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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.
Envision Learning Partners has had the honor of working with Antelope Valley Union High School District since 2017 and we’re excited to share an update on how they are Integrating Portfolio Defenses into the Curriculum: All-in for Success in this Guest Blog written by Duane Robertson.
It is more critical than ever to equip students with a range of skills that will prepare them for college, careers, and life. One strategy that has been implemented in the Antelope Valley High School Districts (AVUHSD) Career Technical Education (CTE) pathways is the Portfolio Defenses. The portfolio defenses not only enhances communication but also fosters students confidence, critical thinking, and collaboration. Recognizing this importance, AVUHSD set a plan to integrate the portfolio defenses into the curriculum, making them an essential component of pathway students’ learning experiences. The implementation plan, the challenges faced, and the successes achieved by AVUHSD is outlined below.
Identifying the Need
After discussions with CTE administration and feedback from teachers, it became apparent that many students lacked opportunities to practice public speaking in structured, meaningful ways – especially after COVID 19. While presentations occasionally appeared in class, they were sporadic and often lacked uniform standards, rubrics or assessments. To address this gap, portfolio defenses were implemented to incorporate presentations as a formalized, skill-building component of CTE pathways.
Setting the Objectives
The primary goals for integrating defenses into the curriculum included:
Developing the Plan
The implementation plan was multi-faceted and involved the following steps:
Overcoming Challenges
While the initiative was ultimately successful, it came with its share of challenges:
Measuring Success
The impact of this initiative was evaluated through teacher and student reflections, and academic outcomes. Key findings included:
Expanding the Vision
Encouraged by the success of the program, plans are underway to further enhance the initiative by extending portfolio beyond CTE classes:
Conclusion
Integrating portfolio defenses into the curriculum has transformed the learning environment, empowering students with communication skills that extend far beyond the classroom. This initiative exemplifies how thoughtful planning, collaboration, and a commitment to students can create meaningful change in education. As students continue to excel in their portfolio defenses and critical thinking abilities, the benefits of this learning strategy reaffirm the importance of such initiatives in preparing our students for the future.
Duane Robertson is the Coordinator of CTE for the Antelope Valley Union High School District.
Mr. Robertson left his position as a multimedia and computer science instructor and Academy Coordinator of the Lancaster High School Engineering and Multimedia Academy, the first Linked Learning Silver-Certified academy. He previously taught business classes as an Adjunct Instructor, after a 15 year career as a project manager. He received his B.S. in Business with an emphasis in Management from Cal State Dominguez Hills, and his first Masters Degree in Education from Chapman University and a 2nd Masters in Administrative Leadership from Cal State Bakersfield.
Duane’s desire to reach students led him to his current role as CTE Coordinator for the Antelope Valley Union High School district. Under his leadership, the CTE classes and academies continue to align with the district’s vision of “every student who graduates will be prepared to pursue college and any career to which he or she aspires”.
Duane is also an alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum, Cohort 4.
When I was a kid, I was thrilled by timed multiplication tests. You know the ones. Fresh paper flipped with the blank side up, while you recite to yourself…
Then go! You flip your paper and, hardly registering the numbers, answer 60 multiplication problems in 60 seconds (or less) with the speed of Usain Bolt. And when the time is up, you pass the paper to a classmate, hopefully a friend, to grade your paper in purple gel pen and find out whether you are a math genius or…well…hopefully you have other talents.
I loved it. To me, math was speed and accuracy. As I went from carrying the one to the Pythagorean Theory, I learned procedures to solve problems with speed and accuracy, hardly registering the numbers. Until I couldn’t anymore.
Eventually, the concepts became too abstract and the procedures couldn’t carry me to any solution – let alone with accuracy and speed. Eventually, I figured that I reached my limit and stopped. As my identity as a ‘math person’ ended, so did aspirations to work in the sciences and anything STEM related. With one course, my plans for my life changed.
Later in life, math and I were reintroduced, this time as a teacher. And I saw that my journey directly conflicted with what we ask of our students: be lifelong learners, persevere, you can do anything you put your mind to. It was then that a thought occurred to me: we’ve been thinking about math all wrong.
So here’s a reframe. The purpose of math class is not to learn numbers and theorems. That’s a byproduct. Instead, the purpose is to learn how to think, problem solve, and investigate our world. Everyday phenomena – natural or socially constructed – are linked to mathematics. It adds data, color, insights, and questions. How we approach a new or difficult math problem informs how we approach challenges that we encounter in our lives. Sure, learning new strategies is an important part of what educators teach in math. But perhaps more powerful is the idea that you can find and use new strategies in creative ways. That we all think differently. That we can build on each others’ ideas. We can aim to support students as they build up their toolboxes and practice being problem-solvers, innovators, and world builders in a variety of circumstances.
We see this shift with the eight standards for mathematical practice, which describe the “processes and proficiencies” that learners will need to be effective in their math education. Simply applied to finding solutions to problems, our learners likely won’t internalize the power of these practices. However, applied as an approach to problem solving, students become empowered in their learning and move toward liberation. When students ask, “Why do we need to learn this math?” We can respond, “So you can change the world.”
This reframe requires safe learning spaces where our students can make mistakes, try new strategies, and explore their world. It requires projects, games, and exploration. Going into next school year, how can we move away from a focus on speed, accuracy, and learning math as a checkbox for the next level of math? How can we move toward liberation?
If we are truly pursuing justice – now and in the future – then we have to change the way we think about math class.
This Guest Blog was written by Envision Education’s Director of STEM, Kala Stepter. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
By Trevor Gardner
The tension between urgency and patience is a constant for educators. On one end we hold high expectations, pushing students to do more than they think they are capable of; we demand their best. On the other end we nurture; we meet them where they are; we remain steadfastly compassionate and understanding.
Paulo Freire first helped me understand this tension when I read what I believe is his most essential texts for school educators: Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to those Who Dare to Teach. In his “Fourth Letter: On the indispensable qualities of progressive educators for their better performance,” he frames the tension in this way:
[The progressive educator] must exercise wisdom in experiencing the tension between patience and impatience. Neither patience nor impatience alone is what is called for. Patience alone may bring the educator to a position of resignation, or permissiveness; that denies the educator’s democratic dream. Unaccompanied patience may lead to immobility, to inactivity… Untempered impatience threatens the success of one’s practice, which becomes lost in the arrogance of judging oneself the owner of history. Patience alone consumes itself in mere prattle; impatience alone consumes itself in irresponsible activism. Virtue, then, does not lie in experience either without the other but, rather, in living the permanent tension between the two. The educator must live and work impatiently patiently, never surrendering entirely to either (pg. 211).
If you have spent any amount of time with young people in schools – but especially as a classroom teacher – you have felt the weight of this tension and you have struggled with the layers of complexity that pull you in either direction. And if you currently work with young people in schools, as we emerge slowly from the global pandemic that forced students to endure nearly a year and a half of online “school”, isolated in their homes, their bedrooms, and their computer screens; I imagine you are experiencing the antagonism of this polarity in a way that is heavier, more messy, and more emotionally fraught than ever before.
Ukiah Camping with Students
Moving into my 23rd year as an educator, both as a classroom teacher and a school leader, I find myself struggling more than ever, as I look out at the 28 students in my 11th grade US History class, or when I sit in coaching meetings with my incredible teachers, with the wisdom to locate the equilibrium in this tension.
Belief in the possibilities of education feels like it is at an all time low. Engagement in the classroom feels more challenging to sustain. Desire to struggle through difficult work seems more short-lived.
When attempting to capture the feeling of this dynamic, I have been using the analogy of an athlete whose muscles have atrophied due to being sidelined for a long time due to injury. From March 2020 until August 2021, students (at least those in Bay Area public schools) did not step foot into a school building. They did not engage in small group discussion with their classmates. They did not get up in front of the class to model how to work out a math problem. They did not rotate around the room on a gallery walk, writing their thoughts on small posters and reading the ideas of their peers. They did not rush out the door to find their best friends for lunch.
Of course, after such a hiatus, they are less good at doing school. In this sense, yes, they have atrophied, at least as students in the classroom. But they have also built different muscles. They have learned to navigate the world in a pandemic, a world more complex than we have known before. They have learned to be closer to their families, to care for younger siblings doing online schooling and for elders facing health conditions. They have built muscles of resilience, awareness, and empathy.
Ukiah Camping with Students
What I am realizing more and more is that, if we are exercising the wisdom of our experience, as Freire asks us to do, then we must find ways to turn this incredibly challenging moment into an opportunity. Our urgency must be marshaled not only in support of our students, but also in questioning, transforming, and reimagining how schools (or at least our own classrooms) function.
Do we want our students to build back muscles that help them comply and fit into a box, an institution, a system that can feel disconnected, uninspiring, and even harmful? Do we want them to be better at enduring boredom and passivity? What are the muscles we want to rebuild as we take this long journey together back to an education that truly serves our students and our communities?
What if we add a third point to Freire’s tension between patience and impatience and we call it HOPE – and we allow ourselves to pull equally in the direction of what else is possible? What if we add an element in our lesson plans labeled hope? What if we ask ourselves every day how we are cultivating hope – in our classrooms, in our discipline policies, in our communication with families and caregivers, and in our interactions with our colleagues? Hope that a different way is possible. Hope that what I learn today matters. Hope that we will learn through this difficult moment together.
I know it is not simple. My students will certainly tell you that there have been more than a few US History lessons that have bored them to sleepiness or that did not inspire them to suck out all the marrow of life and use their knowledge of history to transform the world. I have work to do. At times I have let my urgency run over students and lose sight of the myriad struggles they continue to cope with. At other times my patience has left me mired in acceptance of the status quo. I too have atrophied and have questioned my purpose as a teacher and school leader.
But what if I, what if WE, collectively, placed the cultivation of hope as our primary objective? What if we met the challenges with what the incredible Shawn Ginwright calls “radical imagination… the collective dreaming about how things should be.” Imagine what schools could become.
Trevor Gardner has been an educator in the Bay Area for 20 years. He has taught high school English and history and has worked at multiple levels of school leadership and is currently the Director of Teaching and Learning at ARISE High School in East Oakland. Trevor is the author of Discipline Over Punishment: Successes and Struggles with Restorative Justice in Schools and also an alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum. Connect with Trevor on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Vermont has been on an ambitious journey to implement student-centered, proficiency-based learning for over twenty years. That journey continues to evolve today, and this blog shares some of the key points along the way.
A publication by the Vermont Department of Education in 2003, “High Schools on the Move,” addressed “the critical issues facing Vermont high schools” and identified principles that remain at the heart of Vermont’s work today. These include:
(A Report to the Vermont Legislature on Career and Technical Education)
The task force recommended a focus on personalized learning environments that would enable students to take risks in a supportive setting and prepare them for life after graduation. The What and Why of Act 77 outlines additional milestones along Vermont’s path towards the Flexible Pathways Initiative, created by Act 77 of 2013 and found in statute under 16 V.S.A. § 941. This Act was “established to encourage and support the creativity of school districts as they develop and expand high-quality educational experiences that are an integral part of secondary education in the evolving 21st Century classroom; to promote opportunities for Vermont students to achieve postsecondary readiness through high-quality educational experiences that acknowledge individual goals, learning styles, and abilities; and to increase the rates of secondary school completion and postsecondary continuation in Vermont.”
The Flexible Pathways Initiative paved the way for the inclusion of proficiency-based learning in Vermont’s State Board of Education Rules, Series 2000, The Education Quality Standards, that went into effect in April 2014. These rules state:
In an effort to develop a shared vision for both proficiency-based learning and college and career readiness, in 2017 the VT Agency of Education began collaborating with the field to develop a statewide Portrait of a Graduate (PoG). Approximately sixty educators from across the state gathered to react to the initial draft. That version was influenced by a blog post, The Graduate Profile: A Focus on Outcomes, from Edutopia by Ken Kay that stated:
Over the next two years, more than three hundred students, parents, educators, and community members contributed to the final version of the Vermont PoG. The PoG provided guidance in the development of proficiency-based graduation requirements and articulates the vision for learners who are prepared for success in college, career, and life. Personalized Learning Plans, a requirement in Act 77 for students in grades seven through twelve, serve as a vehicle for documenting a learner’s progress towards the attributes of the PoG.
Fast forward to 2020. . . Vermont educators had been working hard to implement the expectations within the Education Quality Standards for local graduation requirements, however, a survey that year revealed a wide variation in requirements across the state. Depending upon the supervisory union or district a student attended, there was a range from six to one hundred thirty-five Proficiency-Based Graduation Requirements. This indicated that expectations for graduation, which are determined locally and approved by school boards, were being interpreted in a variety of ways. Educators moved forward with the development of PBGRs with good intentions, however, a collective understanding for these expectations had not been developed. Unintentionally, this range in PBGRS created inequitable expectations for learners across the state.
Concern about this lack of coherence and the impact on students, especially those who move frequently or attend Career Technical Education Centers from several different sending schools, gave “birth” to the Proficiency-Based Graduation Hierarchies. Content Specialists started by determining what it means to be literate in their content area and distilled the essential information into an overarching Proficiency-Based Graduation Requirement. Critical Proficiencies represent the enduring knowledge and skills within a content area and promote high expectations for all students. Priority Performance Indicators represent the skills and knowledge that will be taught and assessed. Finally, Proficiency Scales indicate the progression of learning over time. Once this information was drafted, the Hierarchies went through an internal review process using quality criteria documents as lenses for providing feedback. After an additional two rounds of feedback from the field, the Hierarchies were revised, finalized, and posted on the VT AOE website.
Since Vermont is a local control state, supervisory unions and districts are not required to adopt the PBGR Hierarchies. However, in the spirit of continuous improvement, educators are encouraged to adopt the PBGR Hierarchies, adapt them to fit their context, or use each Hierarchy to refine locally defined PBGRs.
As part of VT AOE’s continuous improvement process, members of the Student Pathways Division are working with educators in SU/SDs to support the processes of adapting, adopting, or refining local PBGRs through Participatory Action Research (PAR).
Numerous resources have been developed over time to support Vermont’s efforts to implement proficiency-based learning. The Vermont Framework for Proficiency: Resources to Support Implementation is composed of stackable documents that enable educators to access the information that is most relevant to the needs of their particular school system. It is organized from a backward-designed perspective so that the initial documents lay the foundation for subsequent work and inform decisions regarding next steps. The resources also demonstrate how different parts of the Framework for Proficiency connect and build upon one another. The hope is that by sharing these resources and Vermont’s journey, others can benefit and join us on the road to proficiency.
Guest Blog written by Pat Fitzsimmons
In this special Guest Blog Video Interview, hear from Alcine Mumby and Laureen Adams, interviewed by Niloy Gangopadhyay and Courtney Katen.
This interview was sparked by Alcine’s recent travel to the Ghana ASCD Educators’ Summit 2024 earlier this year.
Learn about Alcine and Laureen’s history- all starting in Oakland at Envision Academy, what Laureen took away and still carries with her as leader of the Tutu Institute in Ghana, why she believes so deeply in performance assessment, and what’s up next for her work continuing to support educators and systems.
By Roman Stearns
During the pandemic, each individual and organization has been forced to practice unprecedented levels of resilience and adaptability. It’s remarkable really. Workers adapted to new conditions and norms. Students adapted to new places and forms of learning. Parents adapted to some form of homeschooling. Beyond individuals, businesses adapted to new strategies for offering products and services, and nonprofits and government agencies adapted to new and creative methods for providing support. From my observation, everyone, of all ages and across all sectors of society, deserves a badge for resilience and adaptability.
Most of us have grown up with some form of badging to recognize accomplishments. Some remember merit badges awarded during Boy or Girl Scouts. Some work in organizations that award pins for years of service. Of course, gamers are very familiar with endless ways to earn badges and level up. The age-old strategy persists because it works; it draws on our natural desire to improve, to achieve, to win, and to get recognition when we do.
Please indulge me while I reflect on personal experience. I’m a former high school Spanish teacher. My wife is multilingual. We see language as a tremendous asset, and thus are committed to promoting languages among our children. When our eldest son, Eli, was three years old, we enthusiastically enrolled him in a dual immersion preschool, where 100% of instruction was in Spanish. To our surprise, rather than becoming fluent, he emerged after three years with very limited capability. Years later, now at a charter Montessori school, Eli has one hour of Spanish per week – not nearly enough for him to become proficient. I had submitted to the reality that perhaps he would not emerge from his schooling speaking Spanish.
Then came the pandemic and the transition to homeschooling. The school introduced Eli, then 12-years-old, to Duolingo, an online app for learning languages. All of a sudden, he became highly interested, doing Spanish for an hour or more a day! He began learning Spanish at a remarkable rate. I was fascinated by the change and wondered about the cause. Like many other online learning apps (e.g., Khan Academy), Duolingo is gamified, with students earning badges and leveling up. It celebrates progress and accomplishment, motivating users to continue to advance to higher and higher levels of achievement. To my delight, after just a few weeks, Eli was speaking Spanish around the house using full sentences!
As a school reformer, I’ve always liked the idea of awarding digital badges to students who demonstrate various competencies, whether collaboration, initiative, empathy, creativity, or civic action. I wonder why programs like 21st Century Skills Badging, designed jointly by the Foundation for California Community Colleges and New World of Work, have not become more popular in CA. Is it because the incentives are not in place? Is it that our education system does not adequately value student demonstration of 21st century skills and social emotional learning outcomes? Is it because those competencies have not yet earned a place in our state accountability system? Inherently, we know they are important, and a growing body of research reinforces the benefits to student achievement and success.
In another blog post, I emphasized that the current circumstances accentuate the need and urgency to embrace success skills and social emotional development as core and central to our education process. As we reflect on what we’re learning – individually, organizationally, and societally – during the pandemic, we must consider how the “new normal” will value the competencies that young people have demonstrated so impressively over the past two years – adaptability, resilience, empathy, compassion, civic responsibility, effective communication across platforms, digital literacy, independence, initiative, resourcefulness, creativity, critical thinking, and more.
Could digital badges help us signal the importance of those competencies? How can we build the capacity of teachers to both demonstrate and measure these skills? Will we add them to report cards? Could more recognition, perhaps through approaches such as badges or gamification, elevate their importance for students? As per another blog post, might it be time for the traditional “currency of education” – the high school transcript – to give way to a newer currency that is more equitable, student-centered, and competency-based? Might digital badges be the best currency as we pivot to a competency-based approach to learning and assessing students?
Fortunately, a group of school districts is already tackling these questions. They are pioneering members of a new community of practice dedicated to educating the whole child. A new California partnership, called Scaling Student Success, works with school districts that have engaged their local stakeholders to create a Graduate Profile – a succinct, one-pager that articulates the skills, competencies, and mindsets young people need for future success. These districts are eager to move “from poster to practice” – i.e., breathing life into their Graduate Profiles, giving each and every student an equitable opportunity to develop and demonstrate the competencies articulated on their Graduate Profile.
One common challenge among the districts in the Scaling Student Success community of practice is how to build coherence around their Graduate Profile and measure and report on the Profile outcomes. They recognize that not all are achievable during 180 school days, from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm. They wonder how they can actively involve their community members in offering opportunities for students to practice and demonstrate competencies beyond the boundaries of the classroom, clock (school day), and calendar (school year). For example, would it be possible to engage families, neighbors, soccer coaches, dance instructors, youth group leaders, internship supervisors, and other youth-serving community members?
While my dream is nowhere near as ambitious nor eloquent as the one expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, it’s a dream that I too hope can become reality in the years to come. Let’s create a phone app that allows students, their peers, families and community members to rate student performance on any competence represented on a district’s Graduate Profile.
To understand how this would work, let’s return to my son Eli. Similar to a Graduate Profile, his school has a set of “Whole Child Reflections” that include empathy, independence/responsibility, acceptance of self/others, problem solving, positive risk taking, integrity, organization, contribution, curiosity and initiative, and critical thinking. On report cards each quarter, his teachers rate him on a scale (AC = area of concern, S = sometimes, O = often, C = consistently). But, those ratings are merely teacher observations during class time. They do not include self-reflection, peer assessments, or ratings offered by other adults who interact with Eli both in and out of school.
When COVID forced an end to his soccer practices, Eli insisted on continuing to practice every day. Happy to support his wellness, we drove him each afternoon to a local park. Over time, he became frustrated that he didn’t have goals, cones, hurdles, and other training equipment he was accustomed to. I suggested that he earn some money to buy the items he wanted. He learned during the recent spring break that he can make money washing cars. So, Eli created a flier promoting “Eli’s Car Wash,” printed it, and placed it on a few dozen door steps in the neighborhood (see Eli’s fun flier here). Over several weeks he earned over $500 and bought all the equipment he needed, including a new pair of cleats! Wouldn’t it have been ideal if he had the opportunity to ask the neighbors to rate him on independence/responsibility, initiative, and perhaps problem-solving. The neighbors could download the app, offer a rating, make a comment, and even attach an artifact.
Then, when Eli had received five or more ratings for, say independence/responsibility, he would use the app to submit the ratings for review and approval. His teacher would review the ratings and associated comments and evidence, and determine whether he had met a standard. If met, Eli would be awarded a digital badge representing his demonstration of competence. That badge would become a portable credential that he then could use in multiple ways, i.e., when applying for high school, college, or his first job.
Benefits to Students and Schools
An app like this could have many benefits, including:
Please share your ideas. How can we promote community-based learning opportunities and validate students’ demonstration of essential skills? Are there places where this kind of badging system is already working? What have you seen and experienced? What would you like to see?
Roman Stearns is Founder & Executive Director of Scaling Student Success, a California partnership dedicated to educating the whole child. Envision Learning Partners is an active practice partner, helping to co-design and facilitate community of practice sessions. Roman is also a member of ELP’s 5th Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
What’s next? Enforcing “time served” is for prison guards, not stewards of genius.
Vinci Daro and Theresa Morris are two razor-sharp colleagues of mine. Among other qualities, they are math curriculum and assessment designers; they also help teachers shift the focus of learning to center students. The teacher works to guide, encourage, and create conditions for unfettering the growth of all students as full human beings, as problem solvers, thinkers, learners, and doers. That’s how I understand it, anyway. It is the opposite of my experience with high school math in particular, and I literally love them for it.
Once I heard Theresa very quickly answer a question about her mission and purpose: “Recovering lost potential.” Another time I saw Vinci’s response to a question about the values and principles she proposes when she is coaching or facilitating, and I think it was the only thing she wrote: “Students are brilliant.”
Think about that. What is happening in a course built on those directives? Let’s explore.
A few years back I heard from two high school students from different schools who designed and prototyped shoes with batteries built into the soles, which recharge via kinetic and solar energy from being used like shoes – walking around, and it helps if it’s sunny. Both students researched previous attempts at such a design. Both devised and revised proposals, plans, designs. Both went into the world to share their inquiries and challenges with professionals, mainly scientists and engineers. One used design thinking and the other used the engineering design process to get to a working prototype, and they did not solve the design challenges in the same way. One of these innovators was acquiring a patent in hopes of a licensing deal and navigating all of that, while the other had a batch of shoes manufactured and shipped to families in Ethiopia so they can be less impacted by rolling blackouts. He raised the money for that, too! They both spoke publicly about their process, challenges, and learning and expertly Both answered a barrage of questions from adults. One shared her story through a professional presentation in a giant auditorium and the other stood by a digital display of his project and walked groups of people through as they approached and investigated his station.
How do we design for that? One answer may strike you as suspiciously familiar.
Schools have found themselves bogged down by inflexible structures at a time when we need flexibility most. Some educators worry about students completing work too quickly and then not having anything to do with the remaining class time.
Rooting conditions for school success in things like seat time ultimately dilutes the data that actually measures student learning. Here are some things we will miss: what students can do now, their strengths and needs, how to support them, and what’s next for them. Pretty important stuff! Once you have them in front of you, how will you use that time to answer those other questions, and teach things that can be learned? Relationships, home visits, personalized interventions, bus passes, carpools, and other creative community support are more effective ways to address the high crimes of absence and tardiness!
Education shouldn’t be like serving a sentence. Let’s instead refocus our approach on what matters most and prepare ourselves to cultivate some genius. Model those transferable skills, bring all students relevant learning experiences, assist them in gaining useful strategies, expressing themselves, creating real things, taking initiative, and generally developing their powers! Let the reality of student brilliance and the high stakes of lost potential set the terms, not “time served.”
In other words, your students are not done yet. They’ve got way more to offer and more to learn. So what’s next for each of them and how will you let them do it?
Exposure and practice to the art of public speaking has the power to deepen and strengthen our connection to self, our education, and our community.
Growing up, I devoted myself to school because it was the one thing in my life whose outcome I knew I could control.
If I did my homework, I got good grades.
If I tested well, I got good grades.
If I met my deadlines, I got good grades.
If I completed my reading log (even if sometimes I skipped reading) I got good grades.
Good grades meant a great report card and that meant that I could eventually go do big things in the world.
My teachers had no complaints by the time parent teacher conferences came, except that they would love it if I “spoke up more and participated in group discussions”. And each time I would tell them that I would work on it, but truthfully, it was the #1 piece of feedback I received for years to come.
I’ll be honest in saying that for this introvert, it was difficult to participate in class. I was afraid of judgment, but more importantly, I needed time to process my thoughts and in some ways, protect my inner voice.
As a first generation, oldest daughter of an immigrant single mother, being the shy, quiet, & reserved Yvonne was simply more comfortable than being in the spotlight. Besides, it had always gotten me the results I “needed”: good grades. And that’s all I needed to help pave the way for my siblings and I to “be successful”.
There were moments I got glimpses of my power as a speaker as the MC for my elementary school graduation & cultural events, but the excitement of those moments were never fully integrated in the classroom.
When I started high school at Metropolitan Arts & Tech (one of the first Envision Education Bay Area schools) I had no idea that my engagement with my education would completely transform. Our curriculum focused a lot on internalizing our learnings through deep reflection, critical thinking, creativity, and talking about it. Every semester we hosted ‘exhibitions’ as a way to share our work with our peers, family, and friends. We were required to present a collection of our work to showcase that we had achieved the learning outcomes of projects across subjects, which made me incredibly uncomfortable and way too nervous. I remember thinking “Why are they making us do all of this extra stuff? Can I just take a test?”
We’d spend hours preparing our talking points, our presentation boards, and even our outfits. Each time, it got easier and I reconnected with my love for public speaking. I say reconnected because I already had it in me. I was just not always in environments that pushed me to step up. The Yvonne that I knew myself to be, could also now fully exist in the classroom. Public speaking opened the door for me to be more authentically myself. To lean into a perceived contradiction where I had a hard time participating in class discussions, but could completely dominate a speech because I had been granted the time to practice and cultivate my art.
And I didn’t do it alone. I had an entire community in my teachers and my classmates. We were all in it together and all bonded over having to deliver presentations so frequently. I grew closer to my classmates because we’d spend hours giving each other feedback or exchanging ideas for how we’d present. We could collectively share our nerves and also work through them to deliver.
No matter who we were or where we came from, when we showed up to the classroom we were given the platform to share our ideas & deeply engage in our education from the lens of our lived experiences.
Presenting in the classroom allowed me to understand myself at a much deeper level, feel empowered by my education, and learn to create community through the art of public speaking.
My hope is that we can all see the power of public speaking beyond simply “taking the stage”, but also recognize its power in helping us reconnect with our most authentic selves, our education, and the collective power of doing things in community with others.
ELPers, Alcine Mumby and Aragon Burlingham speak on camera about their experiences being part of the first Nexus Fellowship. The Nexus Fellowship was developed by the Equity Lab in response to the overwhelming need for race, equity, diversity, and inclusion (REDI) in the learning profession. The Fellowship helps leaders to create long-term organizational change around race and equity.
What experiences brought you into coaching?
I had the incredible experience to be on the team that founded Envision Learning Partners. I was half-way into my teaching career at that point and was offered the opportunity to design and create a way in which we could share some of what makes Envision special with others around the country who were interested. I spent 2 years feeling like I had gone back to grad school as we built ELP, as I was learning so much in the process! Wanting to put into practice for myself all of the rich growth I had experienced, I went back into the classroom at Envision for 5 more years. It was a natural and wonderful return to coaching in 2016 when I was able to re-join the team on this side of the organization.
What do you most enjoy about being a coach?
I feel so inspired by the brilliant educators with whom I get to cross paths and sit shoulder to shoulder while on my coaching journey. I was worried that I would miss the beautiful chaos of teenagers on a daily basis when I left teaching, but coaching provides similarly vibrant relationships with the folks I get to partner with. Coaching offers a bit of a different cognitive challenge as I get to think about units of change larger than my own classroom. This is invigorating and often makes my brain hurt in really cool ways.
What do you like to do when you are not coaching?
When not on a plane or sitting in an airport, you can find me running the trails of the incredible hills and redwood forests in the east bay, talking to every dog I pass on the sidewalk, enjoying the incredible food and wine that we have at our fingertips, traveling to far off magical lands as often as possible, cooking dinner for former students, and stepping out on a dance floor when the music is right.
Hear why our newest Deeper Learning Coach, Morgan Vien, joined ELP and is excited about her new role working with our partners across the country.
What experiences brought you into coaching?
As a student, I loved learning but found school more stifling than unleashing of my love of learning. As a high school teacher, I loved learning from my students and helping them discover themselves and the world around them. As a lead teacher, I always wanted more time to design amazing learning experiences, think about school-wide systems, and learn more about what other great schools are working on.
What do you most enjoy about being a coach?
As a coach, while I miss crazy teenager energy, I love the increased impact my work has on many other people’s students; I love the nitty-gritty of it too: learning, collaborating, and co-designing learning experiences and systems that help schools and districts in their process of transforming teaching and learning from the systems we all inherited.
What do you like to do when you are not coaching?
I am an activist, an artist, and an introvert! A big contradiction of things. I try to maintain space for calm, for creating and appreciating art in many forms, for reflection, and for just existing outside as part of the natural world, as well as fighting the fights that must be fought to make the world a better place.
What experiences brought you to ELP?
I first learned about ELP as a client when working at ARISE High School in Oakland, CA. We were building out new graduate student profiles/senior defenses, as my team
While working with ELP, I am hoping to continue to gain knowledge on how to work with a variety of partners to achieve common goals around bettering the quality of education for our youth. I’ve been on the other side as a client, and I am excited to really dive into the ways of leading this work as an assessment design partner. I am also excited about having the opportunity to lead virtual workshops that can potentially reach the world (s/o to Vinci who had someone from out the country in her last workshop!).
I am SO excited to be a part of this team! Even before I started on my first day, I felt accepted, appreciated, and valued. The fact that I am surrounded by so many knowledgeable and wise educators with a breadth of experience has already begun to excite me even more so about this work. There is a lot of passion and dedication, as well as a strong focus on equity and cultural responsive practice which definitely aligns with my work morals/ethics. And, I’m always excited to grow myself as an educational leader, and I know that’s going to happen here with ELP!
When I’m not working, I’ve been enjoying learning about, and exploring Long Beach/SoCal! I just moved down here in March, and there is so much to do! Aside from exploring, I love to listen to music; sing, dance, zone out, etc. I have been reclaiming my love for exercise, and have been kickboxing and bike riding as well. I just recently got back into art, so I’ve been painting too! Then there’s: time with my family and partner, catching up with friends, sports (playing and watching), watching anime, meditation and breathwork, reading, journaling, amateur photography…I like to do A LOT when I have time!
Fun fact: Current ELPer, Ruth Chung Wei and I discovered that her nephew is my kickboxing coach here in Long Beach! =)
What’s your new role?
I am serving as the Chief Program Officer (CPO) of Envision, a new role for the organization. My job is to steward the overall academic model of Envision Education, which is enacted through our four charter schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and through our nationwide consulting arm, Envision Learning Partners (ELP).
What does Envision Education hope to achieve with this shift?
Before the CPO role was created, the bridge between ELP and our schools ran through the CEO, at the very top of the organization. The intent of my role is to lower the altitude of that bridge and add lanes. I am working to increase the bandwidth of learning between our schools and our nationwide coaching.
How does it support Envision E ducation’s mission and vision?
Since its founding, Envision has been dedicated to the idea that students deserve an education that attends not just to what they know, but also to what they can do and how deeply they can reflect. (See our principles of High-Quality Performance Assessment, or HQPA.) And we’ve always been committed to serving not only students in our own schools but also students everywhere, by sharing our ideas with public schools and advocating for shifts in policy. In that sense, Envision is proud to be living out the original purpose of charter schools: places to test ideas and, if they work, share them. The job of the CPO is to ensure that we live up to that ideal.
What’s your favorite part of your new role?
I am interacting daily with broader swath of Envisioners, including students, teachers, and school leaders. I directly support a team of directors of academics and student services who are brilliant and collaborative. Plus, I still get to hang with ELP!
What are you bringing from ELP that you’re using in your new role?
My decade at ELP taught me that change happens not through mandate but through persuasion and inspiration. That requires communication that is clear, tight, and uplifting. I try to apply those skills every day.
Where do you see yourself and/or your role in the next few years?
I have so much to learn if I am to succeed in my new role, but I remind myself that over my 20 years at Envision, I’ve been here before. I was there when I had to figure out project-based learning as a brand new teacher. I was there when I joined ELP and had to learn how to facilitate learning for educators (a tough crowd!). And it’s where I am and will be for the foreseeable future: climbing a learning curve that’s real steep, pausing now and then to enjoy the view.
Although I have a title of Executive Director (privileged to do work I love with people who inspire me), I still call myself a teacher. I have always been, and remain, completely in thrall to the process of human learning.
Back in 2008, in my sixth year as an English teacher for Envision Schools, I was lucky to be involved in the design and implementation of a multi-disciplinary project that was chronicled by a professional documentarian. Many of you will be familiar with this video of the Campaign Ad Project, but for those who aren’t, it’s a blast-from-the-past glimpse into who I am as a teacher, why I love teaching in a deeper learning culture, and why I am so committed to the overlapping concepts of project-based learning and performance assessment.
Young people deserve learning experiences that are challenging, exciting, supportive, and memorable—what I like to call “learning you can tell a story about.” ELP’s mission is to help learning communities create the conditions for these kinds of experiences to be typical, not extraordinary.
Follow Justin on Twitter @jusowells.
This rounds out our introduction of every ELP team member. In upcoming installments, we’ll pose questions that prompt deeper insights into the ELP team. If you have a question for the team that you’d like answered, please send your question to Courtney Katen for a chance to have it answered in a future newsletter.
Hi I’m Michael, an 11th grade student from Envision Academy, born and raised here in the Bay Area. Interests that I have are the inner workings of cars and what goes into building/modifying them. I’m very interested in the Mechanical Engineering world and would love to pursue a career in it. I look forward to spending the week with the ELP team and learning from them in order to grow as both a person and finding out what makes things work.
I chose to go to Envision Academy in Oakland because I heard great things about the school from my older brother who also attended for the full 4 years. So far I’ve had a great experience at Envision Academy with the school being very inclusive, I never feel out of place.
Here are a few things that I am doing at school: A bridge project in my Physics class where me and a group of students work together to design a bridge that can hold up at least one brick. A satirical piece of writing in my English class where I am pointing out a problem of my choice in today’s world/society while incorporating ideas like irony into the text.
Right now I am looking at colleges which can help the dream of me wanting to become a Mechanical Engineer with a friend of mine contributing to it as well. We have a full list of colleges with each being color coded to indicate how likely we are to be accepted, with green being we are sure to get in and red being a longshot. I am currently looking at Georgia Tech and Stanford University as my top two choices for Mechanical Engineering classes.
What I want to take from this experience of working with the ELP team is how organized and calculated I can get with all my work, but also researching so I can continue to investigate more opportunities that I and others can benefit from.
My week here has been amazing. Being able to meet all these amazing people that helped me settle in and feel welcome was exciting. I got to learn what goes on behind the scenes here and also have my share in the conversations not being left out of meetings and being asked for my inputs on a variety of subjects. A skill I improved at was my communication and planning skills. By being able to participate in the meetings I got better at talking with people that are older but also come from different backgrounds than me. Having control over my schedule also gave me a better understanding on how to handle my time in order to get the work I need done but also make time for other things, whether that be meetings or interviews by my fellow peers. I would recommend that other schools also start to implement an internship week of sorts because the opportunities and just overall knowledge that gain from a work environment is different to that of a school one. The amount of connections you can gain would be very helpful for students so that they get a sense of what their future can hold for them and it would also help them narrow what it is they actually want to do.
Cristian: “I chose this because David, my mentor, the senior directive of student services, made me interested in learning more about the school policies and how they work. I want to gain a different perspective of life, although there are many other opportunities, I want one that hears about students and how they feel when it comes to certain activities. I want to improve my communication skills, not just with students but with adults too. I want to become a structural engineer/architect. What interests me about Envision is its cultural theme and how inclusive they are with African American, hispanic, etc, and how they treat them and their months for example black history month, especially with how inclusive they can be. I’m a sports guy. I play a different variety of sports like baseball, soccer, football, etc. I played for the school soccer team this year. I was thinking of going to a college in Boston or Riverside, San Jose State university.”
Jesus: “I chose this internship because it was close to my home and the work seemed interesting to do throughout the week. I want to learn what are the steps that ELP does to work with the school and how the hiring process works here. I want to improve my communication skills. What interested me about Envision was how it was really close to my house and my siblings had already gone to Envision before. I want to pursue a career in real estate. I like to play soccer, baseball, and I’m interested in the process of making music. I also like to play different instruments like the guitar, accordion, and the drums. I was thinking of trying out Sonoma State, UC Santa Cruz, Cal State, and UC Davis.”
Melanie: “I wanted to go into a medical field assisting but things didn’t work out, but Mr.Viera introduced me to Ms.Kat and the idea interested me because she works with HR and the higher ups, staff, and teachers so I wanted to look more into what goes on behind the scenes at Envision to make things work at the school. I want to learn more about the environment and Ms.Kat’s routine, and what goes on behind the scenes because I didn’t think that all this went on to make the school work. I thought it was just the Principal and the staff at the school. I want to improve my communication skills and hands on work with computers like google docs and sheets. What interests me about Envision is that it’s a small community so you’re able to know almost everybody and with how it is an art and technology school I had an interest in going here when I was coming out of middle school. I’m very interested in the medical field, more specifically the dental industry. I like to explore, hang with my friends, and create memories while also having fun. Some colleges I have on my mind are UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara, and Cal Poly.”
Cristian: “I learned a lot of communication skills, being able to interview teachers, students, and other staff, all of these being people I do and don’t know broadened my interviewing skills. I got to create more and better bonds with all these people. Other Jobs I did were to attend a lot of meetings. The fun part about that was being able to go out, visiting the office, and getting a lot of new views/perspectives on different topics. My experience here was good. I got to meet new people and learn more about them, their job titles, and all the work they do to make everything happen. I think it’s a good idea to add an internship week for other schools because it’s a valuable learning experience, getting them slowly out of their comfort zone white also giving them knowledge on career paths that they themselves might want to pursue after the week is done.”
Jesus: “My week here went well and I definitely learned about the process of how teachers are hired and what they look for in teachers. A skill I improved on was being able to stay focused on a piece of work since I’m very easy in getting distracted so this internship bettered my focus. I would recommend this internship to other Envision students because it’s an easy job but you gain so much knowledge and you learn a lot from being here. I would recommend other schools to also start doing an internship style week because of the amount of opportunities you gain. For example, I was able to get a letter of recommendation from my mentor here. You also get to actually experience what the working world is like and it’ll give an early opportunity for students to learn about it.”
Melanie: “My week was very flexible and very calm, the first day I got an understanding of what the rest of my week was going to look like. After that I spent my time doing my work and overlooking my mentor to get a better understanding of what she does. I’ve learned that the process of having new people is not just accepting the job on the spot there is so much behind it. It can take weeks looking at them and accepting new staff and what they actually look at for potential staff. I improved my understanding and listening better with one on one talks with my mentor, asking her questions, and also just paying attention better. Just comprehension skills overall. I do recommend for other schools to start an internship like week because of the new environment you can get into and the vast majority of opportunities you can get by just meeting new people. A lot of students might not get the most out of just going to school so it would be very great to also learn about other experiences at other workplaces, while also giving students new jobs to look at that they might be interested in pursuing in their future.”
During the 2019 calendar year, ELP’s Alcine Mumby and Aragon Burlingham participated in the first Nexus Fellowship, a program from the Equity Lab. Nexus was designed in response to the overwhelming need for race, equity, diversity, and inclusion (REDI) in the learning profession.
This was a transformative experience for us and the other 14 Nexus Fellows! Michelle and her talented team curated a deep and personal experience for our new community of equity leaders. Nexus took us into a deep personalized leadership journey based on our identities around three specific design challenges: challenges with people, challenges with processes, and challenges with programs.
Watch the video to hear about the experiences of the Nexus Fellows and Equity Lab’s ED, Michelle Molitor.
Thank you Michelle and your exceptional team for creating this incredible program!
Describe what you do at ELP?
I lead the operations side of Envision Learning Partners. This primarily involves behinds the scenes work to ensure our infrastructure and systems are running smoothly so our coaches can deliver high-quality professional development. ELP’s start-up culture has built our service and systems through many years of relationship building, prototyping, and refining.
What experiences brought you to ELP?
I began my work with Envision as an English teacher at City Arts and Tech [our school in San Francisco]. After stepping out of the classroom, I worked closely with all of our schools in a highly successful reading intervention program. In 2010, I became a founding member of the Envision Learning Partners team. We spent the first several years of ELP figuring out the most high leverage work we could do with our external partners. The journey has been amazing – we’ve grown our service from 3 team members serving 1 partner to 11 team members serving over 60 partners.
What do you enjoy most about working for ELP?
I am driven by the mission of ELP and expanding positive educational impact to all students. I believe deeply in providing access and high-quality learning experiences to all students. At ELP we primarily work with adult learners to refine their teaching practices and educational systems, but my motivation still comes from impacting students’ lives by shifting adult teaching and learning.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I spend most of my time on outdoor adventures with my wonderful husband and two children. We like to hike, rock climb, backpack, ski, and camp whenever we have the opportunity. Almost every morning before the sun is up you can find me at a barre class and I always sneak in time to read several novels per month.
have always been incredibly passionate about the work I do with students and families. I started my career as a Special Education Teacher in Philadelphia, Pa. At my core, I will always be a special educator. I transitioned into student services/ special education administrative work which allowed me to have a deeper understanding of the way systemic oppression impacts vulnerable populations. I learned how to center the needs of the community and work alongside those who are most impacted. While working in this role, I developed a passion for inclusive education – it can work when we work it (see article). This led me to another passion of mine – teaching. I work with the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University teaching aspiring general education teachers how to incorporate best practices into their teaching while challenging the narrative of what it means to educate students who learn differently. With my transition to ELP, I am hoping to bring a perspective that allows us to center the most vulnerable populations in the amazing work we do. I am hoping to uphold high expectations for all of the students we serve and, I am hoping that students who learn differently will see themselves reflected in the work we do with districts, organizations, and communities.
What are you hoping to learn while you’re at ELP?
I am hoping to learn how to design high quality performance assessments on a large scale while centering neurodivergent learners. I would like to support districts and school communities with inclusive education as it relates to high quality performance assessments and graduate portfolios. I am also hoping to learn more about research projects on a large scale and how to use that information to improve school outcomes.
What are you most excited about starting at ELP?
I am most excited about working with a team that centers human connection while making an impact on the world of education. I am looking forward to getting to know everyone on the team as well as getting to know our clients and their school communities.
Another project that I am incredibly excited to join is the work ELP is doing with the Oak Foundation. The case study aims to illustrate high-leverage school practices that support the well being and success of Black and LatinX students with learning differences. I am beyond honored to support this work.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Roilyn’s Bio:
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).
Learn more about Roilyn in her ELP blog post and/or connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Hi! My name is Royce Conner, and I recently joined the team as ELP’s Executive Director. In many ways, I feel like I have returned home. While I am new to Envision, my education career began by learning about progressive education from leaders in the field such as Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. Since then I have put students at the center of each of my classrooms and schools. I am thrilled to be part of a team that cherishes the idea that students thrive when given authentic, challenging and rigorous work that is personally meaningful to them and their communities.
A bit more about me…
What experiences brought you to ELP?
A visiting professor from a teacher preparation program once visited my classroom. He observed students deeply engaged in projects that provided them various opportunities to use their knowledge and skills to answer challenging questions about the world and their places in it. Some students led Socratic seminars about the nature of goodness. Others wrote policy briefs for local legislators. A few wrote an original play to be performed along with local actors using interviews the students conducted with immigrants. When the professor left, he said, “This is the way school should be.”
I spent ten years learning the craft of teaching using projects and performance-based assessments. I became a lead teacher in my school, supporting new teachers as they designed projects and aligned performance assessments to local standards. My middle school students, the majority low-income students of color, would often return to my classroom as high school and college graduates sharing gratitude that the work we did in my classroom prepared them for what one student called “the world I almost missed out on.”
After my time in the classroom, I spent two years in the public policy arena, working on statewide and national education issues with Rhode Island Kids Count. I enjoyed policy, but I eventually felt the call to return to education. I moved to California to pursue a degree in educational leadership and policy. After that I spent two years consulting with various school districts, including Oakland USD. I then spent one year leading the recruitment team for San Francisco USD. Following SFUSD I entered the world of school leadership. I served as Head of School for three Bay Area charter schools. One of my schools scored a front page article in Education Week for its innovative blended learning design, and another connected me with Bob Lenz and PBLWorks for its dedication to project-based learning for our students in K-8.
Before joining ELP, my most recent role was as a Fellow with Foster America, a national nonprofit working to improve outcomes for foster youth and develop innovations for the child welfare system.
And this brings me to Envision. While my career has had many interesting turns, I am delighted that I find myself back in an organization that operates and promotes schools that are, like that professor once said, the way schools should be.
What are you hoping to learn while you’re at ELP?
I am going to learn a tremendous amount from our schools! I look forward to seeing how partners in rural, suburban and urban districts rally their school cultures around student-centered design and performance assessments. We know there is no such thing as “one size fits all,” so I cannot wait to learn about how our partners are implementing high-quality performance assessments, graduate profiles, and portfolio defense in their unique contexts.
What are you most excited about starting at ELP?
Truly, it’s the team. I have the great pleasure to work with expert educators, coaches, facilitators, designers, researchers and operations professionals. They are parents, siblings, authors, cooks, readers, adventurers, musicians and athletes. They appreciate a challenge and embrace the power of difficult conversations. As excited as I am to connect with schools, it is the team that brings me the most joy.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I would love to tell you that I dive deeply into great works of art and literature, but the truth is that I love my PlayStation and I play it like a teenager guzzling Mountain Dew. I am also a movie fan, especially horror movies. But I also love my outdoor time, especially hiking. In addition, I love to travel. So far I have traveled to 48 states (I’m looking at you, Mississippi and Hawaii!).
Anything else to add?
My favorite quote is “Don’t dream it—be it.” Extra points if you can name the source.
Royce’s Bio:
Royce joined Envision Learning Partners in 2023. A native of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, he attended Brown University, where he was first introduced to progressive principles of education through Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. He spent 10 years teaching at Community Preparatory School in Providence, Rhode Island. He then worked on statewide and national education policy with Rhode Island Kids Count, where he was selected as an Emerging Leader by The Children’s Defense Fund. He moved to California in 2007 to attend Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, where he earned a Master’s degree in Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies. He spent two years consulting with urban school districts and another year leading the recruitment team at San Francisco Unified School District. He then served as Head of School for three Bay Area charter schools. His most recent role was as a Fellow with Foster America, a national nonprofit working across the country to improve the child welfare system and increase opportunities for foster youth. Royce lives in Richmond, California with his husband. He is thrilled to be part of the team at Envision Learning Partners!
Connect with Royce on LinkedIn.
I serve as the Director of Research and Innovation. My main role is to document the impact that designing and implementing high quality performance assessment systems has on outcomes for K-12 students, the learning environments that student experience, and systems and cultures that support student success. The “innovation” part of my work has to do with developing new tools, frameworks, and methodologies for the work we do with the latest evidence from research and practice. What that really means is that I support our coaches as a thought partner as they develop new products with their district and school partners, and codify tools, products, and practices into a unique ELP-branded suite of resources. I also spend a lot of time writing, reviewing, and explaining rubrics!
That’s a long story, but I’ll give it a try! I started my career in 1997 as a history teacher in New York City, at a Queens high school that was part of the small schools movement in the city, and regularly assigned projects and performance assessments to my students, even before I knew what PBL and performance assessments were. During my graduate studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, I studied the impact of a teaching performance assessment (Performance Assessment for California Teachers) on the learning of preservice teachers, having been inspired by teachers reporting that the NBPTS portfolio assessment had a tremendously positive impact on their professional learning. During my graduate studies, I also began supporting the work of the School Redesign Network at Stanford which was supporting the Bay Area Performance Assessment Consortium (BayPAC), and that’s how I met Bob Lenz, one of the founders of Envision Schools and my current colleagues, Justin, Alcine, Rachel, and Abby, among other founding teachers. Bob requested technical support from the School Redesign Network team. That’s how I ended up facilitating teams of Envision Schools educators as they developed their suite of disciplinary performance outcomes, rubrics, and the portfolio defense, and as teachers got calibrated on the portfolio rubrics. When Envision had its first graduating classes, I conducted a couple of small studies to evaluate the impact of the portfolio and defense on students’ learning experiences and then a follow-up study to learn how graduates who had been out of high school for one or two years were doing. Later, I also participated in collecting data for another set of studies that included Impact Academy and City Arts & Tech HS called the Study of Student Centered Schools (completed by the Stanford SCOPE Center). Between 2008 and 2020, I worked as the Director of Assessment Research and Development at SCALE – the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity, which evolved from the School Redesign Network. SCALE’s primary mission is to support districts, states, and higher ed institutions as they develop and implement balanced, credible, and reliable assessment systems that include performance assessments. I started working at ELP part-time in January 2018, when SCALE staff merged with ELP. I started working full-time at ELP in January of 2020. In many ways, it felt like coming back home, to a school organization with an assessment system that I was part of building. I am so proud of what Envision Schools have become and that we are a national and international leader in the performance assessment movement.
I love working at ELP because I feel so much at home here. I truly feel that my colleagues are like-minded people with the “same heart.” At ELP, I know my colleagues hold very similar beliefs about the potential of all students and a similar drive to do work that makes a difference in students’ lives. We rejoice and celebrate the same small victories, and we mourn and weep for the same systemic sources of injustice in our world. We geek out over backwards planning and all believe in the power of student work as a key lever for teacher learning. We support and care for each other, and know that even when we push back on one another, it is out of love. That’s what makes it feel like home.
I wish I had more time for all my non-work interests – but these days, when I’m able to come up for air, I enjoy making a delicious meal for my family, going for long walks, tinkering on my mandolin, piano, or violin (not all at once!), and shelter-in-place Karaoke nights with my family. Also, I enjoy cuddling with our long-haired Chihuahua-Papillon mixed pup and our aging tabby cat while catching up on the latest sci-fi or historical fiction drama on Netflix.
I began working at ELP in January 2018 as the Director of Research and Innovation. Since then, I’ve been working on the nationwide team providing direct service and technical consulting to client partners and creating assessment products, as well as directing ELP’s research projects.
I’m excited to share that in July 2025, I stepped into a new role: Senior Director of Assessment for Envision Education. This role encompasses responsibilities for the whole organization – Envision Schools and Envision Learning Partners. Envision Schools runs four charter schools in the Bay Area (in San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward). My new responsibilities include overseeing the design and implementation of a comprehensive assessment system for the schools, ensuring the use of rigorous, standards-aligned assessment practices that demonstrate student achievement of core academic skills. At the same time, our system aims to provide regular opportunities for students to demonstrate ambitious learning outcomes aligned to Envision’s graduate profile competencies in real-world-relevant, meaningful, and culturally sustaining contexts. We seek to more systematically integrate authentic and high-quality project-based learning and student-led conferences at all grades 6-12, and portfolios + defenses at grades 8, 10, and 12. We want to develop our schools as models of a balanced and comprehensive assessment system that supports student achievement of both foundational academic skills and ambitious, authentic demonstrations of learning. This new assessment system is described more fully in our new Envision Way documents.
In my new role, I also continue to work with my ELP colleagues, supporting the learning and effectiveness of our national team of Assessment Design Partners, and developing new services aligned to the Envision Way as we seek to meet the evolving needs of both external district partners and our own schools. Our long-term strategy is to strengthen our own schools so they are clear models of the quality assessment systems that we are also seeking to strengthen in partnership with districts. We call this the “flywheel” because of the reciprocal nature of our learning and development work as we pilot new practices, collect data, and evaluate their effectiveness in our schools and in partnership with external districts.
I continue to also be involved in exploring ways for Envision Education to gather evidence of its effectiveness through systematic collection of evidence in our own schools (in partnership with John Ericson, our Director of Data & Assessments), and by initiating research projects to collect evidence of the impact of ELP’s work with districts. I am also continuing to coordinate the research project “Pursuing Equity for Black & Latine Students with Learning Differences”. We wrapped up two years of school case study work in July, and are preparing to launch a two-year professional-development pilot and evaluation phase of the project with a large school district. More news to come!
What do you enjoy most about working for Envision?
It’s definitely always been the people. I truly enjoy working alongside colleagues with a similar commitment to our most marginalized students and who are striving so hard to create supportive, inclusive learning environments that lead to equitable learning outcomes. I am learning so much from my ADP colleagues as well as my Academic Programs Team colleagues. They are all so incisive and brilliant and I have so much to learn from them. I truly feel blessed and lucky to have them as colleagues!
I’m also proud to be working in an organization with a commitment to its pro-Black, anti-racist stance, engaging us all in developing a self-awareness of our individual and collective contributions to our cultural norms, and providing the space to engage in productive struggle to begin changing those norms.
Last, I love that Envision honors hard work while also honoring our need for joy, self-care, and rest! The yoga and art breaks, retreats, sound baths, line dancing, karaoke nights, breaking bread together, and other opportunities to take mind breaks are all helpful reminders that we are whole people who also need laughter, rest, and nourishment to thrive. My family always gets a kick out of hearing about the latest fun things I get to do with my work friends!
Performance assessments have always played a big role in my educational journey, even when I was unable to name it. As a Bilingual teacher in Chicago, I centered my teaching on performing and bringing the content to life. The traditional assessment measures were invalid and were unable to capture the pure brilliance of my students and their community. In the past three years, I’ve focused on partnering with school districts in New England to develop high quality performance assessments that promote joy and equity. Now, as an Assessment Design Partner at ELP, I’m excited to engage in deeper ways with assessment systems and Graduate Profiles.
I’m hoping to deepen my understanding of graduate profiles and how they can serve as a lever for equity for school districts. Most importantly, I’m looking forward to collaborating with the wonderful ELP team to design learning experiences that promote antiracism.
I’m most excited to work with the wonderful team at ELP and their school partners. It is energizing to work with a team that is unafraid to think outside-the-box with antiracism at the center of the work.
There are many things that bring me joy and restore my spirit. One of my top priorities is exercise- I like early morning runs or group workouts followed by an iced coffee and a relaxed afternoon by the beach. I also appreciate time with my family and friends-especially after living on the East Coast for several years. In fact, one of my favorite activities with my mom is to visit TJMaxx and browse the clothes and home decor section. It’s the little things that count.
A picture with me and my beautiful family and a picture of me and my birthday piñata (Selena)!
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 and 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.
Describe what you do at ELP.
I am the Director of STEM Learning at ELP. I get to work with colleagues in many different roles — teachers, coaches, administrators, curriculum developers, assessment developers, and professional learning providers — to design learning experiences and assessment tools that help students become better problem-solvers, and better communicators about their problem-solving strategies. A big part of my work is figuring out how to set students up to use their own everyday language and the disciplinary language of mathematics and science to express and clarify their own ideas, and to build on each other’s ideas (for example, the Math Language Routines). Another big part of my work is developing tools to help educators sharpen their lens for analyzing student work to get better at identifying and describing evidence of learning, and to get better at planning instruction and assessment based on that evidence (for example, Collaborative Analysis of Student Work Protocol). I also get to collaborate on tools for observing classrooms, and for using observation data to plan instruction (for example Observation + Planning Tool); developing and adapting tools like these for distance learning contexts has kept me very busy this year. I am always on the lookout for projects in which the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Next Generation Science Standards are used to optimize student curiosity and student agency.
What experiences brought you to ELP?
My journey to ELP was a happy and unplanned confluence of opportunities and relationships. I joined ELP in early 2018 as part of a team of colleagues from Stanford (Understanding Language/Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning & Equity), and one of the primary magnets that drew us to ELP was a clear commitment to both equity in education and anti-racism broadly. In that merging of people and projects, ELP gained STEM content expertise and I gained a bit more freedom to pursue projects that align with my interests in making school a place where students not only grow their competence in solving problems, but are recognized for their competence. Prior to joining ELP, I was the Director of Math Learning at UL/SCALE, and before that worked for many years with Ann Shannon and Associates, using the Shell Center Formative Assessment Lessons, which transformed my understanding of the importance of attending closely to the variety of ways students generate evidence their learning. I’ve had many opportunities to integrate my training as a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer into my work in math education, but often only secretly; ELP is a place where I get to be my whole self.
Part of the ELP team prototyping at a 2019 retreat.
What do you enjoy most about working for ELP?
Colleagues. The people. (ELP has the best people). The deep expertise and wisdom about working with schools and districts to shift mindsets, to re-align educational systems for equity and learning that matters, and to build tools collaboratively that make these shifts and re-alignments sustainable. Being able to draw on what ELP colleagues are doing at the scale of systems, and in relation to other content areas, provides a much more holistic perspective than is possible in professional settings narrowly bounded by content area.
I also enjoy all of the opportunities to collaborate with the incredible staff at Envision Schools. Partnering with STEM leaders at Envision Schools has been an ongoing source of energy and an actively experimental space for professional learning design and assessment design.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Anything that does not involve a screen: being and moving outside (walking, running, hiking, biking, kayaking); touching and reading printed pages; playing cards, Pentago, chess, Codenames, Just One, and other games with my 14 year old daughter and 11 year old son; playing with our accidental pet, Philmore the fabulous rat. And — when all goes well — living car-free until our summer cross-country road trip to Carrboro, NC, visiting family and friends along the way.
A Note from the Designers: Just so you know- we hear you and we are answering your call!
“Yes – we want to lean in and invite students to tell the journey of their learning in a Virtual Defense… but where do we start?”
We are thrilled that you are digging deeper into the Virtual Defense Toolkit! Each part of this Toolkit is being built with our own main design principle in mind: Tight on criteria, loose on path. Thus the Path Pace is intended to be a guide as you look at where you are currently, and how you might move as a system toward virtual student defenses and beyond.This tool includes suggested tasks and timelines for each of the primary stakeholder groups – students, advisors/mentors, and Admin. We then break down those tasks into week-long chunks. We invite you to explore this tool and then reflect on your context, your capacity, and what feels right for your community. Adopt what resonates, adapt what you want to modify, and hopefully this gives you a place to start. We will be offering resources for several of these tasks as the days go on, and are excited to continue to build what you may need as you take this on.
“This is awesome… but how do we support students to hold parts of this process?”
Yes! We are so glad you asked. Any student-centered assessment supports students to be co- designers of the experience and invites them to activate their agency in the process. This planning tool is built to help them set goals, track key information, manage workload and consider important factors as they prepare to defend their learning.In this new landscape, we know that circumstances and home learning contexts are unique to each student. As you engage in building towards a culminating event with your students, we invite you to question assumptions and let students lead where possible. They are the experts in their home contexts and can make choices about how and when to complete work, the best space in their home environments for hosting the event and of course- how to best be their authentic selves in this process.As always, these tools are an offering and we are excited to see how you use them and what other needs emerge. We are actively designing and releasing this package as needs become clear.Onward!We held a couple of sessions to answer questions and dream with you all. We were excited to learn more about the complexities you’re working through and to imagine how we can support.
Virtual Portfolio Defense Webinar: Tuesday, April 14th
Virtual Defense: Ask Me Anything Session: Thursday, April 16th
Join the conversation on Twitter by tagging us @EnvisionSchools and using the hashtag #ELPVirtualDefense.
Stay Well,
Morgan Vien & Abby Benedetto, ELP Deeper Learning Coaches
We are delighted to announce the education leaders that have been selected to join the newest cohort of our Deeper Learning Leadership Forum. The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking. As DLLF members cultivate relationships and learn across their diverse contexts, they will become more adept and strategic at leading reform efforts in their local systems, thus producing more equitable deeper learning outcomes across the country.
Meet our fourth cohort leaders here. Click the link and scroll down to Cohort 4!
Envision Education is seeking a dynamic, experienced educator and leader to build on the successes of our three high schools and two middle schools and establish Envision Schools as exemplar schools of equity and excellence for our students and for Envision Learning Partners. The Chief Academic Officer (CAO) will do this by providing vision, management experience, educational expertise, and operational oversight. Click here for the official position description.
Questions? Contact David Edwards, Director of Talent and Human Resources – dedwards@envisionschools.org – 510.451.2415 x 107
ELP has been selected as an approved learning partner by IL-EMPOWER for Illinois schools. IL-EMPOWER is the statewide system of support that empowers schools with greater choice in determining their path to improved student outcomes. Schools are informed through a continuous school improvement process which includes analysis of academic and school quality indicators, a system needs assessment, and selecting an approved learning partner like ELP.
To learn more about our partnership, click here.
ELP spends much of its time delivering PD to our partners from coast to coast. Many partners don’t realize that we also turn our PD chops inwards to refine our practices, learn from each other’s work in the field and have some fun along the way! At our last retreat, we focused our efforts on refining our definition of High Quality Performance Assessments. We believe a High Quality Performance Assessment…
We’ll expand on this suite of definitions in the coming weeks – stay tuned!
Happy Holidays from the ELP team!
The Assessment for Learning Conference is next month! Below is a sneak peak at the ELP-lead sessions!
Join ELP for the following sessions at the Deeper Learning Conference on March 25-27, 2020 in San Diego, CA!
Observe an entire Portfolio Defense, learn how the model works, and reflect on how you can apply the concepts in your own context.The Portfolio Defense is the capstone activity of a whole-school performance assessment system. It is the culmination of a student’s 4-year journey. Similar to a masters defense, students stand before a panel of peers, educators, and mentors to demonstrate — to the panel and to themselves — that they are ready to graduate and ready for a successful future.A Defense Design Studio consists of two parts:
Join ELP at our partner school’s DDS:
Bay Area Envision Education DDS dates TBD.
Grad Profile Workshop Series: Jan 28, Feb 5 & Feb 10 (Sold out but more dates to come!)
In this three-part workshop series, led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto, participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc.
Given the surprisingly high demand for this workshop, we have sold out! We are currently scheduling another set of dates, as soon as late February. Please use this Google Form to join the interest list and be the first to know as soon as new dates/times have been confirmed.
Session A: Intro to the Graduate Profile
This workshop is designed for folks who are learning about the concept of a Graduate Profile (aka Vision of a Graduate, Portrait of a Graduate). We will explore what a Graduate Profile is and why it is an important shift for schools, districts, systems, etc., as well as what it means to situate the Graduate Profile as your organizing principle. Participants will brainstorm the skills they believe would be ideal for their graduates, then have an opportunity to check that brainstorm against quality criteria, ideate and revise again. Participants will leave with a draft prototype of a graduate profile as well as a plan to engage stakeholders in a vital input/feedback process in order to move toward a more finalized draft.
Session A TLDR: You have heard about this thing called a Graduate Profile and want to take your first leap into learning more.
Session B: Defining Your Graduate Profile
Once participants have a draft of a Graduate Profile (aka Vision of a Graduate, Portrait of a Graduate) that includes larger skill categories, the next step is to define what you actually mean by those categories in the form of Performance Outcomes. During this session, we will clarify what Performance Outcomes are, determine the scope of the Outcomes that you are drafting (individual school, district-wide, etc.), and practice creating high quality Performance Outcomes for your Graduate Profile. This language will then be used to design shared assessment tools and much, much more. Participants will leave with a more fully defined set of skills for their Graduate Profile, as well as a plan to engage stakeholders in a vital input/feedback process in order to move toward a more finalized draft.
Session B TLDR: You have a list of amazing skills/competencies that you want for your graduates, and you are ready to get more specific about what that really means.
Session C: Select & Design Your Culminating Performance Assessment
Once you have your Graduate Profile designed and defined, you need to create a system that actually measures it. If you don’t, it remains a pretty poster on the wall. One component of that measurement system is a culminating assessment that gives you and your students concrete evidence of how they are able to demonstrate the skills of your Graduate Profile. In various groups, participants will explore different types of exhibitions (student-led conferences, capstones, portfolio defenses, etc.) and design a prototype of a culminating exhibition that provides evidence of student learning/thinking of essential competencies.
Session C TLDR: You want to design a culminating performance assessment that will measure your Graduate Profile.
Assessment for Learning Conference- Winter Launch: February 3rd
ELP is pleased to partner for a second year with the Center for Innovation in Education and Next Generation Learning Challenges on the Assessment for Learning Conference!
Assessment for Learning is a continuing process based in learner goals, relationships, complex tasks, reflection and exhibitions of learning. The Winter Launch is about setting goals and building relationships before the spring conference on May 6th & 7th, 2021.
The focus of the Winter Launch is on connection and inquiry, and we won’t be introducing new content through traditional conference sessions like panels and presentations at this event.
You’ll spend most of your time during the Winter Launch in small group conversations on big questions about assessment. We’ll use a new guided reflection process to help make sense of this moment and envision a more just and student-centered future.
You’ll finish the event with learning intentions for the rest of this year, new ways to connect with AFL peers, and the charge to invite more people into this community.
This is an event for people who are passionate about building the movement to make assessment for learning the norm in our education systems. We expect that most participants will be people who support assessment in schools, districts and networks; people who implement and advocate for assessment-related policies; and teacher leaders.
Like many educators not currently teaching, I’ve had multiple opportunities through this pandemic to be back in the classroom, serving as a substitute teacher. It’s helped me see how stressful things have been for teachers, students, and school leaders.
In the midst of another chaotic year, the idea of performance assessment system building might seem luxurious. Most schools are struggling to staff campus tomorrow. Those big plans for rolling out the district’s new graduate profile or developing your school’s performance outcomes? Maybe next year.
Still, when I’ve been subbing, looking over the shoulders of students communicating with their teachers on Google Classroom, I am reminded that the essence of teaching and learning remains: Students learn content and skills by working through the challenges that their teachers assign and guide them through.
What’s the student work? What kind of assignments? Such questions are always relevant, and whenever we raise and discuss them in dialogue with colleagues, we are engaged in the work of performance assessment system building, even in a year like this. Every assignment that a teacher sets up to advance student learning is an opportunity to apply the principles of High Quality Performance Assessment (HQPA).
ELP’s newest virtual workshop, debuting in February, is called “Building a Great Performance Assessment.” Designed for classroom teachers, it’s a place to revise or create a standards-aligned task that is ready to embed in instruction. It’s hands-on, small-scale, and, we hope, won’t require a sub.
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
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The best assessments not only capture our students’ brilliance but also enable them to see and feel their progress. In this three-part workshop, you will learn the principles of high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning. You’ll come out of the workshop with an assessment that is ready to implement in your classroom.
This workshop series is facilitated by ELP Assessment Design Partner, Soraya Ramos and ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells.
Session #1: Wednesday, February 16th, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
Session #2: Wednesday, February 23rd, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
Session #3: Wednesday, March 2nd, 1:00pm-3:00pm PT (4:00-6:00pm ET)
The ELP Lounge will offer time to share stories, thought partnership with peers, or just the chance to throw up your hands and say, am I the only one experiencing this??? Plan to stop in and slow down to connect, share, learn, & heal. We can’t wait to see you.
Thursday, February 17th, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket!
Share space with change-makers like you who are in search of a collective experience to highlight current triumphs and challenges, leverage student voice, and move from aspiration to action.
ELP will be facilitating sessions both, in-person and virtually! Keep an eye out for more details.
Happening March 29th-31st, 2022. Learn more about the event and register here.
The ELP team had a full and exciting year in 2018-19:
ELP added 20 cities to it’s operational reach this fiscal year, totaling 56 cities in the US and one in Beijing. ELP also quadrupled its support of State Departments, working with Virginia last year, and serving Ohio, Kentucky, and Colorado this year.
ELP is relaunching our blog – keep up with past newsletter content, including more in-depth articles and shared resources! Click on any of the section titles in the newsletter for a quick link to that blog post.
ELP was recently highlighted in an EdWeek article, thanks to a partnership between two of our team members, Ruth Chung Wei & Vinci Daro, and a charter school in Washington DC. Two Rivers Public Charter School started offering a 12-month program for teachers focused on better defining, teaching, and assessing critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Ruth and Vinci provided feedback to the cohort members on their assessment task designs.
ELP was in 44 cities across the country last year, take a look at the updated map on our new website homepage to see where we’ve been.
At the beginning of the current health crisis, ELP developed some resources for those pursuing virtual portfolio defenses. Now, we have an entire webpage dedicated to those tools, examples, and more.
ELP was proud to partner with the Learning Policy Institute and the Linked Learning Alliance to launch the “Defending Learning at a Distance” series, which presented opportunities to observe students’ virtual defenses of learning and engage in conversations with the inspiring students and educators who have remained committed to performance assessment despite school closures. There is still time to share your students’ stories, click here to find out more.
Did your school pilot virtual defenses this year? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Click here to let us know how it went and what you would do differently next time.
ELP is proud to announce that we have received funding for three more years, which allows for two more cohorts of the Deeper Learning Leadership Forum! This generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation will allow ELP to continue addressing issues of inequity in our school systems by bringing together leaders to define and unpack these challenges. For more information about the program and to meet our cohort members, click here.
It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to two ELPers, Director of Partnerships, Aragon Burlingham, and Alternative Assessments Coordinator and Coach, Theresa Morris.
Click here to learn more about each of these amazing leaders.
Educators across the country are beginning this school year with incredible opportunities to continue to push on what school looks like/sounds like/feels like for all students. We know that teachers, school & district leaders, students, and parents worked tirelessly last year to meet the needs of young people in a constantly shifting set of conditions. Innovation was happening each day in zoom rooms from Maine to Hawaii. Resisting the all too-easy slide back into the way things were is hard, as the inertia of public education in the US is an incredibly powerful force. But we believe in the power of centering students, and in the possibility of designing school systems around the sets of skills that our young people need so they can go out into the world and create the lives they dream of.
Send a team of folks from your school or district to this workshop series so they can come back with inspiration and with practical tools and processes to share with your community. Choose this school year to design and begin implementing a graduate profile – there is no better time to start!
Participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc. These workshops will be led by ELP Assessment Design Partner, Abby Benedetto.
Click here a 9-minute glimpse into Session A.
Keep an eye out for this NEW three-part workshop series asks, “What kind of performance assessment experiences would we create to ensure that learners, especially those farthest from opportunity, thrive when we operationalize our current vision/profile of a graduate?”
Participants will explore the different features of high quality performance assessment (HQPA) and design a prototype of a performance assessment experience that provides evidence of student learning/thinking of essential competencies. The series concludes with participants iterating on that prototype after centering the lived experience of a marginalized student your system may serve, and reflecting on the changes needed to ensure that ALL students thrive in their performance assessment system.
Summer, while certainly not a vacation for most educators, can make possible more time for reflection and goal-setting. ELP is appreciative of two recent opportunities to reflect on the bigger picture of our work and to share those reflections with you.
Add to your podcast queue my recent discussion with Dr. Greg Goins on his excellent Reimagine Schools podcast. Mixing educational history and philosophy, Dr. Goins and I reflect on how performance assessment is situated within the larger movement known as deeper learning.
For the many of you actively working to broaden the adoption of good ideas, I recommend A Pragmatic Playbook for Impact, published by Bellwether Education Partners, which includes a case study on Envision Education and an upcoming August webinar that features ELP’s story. See below for more on this.
After another very challenging year for educators, we hope that summer has afforded you some time to look up to the horizons of your work. Please reach out to ELP for support as you consider your next move in the project of building a performance assessment system. Our talented team stands ready to help you train your teachers in HQPA, design a portfolio-defense system, or make your graduate profile a reality.
In community,
Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
ELP is excited to share our Den Talk for this year’s Deeper Learning Conference- Listening to Black Women: What Conditions Enable Black Women Deeper Learning Leaders to Thrive?
Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, will be hosting and spotlighting the wisdom of 3 Black women leaders: LaShawnna Harris, Sabrina Moore, and Kai Mathews. All three are alumni of ELP’s Deeper Learning Leadership Forum.
This will be a Kiva panel where Black women systems leaders from various levels of the deeper learning movement with embodied knowledge and expertise will share their wisdom on creating conditions for Black women and Black learners to thrive in this community. Participants will take notes as they listen deeply, scribing exact words and phrases that resonate with them, then reflect on the shifts and new learning created when they listened to understand to Black women. This promises to be a transformative den experience for participants as they seek to practice the foundational equity skill of listening to disrupt/dismantle their own beliefs about deeper learning, leadership, and equity for liberation.
Kai Mathews
Dr. Kai Mathews is the MTSS (Multi-tiered System of Support) Director at UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools. In this position, she co-leads a statewide pilot aimed at improving school climate and conditions. Dr. Kai (as her students call her) has dedicated her life to creating innovative and equitable learning environments for underrepresented populations. She is an educator, researcher, and creative strategist who is passionate about innovative reforms and practices in K-12 and higher education. With over 10 years of practical work and research experience with students, teachers, and administrators in various school districts around the country, her areas of expertise and passions include educational equity; culturally responsive, inclusive, sustaining education; Project-Based Learning (PBL); Universal Design for Learning (UDL); Blended Learning (BL); and Design Thinking.
As a former 8th grade teacher at High Tech Middle, Chula Vista, Dr. Kai prides herself in creating immersive, project-based learning environments that push, uplift, and teach the whole child and allows students to engage in critical inquiry, social advocacy, and divergent dialogue.
She has a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies with a specialization in K-12 education from the University of San Diego, an M.A. in Communication from Ellis University, and a B.A. in English with a minor in Creative Writing from Spelman College.
Sabrina Moore
Sabrina “Bri” Moore, is an Oakland native. She has been a student, teacher, and is now an administrator in service of students and families in Oakland.
Sabrina “Bri” came to education as a career changer. She remembers the day she made the decision to leave a 15 year career with AT&T Telecommunications for teaching. She was in the midst of obtaining a masters degree and remembered her high school teacher telling her “if you get a masters degree you can be a teacher.” She quit a few months later to do just that and has been pushing for Oakland students ever since.
Her orientation towards school leadership began during her time with Teach Tomorrow in Oakland as a facilitator of professional development and providing mentoring and coaching support to new teachers. “I was encouraged as a new teacher to take risks, to try new approaches and to share my successes and failures with my colleagues,” recalls Moore. “If offered an opportunity to learn something new as a teacher, or as a teacher leader, I never said no- I took all opportunities offered to me to continue to learn and grow.” The same has been true of her in administration. Seeking every opportunity to learn, grow and improve for kids.
She is currently pursuing a doctorate of education in social justice from California State University East Bay in hopes to become the future superintendent of Oakland Unified School district.
When asked to describe her leadership style, Bri says she sees herself as “an anti-racist liberatory leader who is unapologetically Black, Proud and pushing for kids that look like me, come from where I come from and deserve way more than we get”, she is also dedicated to speaking truth to racism so we can see a change to systems, practices and policies that stay perpetuating hate and marginalizing folk.
Bri currently serves as the principal at MPA Primary, facilitates diversity, equity and inclusion professional learning for several organizations, provides adjunct professional learning for new principals and is a new principal mentor for OUSD. She works from one core value, “Kids First” and believes everything else is secondary. She loves what she does so much, even on the worst day she’s SMILING!
Sabrina believes that teaching and leading changes lives and with the best team possible strives for excellence in education. She is driven by the dream of seeing, “kids like me be whatever they want – no excuses and every opportunity to Live their best Lives.”
LaShawnna Harris
LaShawnna Harris is the Founder and President of Creative Station LLC a NYC based education consulting firm. She received a B.S. in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, M.S. in teaching from the Fordham University and a M.S. in school building leadership from Mercy College.
LaShawnna previously worked as an elementary school teacher, math staff developer, assistant principal, founding principal, new principal coach and most recently as the Senior Director of School Improvement for the New York City Department of Education.
As the founding principal of PS 330Q, it was her vision that all students would learn in a supportive environment that focused on their academic and social-emotional development, so they could pursue and achieve their dreams. LaShawnna was noted in the Huffington Post article, “Why School Culture Matters, and How to Improve it” by Michael Haberman that showcased her work with Morrison Healthcare through the school’s PENCIL partnership to improve school culture.
She has a passion and commitment to supporting school leaders with school improvement. Her strengths are facilitating small group professional learning community sessions on managing complex change, strategic planning, collaborative problem solving and improved systems and Operations.
Register for the session using this link: https://sched.co/i5i4
For more information about the Deeper Learning Conference and to register, click here.
Learn more about Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, in her “I am ELP” highlight.
The AfL Conference was a powerful experience for me in many ways. A huge part of my job is curating learning experiences that shake up “business as usual.” In a conference design role, it was interesting to design an experience for 400 people that felt personal, reflective and inclusive. That being said, I think we did that. I am stoked to continue to build out this muscle and imagine what is possible for this gathering. One shift I would make for the future is to support presenters to design even more hands on learning experiences for participants. As leaders who believe in learner-centered processes, we have to practice what we preach and this conference experience is a great place to prototype that work across contexts.
Stay tuned for AfL Conference 2021, as well as resources from this year’s conference!
In light of the current health climate, the difficult decision to cancel Deeper Learning 2020 was made. The event will not be rescheduled to later on this year, instead all efforts will be put toward making DL2021 an epic event, set for March 23-25, 2021! The Envision Learning Partners look forward to connecting with everyone in San Diego next year!
Registration will open in September. For more information, click here.
Join us for the next round of our three-part workshop series, led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto. Participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc.
Session A: Intro to the Graduate Profile
Tuesday, April 6th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You have heard about this thing called a Graduate Profile and want to take your first leap into learning more.
Session B: Defining Your Graduate Profile
Tuesday, April 13th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You have a list of amazing skills/competencies that you want for your graduates, and you are ready to get more specific about what that really means.
Session C: Select & Design Your Culminating Performance Assessment
Tuesday, April 20th, 2021⋅9-12pm PT / 12-3pm ET
You want to design a culminating performance assessment that will measure your Graduate Profile.
For a description of the sessions, FAQs, and to register- click here.
The 2021 Assessment for Learning Conference is a two-day virtual learning experience. Sessions will be ‘flipped’ so that we can spend our live time together in smaller group discussions of content, questions of practice, and design. The Conference will be a chance to build the collective knowledge and shared vision of the Assessment for Learning community.
The AFL2021 Call for Submissions is open and stipends are available! Propose a session today to share your work with a community of educators and policymakers who are committed to fundamentally #RethinkAssessment. How has assessment for learning helped us navigate the crises of the past year? And what must we learn from from this in order to build a more just and student-centered future of public education? Proposals are due March 29th.
Visit the AFL2021 website to learn more!
ELP is excited to share our Den Talk at this year’s conference: Listening to Black Women: What Conditions Enable Black Women Deeper Learning Leaders to Thrive?
Deeper Learning Coach, Alcine Mumby, will be hosting and spotlighting the wisdom of 3 Black women leaders: LaShawnna Harris, Sabrina Moore, and Kai Mathews.
Click here for more details about this session and bios of the three women being highlighted.
ELP is pleased to announce that applications and nominations for the 5th cohort of The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) are now open!
The DLLF is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking.
We are seeking diverse applicants and nominees for our fifth Cohort who are interested in working with other education leaders to address the single biggest challenge facing public education today: inequity.
Click here for more details, links to apply or nominate someone, and a list of FAQs.
Applications due Monday, March 29th.
Cautiously, things are opening up. ELP has a growing number of dates on the calendar for in-person service. We are about to attend our first conference since the pandemic began. We look forward to seeing many of you at Deeper Learning 2022 in San Diego next week. (Read below to learn about ELP’s offerings at the conference.)It’s a good moment to be reminded that performance assessment system building is both big-picture and fine-grained. It’s the highly visible work of establishing a district-wide graduate profile; it’s also the more subtle work of ensuring that science tasks are as standards aligned and culturally responsive as possible. Depending on where there is energy and opportunity, a learning community can toggle between levels and still be making progress.Whatever level of the system you are ready to work on, we’re working to ensure that relevant ELP support is right around the corner. If you don’t see it on the calendar, reach out to us anyway. It’s likely we can meet your needs on short notice.In community,
Back by popular demand! Teachers know that the best assessments not only capture our students’ brilliance but also enable learners to see their progress. In this three-part workshop, you will learn the principles of high-quality assessment and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your desired outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning. By the end of the workshop you will have an assessment that is ready to implement in your classroom.This workshop series is facilitated by ELP Assessment Design Partner, Soraya Ramos and ELP Executive Director, Justin Wells.
Click here for more details and to get your team registered.
We’re excited to announce our first ever ELP Lounge Guest:Trevor Gardner! Trevor is an educator, consultant, author, and anELP Deeper Learning Leadership ForumAlumni.This special event will include time to connect with each other and feel free to come with wonderings about Trevor’s Guest Blog: Urgency, Patience, and the Cultivation of Hope. Plan to stop in and slow down to connect, share, learn, & heal. We can’t wait to see you.
Thursday, April 21st, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket and let us know you’re coming!
We’re looking forward to seeing many of you virtually and in-person next week! Here is the official line up of ELP’s sessions:
Don’t Do Too Much with Josette Neal-De-Stanton: How to make culturally responsive practice and DEI authentically enhance your science assessments.
This workshop will dive into the importance of incorporating culturally responsive practice and DEI authentically into your classroom! Going beyond adding a trendy handshake or latest song into a presentation, we will be looking into how we use these definitions and principles to create science assessments that are engaging to all demographics, particularly targeting your most disengaged students. Far too often we overthink how to incorporate culture into science, but it is easier than you think, and doesn’t have to involve embarrassment as you fumble to remember the lyrics to a Top 20 song to make a “cultural connection.”
Designed to Thrive with Alcine Mumby & Abby Benedetto: Creating High Quality Performance Assessments That Enable Marginalized Learners to Thrive.
Participants will explore the different features of high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) and design a prototype of a performance assessment experience that provides evidence of student learning/thinking in essential competencies. The session concludes with participants iterating on that prototype after centering the lived experience of a marginalized student your system may serve and reflecting on the changes needed to ensure that ALL students thrive in their performance assessment system.
Making Good On Our Promises with Justin Wells & Soraya Ramos: Designing A High Quality Performance Assessment System.
This is an interactive, hands-on workshop where participants will prototype a high-quality performance assessment (HQPA) aligned to deeper learning competencies. Learn the principles of high-quality assessment and apply them to the design of a task that aligns to your desired outcomes and provides evidence of your students’ learning.
Virtual Den Talk with Vinci Daro: A conversation about modernizing mathematics: perspectives from the classroom and beyond.
ELP will be moving our annual Defense Design Studio energy to sharing stories in the hopes of inspiring others to take on the powerful practice of student defenses of learning. We have partnered up with the Learning Policy Institute and the Linked Learning Alliance as part of the California Performance Assessment Collaborative to bring you an online series of virtual defenses and behind-the-scene interviews.
Take a look at the first video in the series, Envision senior, Dani Martin, who vlogs about preparing for her virtual defense.
Click here for more information, including how you can get involved!!
This podcast situates where Assessment, Deeper Learning, Equity and Systems Change meet. Transforming schools is not light work. We illuminate complexities, lift up what’s working and imagine a path forward. With our equity lens we seek to learn from marginalized identities AND intentionally lift up their expertise.
Use this link to check out the first three episodes.
ELP just held our second Twitter Chat earlier this month and the focus was all about students defending their learning in math. The online conversation was held by our Director of STEM, Vinci Daro and previous Deeper Learning Coach & math enthusiast, Jim Malamut.
Keep an eye out for our next Twitter Chat by following ELP on Twitter at @EnvisionSchools and using the hashtag #ELPCoachChat!
Click here to see the resources from our first chat, held in March, which focused on Developing & Measuring your Grad Profile with Deeper Learning Coaches, Abby Benedetto & Suzanne Malek.
Summer Graduate Profile Workshops
Join us for one of the consecutive 3-day workshops to build community with other educators, and to imagine the possibilities when we center systems of education around the skills that young people need in order to thrive.
Participants will explore the value of having a Graduate Profile, develop and define a draft, and then learn how to implement and measure it once they take it back to their school, district, etc. These workshops will be led by Deeper Learning Coach, Abby Benedetto.
We are also offering an additional option for a direct consultation with Abby after the session of your choice. This would be a great time to get your team’s questions answered and customized suggestions
August 24-26th, 2021 ‣ 9am-12pm PT/12-3pm ET
Designed to Thrive Workshop Series
This three-part workshop series asks, “What kind of performance assessment experiences would we create to ensure that learners, especially those farthest from opportunity, thrive when we operationalize our current vision/profile of a graduate?”
Participants will explore the different features of high quality performance assessment (HQPA) and design a prototype of a performance assessment experience that provides evidence of student learning/thinking of essential competencies. The series concludes with participants iterating on that prototype after centering the lived experience of a marginalized student your system may serve, and reflecting on the changes needed to ensure that ALL students thrive in their performance assessment system.
This workshop series is facilitated by Deeper Learning Coaches, Alcine Mumby and Abby Benedetto.
Aug 4th, 11th & 18th ‣ 9:30am-12:30pm PT / 12:30-3:30pm ET
CuriOdyssey STEMCorps
Are you a teacher interested in developing your early science teaching skills? CuriOdyssey is offering grant-funded professional development for the 2021-22 school year. This PD focuses on building comfort, competence and capacity to deliver science ed, aligned with NGSS. Learn more here.
In schools all over the country, May is a month when many students share their learning—through project exhibitions, capstone presentations, defenses of learning, and other culminating experiences. Here’s to all the students and teachers out there, even in this difficult year, who are working to culminate learning in ways that are challenging, meaningful, and memorable. Learning is always a journey. It runs deeper when it is designed to feel like one.As you look to the 22–23 school year, please reach out to ELP for thought partnership and support. How will your students be sharing their learning in May of 2023? Now is the right time to ask. And summer is the best time to design those deep learning journeys for students.Speaking of memorable journeys, we’re in the midst of an important transition for Envision Education, ELP’s parent organization. After a remarkable tenure as our CEO for most of the past 10 years, Gia Truong is moving on. Many of you know Gia as a passionate leader for equity, deeper learning, and performance assessment. Her support for ELP’s mission has been unwavering, and her legacy includes theDeeper Learning Leadership Forum. Gia—from the entire ELP team, it’s been an honor and joy to travel with you.Going forward, we are excited to be partnering with our new Envision CEO Jillian Juman. Jillian introduces herself in this newsletter’s guest blog; read on to hear from her directly.In community,Justin Wells, ELP Executive Director
Part A: Doing Too Much: Disrupting the Transference of STEM Trauma
This workshop will explore the often problematic relationship many students and teachers have with STEM education emerging from traumatic experiences we simply never address. This workshop particularly focuses on the roots of science as it relates to white supremacy culture and science education, and how that bleeds into the way we see ourselves, or don’t, in science. We will look at ELP’s HQPA principles as a means to address healing and thriving in the design of STEM assessments that matter.
Part B: Don’t Do Too Much: Centering HQPA in STEM Assessments
This workshop will dive into the importance of incorporating culturally responsive practices and DEI authentically in order to thrive in your classrooms! Going beyond adding a trendy handshake or latest song into a presentation, we will be looking into how we use these definitions and ELP’s HQPA principles to create STEM assessments that are engaging to all demographics, particularly targeting your most disengaged students.
Join us for June’s ELP Lounge!
We’re excited to announce that in June, we’ll have incoming Envision Education CEO, Jillian Juman, as our ELP Lounge Special Guest!
Stop by to slow down. Connect, share, learn & heal. We can’t wait to see you!
Thursday, June 16th, 4:00-5:00pm PT (7:00-8:00pm ET)
Click here to grab your free ticket and let us know you’re coming!
The DLLF application deadline has been extended to May 31st!
The Deeper Learning Leadership Forum (DLLF) is a cohort-based leadership experience that aims to develop, strengthen, and support a group of educational leaders to work at the intersection of equity and design thinking. DLLF seeks to address issues of inequity in our school systems by bringing together leaders to define and unpack these challenges. On this journey, leaders will explore deeper learning practices; develop the skills to identify and disrupt oppressive ideologies, systems, and structures within education; and practice employing an equity-centered design thinking approach. Learn more about the program here.
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