From The Archives: Getting Buy In For UnGrading - E097

The EduGals Podcast

This week, we are talking all about how to build buy-in for ungrading in your school community. We'll discuss ungrading buy-in strategies for various different stakeholders such as teachers, admin, parents, and most importantly, students. Let's start talking about ungrading!
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**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/97**
Teachers/Admin:

• Start with conversations about grading and grading practices
• Why aren't traditional grading practices working?
• Leverage opportunities informally in your workroom, more formally in department meetings
• Keep in mind - slow and deliberate changes towards ungrading (it's a spectrum)
• Many ways to ungrade (mastery, standards-based, feedback, etc)
• Focus on the feedback and learning over grades
• Look at printouts of marks for students, rubrics we're using (single point vs 4-level), success criteria, moderated marking
• Try to find common ground, team dynamics matter
• Rethinking Letter Grades - Conversation Cards
• Grades are very personal - Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman
• Share your own vulnerability
• Open your classroom space, share your ungrading practices
• Honour professional judgement
• Invite colleagues and admin into your classroom
• Keep your admin in the loop - let them know what you are doing with ungrading and be prepared with a plan

Parents:

• Parents are allies - need transparency, clear communication of grading practices
• Pitch/justify your why of ungrading - send out a newsletter early in the school year
• Mastery can start a strong parent-teacher relationship
• Start an FAQ document to share with parents, teachers, admin, etc - post on website, LMS, etc

Students:

• This is the trickiest group to build buy-in!
• Consider the language you use to talk about grading, assessment, and feedback
• Expect pushback - this takes a bit of time to learn
• Involve students in the grading practices
• Start with having a conversation in general about grading
• Have them track their progress with a portfolio
• Build in reflection opportunities
• Know that emotions can be high - some students might feel anxiety and stress

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