Zach Diamond 0:00 welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other, so this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the modern classrooms project podcast. Toni Rose Deanon 0:29 Hello and welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast. My name is Toni Rose Deanon they them pronouns, a designated hype person here at MCP, and I am joined today by a high school STEM educator and modern classrooms mentor, Eileen Ng and she also happens to be one of my favorite people. So welcome Eileen. Eileen Ng 0:44 Thank you so much. Toni Rose. I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Toni Rose Deanon 0:49 Yeah, it's so exciting to be in this space with you, and in any space, actually, both virtually and in person. And thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast. And before we get started, what is expanding your brain lately? Eileen Ng 1:01 Ooh, that's a great question. I would have to say, AI, in education, there is just so much being written right now. Almost everything is called rethinking education. And I just think anytime we're asking those difficult questions, it's a great thing for us to continually examine what we're doing that is working well and how we need to, how do we need to evolve for the future? Toni Rose Deanon 1:25 Yeah, and that whole concept of rethinking is like, Oh, all right, here. Here it is. More brain work. On our end, more brain, brain work. So Eileen, thank you so much for bringing that up. Tell us more a little bit about who you are and how you started your MCP journey. Eileen Ng 1:40 Sure, I have been in the field of STEM education for about 25 years. I started out in Boston Public Schools. I also did a stint working for a nonprofit sponsor of the Massachusetts state science fair, and I spent one really fun year at as the first teacher in residence at the Museum of Science here in Boston. Currently, I am teaching two upper level biology courses, and I also serve as the head of the stem division and instructional coach at a small Independent School in Lexington, Massachusetts, and I've been a modern classrooms mentor for two years now. And I like to take MCP out on the road, where I get to hang out with you sometimes. Toni Rose Deanon 2:16 Yeah, it's so much fun, actually. And hearing you talk about MCP in the way that you do. It's just so magical and powerful. You do such a better job than I do when you talk about MCP. So thank you for doing that. Eileen Ng 2:32 Oh, my pleasure. It's really fun, and it's really neat to see other teachers start to get excited about what's possible in their classrooms, and it really just meets them where they are. So we really love it, Toni Rose Deanon 2:45 yeah, and so thank you again for always being such a huge advocate of MCP. How did you come across MCP? Eileen Ng 2:52 Yeah, so I remember the day I found MCP. It was the free online course. I was on my couch in the basement. It was spring break of March 2020, and we were waiting to hear from our administration about what our school was going to do. So for the first time in years, I had some free time, and I was catching up on all the educational research I never have time to read. And I think I was reading articles on assessment. Maybe it was standards based grading. It was competency based grading, and I was doing a deep dive, and I came across the MCP online course, the approach just resonated so strongly with me at that moment, it was as if I had been looking for it, but I couldn't articulate, I couldn't articulate how to implement the principles I already strongly believed in, and it just gave me a structure, a very simple, easy to explain structure, to implement it. So when we returned to school, we were actually teaching students remotely and in person at the same time. So not even hybrid, where it was one day remote, one day in person. I had both, and I honestly don't know what I would have done that year or how I would have survived without MCP. Toni Rose Deanon 4:05 Yeah, I remember that year, Eileen, I was the instructional coach, and we were doing the same thing too. And I was like, Yo, I've never done this before, so I don't know we're going to learn together. Honestly, Eileen Ng 4:16 it was wild. And I thought, well, if I'm going to learn this, I might as well do it this year and just go all in Toni Rose Deanon 4:23 Yeah, because we needed to Eileen Ng 4:25 Yes. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And I thought, if I'm going to do this, this will be a great experiment, and if it works, then I'm sold, and I will keep implementing and it really just made sense. It clicked for me. Toni Rose Deanon 4:40 That's so exciting. And I bet you can even visualize yourself when you first came across our model. Because I feel like a lot of educators can of like, Oh man, I could tell you, because it was just that light bulb moment of like, whoa. These are all the things that I've been wanting to do in the classroom. I didn't know how. And then now you're telling me that here's a how to guide. And so it was really, really great hearing that. So thank you for sharing. Sharing that, and you know something that you said, too, it's a great segue, because you were talking about standard based grading and competency based learning, right? And so one of our pillars here at MCP is mastery based learning. And it just so happened that our topic today is visual rubrics, right? Because rubrics, again, are super important so that students and teachers both know what they're looking for to show that mastery. It's not just one of those things that, oh, I got to have it just because it's like, no, it's actually needed because there's transparency with it. Students know exactly what to do to move from one end of the rubric to the other. And so again, transparency is a huge deal here in modern classrooms. And so when we're talking about visual rubrics. For me, I'm like, What does that even mean? Because I've used traditional rubrics. Now, mind you, I did create rubrics that were student Toni Rose Deanon 5:54 student friendly, so the language was very much like student friendly. My students could explain it to a stranger if they needed to, because I think sometimes we do a lot of copy and paste with huge rubrics, and then just hope and expect for our students to understand what that rubric is asking for, right? And so many educators use traditional rubrics because one, it's easy, it's already created, right? And then two, it's like one less thing that I have to think about. And three, it's a lot of the time schools have already approved of these rubrics, right? And so what initially inspired you to create visual rubrics for your mastery based classroom, and then what specific challenges were you hoping to address by moving beyond text heavy designs? I mean, you teach high school, so you are kind of just keeping in mind this needs to be accessible for students, for any students? Eileen Ng 6:41 Yes, I like to talk about what I did before, and then what was the turning point that really made me rethink rubrics. So initially, I was only using traditional rubrics for lab reports and projects or presentations for tests. Like many other teachers, I was only allocating points every question, giving partial credit, calculating that percentage at the end. But I also wrote a ton of comments. I would spend hours grading these tests, writing specific actionable feedback, trying to help them see where they were, where they went wrong, and how they could craft a better response in the future. Those five nuances that I felt I could add in the margins. One day, I was giving back a test in the last five minutes of class, and a student received his test, glanced at the back page and then tossed it in the recycling bin on his way out. And I have to tell you, I was hurt. I was I was I was really hurt because, because I had spent hours grading that test, and I had written feedback on everybody's test, and it just made me feel like all of that was wasted. And the other thing it made me feel it was really sad, really sad that for this student, that felt so final. It was the end of the learning journey, and, and, and I had a revision process that anybody was eligible for, and so he could have done a revision, done, asked for a retake, prepared, but for him, it was just so final. It was just so clear how he felt, and it was clear he didn't need a single comment I had written. He just wanted to know the grade, and that was it. And so I thought, how could I give this feedback? Because I'm not going to stop giving the feedback. It's really important, but in a way that he and other students want to read it, or maybe have to read it in order to find out how they did a holistic picture of student learning that was impossible to ignore. It had to be simple, elegant, able to be understood in a glance, user friendly, but also really informative. And so that led me on a journey to come up with a better system I was I used rubrics, but I knew students weren't reading it. Even with student, it's just a lot. It's a it's a huge cognitive load. It's very overwhelming. It's a piece of paper that looks like a data table with a lot of words. And I decided my new system would reduce the cognitive load for everyone, especially my multilingual learners, and it would have no numbers at all to fixate on. The final grade would be completely obscured, or at the very least delayed. And so this would address the other challenge I was facing, which was that my students were recalculating their missed points just to check my math, and they were lobbying for points, even fractions of points, in hopes of getting a certain overall percentage on their test. And this was really it was another picture of them missing the point. Sorry, that pun was inevitable. But just focusing on the points was so. Not the point of the it was so not the purpose of of the assessment. The assessment was supposed to show what they knew at that moment in time. Toni Rose Deanon 10:09 Oh, my goodness, you said a lot of things here. Eileen, so I do want to say that thank you for sharing the fact that the feelings that you went through were hurt, right? Because, like, Whoa, I spent so much time providing feedback and really making sure that I am helping you to make those revisions, that you can do better and improve, right? Because I think a lot of the times our teachers go through that hurt, and I think sometimes that comes out as anger, right? Like, Hey, how dare you just throw this away. And then our teachers kind of sometimes just sit back and be like, You know what? Never mind. I'm actually not going to provide feedback, because nobody's going to read it anyway. And so this cycle continues. And for you to be like, You know what? I was hurt, not necessarily a frustration, not necessarily taking out on the kids, or even, like, my own teaching practices, but I was just hurt like I spent a lot of time, and that is such a vulnerable piece of like, vulnerable state of being as well, of like that hurt, and then thinking back and sitting back and be like, Wow, this is really sad that that's the final point of learning for that student, even though I had all of these, you know, steps for revisions, and so I really love and wanted to highlight those two very, very big pieces, because that is what's going on internally in our heads, right and, and you're absolutely right about the rubric. Students don't read the rubrics, unfortunately, and that's why I always made sure, as an English teacher, before I even give the assignment out, like, hey, let's look at this rubric. What is this rubric asking? Because I knew that my students would not read it on their own. We had to do it as a community. And like you said, a lot of the times it is overwhelming. It is a cognitive overload. It is one of those things where our students will probably be like, I will never make a four, because that's just that's not in my capacity, right? Or even like, I don't have time to make a four. So it's one of those things where students just shut down. And as adults, we do the same thing. We do the same things we look at, like, what is the bare minimum? That's what I want to do. Because of this cognitive overload, I really love the fact that you also named that. Hey, there were no numbers, but my students were still calculating and still pushing back and asking for those numbers to reflect their task and what they're doing, right? So I'm really curious now, like you were like, No no numbers, because I wanted you to be obscured and delayed. That was not what I wanted my students to focus on. I wanted them to focus on the learning piece of it all and also just understanding how to get to the mastery level, right? So I do have some follow up questions, but I think you're going to answer a lot of this too. Could you walk us through the process of designing one of your visual rubrics? Because that's a that's a pair, like a shift right in your head of like, oh, I don't want to make this text heavy. I want to make this a visual rubric. How did you create that? How did you design it? What are some elements or considerations that you found most important to include to effectively communicate learning targets and different levels of mastery visually. Eileen Ng 13:03 Yes. So as I mentioned earlier, I definitely wanted to reduce the cognitive load, and so it couldn't be text heavy. And so I came up with the idea of a picture or maybe an infographic, something really user friendly, as I mentioned earlier. So I was thinking of something I used to say to my students while debriefing their lab reports, and it's the same idea, nobody wants to look at a day with data, table of numbers and then the averages, because you can't really see what's going on. And so I would say to them, a graph is worth 1000 words. What is the story you were trying to tell with this graph? And so I thought about, well, what was the story I was trying to tell with my new feedback system? And I landed on, I just want them to know exactly what they know well and what they still don't know without having to ask me. So it has to be that clear and self explanatory, and then they could identify any patterns just like a graph, draws out the patterns from the data. This picture would also draw the patterns in their learning so I have two visual rubrics that I'm using right now, one for tests and one for lab reports. I'll talk about the test rubric. First, the standards based test rubric really just looks like a graph. It's a horizontal bar chart with maybe five to seven bars, depending on how many unit learning objectives you have. So the label for the bar is the learning objective, and the length of the bar represents the level of the mastery achieved on the on a scale, on a spectrum. So for example, if the learning objective for one of my tests is I can describe the stages of the cell cycle, I would look at all the questions related to cell cycle stages on that test and then assign a rating on a four point scale just for that standard. And my four levels are beginning developing proficient and. Ending. So the completed graph would show an accurate representation of their mastery in each learning objective. So each learning objective would be evaluated on its own four point scale, and then you have a graph that shows all of them together. And that's the test rubric, the lab report visual rubric, on the other hand, is is a lot more fun and visually appealing, so that tracks progress in skill development rather in content mastery. And I can't even take any credit for this idea. I found this on John means adrenaline website, and he's working with Michael Matera now, and their their forte is gamification of learning, and they provide all these really excellent templates and other resources for teachers. And while I was on his blog, I saw this brilliant spider web, spider web rubric, and it looked like an octagonal web with eight, eight spokes radiating out from the center. And there were four, I guess you would call it rose of the spider web for each one. So the really cool story behind this is that the inspiration for this rubric came from the world of gaming and the world of fitness. So he talked about how he was listening to a speaker who was intrigued by the idea of this character sheet, a character sheet. I don't play Dungeons and Dragons, but apparently it's very key in a game like that, in which you track various aspects of your health, or maybe your potion level or your skills, and it you need a dashboard to see it all in one place. And so you need to track track various aspects so that you can move on in your journey. So that's one. And then the world of fitness was from John Meehan's own goal setting practices. He's a marathon runner, and so he was trying to track his progress with his runs, maybe training for a race. And He came up with, he calls it the personal rubric, sorry, the personal record rubric in which he tracks various aspects of his training. And so the idea behind the PR is that you're always trying to beat your own PR. And so I loved the idea of having all of those things in one place, like a visual player dashboard, and then the idea that you're trying to get better every time you do it. And that just works so perfectly for skill development. So his original web rubric contained eight language arts competencies, and so it was really easy for me to replace sentence structure and thesis statement and grammar with hypothesis development and data representation and evidence based argumentation for a science lab report. And the idea here is that, again, you would rate each skill on a four point scale, and then you would plot those points on the web, or the student can plot those points on the web, and then connect the dots, to give a sense of their quote shape, unquote of mastery. So the bigger, the better. And with every subsequent lab, they can redraw the new shape on top of the first one. And hopefully over time, you can see the growth. Sometimes you can see the regression as the case may be, but it can really serve as a visual documentation of learning. John even goes so far to suggest adding reflection questions on the backside that help students plan for future improvement. Like, what did which skill did you do really well? What are some obstacles to this other skill that you did not perform as well on? And what could you do to address those obstacles in the future? So some self reflection there for the student to really engage with their own rubric in a tangible, visually compelling manner. Toni Rose Deanon 18:52 Yeah, and I really love that concept too, of you don't use it just one time. You keep using it to get a say, get a sense of your growth, right? Like you said, and when it's something that's attainable, something that students can actually see, then they will continue to use it, because they're seeing their growth, and then, like, loving it and owning it and being able to have conversations. So that is, that's so fascinating. And another thing that I was thinking about too, you know, you're like, oh, I want to create an infographic. And then you created, like this, this web right for for students, because you were inspired by it. And I'm chuckling too with the Dungeons and Dragons, because I feel like, so the more I learn about gamification, the more dragons and dungeons come up. And I'm like, I really need to play this game honestly. Toni Rose Deanon 19:41 So it just the power of storytelling, right? The power of like this PR that we're talking about, but it is just like the growth that we get to see, and then also, like your inspiration of like I want students to fill in the gaps without having. Who asked me, right? Like they know that they're this is where they are beginner, but there, there are clear guidelines of how to get from beginner to the next the next level, right? So developing and so I really love that part too, because I think again, a lot of the times, our students just don't know how, and it's because we're not clear. It's not because they don't want to because it's not clear for them, and then it doesn't feel safe and brave for them to show up as needed, because they just have no idea what that looks like, right? So I'm excited now to hear about like, how did your students respond to using visual rubrics? Right? Because I know when we're thinking about infographics. When I taught infographics as sixth graders, I had to teach them how to read it because, yes, it is a photo, and photos have lots of you know, it's worth 1000 words. Like you said, a graph is worth 1000 words, right? But there's also a specific skill that needs to be taught for students to still be able to process and digest a graph or a picture, right? So how have your students respond to using visual rubrics? Have you observed a difference in their understanding of expectations, their ability to self assess, their overall engagement really, with the learning process, compared to when you use traditional rubrics? Eileen Ng 21:14 Yeah, I think something you said really hit the hammer on the head when you talked about they have to understand how to get there. And so part of what I did first, because the two rubrics that I use depend heavily on the four point scale. And as I mentioned, there are many names for the four levels. I just picked beginning developing. It's actually I switched back and forth between achieving and proficient and extending, and I made my own four level infographic using Canva, so something really simple in words that I thought they would understand. And so mastery is I could teach this and answer any questions from the audience or students, or I can explain it very thoroughly with all the fine details and nuances of the concept or process. And then achieving is, I know the basic idea any misconceptions are minor, and then the level beneath that, I have a general idea of how this works, but some of my misconceptions are major and really change the way the concept or process really works. And then beginning is, I'm just starting to learn this. And so I had to define what that meant for biology. And I think all teachers do need to define those levels, because those words alone proficient, it doesn't help the student understand what proficient is. And so I would keep referring to that and saying, Well, could you teach it? Could you teach it to a friend? Could you teach it to me? Could you answer any questions that I have about this? And that really helped them think, Oh, could I do that? No, I don't think I'm feeling confident enough, so I must be here. And so the visual rubric just helps match how they feel with how I feel. And hopefully that can be a great conversation starter. So in the beginning, my students called it weird, and they said, I don't really understand this and and most saliently, they would say, Hmm, okay, interesting. So what's my grade? And I'd say, No, you don't get it. This. This whole process was so that you wouldn't ask that question. But as the year, they began to adapt to it. So I would actually like to read for student quotes from a survey I sent out. I sent it out at the end of in the middle of trimester two, and then again, at the end of the year. And here are four quotes. One, it helped me set clear goals with the smaller range. Two, I think in the beginning of the year, it triggered my anxiety a lot, but I got used to it. It allowed me to grow more confident in my ability to learn and express that knowledge well. Three, I think it lowers my stress, because sometimes a score out of 100 could make me feel really bad about my score. I don't feel frustrated, but instead I trust it, because I know if I get a two out of four, I did not understand the content. I actually like the grading system and four, it made me care less about grades and focus more on learning the course material. So those are direct student quotes, and that was really encouraging to me, because the other goal I had was to reduce anxiety and stress in my classroom and just to just to take that power away from grades and and have assessment be like I said before, a conversation starter, not a final proclamation of what you know and what you don't know, definitely not something that makes students feel bad about themselves. So another difference I noticed was in the atmosphere in the classroom after I handed tests back before I was using visual rubrics, these would be very tense moments, and that's why I. Used to give them out at the last five minutes, because I didn't want that emotion to derail my whole lesson, because it really had the potential to do that. So I could feel the tension. I could feel the anxiety. They were nervous. I could see it in their faces. But now there's a different field together altogether. They are anxious to see their rubrics, but it's more relaxed, and I have really enjoyed just being a fly on the wall and listening to them talk. After they get it back, they're showing their graphs to each other, but it's not in a what you get, what you get, kind of way. It's they're not comparing, they're not teasing each other, they're not trash talking, but they are actually talking about their academic performance, and mostly what they're doing is trying to gage how well they predicted their performance, which is a self is metacognition, and it's self reflection, and it's, it's just beautiful. They would say things like, Oh, I thought I failed that part. I did better than I thought. Or, yeah, I really didn't get that one, and it shows and the conversations were centered around the actual content. They would talk about what they were still confused about and what they were really proud of. Toni Rose Deanon 26:13 This is so lovely. Honestly, that's all I have to say. Is that this is lovely. I love that you shared with us some feedback from students, because I think that that's really powerful too, to continue to engage with student voices, right? Providing them a space to share what their thoughts are, because I think that's how we continue to get better as educators for our students, right? So I love this concept of like, you know what? It was weird at first, I hated it. I didn't like it, but now I understand. And you know, you still had students who are asking about grades, because, again, that's really hard. I mean, especially you teaching high school, that's all they've been conditioned is talk about grades, talk about grades. To ask about grades, right? Everything was tied to a grade, and for you to sit back and listen to the conversations that are happening, that are naturally happening without your guidance, that is such a beautiful thing to see and experience. So I'm, I'm really that makes me so happy that you're able to experience that as well as your students as well. So I really love that. Zach Diamond 27:14 Hey, there, listeners. This is Zach. I've got some announcements for you for the week of October 12, 2025 Do you want to start building your own modern classroom and work one on one with an expert educator? If you're in Chicago, St Louis, Alabama, or any of the districts we've partnered with, you can sign up now for the virtual mentorship program. Our next session runs from October 20 to January 19, and the whole program is virtual and self paced. You can see if there's an opportunity in your area by going to modern classrooms.org/apply-now. That's modern classrooms.org/apply-now. Ready to reimagine your classroom. Join kami screen PAL and MCP as we dive into the shift to student led by Catlin Tucker and Katie Novak, focusing on shifting from information transfer to student driven discovery for our first book club session, one out of four on October 16 at 7pm Eastern, explore workflow shift Number one, strategies to empower students as active learners and leave with fresh ideas to transform your teaching. Let's chat, collaborate and spark change one page at a time. Cassie Fontaine and Zuska Blasi are presenting at Mass Q on October 15 and 16th in Boston, Massachusetts. MCP will be exhibiting at NCTM Annual Meeting and Exposition on October 15 through the 18th in Atlanta, Georgia. So if you're attending either of those, make sure to stop by and say hi. Now let's get back into it with TR and Eileen Toni Rose Deanon 28:56 and so in a mastery based classroom, right? Like feedback and clear learning paths are crucial. How do you How do your visual rubrics specifically support the principles of mastery learning, such as providing opportunities for revision or focusing on conceptual understanding over just completion? Because, like you said, right? Like you have some students now who are like, Oh yeah, I definitely didn't get that. And it shows and they don't sound deflated. It's just more like a recognition, an awareness that they didn't understand. It is there now more of a motivation and higher engagement with your revision process, now that they have a better understanding of how to do that? Eileen Ng 29:33 Yes, definitely. My visual rubrics are on a continuum. So I said it looked like a bar chart, but it's actually a line, and there are dots at every level, and so you connect the dots, and you have this line, and you can see the dot beyond your.it a marker. It's colored. I like to make it really pretty, so using pretty colors, so. The visual rubrics show the students position along a learning pathway in a way that a grade can't possibly give you that information, and so I believe that supports more of a growth mindset, whereas test grades feel very final, and it's also not clear from either the percentage or the letter grade. Well, where did I go wrong, or what did I do? Well, it just doesn't give you that information. And so something I noticed was that students, more students, were initiating test revisions than before, because they could clearly see what they did understand, and then, and then the ones that they didn't understand were usually in the minority, maybe two out of seven they perform poorly on. And so they they would look at it, and they'd say, Okay, well, and I had this revision policy in which they didn't have to re demonstrate mastery on the learning objectives they had already mastered. And so it just felt doable to them. They could say, well, I just really need to take the protein part of this test. Again, that is the part I struggled with. Do you have time for that? And it would be really quick. I would have a conversation with them, because I like to do oral revision, oral revision sessions with them, and they would talk me through, and then they would be done. It was so quick. And it just, it wasn't so daunting and and then I would draw with a different color an extension of their line, and so that growth was also visible. Secondly, the absence of points or numbers on the paper somehow made the relationship between content mastery and grades clear. Because I think students have this idea of this A as the ultimate goal, and their question is, what do I need to do to get to an A? Or why didn't I get an A on this? And they really don't know what that a entails, or what it requires. And so with the explanation of the four levels, there's no magical formula there. You know, when you give points, you're subtracting, you have this total points. You divide the top number by the bottom number. And it can all be very complicated, and every teacher has their own way. It feels very obscure to the student. They know that some math is involved, that they just don't know how they arrived at the grade, whereas the four levels of mastery largely do correspond to a, b, c and d, and so suddenly that grade makes sense. Now I didn't give a letter grade, but if I were to it would align with where they are on their visual rubric, and they could probably come up with it themselves. So again, having that ownership, having that ability to assess yourself is really the goal here for them, to be independent learners, to know what they need to do to improve. You know, sometimes when a student gets a grade and and either a parent or that, they say to themselves, how can I do better? Well, I'll study harder or do better, and that's just so hard for a student to hear. Well, how do I do better? How do I study? What does it mean to study more? And so just, just the whole idea of just giving them a really clear path forward, as you said, so, grades no longer feel arbitrarily given by me as a teacher, or mysteriously calculated with a formula they can't see, but legitimately earned through demonstration of mastery. I think my visual rubrics really help them see that it's really important to be accurate in reporting, because it helps students take ownership over their learning and then take steps to learn the material they haven't mastered and learn it thoroughly. That is what earns the A and really illuminates the kind of deep thinking and application it requires beyond just trying hard or doing the work. Toni Rose Deanon 33:53 Oh, Eileen, this is this is so great. I i love that you said that revisions should not be daunting, right? And again, you're keeping in mind the the cognitive overload of our students, and not just for like our multilingual students, or even our students with IEPs and five oh fours, but literally, every student that we have in the classroom is like, how do we scaffold this so that it's accessible? How do we make sure that it's not a cognitive overload? Because you're so right with revisions, right? Especially for someone with my brain. ADHD, I'm like, revision. I'm not revising anything. I got to get it done one time, and then that's it. But then for you to be able to break it down, and then to say, like, hey, you know what? We're actually going to do this through verbal conversation, so that I can really see and and decipher if you really know the content, right? Like, you don't actually have to write out a whole page, or even take 30 minutes to an hour to 90 minutes revising something that you don't necessarily have to. Let's just talk so it's like, it's low left, right, and it's something that students could say, like, Okay, I could just talk about it. Because, again, I tell students all the time, if you could talk about it, could be about it. Right? If you can make people understand, then you've got it. So why not have verbal revisions? I think that is so powerful and such a nice reminder for our listeners that verbal revisions are a okay. Like that is totally fine. And then I'm also chuckling at the fact that, like when we ask, when we do ask our students how they're going to be better, how they're going to improve. Oh my gosh, Eileen, study harder. Is always something that my students used to say all the time. And I'm like, But how are you going to do that? Well, I mean, I don't know. I'm just going to study hard. I'll make flashcards. What you don't make flashcards? Now, do you even know how to use flashcards? And so again, going back to this piece of like transparency, transparency, transparency, it is so important for us as educators to know what our journey looks like, for our students, and then for our students to know what their learning journey looks like, so that they can make those decisions by themselves, be self directed learners and to really, truly revise and master the concepts on their own, because everything is transparent, everything is clear, everything is accessible. So I really love those things that you said, and I'm going to go off script for a little bit. Eileen, and I hope that's okay. But how are your parents and caregivers and families and other stakeholders responding to your visual rubrics. I'm so curious. Eileen Ng 36:23 Honestly, I didn't get too much feedback from them. What I mostly got was some alarm over the grading portal, and so I wasn't going to talk about this in length in this podcast, or that the process of converting these visual rubrics back to a percentage for my LMS is probably beyond the scope of this podcast, but basically, I populated my grade book with all numbers out of four for individual assignments, so They actually never saw an individual assignment percentage, and that was intentional. In doing that, I had to create a shadow assignment that had the actual percentage that was integrated in the grade, but not published. But I could not prevent my portal from using the grade, the score out of four, as a percentage, even though it wasn't counted in the grade. And so this was producing a lot of 50s and 75% and so there, there I realized I needed to educate parents and caregivers early, because I was experimenting with it during the year. I hadn't really thought to announce it. I was just trying out an idea, and it was going well with the students, but what they would say to me is my mom freaked out when she saw the 75 and then I said, Wait, wait, wait, wait, no. Ms ng has this system. She has this weird system, and it's really not a 75% please just talk to her. She will verify this, and I would. And so what I did is, at back to school night, I talked to them, and I said, Hey, don't look at those numbers. I'm really trying to help them focus on the learning. And they were on board. Toni Rose Deanon 38:13 And I think that's, that's it, right? It's just that communication piece of again, it's not just our students who are worried about grades. It's literally everyone. I mean, we think about universities going into, you know, university or college, like they look at transcripts and grades, right? So, rightfully so. But, and I think that communication sometimes goes a long way. When you show your stakeholders, other stakeholders, of what you're doing, then they have a better understanding. And then also opening that communication piece too. Of like, if you have any other questions, like, let me know, right? Like, and also the fact that like students can also can advocate for themselves and say, like, no, no, this is it's different. I can try to explain it to you, but if you want valid validation, if you want a confirmation from an adult, like, talk to my teacher about it, right? So I love that part, and thank you for letting me ask that question too, because I know that that's going to be a question that folks will have in their heads too. And so, Eileen, you recently got published by Edutopia. Congratulations, by the way, how exciting, because I don't think people understand how challenging it is to get published by Edutopia on the same exact thing that we're talking about now. So listeners will put the link to the show notes as well of Eileen's article on visual age right of visual rubrics. And so how was that process for you, Eileen? Because I'm so curious. I know it's been a while for me since I've been published, so I'm curious how that went for you. Eileen Ng 39:39 Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. I should say here first, before I talk about it, that that never would have happened without you and your encouragement. And I just want to express gratitude for always pushing me out of my comfort zone and to all the MCP people out there when you say you're slightly interested in anything you. You should better make sure that you are because someone most likely Tony rose will follow up with you and make sure that happens and be your cheerleader every step of the way. So it was honestly a little daunting, because at utopia, I respect it so highly. I read it all the time, and it reaches such a wide audience, and so I felt very small in this large world of amazing educators. But it was also really, really valuable for me. There were many iterations of this article, mostly my first draft was way too long, and they helped me cut it down, and that process helped me reflect and refine my writing, and really focus on, how can I make my system accessible and implementable and transferable to teachers in any situation, not just a high school science teacher, but elementary school art teacher, you name it, and They really encouraged me to think in with that lens as well. And so I had to be really clear in my writing. I couldn't get into the weeds. I didn't want to scare anyone off. I will say it, it seems like it is a time saver in some ways, grading holistically by learning objective, definitely, you're not calculating points. But on the other hand, making this visual rubric does take time, and I really had to think, Is this possible for someone who has 125 students? Are they staying up all night with a marker or a spider web and and I think that's where some of the transferring to the students, hey, draw your own graph. Connect your own dots on the web. It brings them face to face with their rating. And truly is feedback that is impossible to ignore, which was my first goal. So I've really enjoyed this opportunity, and I know everything is going to be edited out. But to be able to have a conversation with you about the process and to share my story fully, the Edutopia article needed to be really short and sweet, but there's this is a multi year process, and it's just been so great to talk to you about the process and have you challenge me to think about other aspects and the potentials. So I think I would prefer a conversation over an article any day, but I'm really glad my article is out there as just a tiny seed, and then I just welcome all the questions from teachers who are interested in how to implement this into their own classroom. Toni Rose Deanon 42:37 Yeah, and I have to give you back the shout out to Eileen, because you know you're right, the slightly interested response will garner the email from me of being like, you're in, hey, I'm here, but you've also always been so kind and patient when working with me. So I want to say thank you as well for never being rude about it and just being like, tr, really, let me see if I have capacity. And you have done such again, like such a great job of sharing your story, sharing your experiences, sharing your expertise, and how you continue to elevate and innovate your classroom setting, and you've created also just a community of teachers who reach out to you, or at least someone you know, a thought partner, to pick your brain about different things. So thank you for always saying yes, always saying maybe, or let me get back to you, but you've never left me on red. So I really appreciate it, and I also continue to learn from you, Eileen, because again, your expertise is just like top tier, and I know that every time you and I have a conversation, you're constantly just showcasing how much you know and also expanding my own brain. So thank you for always being willing to share your story so that folks can continue to innovate their classrooms and to try something new. So again, congratulations on the editopia publication that is so dope that's going to be in the show notes as well. Y'all so you don't have to do any googling. So Eileen, what do you hope to see in the future, and what goals do you have? Eileen Ng 44:17 Yeah, I'm I'm in this space where I am coaching and supporting teachers, and I really love that. I've, I've, I've gotten a couple of teachers implementing MCP, and so that is so beautiful because I work with Mentees, but it's also beautiful to see that happening in my own school, and now having kind of a cadre of educators I can bounce ideas off of, and I do have a very supportive administration and and we have great discussions on how we can rethink our assessment tools and practices, and that's a school priority and a vision to think outside the box when it comes to assessment tools, and again, to talk about the potential. Potential of a new system and but also be aware of how it might require the education and the communication. And so that's a conversation that I'm really excited to continue having. And I I feel that my dual roles as in the teacher in the classroom, but also instructional coach, but also MCP mentor, just allows me to do that on so many levels, to see it locally in my school, but then also to think, Hey, I'm in communication with Chicago educators, with educator in Greece and somebody in Africa who's got this like one room schoolhouse. And it's just amazing to see us all thinking and grappling with the issues and and just really moving forward to a better way. You asked, What goals I have or what I hope to see in the future. What I really want to see in the future is a world where students are not defined by a number or a letter, or they don't feel defined by that. I would like to see us think of new ways of reporting that better capture the essence of students and all their uniqueness and arrays and displays of talents and skills. We all knew know that every student is different, and yet these transcripts and these report cards are dry and they don't capture that, and they don't capture the life skills and the gifts and the talents they just it's a piece of paper, and some big decisions are being made based on this paper. And so I'm, I'd like to be part of the the next generation of educators who are really pushing for change. And I want to mention mastery, transcript, Consortium, or MCC, because they use visual rubrics. It's not a spider web. It looks more like a pie graph with different sectors that are different sizes. But I was so encouraged to find that around the same time I was experimenting with visual rubrics, because they are really trying to push the needle, and they are promoting using a visual rubric to supplement or supplant the transcript that goes to colleges, and colleges are accepting students with visual rubrics as their report card. And that's really encouraging to me, and so I just want to be a part of that change. Toni Rose Deanon 47:20 Oh, that's really dope. I feel like there's some kind of partnership coming up. That would be really, really cool. Yeah. So Eileen, how can our can, how can our listeners connect with you? Eileen Ng 47:31 Yes, so I am talk about feeling dated. I am not on all the social media, but I'm very timely in responding to emails. So I would encourage them to email me and ask any questions, and the rubrics are linked below, and I also have a modifiable template if that's what they want, and I'm just happy to talk to anyone through the process. Speaker 1 47:55 I love that. Okay, well, Eileen, again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It is not outdated. With social media. It's a good thing that you're off of social media. I aspire one one day, one day. Eileen Ng 48:07 It's an intentional choice as well as I just don't have time. But I am on the Edutopia Facebook, and I think that if you tag me, it will send me a notification, and I'm happy to respond there as well. Toni Rose Deanon 48:19 Beautiful. So that's, that's that's one way, that's one way, right? So thank you again for extending an Invitation to folks to continue picking your brain and asking you questions and being a thought partner for them. So thank you so much for sharing your experience and expertise with us. Eileen, and as always, as always, I just really, really, really love learning from you. So thank you again. Eileen Ng 48:41 Thank you so much too. I really love our conversations and anytime we talk shop, and I just appreciate you so much because I wouldn't be here without you. Zach Diamond 48:54 Thank you so much for listening. Listeners, remember you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org, and you can find the links to topics and tools we discussed, as well as more info on this week's announcements and events in the show notes for this episode at podcast.modernclassrooms.org We'll have this episode's recap and transcript uploaded to the modern classrooms blog on Friday, so be sure to check There or check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. And if you enjoy our podcast and it's been helpful in supporting you to create a blended, self paced, mastery based learning environment, we would love if you could leave a review that does help other folks find our podcast. And of course, you can always learn the essentials of our model if you want to go beyond the podcast through our free course at learn.modernclassrooms.org, and you can follow us on social media @modernclassproj, that's P, R, O, J, we are so appreciative of all the hard work you do for students and schools. Have a great week, and we'll be. Back next Sunday with another episode of the modern classrooms project podcast Transcribed by https://otter.ai