A final day of kindness today. Wednesdays are “Kindness Cards” days, (see Kindness Connects). And this year, though it came late in the year, Kindness Cards have seemed to play a more important role than ever. Each week I am amazed at how enthusiastically and authentically kids engage in this activity. I love how they have come to “read the room,” making sure no one is left out. It is just another connection creator that honors the humans in the room.

And I will miss these particular humans a great deal. More, I think–I know–they will miss each other, too. We will all miss “us.” And it’s not only a guess on my part. I know because they tell me, and the last few days, as the end draws near, they have begun to tell me even more. In fact, it’s been a regular “frown” this week.

Frown: I’m gonna miss this class.

Yes, we all are.

Happy Wednesday, all.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.

It’s a game I no longer play, but it’s a game I played for longer than I care to admit. It’s a game we’ve all played. The grade game.

I write more about the “grade game” in my upcoming book. And while I wish I had given myself the time to write more about it this morning, my real reason for posting this was to put at the ease the minds of my colleagues around the world who are being forced to play their hand in the grading game here at the end of the school year. They have to reconcile the rules and the room. And many do, even maybe most. In my 25 years I have discovered whether we call it the “grade doctor” or the “grade fairy,” many feel compelled to set right the wreck that happens when learning and grading collide at the end. At first we do it quietly, for fear that we may be upsetting the grading gods, but as time goes on and we discover that others do it, too, we proceed with less fear, and we, in a number of ways, fix the wreck for kids at the end. We have to.

Malpractice? I don’t think so. It’s not a whim upon which we act. It’s a why. We know there’s a problem with the game. And until we fix the problem, we can’t let kids be the losers in a game that’s rigged not in their favor. And the fact that so many of us “manage the margin” indicates to me–and hopefully others–that we have to do this, and more, we have to be okay with our doing it. For we are not alone.

We work in a broken system. And while our “managing the margin” in our rooms is not the final fix, it is a band-aid to cover the wounds inflicted upon kids when they get caught in the malfunction of our machine. It is the necessary first-aid we must apply out here in the field.

Happy Tuesday, all.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.

Today, my kiddos will begin writing their learning letters (“My Learning, My Story”). It is time for them to look back on their experiences over the past several weeks and make sense of where they have arrived as learners. And from that sense-making, they will select (and support with their evidence) a final grade in a letter to me. And that is where we meet in the end, when it comes to making sense of the wreck where learning and grading collide. We (mostly they) find and name that place.

As my longtime readers know, the goal is to reach an agreement on a final mark, based on the available evidence, which necessarily is not limited to the record in Skyward. It takes into account many variables that come into play for each kid in their experience, things that maybe aren’t readily seen or understood without the perspective of the learner. They know best their experience, and so, I ask them to reveal that to me in their reflection from their time with me.

This is my fourth year of using “select-and-support” grading with my kiddos. And while it has taken different forms as it has evolved, at its center has remained the belief that learners must be engaged in the process of determining a final grade. It’s their learning. It’s their story. They have to tell it. They have to play a role in making sense of mess the where learning and grading collide.

Happy last Monday, all.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.

Morning, all. Afraid I don’t have a lot to contribute to the conversation this morning–other than a couple of tweets about support, that place where learning meets teaching.

I think the “S” word has to be part of any and all conversations in education. Teaching is supporting.

Happy Friday, all. Sorry I didn’t have more to offer this morning. Have a great weekend.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.

Seniors last day yesterday. One of them handed me this letter.

It ain’t me. It IS Smiles and Frowns: the best and most important decision I have ever made in my career. It creates connections in ways that I never expected, and “family” is not a strange word in the 180 Classroom.

But is that my job? To “create families.” Yes, I think it is. And that very thought is what led to the thread I posted in Twitter this morning.

And I believe that to the core of my being. Smiles and Frowns will change–will better–the world.

Happy Thursday, all.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.

Where are you in the support cycle?

I don’t believe in lines. I believe in circles. In fact, my work is predicated on the spin, on the cycle. Do, Reflect, and Do Better are spokes in a wheel, not signs on a line. Learning is a cyclical process.

And that belief is at the center of this latest circle spinning ’round in my head with Teaching Targets.

Today, I will support your experience with (insert standard) by meeting you where you are in your learning.

• I will help you get started if you need a boost.
• I will clarify the directions for you.
• I will provide a reason(s) for why we are doing this.
• I will provide examples for you.
• I will model the process for you.
• I will provide resources for you.
• I will modify the task or provide an alternative.
• I will provide feedback to get you through the process.
• I will provide extra time.

I’m sure there are others that will come to mind as I build my support list for next year, a list (presented as a circle), which I imagine will have a permanent place on the wall of my room and the “walls” of my kiddos’ notebooks. And I imagine I will sit with them and ask them, “Where are you in the support cycle?” And they will have at their fingertips ways to ask for my support. And that is the crux of the Teaching Targets: my support.

I am still thinking my way through this, but this is the gist of where I plan to head with Teaching Targets next year.

Happy Tuesday, all.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.

Today, I am going to support your experience with (insert standard) by…

…meeting you where you are in your learning.

Where I am in my teaching teaching needs to be where they are in their learning–each of them.

And where they are is the only place they can be. But it is not enough that I understand that. My kids have to understand this. And I think to that end, we have to dismantle the system. We have to lose the labels.

Apparently, others share my sentiment. I tweeted this out early last Friday morning as I was reflecting on meeting kids with Teaching Targets. But I did not expect it to get the attention that it has in the Twitterverse. With nearly 4,000 likes and over 500 retweets, it suggests that many acknowledge the problem with labels, but it has to go beyond our acknowledging it. It has get to a place of changing it, of dismantling the systemic structures that force the fit. We have to approach the learning experiences differently, and that is what I am trying to do with Teaching Targets.

Today, I will support your experience with (insert standard) by meeting you where you are in your learning.

From there, I then imagine a list of ways that I will articulate my supports to kids. And I will get to that tomorrow. Sorry to drag this out. Still thinking my way through it.

Happy Monday, all.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.

Hey, good morning, all. Gonna postpone the next installment of “Targeting Teaching.” My brain’s tired this morning. So, please pardon my pause, as I take a Friday bow and wish everyone a weekend of wellness. Be back on Monday, and I will continue my discussion on Teaching Targets.

Happy Friday.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.

Students will be able to support claims with text evidence.

I can support claims with text evidence.

Today, we will experience supporting claims with text evidence.

Today, I will support your experience of supporting claims with text evidence by…

From “SWBAT” to “I Can” to “We will experience,” and now to “I will support your experience…by…,” I have tried to target learning, but really with this latest iteration, I have begun targeting teaching.

In yesterday’s post Source of Commitment, I shared my developing idea for using “Teaching Targets” next year. And though it is, I suppose, somewhat rooted in the notion of learning targets, it is mostly focused on the teaching. Wait. Shouldn’t the focus be on the learning, on the learner? Yes, of course. And my hope is that by the time I am done constructing this concept (which is beyond the capacity of this post), you will see that it is, indeed, focused on the learning, and the learner.

To begin, let’s go back to where I began, to where I always begin “better.”

“How can I create better learning experiences for my kids?”

Create. This is not a whimsical word. It is a carefully chosen word. I believe we must be creators, innovators. We stand at an important place in the learning experience. We are a conduit through which the experience begins and continues. We are a filter that makes fit all that we bring into our rooms. It has to fit us. It has to fit our kids. I call it the “fit filter.” If things don’t fit, they don’t work. So we make them fit. We create and innovate. We must. Create is a careful word.

Better. This too is a chosen word. In the context of Project 180, it is the chosen word. And though I have described and discussed “better” many times over the course of the Project, I think I discovered an important iteration of the idea in a tweet yesterday morning.

And there, I think, it is. A purer place. That is what I seek. I could simply capitulate by writing “I-can” statements on my board (that’s what admin looks for), but that’s not enough. There’s more to it, I believe. I believe, sincerely, there is a purer place to be found. So, am l seeking Shangri-la? Yes, maybe I am.

Learning Experience. For me, the key word here is experience. That’s not blasphemous. Learning already holds a sacred place. That should go without saying, so I won’t say it. As evidenced in the “targets” above, my journey has led me to believe that I simply present and support experiences along my kids’ learning journeys. Our paths met, and we decided to venture forth together over the next 180 days. That is the essence of our time together. It’s a shared experience. We learn in our experience. So, I daily call it, literally, in my Google Classroom post, “Learning Experience.” Learning is experience.

Kids. The humans in the room. They come to me in myriad ways. No learner the same. No learning the same. And that defines my teaching. Teaching is supporting. So I focus on my supporting. What else would I focus on?

And that’s the frame–for everything. And it is certainly the frame for this latest creation, “Teaching Targets.”

Today, I will support your experience with (insert standard) by…”

Tomorrow I will continue by sharing how I imagine using it. Thank you for your patience as I walk myself through this.

Happy Thursday, all.

Do. Reflect. Do Better.