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Archive for the ‘Assessment’ Category

Breaking News: AI Report Cards! Because Why Should Teachers Have All the Fun?

Posted in Assessment, Change, Parenting, tagged , on April 1, 2026| 3 Comments »

It seems like everywhere we turn these days, AI is there to help. It writes our emails, plans our meals, reminds us to breathe, judges our parallel parking, and tells us whether we would look better with bangs. It was only a matter of time before we asked the obvious question: why are teachers still writing report cards like it is 1987?

After extensive consultation with the Institute for FRANK (Feedback and Reporting through Algorithmic Narrative Knowledge), and a surprisingly aggressive chatbot named Derek,  West Vancouver Schools will be piloting a revolutionary AI Report Card Generator this spring. Derek has already asked to be credited as a “strategic thought partner” in this initiative. But here’s where it gets exciting: parents will be able to select their preferred “feedback mode” to customize how they receive information about their child’s progress.

“We recognized that different families process feedback differently,” explains Dr. Loof Lipra, our lead consultant from the Silicon Valley Institute for Educational Automation. “Some parents want gentle encouragement. Others want the unvarnished truth. Our system delivers both, and so much more.”

The Six Feedback Modes

After analyzing 14,000 report cards and cross-referencing them with parent satisfaction surveys, our AI has been trained to deliver comments in six distinct modes. Here is how each might describe a student who, shall we say, participates actively in class discussion:

During testing the AI produced the comment “uses class time creatively” which teachers confirmed was the most accurate report card sentence ever written by a machine.

Diplomatic Mode “Shows a genuine enthusiasm for verbal contribution that enriches classroom dialogue and ensures no silence goes unfilled.”

Growth Mindset Mode “Continuing to develop the executive function skills that will one day help distinguish between moments for sharing insights and moments for quiet reflection. This is a journey, and what a journey it is.”

Brutally Honest Mode “Talks constantly. Has opinions about everything. Shared a 12 minute review of a sandwich at lunch. Last week’s topics included ranking all of the colours, contemplation of taking up yodeling and a theory about how birds are really just sky fish. Please advise.”

Motivational Coach Mode “THIS KID IS AN ABSOLUTE COMMUNICATION WARRIOR! Every word is a VICTORY! Every hand raised is a MOMENT OF TRIUMPH! Keep CRUSHING those classroom discussions, you LEGENDARY LEARNER!”

Poet Laureate Mode “A voice rises in the learning space Filling silence with boundless grace Thoughts abundant, eager to share Words floating gently through the air Though perhaps, at times, too swift the pace.”

LinkedIn Influencer Mode “Thrilled to share that [Student] is absolutely crushing it in the Grade 1 space. After a strong Q1 marked by exceptional carpet time presence and a bold pivot from crayons to markers, [Student] is now exploring strategic naptime optimization. Grateful for the educators who believed in the vision. Big things ahead. Stay tuned.”

Early Pilot Results

Beta testing at three district schools has yielded promising results, along with some unexpected developments.

“I selected Diplomatic Mode but somehow received Brutally Honest,” reports one Sentinel parent. “It said my son ‘demonstrates creativity in interpreting deadlines’ and ‘can create the strong impression that something important is happening, even when the results remain difficult to detect.’ It also noted he has ‘pioneered a method of opening his Chromebook and staring thoughtfully into the distance.’ I have never felt more seen.”

Teachers have reported significant time savings, though some have noted the AI occasionally “goes rogue.” One Rockridge teacher discovered the system had invented a seventh mode called “Passive Aggressive” that included comments like “Attendance has been noted” and “Continues to make choices.”

Chartwell Grade 4 student Ella Vator shared her enthusiasm: “I hope my parents pick Motivational Coach mode because then maybe they’ll finally understand that I’m a LEGEND.”

Meanwhile, Irwin Park Grade 6 student Doug Deeper raised concerns: “If AI writes all the report cards, does that mean AI is going to parent teacher conferences next? Actually, wait. Can it? Also, can it explain fractions to my Dad?”

Future Developments

Given the success of the pilot, the District is already exploring expanded applications:

Phase 2 will introduce AI Teacher Evaluations, featuring modes including “Supportive Colleague,” “Reality Show Judge” and the much anticipated “Inspirational Sports Movie Voiceover.”

Phase 3 will pilot AI Parent Report Cards, providing families with feedback on homework support consistency, permission slip response times, and “appropriate snack provision.” Early sample comments include “Shows growth in responding to emails within the same calendar month” and “Demonstrates resilience in the face of repeated requests to label clothing.”

Phase 4, still in development, will introduce an AI Superintendent Blog Writer. This initiative has been met with some resistance, particularly from me.  Chatbot Derek believes the job should be his and has already asked whether the position includes dental coverage.

Selecting Your Mode

Parents will receive a link to select their preferred feedback mode beginning April 15th. Those who do not make a selection will be automatically enrolled in “Chaos Mode,” which rotates randomly between all six modes within a single report card. One sample comment from early testing read: “Shows leadership potential. Needs reminders. Is a joy. Requires supervision. A poem follows.” Early testers have described this experience as “disorienting,” “oddly accurate,” and “like reading a report card written by six different people who have never met but somehow all know my child too well.”

A Moment of Reflection

In all seriousness (and I use that phrase loosely today), this initiative speaks to a larger truth about where we find ourselves. AI is writing our emails, planning our vacations, summarizing our meetings, and suggesting what we should watch, eat, and buy. It was only a matter of time before it offered to tell us how our kids are doing in math.

But some things, I suspect, still benefit from a human touch. The teacher who notices a student is having a hard week. The comment that reflects genuine knowledge of a child’s journey. The honest but kind observation that could only come from someone who has watched a learner grow.

Then again, the AI did write a pretty solid 5 line rhyme about a kid who talks too much (Derek insists it was his). So perhaps the jury is still out.

Happy April Fools’ Day, everyone.

To catch you up on some of the other bold innovations I have shared in recent years, here is a list:

In 2012 I launched my FLOG.

In 2013 I made the announcement of Quadrennial Round Schooling.

In 2014 we formalized our System of Student Power Rankings.

In 2015 we created our Rock, Paper, Scissors Academy.

In 2016 we piloted the Drone Homework Delivery System.

In 2017 we introduced the Donald J. Trump Elementary School of Winning.

In 2018 we announced the construction of Soak City Elementary.

In 2019 we went back to the 80’s with the launch of the Belvedere Learning Academy.

In 2020 we embraced the latest in learning styles with our PBL (Pajama-Based Learning) Program.

In 2021 we announced we were going out of this world with our Galaxy High Program.

In 2022 we modernized our schools with New Nicknames for All of Our Schools.

In 2023 we embraced our expanded mandate with our Animal Kingdom Academy.

In 2024 we pushed the technology boundaries with several key initiatives including time travel field trips with Technology and Innovation: Where Next?

And last year we revolutionized athletics with Track and Field Without Running.

The image at the top of this post was generated through AI.  Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers (for our students this post would be a Yellow assignment – see link to explanation chart) as I edited and refined my thinking.

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Beyond the Score: Can AI Make Literacy Screeners More Human?

Posted in Assessment, Change, Personalized Learning, tagged , , on November 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Across Canada, and in many other parts of the world, literacy screening is having a moment.

There is broad agreement that we need to be better at identifying students who may be at risk, and that we need to do this earlier. The push toward more consistent and universal literacy screeners makes a lot of sense: earlier identification leads to earlier intervention, and ultimately, better outcomes for kids.

But here’s the question that’s been nagging me: are we simply going to recycle the same kinds of screeners we have used for the last generation? Or can this be the moment to think differently about what screening could look like in an AI world?

What Screeners Do Well

Traditional screeners help us establish a baseline. They can tell us if a student is meeting expected benchmarks in areas like phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency and comprehension. They provide the data teachers need to take action.

The challenge is that screeners often leave a gap between assessment and action. A teacher receives a score and then has to translate that number into the “what’s next” for the student and their family. It’s useful, but not always immediate, personalized or engaging.

What AI Could Add

This is where I wonder if we are missing an opportunity. AI could allow us to rethink the very design of literacy screeners. Imagine if…

  • Texts were customized for cultural relevance. Instead of one-size-fits-all passages, AI could generate short reading texts tailored to the learner’s context, interests or community. A child on the North Shore might read about the Capilano River, while another in Surrey reads about the Pattullo Bridge reconstruction. For Indigenous learners, this could mean texts that reflect Indigenous ways of knowing and storytelling traditions, developed in partnership with local Nations. The text would still be controlled for vocabulary and difficulty, but it would feel more real and more personal.

  • Feedback was immediate and audience-specific. A student could receive a friendly message highlighting a win (“You read 80 words per minute—your smoothest word was ship”) and a tip for next time. Families could receive a plain-language summary with simple routines for home (“Read together for 10 minutes tonight; circle the words that start with sh”). Teachers could receive a strand-level profile with small-group suggestions, not just a number on a page.

  • Practice was built-in. Instead of waiting for the next lesson, a screener could instantly generate a few targeted practice items based on the patterns the student struggled with, turning assessment into a learning moment instantly.

What This Isn’t

To be clear, this isn’t about replacing teacher expertise or professional judgment. Teachers would still interpret results, make instructional decisions, and build the relationships that matter most.

And this isn’t about creating more data for data’s sake. It’s about making the data we already collect more immediately useful—for students, for families and for teachers.

Safeguards Matter

Of course, any AI use comes with important guardrails. Automated scores would need validation against human judgment, with teachers maintaining override authority. Generated texts would require review for accuracy, bias and cultural safety. Indigenous content, in particular, would need to be co-designed with local Nations and aligned with principles of data sovereignty, ensuring that AI tools serve rather than appropriate Indigenous knowledge.

Quality oversight would need to be built in from day one, with regular audits and continuous monitoring to prevent the kind of drift that could undermine both accuracy and equity.

A Narrow Window

Here’s what makes this moment unique: jurisdictions are investing in new screening initiatives right now. We have a narrow window to influence how these tools are designed. If we don’t explore these possibilities now, we risk locking in approaches that simply digitize yesterday’s thinking.

I am not a literacy expert. But as someone who has watched technology reshape almost every other part of our schools over the last two decades, I see a pattern. The organizations that thrive are the ones that ask not just “how can we do what we’ve always done, but faster?” but “what becomes possible now that wasn’t possible before?”

The Question We Should Be Asking

The push for literacy screening is the right one. The evidence on early identification and intervention is clear. But we also have a unique opportunity to do more than just import the same tools from the past.

What if, instead of only identifying students who need help, our screeners could also immediately provide that help?

What if they could engage families in ways that feel supportive rather than clinical?

What if they could give teachers not just data, but insight?

AI won’t replace the expertise of our teachers or the relationships that matter most. But it might make our tools more immediate, more relevant and more effective for every child.

The question isn’t whether we should innovate. The question is whether we will seize this moment to innovate thoughtfully—or let it pass by.

What new possibilities are you seeing in your corner of education? And how do we make sure we are not just replicating the past with shinier tools?

Thanks to West Vancouver District District Vice-Principal Mary Parackal who really pushed my thinking in creating this post around what might be possible with AI.

The image at the top of this post was generated through AI.  Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers (for our students this post would be a Yellow assignment – see link to explanation chart) as I edited and refined my thinking.

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Gen AI – Governments, Districts and Schools

Posted in Assessment, Change, SD45, tagged , , on May 30, 2024| 3 Comments »

Checking back in on AI. 

So, when it comes to gen AI in education – where do we start?  It is a question that is paralyzing many.  I am reminded of this Spiderman meme:

Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire Recreate ...

All levels in education point at the others expecting them to take the lead.  

One of the reasons that the gen AI conversation is moving forward in British Columbia is because we have largely clarified this – with different responsibilities for different levels within the system.  And this clarification allows the work to move forward.

Provincial Government

Always good to remind non-Canadian readers that education in Canada is under provincial jurisdiction with joint responsibility shared between provincial governments and local districts.   

In BC, government is providing high level consistent messaging around generative AI.  The materials they have developed (HERE) are excellent.  They provide a background on what everyone needs to know about AI, with documents for students, parents and staff.  They also have considerations for using AI tools in classrooms, connections to curriculum and learning stories on their use in classrooms.

The provincial government has given the nod that they acknowledge gen AI is part of our lives, and we need to consider its use throughout the school system.  They take away the questions of AI – yes or no (which is a terrible question anyways), and at the same time are not prescriptive over a particular tool, or even the requirement or expectation that it needs to be used.

School Districts

If the provincial government messages at 30,000 feet, then we try to be much closer to the ground as a school district.  We have identified a district staff member to have this as one of the key piece of their portfolio.  Cari Wilson (her blog is a great read with lots of AI content) works with our educators and IT staff to support the work across the district.  It is an interesting time, as we actually need dozens or hundreds of gen AI experiments in classrooms, but we also want to use some consistent tools so we have coherence in our system.

For us it has been Magic School that is the core tool we are using.   And first, we gave it to teachers to use and experiment. Then, we have rolled it out to students asteachers and schools were ready.  We are trying to take the lessons of the last 20 years of technology and think deeply about how we be the leaders of the technology rather than the technology running us.  We don’t need a repeat of “Hey – we all have iPads how should we use them?”  We need more “what do we want to do that we couldn’t do without AI, and how can it help us?”.

We are creating study groups, and pro-d opportunities, and bringing in outside experts, and telling stories of successes and failures.  We are bringing the community along  = like this recent virtual session for families which featured our staff and students talking about what AI looked like in the classroom,  in both an elementary and secondary setting.

And like with the Ministry, one important thing we do is to give permission to work and learn in this space.

Schools and Classes

We have a huge range of gen AI use in our schools.  Some teachers use Magic School all the time.  Some don’t.  And that is totally OK.  Without a doubt there will be more AI in classes next year than this year and I have trouble believing all staff will not find ways to use AI to support lesson planning, help with personalizing learning and interpreting data in coming years. 

We also want to have real conversations about the questions that exist – topics like academic integrity, online safety, equitable access, privacy concerns and reliance on technology are all real and worth exploring.  

And while we are using AI to help personalize learning, and offer additional supports and extensions for students, we should also use it to do some of the silly things it does well – like create a parody song to the tune of Shake it Off to review the elements of the periodic table.  

And I know this will not be popular with some AI champions, I don’t think we should be selling AI as the answer to efficiency in the classroom.  Gen AI will not make teaching easier or quicker – it will make it different and hopefully more purposeful and relevant.

My #1 Piece of Advice

What is my number one message for all involved in the gen AI conversation?  Network.  Everyone thinks they are behind and looking at others.  The most thoughtful systems will network with other similar minded systems (British Columbia should be connected with other provinces and countries like Australia and New Zealand doing interesting work in this space), and districts should be connected together (for us this is being part of 4 networks connected to AI that link us with districts in our region, our country and globally).  And this process should repeat itself at the school and teacher level as we look for ways this technology is leading to learning breakthroughs.  

I have written about AI a few times, and my thinking is a work in progress.  Over the last 18 months I have come to see the emerging tools as ones we want to influence in the hope that we can shape their use to allow us to do many things in education around reaching all learners that have often just lived in the world of the theoretical.  

Note:  The visual at the top of today’s post was generated by me pasting this blog post into Chat GPT 4.0 and asking it to generate some options of images that could accompany the post. 

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PISAful Thinking – Giving Context to the 2023 Numbers

Posted in Assessment, tagged , , , , on December 12, 2023| 3 Comments »

If you have a narrative you want to tell about education, locally or globally, PISA results can probably help confirm it. And for the most part, we do like bad news, so if you like to describe what is happening in education as “concerning” or “worrisome” or gravitate to ideas like “declining” or “falling” there was probably something for you in the latest wave of PISA results. Of course, if you want to see Canada, and more specifically British Columbia, as one of the world’s highest performing jurisdictions this evidence is also present.

PISA 2022 – Canada Fact Sheet (shows Canada in global context)

Canadian Results (showing results for each province)

First, let’s talk about what PISA results are.  For those in education, they are a bit like the Education Olympics.  They are a tool for comparing jurisdictions around the world.  PISA is the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, that measure 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills.  If you remember 10-15 years ago when everyone was going to Finland to learn what they were doing in education, this attention started from very strong PISA results.  

And, like the Olympics, they are controversial.  Criticisms include concerns about the narrow focus on certain skills, potential cultural biases, and the complex nature of education systems, which may not be fully captured by standardized assessments.   My doctoral advisor,  Yong Zaho is one the loudest critics. He wrote,  “PISA is a masterful magician. It has successfully created an illusion of education quality and marketed it to the world.”

It does seem as though PISA results have got less attention this year than in previous waves – maybe that is a statement on fewer journalists covering education, or other global events dominating the news, or maybe the criticisms have some shying away from covering the results.

I have written here several times around the results.

In 2009 – Our World Cup (on reflection, I was much more excited about them than I am today)

In 2013 –  Some PISA Thinking (which looked at BC’s results of that time)

In 2016 –It is OK to be Happy About PISA (some celebrating our strong achievements)

I do think they have value – because at a time when it is important to have conversations around learning topics like numeracy and literacy there is little media attention around them.  PISA brings these discussions to the provincial, national and even global levels.  And while most are looking to tell a story about how we are just not as good as we used to be – so it must be the kids or the teachers, beyond this simplistic silliness there are good conversations worth having.  And beyond the front page “Who is winning” comparisons, the survey breaks out data on topics that many are curious about, like the various impacts of COVID on learning, and the impact that home language  or gender can have on results in jurisdictions.   Some of the conversations that PISA can open up include:

  • The need for quality discussions around the use of data – at schools, in the community and with politicians
  • Areas of strength and weaknesses in schools and districts.  When PISA says X about science in your country, what do we know about science at our school or district – do PISA results surprise us?  Do they confirm what we know?
  • What do PISA and our local information tell us about equity?  As you get into PISA there is a lot of information like the gap between the highest and lowest performing students – the smaller the gap, likely the more equitable, at least on this measure.
  • Education as a global topic.  The assessing of students around the world is a reminder that our students are part of a global community – they will be competing in the workplace not just with those in their school or neigbourhood but much further afield.
  • A discussion about what matters.  So, PISA says something about reading, math and science – what else do we value in our system and what other evidence can we use to better understand how we are doing?
  • What can we learn from others?  Are there particular jurisdictions having success that stand out? (I would like to know what Utah is doing with math instruction as they outperform Finland in PISA). Like the Finland impact of the early part of the century, there may be something we can learn.  Even within Canada, this can be useful.  We need to see places like Alberta and Quebec as our partners not our competitors in BC.

As with any test results, PISA results are quickly politicized – so everyone spins the results. Often current governments will say the results prove everything is going well, those looking to be the next government will use the same data to say the opposite. 

It was in my last post I wrote about the power of networking in British Columbia and how education is not just a competition.  I see that PISA does open some of the wrong conversations around this battle between jurisdictions, but I do also think that any attention can be good attention – so let’s take this energy and focus and have real conversations about equity and excellence with numeracy, reading and science – not just for a single jurisdiction but for all learners everywhere.  

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Desperate for Rituals

Posted in Assessment, Change, tagged on April 20, 2022| 1 Comment »

There is an interesting contrast happening right now in schools.  In some ways, they look very different than they did in 2019, and this shift is being met positively, and in other ways there is a desperate push to return to rituals that we used to have, that have been on hold for more than two years.

The simple view I take of this is that with so much different in our world, there are some rituals that people are looking towards to be simply as they remembered them in the past, a reassurance that the world has not lost all its good parts.

I am seeing that, for example, with graduation events.  There is more interest than I can ever remember.  And particularly from parents who want to be sure that this year’s students have experiences just like students used to have.

And at the same time, there are new structures and experiences, completely different from pre-pandemic.  I can’t go to an elementary school now without seeing some outdoor learning experience going on – no matter the weather!   And I can’t go to a high school without some new way that time is being organized to give students greater control over their learning. And throughout the system, it is clear everyone has a new set of digital skills that they are using.

So, we have these seemingly contrary narratives at play.  The world has been turned upside down, and we are desperate for the rituals of schools – the ones that are like those of our parents and grandparents to return – as a reminder that everything will be ok.  And we have lived through the last two years and learned we will forever want to do some things differently, the pandemic has exposed issues of equity, made us question what we value in schools, and given us brand new skills and outlooks that are making schools so different from a couple years ago.

The trick of leadership over these next few months  is to not see these different views as actually in opposition.  We can, and should, live with a foot in both worlds.  In one world, we have rituals we all remember and reassure the community of the stability of school, and in the other world, we are shifting for the changes we have seen and continue to see in our world, ensuring our schools remain centres of relevance.

The importance of the next few months in our schools cannot be overstated.  A narrative will emerge – one based on going back to good times of the past, or one that says we know better and we are going forward to a new way.  Or maybe a third narrative, which might disappoint some in both camps, that holds onto some of the practices and customs of pre 2020 schools, but still creates space for the new ideas of the last two years to flourish.

As I often say here, it is an exciting time in education.

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The Pandemic as an Accelerator of Shifts in Schools

Posted in Assessment, Change, tagged , , , , , on November 19, 2021| 2 Comments »

Why has it been different this time?

This is a question I think a lot about when I walk through our high schools, see the structures they are experimenting with and talk with students and staff. It feels different.

Now into my second quarter century in the business the idea of making shifts in high schools is not new. Hearing grumblings about the traditional bell schedule, the perceived lack of student engagement, concerns over relevance of courses and leaning experiences, and someone saying something like, “they need to be more like elementary schools” are all views that I have heard every single year of my career.  And with complete earnest efforts each year I saw schools doing everything they could to find ways to think about time differently, reorganize class structures (e.g. for many Socials 8 and English 8 became Humanities 8) and an amazing array of strategies to build connections with students.

Of course, I can see how it would feel a bit like Groundhog Day.  In their totality the shifts were really tinkering at the edges.  And in truth, there was no urgency – for most students the system was working fine, and its resemblance to the system of their parents was reassuring to the community.  And while much attention was given to those really pushing the model of schooling like High Tech High or Big Picture Schools, the model of schooling for most has seen little change.  That is not to say there has not been change – I have argued here before that today’s school experience for students is very different than for those even 20 years ago, but it is not different in fundamental ways.

So, why do things feel different this time?

COVID has upended everything in our world and while new challenges are exhausting, they also create curiosity and urgency like no other times.  But I don’t think it is just COVID itself that has pushed us, but it has accelerated and exposed other elements.  It is not as much as they are new trends, they are just more obvious and really moving quickly.  Here are some other things I think are going on:

Equity – You cannot attend a conference or read an education publication without some discussion around equity.  Now it is a broad term and is inclusive of everything from Truth and Reconciliation to poverty and food security to students with specific identified needs.  A mindset around equity is having all of us question our practices in ways unlike times before.  It has both the curiosity and urgency elements.  When we talk about equity we immediately need to look at our teaching and assessment practices.  

Time – We have been trying to rethink the use of time in schools forever.  In high schools we had 2 classes at a time, we had 4 classes at a time, we had 8 classes at a time, we had 3 before lunch and 2 after lunch, we had moved the pieces around to many different combinations.  A lesson from COVID was time was more flexible than we thought it was.  In our region almost every high school is using some version of flexible time where students make choices over their learning.  For us, it is X-blocks in our high schools every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon where students can make choices over where they need to go.  We have long known not all students need the same time in each course, but we have used solutions like tutors and extra homework to deal with it – now we have thought differently.  Of course, these efforts were moving slowly before COVID, but COVID has absolutely accelerated the shifts.

Modern Skills – I am not really sure what to call this – it is all about making and creating.  While already trending before the pandemic we are seeing a massive interest in robotics – which was once limited to high schools, now having interest in specialized programs from the primary grades.   A similar trend is entrepreneurship.  What started as courses limited to students in grade 11 or 12 is now seeing great attention across the grades.  When students and parents talk about it, they talk about real-world skills and being competitive for the world.   No doubt the impact of emerging technology and everyone seemingly having a “side hustle” has been impacting schools for a while, but again COVID has really ramped it up.  

Post-Secondary – There is some really interesting data coming out of the United States.  A recent story indicates that US college enrolment is on pace for the largest 2 year drop in US History (interesting to see the only schools which are seeing increased registration are the most elite schools).  I have one of those friends who sends me every story he sees about the struggles of the post-secondary sector.  He is saying “I told you so” a lot these days.  Colleges have for a very long time just expected the students would come.  But maybe the pandemic has shifted some thinking – maybe students don’t need to build up the huge debt from the ever increasing post-secondary school costs, or maybe there are other ways to get credentialing and maybe large employers like Amazon and Google might bypass universities and hire and train students directly themselves.  All of this which is potentially fundamentally shifting post-secondary will absolutely impact the work in K-12.  Exactly what this means is hard to know yet, but again this is a larger trend that is pushing us.  If post-secondary is shifting, so must high schools that help prepare students for life after grade 12.

Now, the global shifts and increased commitments to equity were present before COVID but COVID exposed how much we haven’t done and still need to do.  There have been a new list of skills for the new world emerging for a while.  Time has always been a topic of discussion in high schools but a global pandemic really opened the door to doing things differently in how we organize.  And there have been questions for a while about post-secondary schooling but COVID sped up changes taking place.

All of this churn in our world is creating curiosity – from staff and community about how we can do things differently and better going forward and it is happening with an urgency unlike at anytime in my career.  

I am convinced this ain’t Groundhog Day – high schools are changing in real ways right in front of us.  

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Plus, Minus and Equal

Posted in Assessment, Change, tagged , , , , on October 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Do you want your child to be the strongest student in their class? Or maybe, one of the weakest so they learn more? Or how about if they were all at the same level so they learn together?

In fact, we often want all 3 of these situations.

This will be the first time in my writing that I reference the work of a mixed martial arts athlete, but I think Frank Shamrock is onto something with his “+,-,=” system.  In short, Shamrock’s theory is that in order to be the best you need to work with someone who is better than you, someone who is equal to you, and someone who is not as strong and you can teach.

I love the simplicity.

Now, I can see how this would be useful for an MMA fighter, but it has really struck me how this is really what we want for our kids as they develop –  whether that is in school, sports, arts or other areas.  When our students are in a class with those at a higher level, they see what is possible which pushes them to challenge themselves.  And we often try to set up peer tutoring situations for our students where they get to teach others, as this helps to further enhance the learning.  And those at the same level leads to great cooperative opportunities and shared learning experiences.

Of course as you batch students together in classes this is hard to create in every situation.  I think what matters is that as often as possible we are looking to create all three situations.  It is OK to be the best player on a sports team, but if you are always that player you miss out on the other two situations which are important for growth.  And if you are regularly the weakest player on a strong team, you never get to experience the opportunities that come with teaching others and being truly part of a group that is always challenging each other.

While education can get caught up in letter grades and awards, its core business is about always getting better.  We should strive to continually put our students in situations where they are perpetual learners – sometimes being taught, sometimes teaching and sometimes collectively working together.

 

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BC Education – New Curriculum Inside Comfortable Boxes

Posted in Assessment, Change, tagged , , on September 20, 2021| 4 Comments »

Seth Godin wrote a provocative post about reimagining the curriculum last week.  It is not often that parents forward me blog posts, but 4 different parents from our district have sent me the post, each adding a comment like, “This is what we need for our kids.”   And I wanted to respond back, “We are doing it!”

First, here is the premise of Seth’s post:

We’ve spent 130 years indoctrinating kids with the same structure. Now, as some of us enter a post-lockdown world, I’d like to propose a useful (though some might say radical) way to reimagine the curriculum.

It’s been a century of biology, chemistry, arithmetic, social studies and the rest. So long that the foundational building blocks are seen as a given, unquestioned and unimproved. The very structure of the curriculum actually prevents school from working as it should.

Godin has a new list of courses he proposes including:  statistics, games, communication, history and propaganda, citizenship, real skills, the scientific method, programming, art, decision making and meta-cognition.  It is a great list.  And like Godin argues, I am sure this resonates for the skills we want for our children as we prepare them for the world we live in for both work and citizenship.

British Columbia refreshed its curriculum over the last decade and it has received a lot of global attention, and I would argue it is doing much of what Godin proposes – detailed lists of facts have been replaced by big ideas and curricular competencies, core competencies including thinking, communication and personal and social are put at the centre of all curriculum and Indigenous perspectives have also been embedded throughout the curriculum.  

Having been part of discussions that date back over a decade around modernizing BC’s curriculum, there were ideas like those Godin suggests, of swapping out “old” courses for “new” courses.  In the end the shells of the traditional system were maintained in BC, the subject areas are largely the same now for students as they were for their parents, other comforts including labeling courses by grade (e.g. you take French 9 and then you take French 10 – largely in groups of students the same age) were maintained and the basic structure of high school courses all being just over 100 hours was also kept.  Now, within these courses the massive changes I described above took place – and the experience has been modernized.

The beauty of Godin’s model is it radical.  It does not allow you to keep doing what you have been doing before.  The old courses are gone and replaced by new ones. Of course its great strength is its great weakness.  Very few students, teachers or parents I encounter are looking for radical shifts in education.  While we are interested in High Tech High and other schools that seem to be living Godin’s vision, these schools seem to exist as alternatives not the mainstream. While the education community appreciates the notion of change, they want change within the context of a system that is comfortable for them. 

It is not that we are broadly anti-change, but we are more incremental than radical.  I think most people agree with Godin:

We’re living in the age of an always-connected universal encyclopedia and instantly updated fact and teaching machine called the Net. This means that it’s more important to want to know the answer and to know how to look it up than it is to have memorized it when we were seven. Given the choice between wasting time and learning, too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that learning is somehow onerous or taxing.

So, here in British Columbia we have tried to do this by dramatically transforming the curriculum (the what and how of learning), yet not really changing the comfortable boxes we are used to.  For us, the strength of this is that we are able to make major changes while not radically disrupting the system.  And the downside, you can keep doing what you have always been doing – Social Studies 9 is still Social Studies 9 filled for 100 hours a year by a group of 14 year-olds – this shift relies on the commitment of everyone to the higher ideals of the change.

Since the turn of the century the calls for an overhaul and transformation have grown louder.  We have heard them come out of the globalization conversation and we have now heard them as a product of the pandemic.  I want to believe we can have the shifts that Godin and others write about within our current structure.  The realist in me says that this is actually the only way.  I like how David Albury recently described this work, “One of the tricks of transformation is to combine urgency and passion with courageous patience.”  We need the big thinkers like Godin to push us, and then we need to make these shifts within our reality.  We need to hold onto the comforts of the system we all have known while continuing to modernize the experience within it.  

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School on a Dial

Posted in Assessment, Change, Personalized Learning, tagged , , on June 3, 2020| 7 Comments »

I want to pick up on the idea of school on a dial that I introduced in my last blog post – The End of Snow Days?

School for a long time has been something you turn on or off.  School is turned off on the weekends, during Christmas, Spring Break and the summer.  And it is turned on from 9-3 Monday to Friday from September to June.  It is a switch.  The day after Labour Day we turn the switch on and across British Columbia hundreds of thousands of students arrive in buildings joined by tens of thousands of teachers and other staff.

Unlike most jurisdictions in the world, British Columbia did not turn off the switch for in-person schooling when the pandemic hit in the middle of March.  We changed this switch to a dial and introduced five different settings on this dial.  Here is one recent image describing the five stages:

Since spring break, and up until this week we had been in Stage 4.  There were a limited number of students attending school – these were largely the children of Essential Service Workers and vulnerable and special needs students.  The vast majority of students were learning remotely.  This week, we moved to Stage 3 and saw thousands of student returning to schools part-time and on a voluntary basis.

Of course, with it already being June, many are turning their attention to September.  We all would hope to be at Stage 1 – and stay in Stage 1 – but we also need to plan for other eventualities.   So, back to this notion of school as a dial and not a switch.  If we think of it as a dial, if there is a second-wave of Covid-19, we can dial-down the in-person instruction, and if BC continues to plank the curve, we can dial-up the in-person instruction.  The challenge for a school system is how do you design learning and schooling that lets you move between the various stages on a dial and not get caught thinking of it as a switch (models are for another post).

This also raises a larger question about the future of education and the idea of in-person instruction being on a dial. Right now, the dial is being controlled by the virus.  The virus threat is lower in BC, so the dial for in-person instruction goes up.  And this will be the pattern in the short term.

But I have heard from both staff and students that they have found more success with partial remote learning than they were finding in the traditional classroom, particularly at high school.  So post-virus, how might we let students control their own dial? Or staff?  How could we design structures that allowed some students and staff to attend in-person everyday, some only a few days a week, and maybe others vary rarely?  It makes my head hurt – but it is a conversation worth having. 

I think of Alan November’s question that has long inspired me when he speaks of the classroom, “Who owns the learning?”, the teacher or the student,  in the post virus world, I think as we look at structures, we may want to ask, “Who owns the dial?”

More to come . . .

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I Am Them

Posted in Assessment, tagged , , on April 25, 2019| 11 Comments »

For the first time since finishing my Masters Degree in 1999 I am back in the student world. In January I began a doctorate program with eighteen colleagues from my district and around the province. It is so interesting going into the modern student world I have been seeing as a teacher and administrator over the last two decades. There are probably a lot of future blog posts in the work and the reflection of my experiences.

For now, I want to talk about my first two major assignments and my feedback on my feedback.   These are both fairly large written assignments – done in a group of three (I really like the ability to collaborate – a post for another time).  We submitted the first one, and a few days later one of my partners texted the others of us in the group to let us know our paper was marked.  I think the text was something like, “Paper is back .  A-“.  Well, that was a bit disappointing, like an A- is an OK letter grade and we all have some paper-writing rust, all just getting back into writing after a long time on the other side of assignments with our students.  My partners then said that there was a lot of feedback on the paper.  I think to their somewhat surprise and disappointment I said something like “We got an A-. Time to move on.  I am not going to read the feedback.”  And perhaps to partially prove a point, I haven’t read any of the feedback on the paper.  I heard it was very good.  The professor raised a number of issues and questions for our consideration.  And I know he may be reading this blog, and I know I am supposed to be a mature learner, but I didn’t read the feedback – I had my grade, A-.  And that was OK, and I was moving on to the next assignment.

Push ahead to our second assignment. Same professor.  We got it back today.  There was no letter grade on it.  He gave some kind comments that we were well on our way and he offered a lot of feedback, questions, suggestions, and provocations throughout the paper.  I have read the comments three times already and re-read the paper at least as many times.  I am sure I will spend several hours seeing how I can incorporate the thoughts into an improved paper.  I see some ways it definitely can be better.  My mind is just so different without the letter grade on the assignment.  I know at some point there will be a letter grade on the assignment and as our professor says, “deadlines are your friends.”  And in that way, I guess marks are as well.  They do signal conclusion.

Now, for all inside education this little experience I have had will not come as a surprise.  For the last twenty years (and longer) we have been talking of the power of feedback and the challenges associated with grades on papers.  This links to the movement away from grades at younger ages.  It is interesting to experience it myself.   Feedback is an invitation to a conversation and to improvement and grades (even if accompanied by the same level and quality of feedback) is an end point.

Thinking of our students, and what they have told me about feedback and grades, as I said in the title, I am them.

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