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WINTER COMMUNITY GATHERING FOR ALL MBLC MEMBER TEAMS
COMING UP TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 3:30 - 5:30 P.M. (ONLINE)
New after school time to maximize attendance. Please register your whole MBLC team.
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Volume 1, Issue 3 | December 15, 2022
Greetings, MBLC Community:
We send good wishes for the December holidays, and wish you, those you care about, and your whole school community peace, love, joy, and sustained wellbeing in 2023.
The start of winter has us bundling up, dealing with snow days, and preparing for the holiday break—after a busy fall season! MBLC teams have been working on all manner of learner-centered shifts. Member schools have also been visiting and learning from each other—and from educator practitioners around the country with well-developed, high quality systems for mastery-based learning and culturally responsive-sustaining education.
Please read on for details about what’s been happening, and what’s in store for winter and early spring. With our appreciations and best wishes—
The MBLC Support Team:
Professional Learning Coaches: Clyde, Don, Chris, Joy, Kate, and Katie
WA SBE: Alissa, Seema, and Stephanie
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Find resources from past events at the MBLC Community Site.
These events are coming up in January, 2023. For events open to Friends of MBLC, look for this symbol: 💟
You can register and get more info at the MBLC Site: bit.ly/MBLCsite or check out our NEW Google Calendar of events: bit.ly/MBLC_Eventcalendar.
For a longer-range view, see MBLC Year at a Glance for School Year 2022-23.
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Thursday January 19 I NOON-1:15 p.m. I Youth Advisor/Adult Ally Session 2 (Note new earlier time by popular request.)
For MBLC schools with youth advisors: 2-3+ youth advisors and one adult ally per participating school.
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Coaching Office Hours I 3-4:30 p.m. I January 3, 12, 23
For MBLC member school teams (optional)
Use these hours to get feedback on a lesson plan or rubric, plan PD for your colleagues, learn about resources or exemplars that relate to your initiatives, get help with a problem of practice
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Here’s what we’ve been up to lately! Find recordings and resources from past events at the MBLC Site: bit.ly/MBLCsite.
Webinar 7: How Students Become Expert Learners: Using Research on Learning to Support Our Work - December 12
CompetencyWorks Co-Founder Chris Sturgis shared how to apply current research on emotions, cognition, identity, and motivation in learning. Chris drew connections between research on learning and culturally responsive-sustaining education—and shared underlying research that informs MBL. It was a fascinating journey for participants, who contributed to the most active Zoom chat in MBLC event history!
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Mapping Your School-Community Partnership Ecosystem
with School’s Out Washington/SOWA - December 8
Kintasha and Kelly led participants in identifying school partnership relationships, exploring how to build and support relationships with people and organizations, and how to consider different partnership models.
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Leaders’ Community of Practice, Session 2 - December 6
MBLC leaders looked at and discussed exemplar mastery-based grading policies and progress reports, and watched and discussed a video on CRSE in school, before connecting in breakouts about what’s happening in their own schools.
Fall Community Gathering - November 29
Keynote speaker Jeremy Chan-Kraushar shared top take-aways for the MBLC, from his work as co-founder of NYC Competency Collaborative (a community of 90+ K-12 public schools). Participants then chose from 4 mini-electives on high interest topics and made “elevator pitch” videos for students and families with clear and concise messaging about their MBLC work. It was a great event. Thanks to all participants!
Webinar 6: Culturally Responsive-Sustaining MBL Student Support Systems - November 3
Science/math teacher Cristina Rade from Competency Collaborative Living Lab member Frank McCourt HS shared about her school’s 8 shared learning outcomes, and how CRS-MBL works in her classroom—including her practice of co-designing her syllabus and lesson formats with students. Cristina shared many invaluable resources, which are linked in Webinar 6 slides—and offered practices participants could try the next day.
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Here are resources and videos for your use. Enjoy, and let us know your wish list for next time!
Read the new MBLC Community Blog with current and forthcoming posts about member schools, community events, and discussions about aspects of our work on culturally responsive-sustaining MBL.
We’re excited to share the first two in a series of profiles of member schools. We plan to update profiles with “lessons learned” as the MBLC project continues. For now, learn all about two of our founding member schools here:
“Ritul’s MBL Experience:” In this short video, Ritul, a 9th grader at MBLC member school Innovation Lab HS (ILHS) in Bothell, describes how she benefits from the MBL system at her school. Thanks to Ritul, ILHS, and SBE Director of Communications Stephanie Davidsmeyer for this video.
Proficiency-Based Learning: A Roadmap for Educators from Great Schools Partnership contains a series of toolkits that can be used to develop an understanding of the steps that schools and districts can take as they shift to MBL systems. In these toolkits, “proficiency” is used as a synonym for “mastery” or “competency.”
“Why Make the Shift to MBL?” In this short video from NYC Competency Collaborative, you’ll hear from a school that opened with a competency-/mastery-based model, AND from a school that started with a more traditional model and made the shift to MBL for a dramatic reason … watch for the iconic story of Angelica.
Top Ten Most Popular Resources from Competency Collaborative (CC) https://bit.ly/CompetencyCollab_Top10 CC is a community of 90+ New York City K-12 Public Schools implementing competency-based, culturally responsive-sustaining education. This “greatest hits” list was shared at our recent Fall Gathering, and includes the most-used and most-loved resources from the CC schools and program team.
Zinn Project Black Freedom Struggle Class Series (recommended by Avanti HS MBLC team) Monthly free 90-min classes Mondays at 4:00 p.m. PT. In each session, a teacher interviews the historian, and breakout rooms allow participants in small groups to meet, discuss, and share teaching ideas. Classes are for teachers and other school staff. Parents, students, and others are also welcome. Register here: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/teach-black-freedom-struggle-classes.
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Dear Embee Elsie:
We’ve been talking about flexible pacing, and building a system for revisions and retakes with our high school students. Some are now putting off work because they know they can turn it in late without penalty. How have other schools handled this issue?
Signed—Assignment Come Lately
Dear Assignment Come Lately:
It’s wise that you’re thinking about how to prevent students from falling into the well of mismanaging time in school. Here are some strategies that could help.1) High school students often come to us “conditioned” over the years to meet deadlines as the impetus for productivity. In the switch to MBL, which entails flexible pacing and opportunities for revisions/retakes, some students who’ve been accustomed to strict deadlines begin to let things slide. Explicit attention to “deconditioning” is vital. Students respond when you talk about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation—and the process of deconditioning. You could propose trying “the old way” with inflexible deadlines for a week, and then challenge students to stay productive with a week of more flexible pacing—and then discuss which way works better, and where the best balance will lie.
2) Talk with students who are disengaging—what is behind it? Could you invite feedback on tasks and lessons? Are classes offering meaningful choices that are relevant to students’ interests? Is there a social issue impeding learning? There may be reasons pertaining to lack of wellbeing, or reasons unrelated to school. A supportive conversation may be helpful—and welcome.
3) Try framing the issue clearly: You’re here to learn and grow, and to reach your personal best—and we teachers are here to support you in that. We need evidence of where you’re at. Our interactive process of learning/feedback/revision/growth gets waylaid when we have no evidence. This is not about breaking rules—it’s about interrupting our main reason for being together in this class.
4) Level with students about pacing: We are here to support your thriving and reaching your own personal best with rigorous academic goals, so while there’s more flexibility built into our learning process, we do need to see you engaging, learning, and producing. Think of it as a more responsive game of “beat the clock,” but you do need to prevail, one way or another. The end of the term will be here, guaranteed—and if you’ve gone into time debt, you will not be able to make up a whole marking period of learning in the home stretch.
5) If you are not yet using an outcome pertaining to planning and productivity, it might be helpful to include one. (Side note: Work habits/skills should ideally not be graded—but should be taught, practiced, coached, and mastered to support academic learning.)
A school I worked with for a long time in NYC, Frank McCourt HS, has this outcome: GROW. It gets at the healthy reason for being productive—not just to do it because your teacher assigned it, but to attend to your own learning and growth, the main reason you're in school. Here's how this school defines GROW, and a link to a GROW rubric.
Finally, here are three other wise takes on late work:
One teacher’s take on late work: Kevin Mears from Leaders HS in Brooklyn, NY, a CC member school
Two more teachers’ takes on late work: from Sam Fetters at MS 442/School for Innovation in Brooklyn, NY & Xenia Thomopoulos at The Young Women's Leadership School of Astoria in Queens, NY—both CC Living Lab schools
CBE Problems of Practice: Late Work from Chris Sturgis in CompetencyWorks.
I hope some of these ideas are right on time. Thanks for writing!—Embie
Reader, do you have a question for our advice columnist Embie Elsie (aka M-B-L-C)? Please reach her here!
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About us
The Mastery-based Learning Collaborative is a community of Washington State schools that are using youth-centered, mastery/competency-based, culturally responsive-sustaining practices and approaches. Our program is an initiative of Washington State Board of Education, in collaboration with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Professional Educator Standards Board.
Contact
Mastery Based Learning Collaborative
State Board of Education
Olympia, Washington
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