academic assessment and a celebration of what students have accomplished. The essential outcome of the model, above and beyond rigorous academic preparation, is the agency our students can develop: they graduate ready to take charge of their educational future and advocate for themselves on the path to receiving a college degree.
We also know that our model is not yet building that agency for enough of our students. It is transformative for some, but not yet for all and not consistently for the most marginalized. We know that in order to truly serve our black and brown students, we must find ways to center their experiences and eliminate racist structures within our system, so that all students have access to transformative learning experiences.
Last year, Envision Academy (EA), our Oakland California school’s 11th and 12th grade teachers observed that too many student defense presentations felt like pro forma exercises, lacking authentic student engagement and falling short of the potential of Portfolio Defense. They could see that the Defense — a model designed to empower students — was not working for enough of their students. EA teachers hypothesized that students would be far more engaged and their agency would increase if their identities as learners were more central and if the Defense process were more inclusive and culturally responsive. We hypothesize that with these improvements, students will be better prepared for college, less likely to confront imposter syndrome, and more likely to persist until they earn a degree.
As a result of the EA teachers’ inquiry, in 2018-19 Envision Academy changed the driving question of the Defense to one that asks each student to describe who they were, are, and want to be as a scholar, the kind of person they want to be, and the role of education in shaping their identity. The teachers also found ways for students to bring more of their culture and community into the process, including giving their presentations in their native language. As a result of these changes, other aspects of model changed as well: the senior Advisory curriculum shifted to focus on the Identity Statement, with significant time dedicated to writing and revising; new strategies were put in place to align the Identity Statement with each students’ portfolio of academic artifacts; teachers developed tighter frameworks for assessing projects and calibrated with each other to ensure consistency. These changes led to stronger, more personal defense presentations, richer connections to academic content, and clearer reflections from students about their identities, their goals for the future, and their awareness about their areas of growth.
The improvements we have piloted at EA have already had a strong, positive impact on students. In the words of one graduate: “I was able to express more about myself and my passions in my defense presentation, especially where we explained who we are, who we used to be, and who we want to be. That was very powerful because the presentation wasn’t just academic but also about the student and their goals; it felt more authentic.” Teachers also noticed important changes: “I’ve always thought Portfolio Defense was amazing, but last year was just incredible. The new process really put our students at the center. It was rewarding to see them, in the 2019 presentations, be more engaged and invested; presentations were more personal, and so many more of them presented like scholars. That’s how I know these changes have made a huge difference.”
Anecdotally, these quotes represent what we know is possible: with a more student-centered Portfolio Defense system, our students will be more invested in their education, they will actively develop a scholar-warrior identity, and they will be more prepared to meet the challenges of college and persist through them. With a college degree, they will be positioned to change the economic trajectory of their lives. As these students gain financial autonomy, they can break the cycle of generational poverty, positively impacting the individual student, their families, and their communities more broadly.
In community,
-Gia
Click here for more information about Envision Schools.
In this special Guest Blog Video Interview, Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton, interviews her very own brother, Rene Neal-De-Stanton.
Rene is currently a science teacher byway of nursing school with a background in entertainment and dance.
They discuss the importance of project-based learning in science and dive into the importance of representation and equity in the classroom.
My career began volunteering at an elementary school in Washington, DC in 2001. As a staff member walked me to my assigned classroom, I noticed a room tucked away in the corner. There were only a few students in the space. Some students were wandering around, some were disengaged, some sleeping, and others were sitting at tables coloring or tracing the alphabet. There were multiple adults in the room, mostly talking and laughing but not really paying much attention to the students. Growing up, I attended the same school as my uncle, who had Down Syndrome. I recognized that room. I knew exactly who that room was for. It was the place where special education students were “contained”. That was the moment I decided to become a special education teacher. I’ve been committed to this work ever since.
Admittedly, we’ve learned a lot since 2001. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)1 held all schools and/or districts accountable for ensuring that students with disabilities received a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). Shortly thereafter, came the revival (originally introduced around 1994) of Inclusive Education. Educational researchers soon learned that students with disabilities had better academic outcomes in classrooms where they were included with non-disabled peers. The research also found that inclusion positively impacted all students in the classroom (National Center for Education Restructuring and Inclusion, 1995.) Based on this research and with the revision of IDEA 2004, schools began to adopt Inclusive Education as the pillar of serving all students in the educational environment.
The world of special education shifted. Students with disabilities were no longer excluded from the general education classroom and everyone felt as though true progress had been made. We lived in this fantasy for a while. Students with disabilities were no longer being served under the “separate but equal” approach. Everyone began to settle into the idea that including all students in the same classroom had less of a negative impact than was previously thought. Students without disabilities were still thriving (relatively speaking) and students with disabilities (and their families) were happy. As time progressed, challenges began to arise. Schools began to experience significant rates of disproportionality among certain racial and ethnic groups entering into Special Education. These same students were often being disciplined and/or suspended at a higher rate, placed in more restrictive learning environments, and were not meeting academic expectations. Schools began to wonder if Inclusive Education was the answer to serving all students. This is where educators began to ask questions:
Inclusive Education takes an immense amount of preparation and planning. It requires a team of educators who believe that all students can achieve, no excuses. It means that all systems are universally designed with the most vulnerable populations in mind. Inclusive Education means that everyone has the strategies, tools, and training necessary to deliver high quality instruction to all students. It means modeling structures during professional development, co-planning and co-teaching. It means using The UDL Guidelines to support curriculum design, unit, and lesson planning. Inclusive Education means every stakeholder has a voice that isn’t only heard but represented in the work. Most importantly, Inclusive Education means that all of our students are thriving and operating in their full genius.
Take a look at the data. Literally, pause and google “How effective is Inclusive Education?” or whatever variation of the phrase you’d like. In 30 seconds, you’ll find that Inclusive Education does work. There are some good examples of this AND that students with disabilities aren’t doing much better now than they were in 1994, or 2001, or even in 2023. Some educators like to attribute this to the pandemic but let’s be honest, the same issues were present before. We can no longer continue to ignore the fact that our infrastructure, our systems, and even our preparation programs were not designed to support students with disabilities or diverse learners. I know everyone is busy, I know everyone is exhausted. I know funding is an issue. I know COVID threw us all for a loop. I also know that not all of our students have what they need to be successful. In full transparency, I know since the inception of Inclusive Education, things actually haven’t gotten all that better, and so do you. With that being said, let me ask you some questions: What can we do to shift the data? What can we do to change the narrative? How can we center students with disabilities and diverse learning styles in the planning process, in our classrooms, in our staff development, and in our schools? What actionable steps have we taken since 1994?
No more excuses. Inclusive Education works when we work it. Even though our students are in Inclusive environments, the data says they are struggling academically, behaviorally, and emotionally. It’s time to shift.
Here is my CALL TO ACTION:
Let’s reconnect, re-engage, re-introduce, re-commit, and re-establish ourselves, our systems and all stakeholders. Our students deserve better. We can do better. Let’s just start, no more excuses.
Roilyn Graves is Envision Education’s Director of Special Education.
Note: All resources and research are linked.
From a professional standpoint, I was the Principal of the first International Baccalaureate French dual language public school in the country. I have seen how a graduate le arner profile empowers a community of diverse learners and how performance assessments make room for self-discovery. The work of Envision is aligned to my values as an educator and leader.
To be deeply understood and valued for who we really are is a basic human need. It is also unmistakably a privilege. It is a privilege because not everyone can trust that their whole selves will be tolerated in all spaces. It is a cultural loss. The impact is a ripple effect; we stop bringing the best of ourselves into spaces where difference is not well received. It is a missed opportunity to learn from one another and to consider the solutions created from divergent ways of thinking.
Growing up, I watched my black father from the south navigate different spaces. He fought his way through college with no plan and no support. Fumbling through life, he hid who he was to survive. He hid his childhood, the poverty, the abuse, the foster care, and the pain that lingers when mental health goes untreated and leads to starvation and death. He was a brilliant man and I am not sure how many people knew that. He was a shadow.
I think a lot about what it means to be a black woman, an educator, a leader, a good sister and daughter. I think about what experiences our young people and families deserve to ensure that they are both seen and heard. I think about what it means to be a disrupter of cultural norms and practices that have historically oppressed groups of people who have not experienced being deeply understood and cared for.
As the incoming CEO of Envision Education, I have a deep sense of pride in the work of Envision Learning Partners (ELP) and the number of students who are impacted by thoughtful collaboration with smart educators across the country. ELP is about establishing learning opportunities for young people to be deeply understood and appreciated for how they learn and share with the world. The development and execution of performance assessments is equity based learning because it requires expansion of knowledge and exploration with people who carry different perspectives and experiences. It provides opportunities for young people to be seen, heard, and celebrated. It empowers independent thought and dismantles practice where authenticity is for some not all.
I believe in our collective work as educators and the power of unity. Together we can move students from the shadows and into the light where all students can and will thrive.
Get to know Jillian more in the June ELP Lounge, RSVP here.
Impact Academy alum, Kina Evans, shares how her time at Impact shaped her path from student to educator and now CEO. Walking the halls of Impact Academy, Kina learned not just academics, but how to find her voice, lead with confidence, and envision a future bigger than herself. After earning her master’s degree and teaching for six years, she founded Bully Talk Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to empowering youth and transforming school culture. In her ELP Guest Blog, Kina reflects on how Impact Academy’s lessons continue to guide her work as a leader, advocate, and change maker.
Walking through the halls of Impact Academy in Hayward, CA was where my journey truly began. As a student, I didn’t just learn academics—I learned how to find my voice, lead with confidence, and envision a future bigger than myself. Those experiences planted the seeds for everything that would come after graduation.
After Impact, I pursued higher education and proudly earned my master’s degree. One of my proudest moments came when I was invited to appear on The Jennifer Hudson Show, where I was able to share my story and the mission behind my work. It was a reminder that the impact of our voices can carry far beyond the classroom.
For six years, I poured my heart into teaching, working directly with students and families every day. Teaching was more than a job—it was a calling, and it gave me the foundation to see where my true purpose was leading me. Eventually, I made the decision to transition into substitute teaching so I could dedicate more of my time and energy to building Bully Talk Inc., the nonprofit I founded to empower
youth, transform school culture, and create safe spaces for students everywhere.
Looking back, I can see just how much Impact Academy changed my life. From the lessons I learned as a teenager to the resilience and drive I carry today, Impact has been a thread running through every step of my journey. It helped shape not just who I was then, but who I am now—a leader, an advocate, and someone committed to making a difference in the lives of others.
By Michael Viera, Envision Education’s College and Career Pathways Manager
Several years ago the city of Oakland came together to support college and career programming for high schoolers, by advancing and deepening career pathways in alignment with the Linked Learning Alliance standards and methodology. The Linked Learning Alliance hosts an annual conference where educators share best practices and takeaways from school sites around the state. Oakland schools always show out in big numbers at the conference, but this year it took place in downtown Oakland, so the presence was even greater.
I had been to the conference previously, but this time was different. Being my 3rd year at Envision in this role, I felt like I finally understood what it was all about. I had colleagues from Envision Learning Partners in attendance and collaborating with me. I got to connect with colleagues from other Oakland schools. I knew what to look for and who to listen to in order to improve our programming at Envision Academy and across the Envision network.
The conference was motivating, to say the least. It is a breath of fresh air being in rooms of educators who are excited and realistic about their work in schools, and who understand the skills students need to have success in their futures.
I came back from the conference and immediately organized Envision Academy’s first job fair since COVID. We had twelve community partners visit our campus to share information with students on internship opportunities, after school and summer programs, and community resources. Students seemed excited about these experiences that they can be a part of outside of their regular curriculum.
At the end of the event, two students stayed back and pulled me aside. I thought something bad had happened. Instead, one of them simply said, “Mr. Viera, we just wanted to thank you for putting together this event. It’s really inspiring to see all these opportunities we didn’t know about until now.”
After a couple of weeks of back and forth emails and phone calls with partners, planning meetings with administration, and quite literally running around setting up tables and chairs on the day of the event, those students made it all worth it. When students are able to take their learning outside of school walls and make connections with their community, they feel seen and they thrive.
Hear from Michael and ELP Assessment Design Partner, Josette Neal-De-Stanton on their takeaways from the Linked Learning Conference.
We are honored to introduce Michelle Molitor, Executive Director of The Equity Lab. Their equity work began as a response to the urgent need for culturally responsive systemic change for our most vulnerable students. Ms. Molitor has partnered with and led work alongside several national and regional education agencies and works directly with organizations across the education ecosystem, including the Department of Education, philanthropic groups, district offices, schools, and education-facing nonprofits. Michelle wrote this piece in partnership with Nicole Young.
The Kids Are Not Alright… Michelle Molitor and Nicole Young
Even the kids are feeling it.
You can see it in the weary, glazed-over looks of your friends’ children on Instagram. Or in the hilarious quotes parents post about homeschooling on Twitter. Children, too, are tired of sitting in the house each day looking at their siblings, learning from their parents and their disembodied electronic teachers, and being unable to see their friends.
A friend recently posted about her four-year-old’s utter meltdown when she bombed their house for ants. He was devastated that she’d destroyed the only friends who had come to visit in weeks.
We’ve talked a lot about mental health during this pandemic, but we are often talking about adults. Kids, we assume, are resilient and much more adaptable than ourselves; we’ve decided they will be just fine. But children are feeling the same immeasurable strain adults are.
We are communal mammals, and our brains are not designed for social isolation. It’s difficult to parse the cascading grief we’re feeling at the loss of loved ones, time with friends, activities we enjoy, or income — even as adults. How much more onerous must it be for children, who face the same realities with less insight into what is causing them?
Some of the most accessible and cost effective mental health options for children in America are delivered through our schools. And when schools shut down, a lifeline for children in desperate need of counseling and support all but collapses.
In the COVID-19 world, we need to think differently about how we provide for the whole child. As traditional schooling changes, it is imperative that we consider how to support children with trauma, kids whose homes may not be safe, and queer and trans kids navigating their identities in hostile environments.
When we assume children are fine, that they are in less need of mental or spiritual support than ourselves, we are tacitly asking them to sublimate a portion of who they are. In doing so, we limit their complexity, ignore their needs, and most alarmingly, ask them to flatten themselves so that we can believe they are all right.
Grounding in History
There is a violent legacy of assimilation in American schooling. Throughout our nation’s history, the most vulnerable students have been rounded up, tracked, beaten, and punished for being who they are.
In 1824, then Secretary of War John C. Calhoun created the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an office in the U.S. Department of the Interior that was tasked with “civilizing” and controlling Indigenous and Native American tribes across the country.
In addition to forced displacement and brutal subjugation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs also oversaw the creation of “Indian boarding schools.” These schools, which operated for more than 100 years (from 1860 to 1978), were specifically designed to force the assimilation of Indian children to white culture and the English language.
Indigenous children were taken from their homes, often without their parents’ consent, and sent to live in these boarding schools. Their hair was cut and their clothes were burned, they were beaten for using their native languages, they were often abused by their caretakers, they were forced to practice Christianity, and their cultural and familial ties were severed.
In 1892, Richard H. Pratt, the man who established the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, famously delivered his “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man” speech. Indians were, in Pratt’s opinion, only worth saving if they could be Americanized. Every part of their Indian identity and culture was savagery that must be stripped away. His was the prevailing thought driving American policy and law through the turn of the 20th century and until the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed into federal law in 1978.
Even as John Dewey’s research was leading a national discussion about educating the whole child, Indigenous and Native American children were enduring an educational system that viewed their cultural identity as a scourge to be erased.
Listening to Those Most Impacted
By 1978, generations of Indigenous children had been forcibly assimilated through schools. In their own chilling accounts, survivors of this trauma recount the voicelessness that permeated their experience; they were unable to speak their own native tongues and unable to voice dissent in the language that was forced upon them.
Are we listening to our students when they tell us what they need today? As children fight to stay engaged on laptops all day or dissolve into tears over dead ants, do we hear them?
A global pandemic, we’re learning, affects everyone — in ways large and small. And instead of insisting children put on a bright face in the midst of such global uncertainty, it is incumbent upon us as educators, parents, and community members to ask them what they need to feel supported.
For children who are struggling in homes where their identities are under attack, this is even more important. How do we make room in our thinking, and eventually in our policy making, to prioritize the voices of LGTBQ students, students facing abuse, or those struggling with trauma and depression?
COVID-19 has cracked wide open the deficiencies in our education system. But as we reconfigure the system to support adult needs, are we listening to young people?
Advocate for Radical Change
We see echoes of the Indian boarding schools’ philosophies in our classrooms and schools today. Students are asked to leave their identities at the school door. Black, Latinx, poor, and immigrant parents are seen as nuisances rather than co-designers in their children’s education.
However, students do not come to school as empty vessels waiting to be filled. Instead, they come full of incredible strengths and their own individual stories. To make radical change in this area would be to create an education system that encourages children to lean into their identities and genius, rather than stifling them for adult comfort.
We will only see a radical shift in American education when we begin to devalue compliance and assimilation. As much as children need structure, they also deserve an education that is compassionate and treats them as the whole people they are.
If we reimagine an educational system that serves the whole child, parents, families, students, and educators must be equal partners in defining its purpose and leading its design. For vulnerable students, those facing abuse or those whose families would punish them for being LGBTQ, a holistic model must address the realities they face when they get home.
Ultimately, radical change means investing in the whole child being able to heal and thrive.
Build and Iterate
Assimilation is a tool, wielded by a racist, homophobic, sexist, and capitalist society to quell difference. Its dominance in our education system means that we are stifling children and actively ignoring their needs as physical, mental, and spiritual beings. But if such an oppressive system is designed, it can be redesigned.
This requires recreating an education system with the needs of the most marginalized children at the center. This necessitates adults mobilizing in support of children — not on their behalf. And it demands a different orientation to the many facets of childhood in a rapidly changing world.
Want to Learn More?
Watch Unseen Tears: The Native American Boarding School Experience in Western New York
OR
Read Moving Equity Work Toward Action in the Age of Covid-19
A Parent’s Reflection on the Driver’s Test Analogy
Here at Envision, we frequently use the Driver’s License Test analogy to talk about Performance Assessment: it is a clear and familiar example of showing you are ready for a momentous next step by demonstrating what you are able to do (drive) with what you know (driving rules and regulations).
As a mom, I recently had a chance to consider this analogy from a distinct vantage point: the passenger seat. Helping my daughter learn to drive has given me the opportunity to expand on this beloved Envision metaphor with some key observations related to Performance Assessment.
First, it can be abjectly terrifying to drive with an “emerging” driver. In Lola’s first few forays on the road, I had several white-knuckle experiences that will be familiar to any parent of teens. I had multiple visions of catastrophe. I may have screamed a couple of times. And I realized it was the loss of control that really unsettled me. It is daunting to realize there is NO OTHER WAY for your child to learn how to drive except by LETTING GO OF CONTROL. It dawned on me that it must also be hard for teachers to let go of control in the classroom. Of course, classroom performance assessment does not pose the threat of bodily harm the way hurtling over the Bay Bridge on my daughter’s maiden voyage did. But I found it interesting that I struggled to give up control even though I knew she was ready for this important step. I struggled in safer situations too—complete with pressing on the non-existent, passenger side brake—and sometimes found it hard to articulate instructions. It made me curious about how teachers confront and manage this struggle.
Secondly, teacher-student relationships really do make a difference in student success. Lola took the test twice: she failed the first time. The first instructor was dour, unfriendly, and impatient. According to Lola, she gave the directions (turn left, turn right) with very little time between instruction and execution. She wasn’t receptive to clarifying questions. She did not smile. Two weeks later and the difference could not have been more stark: the second instructor was friendly and engaging, immediately introducing herself to both of us. After the successful test, Lola was effusive about how different this second experience was. This instructor took the time to give Lola a friendly overview of what the test would be like. When she noticed Lola was nervous, she offered suggestions for how to relax a little bit. For Lola, having the instructor see and acknowledge her anxiety helped enormously. Out on the road, when Lola made some small mistakes, the instructor said things like “this is a mistake I make sometimes too, so just keep in mind xyz…”. She also gave directions clearly, with time for Lola to execute on them, and was patient with questions. With that kind of assessor in the seat next to her, Lola was able to drive the way she knew how, and of course she passed.
In the days since Lola has been whizzing around the Bay Area on her own, I have thought often about this woman, her skill at her job, and the way she helped my daughter. It strikes me that performance assessment, at its best, is about not only challenging the learner but also creating conditions for her success. And I’m once again grateful for teachers who are practiced in the art of both supporting students and letting them truly show what they know and are capable of.
For more of Monica’s “parent perspective,” check out this 2018 post in EdWeek: The Gift of Portfolio Defense.
ELP and Alliance kicked off our partnership in the 2018-19 school year. In our first year we worked together to deeply engage around building a graduate profile. In 2019-20, we have been engaged with the Alliance team to develop a vertical articulation of the graduate profile with the intention of using that vertical articulation as a tool for a few things:
ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells, with the Alliance team.
ELP looks forward to our continued partnership with Alliance!
For more information about Alliance, click here to see their Partner Profile.
By Dr. Sabrina “Bri” Moore
As a former student, teacher and principal and current director in education, I have a question. Am I the only one wondering how THE GREAT RESIGNATION will impact an already exacerbated teacher shortage? If I am alone in this wondering, please do not keep reading. If, however, like me, you’ve seen the statistics that say over 4 million and growing individuals have decided to leave their jobs for greener pastures and you remember what it was like when you or someone you know became an overnight homeschool educator; then you’re still reading.
According to Jill Tucker of the S.F. Chronicle, the pandemic ushered in unprecedented numbers of teachers retiring from the profession, “a survey found that 62% of [retired teachers] … decided to retire earlier than they had planned to.” This blog post is my meager attempt to plead with and support all teachers and educators to stay in your job; whatever you do, do not resign. You are needed and greatly appreciated. Nothing about teaching and leading is schools has ever been simple or easy. In fact after the last few years we have had, I can say with certainty, I am not alone in my belief that teaching and leading in schools is not for the faint of heart. Daily educators wear the hats of many as they impart knowledge and provide conditions that support student learning and social emotional wellbeing; sometimes without consideration of their own. Compound this with wearing masks, staying safe and contact tracing and, I too am at a loss for words.
All that being said, educators, school folx, the people who show up for our young people each day, to you, I have a few words of wisdom for your own learning and social emotional wellbeing; do all of this and when you return in the Fall you have my word that the students you love and learning that follows good teaching will be there waiting.
The words of wisdom I will share are as follows:
If none of that works for you, fill in the blank. Pause __________________. What any therapist, counselor or coach will tell you is before making a decision that will impact your life in ever rippling ways and in the case of school educators the lives of so many others you should Pause.
Pausing is not what we are best known for in Oakland. We [as an Oakland native I feel like I can speak for the we of us] are known for leading out on the latest and greatest campaign, initiative, change, challenge or charge for social justice, civil rights, advocacy and action. We are not however known for the EPIC PAUSE. Yes I just made that up but, stay with me. I’m starting a new campaign for all educators and if you are not an educator (which is debatable; we all are in some way) you too. Until the FALL of 2022 let’s commit to the EPIC PAUSE. The epic pause is the moment we take to think deeply about our why, ask great questions, remember what it was like before the Covid-19 Crisis and what it could be like if we all banded together to build the diverse and stable staff called out in the Oakland Unified School District’s strategic plan.
If you all commit to that, my team and I at 3Ls will commit our work, life, passion and energy to the mission of 3Ls: Literacy, Leadership and Liberation. Where we offer a “whole child” full-service community model for alternative literacy opportunities to educate and empower students, families, community members and educators, led by people within the community itself, to break cycles of illiteracy and generational poverty one neighborhood at a time. We promise to show up everyday so that every student can read, every school we serve receive quality coaching and professional development leading to better literacy, leadership and liberatory ways of being for all.
Dr. Sabrina “Bri” Moore
3Ls: Literacy, Leadership & Liberation
510-685-1329
Follow us: 3Ls on Social Media
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Bri is also an alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
Challenge Success-Stanford Survey of School Experiences, our student experience survey with dozens of school teams each year. While the survey covers many topics within student well-being, engagement, and belonging, one of the key metrics we discuss with schools is stress. Across hundreds of thousands of responses and 10 years, assessments, tests, and grades are consistently some of the top sources of stress for middle and high school students.
Experiencing stress is not negative in and of itself. In fact, learning how to adapt to productive stressors such as a difficult subject or strenuous exercise is how we grow and develop. However, the stress students feel from assessments is too often an unhealthy form of stress. Traditional summative assessments, typically tests and quizzes, are clearly linked in students’ minds to grades, transcripts, and the post-secondary stakes associated with them. In this context, assessment can become a source of fear, anxiety, and dread. Some students respond to this stress by plowing hours of time studying and preparing at the expense of their sleep and other activities, while others might shut down, procrastinate, or resort to last-minute cramming. These strategies might help them score well, but don’t do much for long term learning.
Schools are in a challenging position because they are responsible for promoting student engagement, well-being, and belonging while also preparing them for post-secondary admissions and learning in the higher education system.
How can schools help students engage in rigorous, transferable learning in ways that help navigate this tension?
One promising path is to take a clear eyed look at assessment practices. When schools make time to consider why and how they assess, who their assessments are for, and ultimately what they want their assessments to look like, they often express a desire to make assessment to feel authentic and personally meaningful. They want assessments that inspire effort and growth, that demonstrate high levels of learning and a depth of understanding, and most of all that feel meaningful and important to their students.
In other words, they want more performance assessment.
Performance assessments are tasks where students apply their knowledge and skills to solve real problems, create authentic products, or demonstrate mastery in contexts that mirror professional or real-world situations. Think science experiments designed to solve local environmental problems, history projects creating museum exhibits, or math challenges proposing a redesign of a public park.
While talk of performance assessment often centers around all the ways it is a superior measure of complex, transferable skills, what I want to lift up here is how performance assessment done well is also a major lever for students’ overall well-being, engagement, and belonging.
One of the biggest stressors for students is the uncertainty surrounding traditional assessments. They worry about what will be on the test, whether they studied the right material, and how their performance will impact their grades. This anxiety is not just about the difficulty of the work—it’s about the unpredictability of the assessment itself.
Performance assessments help eliminate this unnecessary stress by making expectations clear. During high quality performance assessments, students receive rubrics, exemplars, checklists, and guides that outline exactly what success looks like. With excellence made clear, instead of wondering “Will this be on the test?” students can instead start asking “How can I make my work stronger?” There’s still pressure to perform, but it’s a productive pressure, the kind that pushes students to pursue their best rather than paralyzing them with fear.
Additionally, traditional assessments often take a “stop and measure” approach, where the assessment feels like a separate event from the learning. This disconnection positions assessment as an, often high-stakes, judgment rather than part of the learning process. With performance assessments, students have the opportunity to learn through the assessment itself. They reflect on their work, receive feedback, and have opportunities to improve as they work towards a final product. The standards for quality remain high, but the process of pursuing those standards nurtures effort through emphasis on quality, revision, and growth rather than relying on high stakes for high, stressful effort.
A common complaint from students is that schoolwork feels meaningless. They don’t see how what they’re doing in class connects to the world outside school or their future goals. In our Challenge Success Survey data, our most consistent finding is that students are mostly “doing school” when it comes to their engagement. They are working hard, paying attention, and turning in assignments, but they don’t have a strong sense of purpose, let alone interest in their work. Traditional assessments reinforce this disconnect, as they often emphasize memorization and rote recall rather than deep understanding and application.
Performance assessments change this dynamic by making learning more relevant. Instead of filling out study sheets to prepare for taking multiple-choice tests, students can be asked to tackle complex projects, solve real-world problems, and create authentic artifacts that mimic the kind of work professionals do. When students see that their work has real-world applications, they are more likely to find it meaningful and stay engaged.
Another key component of performance assessments is choice. Students have more agency in how they demonstrate their learning, whether that means choosing different materials, exploring unique lines of inquiry, or deciding how to present their findings. This autonomy increases motivation and makes learning more enjoyable. Plus, when students are able to tap into their strengths in their particular approach to the task, the assessment becomes more personally meaningful and enjoyable.
Belonging is a crucial element of a healthy school experience, and performance assessments can play a major role in building a strong classroom community and individual excellence.
Belonging starts with connection, and performance assessments create space for meaningful teacher-student interactions. Because these assessments often involve complex work and ongoing feedback, teachers have more opportunities to connect with students one-on-one. These conversations help build trust and rapport, reinforcing the idea that teachers are there to support learning, not just evaluate performance.
Additionally, performance assessments encourage peer collaboration. Unlike traditional tests, which often promote competition and isolation, performance-based tasks allow students to collaborate, give each other feedback, and share ideas. This fosters a sense of shared purpose and community, shifting the classroom culture from “every person for themselves” to “we’re in this together.” The result? A stronger sense of belonging and a more positive learning environment.
Belonging is also related to our sense of identity. As we seek to inspire all learners to high levels of personal excellence, performance assessments provide opportunities to embrace a broader vision of excellence. Traditional high-stakes tests tend to privilege certain test-taking skills and a narrow range of talent, while performance assessments allow multiple ways to demonstrate understanding, empowering students from different backgrounds or with different strengths to succeed. Additionally, when students are able to make individually meaningful choices in their work, they are able to bring more of their full selves to their learning and to the classroom community.. This not only enriches their personal experience, it creates greater opportunity for connection and relationship building with teachers and peers.
It’s also important for students to see examples of successful work from people with diverse backgrounds, especially in fields where certain groups have been historically underrepresented. For example, young women of color in science classes can and should see examples of women of color thriving in those fields through exemplars, stories, and real-world models. Seeing themselves reflected in the work they’re being asked to do can build both belonging and ambition.
Shifting toward more performance-based assessment is no small task. It requires thoughtful planning, sustained effort, and, often the guidance of experienced experts like the team at ELP. But the rewards make it worth the investment. Students’ well-being, engagement, and sense of belonging are deeply interconnected, shaping their entire experience of school. High-quality performance assessments are one of the most effective tools we have as educators to nurture these dimensions of student thriving. By integrating them into our practice, we can create learning environments that challenge students intellectually while supporting them emotionally, socially, and developmentally.
Why did you apply for the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF)?
[ELP’s Deeper Learning Coach] Alcine had worked with our district for a year, helping us develop our Graduate Profile. During one of our training sessions, she informed me of the DLLF geographic plan to include our area. That year I was also assuming a new role of Director of Pupil Personnel/Equity Officer and felt that the forum would greatly benefit my professional growth as well as the direction of my district.
What are the benefits of being a part of the DLLF?
Learning from a group of diverse educators has been the greatest reward. There are members from large and small districts who are willing to go on the deeper learning/equity journey that will take our school systems to the next level.
How has it helped you with your professional work?
The DLLF experience has provided me with a network of educators that will serve as a professional learning community for 18 months and beyond. The structured and unstructured collaboration has allowed me to introduce ideas in my district that “disrupt” the typical processes of education.
What is your individual project?
Introducing equity systems across my district. Building the concept of equity in our district is definitely in its infancy stages. To complete my project, I used Kotter’s 8 Stages of Change to introduce and implement equitable practices in my district.Robert is the Director of Pupil Personnel and Equity Officer for the Mason County School District in Kentucky.
Learn more about the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum experience by clicking here.
I have two daughters – ages 12 and 9. Both attend our neighborhood K-8 public school, an easy five-minute walk from our home. Like many working parents with school-age children, my spouse and I juggled our work and parenting responsibilities in pre-COVID times to make sure we spent quality time with our children, provide support with math homework and longer-term projects, and support their participation in enrichment and extracurricular activities. Sometimes math homework sessions ended in tearful or rage-filled meltdowns, and at other times, perfectly decent drafts of writing projects ended up as torn or crumpled pages thrown across the room. On the flip side, one of my daughters exuberantly and proudly shares her creations in a game simulation, and the other eagerly accepted swim lessons after years of rejecting them so she could keep up with her friends at pool parties. If any of this sounds familiar, you are in good company. Based on my experiences as a parent, educator, and researcher, I have come to understand a singular truth about learning – that ALL learning is social-emotional learning.
Recall a time when you struggled to learn something new at some point in your life. What emotions did you feel in your struggle? What factors helped you persist in the learning process? I recall shedding tears over long division in third grade, lacking confidence to contribute to class discussions, and anxiety over a lifetime of failed swim lessons. Sometimes, all I needed was a friend to show me how they worked a problem, an invitation from a teacher to share my ideas, or an opportunity to practice the skill again and again. Thinking about those times, it is clear to me that there is a social-emotional component to all aspects of learning. Over the last two decades, researchers have documented the critical role that social-emotional factors play in student outcomes such as grades, school persistence, and test scores (Durlak, et.al., 2011; Greenberg, et.al., 2003; Sklad, et.al., 2012; Taylor, et., al, 2017). Encouragingly, in recent years, there has also been a growing awareness of the importance and value of students’ well-being (the Stanford Prevention Research Center (2019) defines well-being as “a holistic synthesis of a person’s biological, psychological, and spiritual experiences, resulting from interplay between individuals and their social, economic, and physical environments that promotes living a fulfilling life.”) and “whole-child development” (see Turnaround for Children’s Building Blocks for Learning for another whole-child framework) as a valued goal in and of itself.
From 2016-19, I had the opportunity to direct a research study with a team at the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, & Equity (SCALE) and ELP called “Measures of Social-Emotional Learning,” a project supported by the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stuart Foundation, to explore the possibility of developing credible, instructionally-embedded sources of evidence about students’ SEL development that can be used to inform students’ and teachers’ next steps. We wanted to go beyond traditional pupil survey instruments that, in many cases, do not provide timely and immediately actionable information about specific students (there are a couple exceptions: the Co-Pilot/Elevate program developed by PERTS (Project for Education Research that Scales) engages students in multiple short-cycle administrations of a brief survey that provides targeted, disaggregated information to teachers and can be used to inform immediate next steps; Project Co-Vitality allows for tracking individual pupil responses over time. Both instruments are proprietary and require registration with their programs), to explore authentic sources of evidence in contexts where students actually apply social-emotional practices in the course of engaging with academic content. This study was completed in partnership with teachers in student-centered learning contexts where students were engaged in project-based learning and exhibitions/defenses of learning. The Executive Summary provides an overview of our findings.
The findings from that study have strongly influenced my understanding of the importance of whole-child development, the integration of social-emotional learning in all aspects of learning in school, and the learning environments that are necessary for students to develop as self-directed learners with ownership of their learning and agency over their lives. Teachers, families, and other adults in the school community play a critical role in shaping the learning environments and conditions that nurture students’ SEL development. These learning environments shape whether students feel empowered to make choices in their learning and whether student voices are honored and heard. A culture of mutual respect, support, and safety among students is needed to empower student voice and choice. If students are to have ownership and agency in their learning, they need a low-stakes “trial and error” culture where they feel safe not getting things right on their first, second, or even third attempt, where academic and creative risk-taking is applauded, and grading policies value growth and effort over initial success. A culture that values growth also provides regular opportunities to receive constructive feedback from peers and teachers, and supports students to act on that feedback. Through the study, our team came to understand that all teachers, not just counselors and advisory teachers, need to be equipped to understand the social-emotional well-being of their students and the role that all teachers play in creating the learning environments that support students’ SEL.
During the research project, based on evidence of how well teacher-developed measures of SEL worked for students, the research team authored a framework that describes opportunities for developing and demonstrating social-emotional learning in the context of PBL and Exhibitions of Learning. The framework proposes a set of design principles for credible and valid measures of SEL:
One key learning from the study was that students need an authentic purpose and audience for engaging with measures of SEL – this is similar to the way authentic performance assessments can spark and sustain student motivation and more validly measure a complex skill. For example, when students reflect on their own and their peers’ “team mindset” skills in the context of completing a joint project, the feedback they give each other and their own reflections on how they contributed to the project are more meaningful, honest, and valid than completing survey items on their collaboration skills without a specific context. Another key learning is that measures that engage students in socially constructed or peer-mediated sense-making (e.g., those in which students have opportunities to share learning goals with a buddy, discuss evidence of their progress on those goals, set new goals, and hold each other accountable) were seen as the most authentic and valid SEL measures by students and teachers. This is the “social” in social-emotional learning. Most students learn and perform best when they have opportunities to engage with others (whether peers, teachers, or mentors) in authentic discussions, collaborative projects, or when receiving feedback and coaching. This allows them to process complex ideas through conversation, build and validate their understandings, make meaning of common experiences, and refine their own ideas. The interactions students have with others in the process of learning something new is not just a “nice to have” – it is an essential component of the learning process.
The need for teachers to become better equipped to nurture their students’ SEL (and by extension, attend to their own social-emotional well-being) has been amplified by a range of crises and challenges over the last two decades — a rise in school shootings, growing awareness of the harms of in-person and cyberbullying, unnecessary use of police force in schools and disproportionate over-application of disciplinary action and criminalization of Black and brown students, increasing poverty and homelessness, children in foster care, a national opioid epidemic, the plight of undocumented immigrants living in constant fear of ICE, and the marginalization of LGBTQIA+ students, to name a few challenges to well-being that children in American schools currently face.
During the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis, it has become even clearer that we need to attend to the social-emotional needs of children as well as the adults that mentor them to create safe learning conditions that shape how students will be able to cope with the health crisis and a world where threats to their very existence feel more real than ever. The pandemic crisis and distance learning pulled back the curtains on deep systemic inequities in the ways students from Black, brown, and other marginalized communities have been left behind. Schools mobilized to provide for the needs of millions of children across the U.S. whose only steady meals came from the school lunch program, and did their best to overcome the deep gaps in access to the computing technology and Internet service needed to participate in online learning. Even with the heroic efforts of their schools, many of these students fell through the cracks and existing inequities widened. In addition, many public school students suffer from homelessness (114,000 in New York City and 17,000 in Los Angeles alone), lack of access to healthcare, worries for parents who must risk becoming infected everyday because they are essential workers, and sometimes abuse in the home. On top of these extraordinary stressors, Black and brown children suffer immensely from seeing the violent murders of people who look like them by the police and other individuals, with almost no consequences for perpetrators and no justice for the victims. And children of Asian American Pacific Islander descent are increasingly becoming witness to or victims of overt racist attacks by individuals blaming them for “bringing the Coronavirus”. In the face of these immense sources of stress, fear, and trauma, what should schools and teachers be doing to prepare for the next academic year, which begins in less than a month in some districts?
Rather than preparing to be instructors of content, teachers must be prepared to be instructors, coaches, and mentors of children. This juxtaposition of these two teaching dispositions is not a new idea; nor is it intended to be mutually exclusive. It is entirely achievable to be a teacher of children and a teacher of content. And in an equitable classroom that prepares students to cope with the current challenges in their lives and the world they will face as adults, teachers must fulfill both roles. However, it is imperative now more than ever that teachers attend to the needs of the whole child, not just their academic needs. In this moment, when there is so much healing and recovery that students, families, and teachers need to do in the face of a pandemic that continues to rob people of their health, jobs, homes, and basic sense of security, and heightened anger about the racial disparities in our justice system and basic civil rights, we will cause more harm than good if we simply return to the past patterns of policies, practices, and priorities of “normal” school, as argued by Adelric McCain (Network for College Success, UChicago) and Hugh Vasquez (National Equity Project). Indeed, we should remember that “normal” school has not worked well for vast numbers of school children, especially Black and brown children, English learners, and children with special needs. In many cases, students have been traumatized by their experiences with “normal” school. Dr. Pedro Noguera suggests constructive ways for reopening schools in a way that puts equity at the center.
This is a time to prioritize the well-being and social-emotional needs of students, their families, and their teachers. Before we can demand that teachers teach their content effectively (in-person or via distance learning) or expect that students catch up on all the academic learning that did not happen in the Spring, we have to ask whether members of the school community, but especially children, feel safe, seen and heard, and supported. The well known Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1995-97) found that certain traumatic experiences in childhood are major risk factors for the leading causes of illness and death as well as poor quality of life in the U.S. However, the same study also found that the effects of these traumatic experiences can be offset by the presence of one dependable and caring adult in a child’s life. Sometimes, that adult is a mother, father, or a relative. More frequently, that stable, caring adult is a teacher or mentor (Paper Tiger film; Resilience: The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope film). There are not enough school counselors, social workers, and mental health providers to meet the explosion in need, especially with anticipated school budget cuts (S. Kohli, Los Angeles Times, 5/7/20). Teachers and other caring adults in children’s lives will need to step up and work together to help children recover from the traumas experienced during the pandemic school closures and even before that.
Implications for pedagogy and practice. When teachers are instructors, coaches, and mentors of children, teachers begin not by testing students about their reading and math knowledge, but by prioritizing learning about their students – who they are as persons – their strengths, interests, and lived experiences, their families, their communities, and their cultural/language backgrounds. Teachers begin also by establishing classroom norms, routines, and a culture of safety, mutual respect, risk-taking, personal and social responsibility, personal and social awareness, peer support, and low-stakes learning through “trial and error”. They endeavor to build trusting relationships with their students and their families through ongoing communication and inviting families to be a partner in their students’ learning. They check in regularly with their students and invite them to share their successes, struggles, and needs. They create opportunities for students to build relationships with their peers, which provides a powerful authentic context for students to experience healing and support – something we learned from our research study on measures of SEL. Relationship building is an ongoing process that will be challenged by events in and outside the classroom across the year. When incidents of racial injustice and intolerance occur in school and outside of it, teachers do not gloss over these events or pretend they didn’t happen. Teachers who care for students’ social-emotional well-being confront these issues head-on, centering the voices of marginalized students as they process these issues and encourage students to respond in appropriate ways. Teachers are prepared to respond to instances of racism, disrespect, or conflict within the classroom as a mediator, rather than as a punisher, to repair relationships and restore a culture of mutual respect, as well as respond to crises or traumatic experiences (with the support of families, counselors, and social workers) that affect students’ social-emotional well-being.
Some teachers may have an intuitive ability to build relationships with students, create and maintain a classroom culture of safety, support, and mutual respect, and respond appropriately to the effects of trauma in students’ lives. However, this is a skill set that many teachers will need to learn and practice. Thankfully, there are resources and an established knowledge base to draw upon from counseling psychology, social work, and the mental health field. Below are some organizations and resources that can support your school staff as they consider beginning the journey to becoming instructors, coaches, and mentors of children, prioritizing the well-being of the whole child. Our team of ELP coaches has expertise and direct experience with these student-centered, whole-child pedagogies and practices; we have also created research-based tools and design frameworks for designing measures that elicit instructionally-embedded evidence of social-emotional practices that can help teachers better understand their students’ social-emotional strengths and needs and create learning environments that nurture their SEL development. We invite you to reach out to us to learn more about how we support districts and schools.
ChildTrends/Child Trauma Training Center (UMass)
Culturally Responsive Education Hub
National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Trauma Sensitive Schools (National Association of School Psychologists)
Forbes, H.T. (2012). Help for Billy. Boulder, CO: Beyond Consequences Institute.
Harris, N.B. (2018) The Deepest Well. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Kaiser Permanente & CDC (1998). Adverse Childhood Experiences Study
Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Central Recovery Press
Minahan, J. (2019, Oct). Trauma Informed Teaching Strategies. Educational Leadership, 77 (2), 30-35.
Newhouse, C. (2020, April 6). Four Core Priorities for Trauma-Informed Distance Learning. KQED Mind/Shift.
Porges, S. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company
Resilient Educator (2020). Essential Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategies for Managing Stress in the Classroom.
Teaching Tolerance (2020, March 23). A Trauma-Informed Approach to Teaching Through Coronavirus.
van der Kolk, B. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Yusem, D. (2019, May 31). Restorative Justice in Schools: SEL in Action. Mindful Schools.
Emotional Well-Being and Coping During COVID-19 (UCSF)
That Discomfort You are Feeling is Grief (Harvard Business Review)
Self-Care for Teachers of Traumatized Students (Resilient Educator)
4 Self-Care Resources When the World is Terrible (Colorlines)
Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P., Dymnicki, A.B., Taylor, R.D, and K.B. Schellinger (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82, (1), 405–432. https://www.cpr.org/sites/default/files/durlak_et_al-2011-child_development.pdf
Greenberg, M.T., Weissberg, R.P., O’Brien, M.U., Zins, J.E., Fredericks, L., Resnik, H., & Elias, M.J. (2003). Enhancing school-based prevention and youth development through coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning. American Psychologist, 58, 466-474.
Sklad, M., Diekstra, R., De Ritter, M., Ben, H., Gravestein, C. (2012), Effectiveness of school‐based universal social, emotional, and behavioral programs: Do they enhance students’ development in the area of skill, behavior, and adjustment? Psychology in the Schools, 49(9), 892-909. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.21641
Taylor, R.D., Oberle, E., Durlak, J.A., Weissberg, R.P. (2017). Promoting positive youth development through school‐based social and emotional learning interventions: A meta‐analysis of follow‐up effects. Child Development, 88(4), 1156-1171
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