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You can register and get more info on the MBLC website: bit.ly/MBLCsite or check out our Google Calendar of Events: bit.ly/MBLC_Eventcalendar. You can also view the Year at a Glance.
For events open to Friends of MBLC, look for this symbol: 💟
MBLC Monthly Meeting
Tuesday, March 18 & Tuesday, June 3
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. PST
For all Cohort 1 & 2 MBLC school teams and interested staff
Friends of the MBLC, you are welcome to join the presentation (first 40 minutes of the meeting). Break-out rooms are for MBLC member schools only, so please jump off when we transition to the break-out room portion of the meeting. 💟
The MBLC Meetings are a series of online events that happen throughout the year. In these meetings we will share webinar presentations on essential components of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Mastery-Based Learning. Each webinar will be followed by breakout room sessions during which MBLC educators will be able to connect with others from across the collaborative to discuss the ideas shared in the webinar, and to share dilemmas, questions, successes and resources.
In March we will focus on fostering responsive, youth-centered school culture.
In June we will share & celebrate all of the great work we have done this year!
We strongly encourage teams to attend together.
Register your team today!
Impact Fellows Meeting
Tuesday, April 29
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. PST
The MBLC fellows are a group of educators from across the Collaborative who work to achieve educational equity in schools through leading and facilitating learning in their own schools and districts, and through the facilitation of sharing and learning among MBLC schools.
MBLC Youth Advisory Council
Tuesday, April 29
11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. PST
Youth Advisor meetings convene students who attend MBLC schools to provide opportunities for them to learn more about the MBL/CRSE efforts happening at their schools and to share their experiences with other students across the state.
Spring Community Gathering (in-person event!)
Tuesday, May 6, 2025
9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. PST
Location: Central Washington University, Ellensburg, WA
The MBLC Spring Gathering will be held at Central Washington University in Ellensburg on Tuesday, May 6. The day’s agenda will include concurrent workshops and presentations by the Impact Fellows and a panel discussion with the Student Advisors. Join us for a full day of professional development and to celebrate the close of another successful school year!
Registration information and link coming soon
Other Events
Elevating Every Learner: Generating Quality Lesson Materials and Practicing Competency-Based Grading Practice with Colleague AI
On March 24th, the Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) will host an interactive, hands-on virtual training where education professionals can learn how to leverage Colleague AI to create differentiated learning experiences and implement competency-based grading practices.
Culturally Responsive Education Alignment and Sustainability Conference
Dr. Adeyemi Stembridge will speak at the Culturally Responsive Education (CRE) Alignment & Sustainability Conference on May 14th. District and Building Administrators can learn about how to uplift their CRE work to better meet their goals and the needs of teachers and students.
Big Picture Learning Conference
Big Picture Learning's annual conference on student-centered learning, called Big Bang, will celebrate Big Picture Learning's 30th Anniversary from July 21st - 24th. This year, the event will take place at the founding BPL network school - The MET, in Providence, Rhode Island (where GSP coach Darthula Mathews taught earlier in her career!). This is sure to be an exciting and productive event.
MBLC Event archive: Our growing event archive on the MBLC Community Site is a treasure trove of recordings and resources from past events.
OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS AND OPPORTUNITIES
Board Accepting Applications for Student Representative
The Washington SBE is seeking a current high school sophomore eager to make a difference in the state’s education system by serving as the Board's Student Representative for the 2025–2027 term. We’d love to see MBLC students apply!
Key Details:
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Deadline: Applications are open until March 28, 2025. Finalists will be notified by April 7, 2025.
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Eligibility: Open to current high school sophomores who will attend a Washington public or private school through 2027.
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Responsibilities: Attend State Board meetings (approximately 16 school days per year), contribute student perspectives, and help shape K–12 education policy. Click here for a list of 2025 meeting dates. Special meetings may also be scheduled to address urgent topics outside the regular meeting calendar.
Apply on the Association of Washington Student Leaders (AWSL) website
NASBE High School Transformation State Network Survey
Want to inform Washington's work to advance high school transformation across the state? Our state is participating in a six-state network focused on high school transformation, and this survey will help us better understand opportunities for policy change. Now through March 31, take this survey to help inform our state policy work and help share!
Take this survey
Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program
This grant is for the creation of community learning centers that provide academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours for children, particularly students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools. Please refer to the link above for details.
READ THIS, WATCH THAT!
Here are some MBLC highlights from our coaches. Enjoy, and let us know your wish list for next time!
Winter Gathering 2025 Photos
On February 25th, our MBLC Community gathered at the University of Washington, Tacoma to learn together and share ideas and resources related to CRSE and MBL and to deepen our understanding of Indigenous practices and the Since Time Immemorial (STI) curriculum. Here are some photos from this fantastic all-day event.
West Valley Innovation Center’s “Ram Record” Helps Students Direct Their Learning
One of the central challenges of mastery-based learning is designing systems that enable students (along with their families and educators) to keep track of their progress towards mastery. Effective mastery-based systems make learning more visible, indicating quickly where students need more practice or support, where they have achieved mastery, and where they may be ready to move ahead. Educators in the WA MBLC strive to design mastery-based systems that help students learn skills through meaningful projects. At the West Valley Innovation Center (WVIC) in Yakima, educator Kendra Bourne has designed a classroom system that enables her school’s project-based approach to be grounded in clear demonstrations of student mastery of standards.
Kendra, who is a Math & Science Designer at WVIC, created the RAM Record in order to solve several challenges. First, the school is a career and technical school that focuses on project-based and real-world learning, so students are often engaged in long, complex units that connect with multiple standards. A central challenge for teachers at WVIC has been figuring out how to help students break these large projects into manageable pieces, and how to track students' proficiency at the various standards covered. An additional challenge for Kendra is that she sees each group of students only about once a week, so she needs to pack her instruction into that time and set the students up to work independently during the days when she is with another class.
The Ram Record achieves both of these goals. It helps students see the benchmarks they should be reaching, while providing support both to students who want to move faster, and students who need more support. In addition to helping students stay on top of the components of big projects, the Ram Record increases the transparency of what happens in the classroom - making it clear to students, families and other educators what is being taught and how students will demonstrate learning.
How Does The Ram Record Work?
Each week, Kendra prepares a Ram Record for each class. At the top of page 1, the students see the standards that they are working on that week. In the middle of the page, a table contains these three bold headings: “What Am I Learning?,” “Deliverables,” and “Done.” Beneath these headings, Kendra describes the components or learning goals within the standard in student-friendly language, lists the lessons or mastery checks connected with each learning goal, and provides a space for students to check each one off when they are done. The second page provides a glossary of important vocabulary for that week’s learning goals or other resources. Here are a few examples; the first is from an algebra class, and the second is from her co-taught Agricultural Robotics class.
 Kendra explains, “Before I created it, we discussed as staff what we wanted to keep track of - both standards and learning goals. So I put together the Ram Record as a model of what we could do. The intention was, especially if it’s for a project, was that students would be able to refer back to it for weeks and go, ok, well we’re working on this learning target, and these are the things I have to have done. And so the class can continue to move forward, while the students still understand, I have to check off each box. I have to meet that learning goal before I can move on to my next learning goal. And I have the resources I need to be able to do it.”
How the Ram Record Supports Differentiation
Kendra explains that students have varied in their response to the Ram Record, with some using it constantly and others needing more prompting. It has not taken long for her middle school students to understand that this is how the school works, and they have built a habit of referring to the record. For high school students, who are more accustomed to other patterns, this process has been happening more slowly. However, the culture of the school is beginning to shift as students learn how to be more independent and resourceful as learners with the help of the Ram Record. Kendra and her colleagues plan to craft systems in the future to help upper level students build their own Ram Records, a skill that will greatly increase their capacity to be independent learners in college or other post-high school training.
The group of students who have been most helped by the Ram Record are students on IEPs for executive functioning. As Kendra explains, “these students are the number one group that I have seen huge improvement from. In our project-based classrooms, you know you walk into a classroom and there is so much stuff happening all at once. You’ll be given things right off the bat to manipulate and hold in your hands, and it’s hard for our students with executive functioning difficulties to keep track of everything. But when they get the RAM Record … they put it in their binder, and they build a routine around it, and that keeps them on track. And that does require teacher guidance, but they keep track of it.”
The Ram Record has also helped students who want to move more quickly than the average pace of the class. As Kendra explains, “Some students will ask to work forward in math classes. Right now, I have one student who is way ahead, because she can ask for the Ram Records from last year’s class, and I can provide them. This gives her a clear way to move fast and demonstrate mastery.” Enabling this kind of individualized empowerment in a project-based context is not easy, but the Ram Record is making it possible.
Applying the Ram Record in a Comprehensive School
The context at WVIC is a bit different from a traditional comprehensive school. There are about 185 7th-12th graders at WVIC, and Kendra, WVIC’s only math teacher, teaches all but about 10 who have completed their math requirements. This means that Kendra teaches many classes: 7th grade math, 7th grade accelerated math, 8th grade (pre-algebra), algebra, geometry, and co-taught classes in computer science and agricultural robotics. Kendra’s previous teaching experience, however, was as a chemistry teacher in a comprehensive high school, and she feels that the Ram Record tool would have been equally helpful in that context.
The Ram Record helps her communicate clearly with all other educators who support her students, indicating what the student needs to work on - a benefit that would be valuable in any school. She also notes the way in which the Ram Record could be used to design a structure in which a teacher could use alternating blocks to deliver instruction and then to have students work independently while the teacher circulates to provide support. A tracker like the Ram Record would be invaluable in any context where the teachers are seeking to engage in project based learning, as it so effectively chunks the learning and enables students to demonstrate each component skill.
You can find Kendra’s Ram Record in the MBLC School-Based Resource Exchange. Thank you to Kendra and West Valley Innovation Center for sharing this great work with the MBLC Community!
FEATURED MBLC SCHOOL PROFILES
Read about Rebecca Midles’ visit to our Cohort 2 MBLC school Pinnacles Prep, a charter school in Wenatchee that prioritizes personalized learning and inclusive environments.
This small Big Picture Learning school in Quincy, WA is focused on developing a common understanding of proficiency while centering each learner academically, socially, and culturally.
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Meet Michael Velasquez, principal at Avanti High School in Olympia, Washington, who centers school culture as his vehicle for strong and effective leadership. Thank you for your service, Michael!
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