In my practice, classroom culture and the structure and delivery of curriculum walk hand-in-hand. Strong curricular structure and pedagogy lead to positive classroom culture, and without positive classroom culture, structure and pedagogy fall flat. In turn, it is on the foundation of classroom culture and pedagogical effectiveness that opportunities for differentiated assessment and instruction are possible and effective. The reciprocal relationship between each of these three categories has been incredibly helpful in my being able to dissect, evaluate, and evolve by teaching and classroom practice.
Classroom Culture | The Pluribus and the Unum
“Freedom and community are not opposing forces any more than pluribus and unum. We are free so that we can create a community life so that, in turn, we can be free.” (Parker, From Idiocy to Citizenship, 2000)
The Pluribus and the Unum
I think about community in terms of the pluribus (the many) and the unum (the one). I build and foster classroom experiences and dynamics with the following goals connected to the dimensions of belonging and understanding for both the individual and the group. (see diagram)
In my classroom ecosystem, a diversity of people and voices have a role to play and signal to send. Students need practice exchanging ideas and going deeper to send true signal that helps to enlarge understanding for everyone. By the end of each term, positive individual and group dynamics are tangible, and students can point to specific instances that are characterized by both understanding and belonging.
PRESENCE AND PARTICIPATION
At the foundation of my approach to classroom culture are the following values, each student: (1) feels seen and included; (2) recognizes the number of different ways they might participate; (3) has and is prepared for deliberate moments when they are the academic authority in the room; and (4) understands that teaching and learning are social and dependent processes that require collaboration and compromise.
Student Placards
The courses that I most frequently teach are multi-grade and interdisciplinary. When the obstacle of remembering the names of peers they are sharing a class with for the first time is removed for students, some of the transaction cost of collaborating seems to fall and the quality/depth of collaborative exchange increases, and in turn, feelings of inclusiveness and belonging.
At the start of the term, I ask students to create their own placard or name tent which includes notes about how their name is pronounced, what their preferred pronouns are, and what they consider to be their top three strengths.
Often, they will be asked to use the interior of the name tent to capture some of the core understandings in the class or their rationale for enrolling in the class.
When I started this practice, it seemed artificial and wooden to me. As I’ve used it more, I am confident that the scaffolding-effect of this mechanism helps students feel more present, included, and connected to their peers.
Traditional Participation
Inclusion in an academic space means access to different narrative or participatory options. The traditional offering of a thought with a raised hand provides only one option for participation and contribution.
The diagram to the left maps the frequency of oral participation in a single class period. I ask a different student to track participation in each class period to visually reinforce what participation patterns look like without the weight of a grade. This gives each student an opportunity to reflect on how they participate in a traditional sense. I then use this visual to reinforce a point of emphasis in my classes, that discussion offerings are only one of a diversity of opportunities for participation.
COLLABORATIVE PARTICIPATION | COLLECTIVE LEARNING
Early in my career, I was under the false impression that students needed maximum variability in assignments and assignment elements to encourage critical thinking. As I’ve come to better understand my classroom, my practice, and cognitive science, I now default to standard assignments that are repeated, so that students are able to gain a muscle memory for the kind of thinking I’m asking them to do. By not taxing working memory with varied assignments, I help students free up more bandwidth to build understanding of core concepts, and extend/apply their thinking to new contexts and scenarios.
One of the core concepts in Evolution of Society is collective learning. This is the idea that, while the average human doesn’t have a significantly different IQ than any other human, humanity is able to progress and evolve by leveraging symbolic language to tell stories and build shared knowledge; knowledge that can be transferred from person to person, culture to culture, and generation to generation.
To promote an interconnected classroom culture, I ask students to collaborate in a number of varied groupings on repeated assignments. This maximizes their exposure to different classmates and different ideas. I use several mechanisms to help students feel comfortable, so that they feel recognized as an integral part of the class experience, and in turn, are more likely to share themselves, their thoughts, and their insights.
Your students seemed like they were talking to each other as much as to you when volunteering answers and/or asking questions, which is a really cool thing to see.
-Kate Lewellen, PDP Feedback Team Member
Partnered Notes & Presentations
In Evolution of Society, students are asked to work with a different partner during each of the first two modules. Each pair is assigned to one class period. After class they collaborate on synthesizing notes they’ve taken during that class, then present those notes at the start of the subsequent class. Note that groupings are created with an eye toward a diversity of gender identification in each group.
Asynchronous Participation: Discussion Posts
The majority of homework assignments in my classes are posts to a public, class discussion group, where students are required to post before they are able to see the posts of their peers. Over time, by reading each other’s posts students become more familiar with each other and how each of their peers thinks. Often class starts with students reading and responding to the post of a classmate to their right, left, or across the table which facilitates students seeing a diverse range of classmates as thinkers and contributors. In this way, students expand their working understanding of the course concepts and vocabulary while using both expressive and receptive skills, and become more connected to their peers.
A Marketplace of Ideas
| Market Attributes | Classroom Analogs | Undercover Economics Application |
| (1) Institutions and Rules | As the teacher, I explicitly define expectations surrounding repeated activities and assignments. This establishes a cadence from class to class that helps students practice and understand expectations. | Students submit all outside-of-class work in public discussion posts. The first post is completed as an in-class activity so that students understand the expectations of the assignment and the nuances of the rubric. |
| (2) Enforcement of Rules | As the teacher, I reference and reinforce behavioral expectations for different activities and interactions. Ultimately, those expectations are held by students, who quickly internalize them. | I assess and grade the first discussion post quickly providing feedback on the substance of their contributions so that student responses become more consistent and substantive over time. |
| (3) Economic Actors who are free to make transactions and move in and out of the market | Students become more familiar with classroom structures and culture over time. As students become more familiar with expectations and different ways to participate, they start to see themselves as thinkers and contributors with choice and agency. | A review of discussion posts is often used to open the subsequent class period, honoring the time students put into constructing their posts. Students are asked to speak about a post from the person sitting next to them which highlights them as individual thinkers whose ideas have an influence on the thinking and understanding of their peers and teacher. |
| (4) A Free Exchange of information that expands over time leading to market efficiency | Activities and assignments are designed to foster connection, exchange, and enlarged understanding | Students submit all outside-of-class work in public discussion posts. Once a student posts, they are able to see the posts of their peers. As students become more familiar with each other’s thinking they feel more connected and more open to academic exchange. |
PREPAREDNESS, ENGAGEMENT, SELF-ADVOCACY, PERSEVERANCE, COLLABORATION
In my classes, smaller, daily homework assignments are tuned to be 35-45 minutes in length so that a reasonable effort will give them the opportunity to cement learning from the previous class, or prepare them to learn in the subsequent class.
Late homework is not accepted without a prior extension. I explain to students that I am looking for them to establish a baseline and pattern of consistent effort, and that there are numerous assignments with low point values, so if one is missed it will have minimal impact on their grade. I couch this in the context of an economic concept, sunk cost, an action or investment that has been made and can no longer be recovered; an approach to which many of their college professors will map. I encourage students to connect with me in-person, in class or individual meetings, or through Canvas, if they would like to discuss feedback or course content that they would like help with.
Current and Future Practice
| Indicator | Area of… | |
| C.1 | Coaches and reinforces peer-to-peer dynamics that are appropriate and constructive | Strength |
| C.2 | Communicates behavioral expectations that are appropriate to class activities | Strength |
| C.3 | Develops a mutually respectful relationship with each student, instilling confidence that the teacher is invested in their success | Strength |
| C.4 | Demonstrates cultural competence by promoting inclusivity | Improvement |
| C.5 | Designs and facilitates a classroom culture that promotes student preparedness, engagement, self-advocacy, perseverance, and collaboration | Strength |
Reflection
Equity, inclusion, and compassionate leadership are core to our mission and vision at Eastside Prep. As a classroom teacher who focuses on the modern world, I know that understanding and navigating issues of equity, inclusion, diversity, and compassionate leadership are parts of a student’s ability to navigate the modern world, and make it a better place; as reflected in the school’s vision statement, inspiring students to create a better world.
In each of my current classes, Undercover Economics, Evolution of Society, and Urban Planning, I have embedded the exploration of different topics that take on equity issues related to class, race, ethnicity, and gender. In Undercover Economics, we explore how the structure of capitalism reinforces a disparity in wealth and financial power by looking at the impact of earning potential of different professions on personal budgets; in Evolution of Society, we discuss gender balance, as connected to positions in the technology industry; and in Urban Planning, we focus on demographic and economic statistics as connected to housing issues, cultural art and representation, and the unequal distribution of resources to historically and currently marginalized communities.
In my future practice, my goal is to draw tighter connections between issues of equity, inclusion, diversity, and belonging in my approaches to classroom culture and curricular design.
Pedagogical Effectiveness | Structure, Empathy, and Execution
“Luck is the residue of [elegant] design.” John Milton
Levels of Abstraction
As I think about class design, I am continually moving from the scale of course to module, to week, to individual class, and back again. Modules give me the opportunity to shrink the problems I’m working to solve in my curricular design. The size and structure of a module provide the mental space to abstract, think thematically, and in a broader sense, about what the progression or arc of a course should be. My hope is that when students, parents, or colleagues look at the module progression in any of my syllabuses that a narrative arc is evident.
Structure and Culture
The success of a classroom experience is based on the interplay between people and structure; the result is classroom culture. The more elegant the structure and the more inclusive the dynamic between students and students, and students and teacher, the more effective the space and the deeper the learning.
Elegant and effective human-centered design is a relationship between structure, empathy, and execution. Pedagogical effectiveness is a combination of:
| Empathy for Students | + Intentional Structural Design | + Elegant Delivery and Facilitation |
| Where students are and what they need | The agendas/lesson plans that frame the experience for teacher and students | How the agenda is executed and adapted; including transitions from one class activity to the next |
Students are given freedom to dictate their own approach to project management.
My class agendas, or lesson plans, provide the structural foundation on which a class experience is designed and constructed. My teaching is the delivery mechanism of that class design. As I design 70-minute class experiences, I think about what the expected outcomes of the current module are for students, the guiding question the class is engaging for the current module, and what major assessments are in the near future.
As I design class experiences, I start with a series of empathy-oriented questions that help me surface who and where students are, and what they need.
- What content or skills are they working to learn?
- What does my formative assessment indicate that we need to give more attention to?
- How does this class experience connect to previous and subsequent class experiences?
Teaching in the Block
Early in my career, I taught in the context of 105-minute periods with students who were variably engaged. The current 70-minute structure of EPS classes seems to be a sweet spot. This duration contributes to a more relaxed classroom environment where multiple modalities can be employed during the class.
As I prepare for 70-minute classes, my preference is to have at least two full periods of content and activities designed for each single class period. Walking into a class period with a quiver of options gives me the opportunity to go deeper, taking more time with activities that are working well, and cycling in new activities and opportunities for thinking, when I feel a class progression is stalling.
My classes include video content, readings, student contributions, and mini-lectures generally no longer than 9 minutes in length. As I’ve referenced earlier in this portfolio, the research of cognitive scientists like John Medina evidence that the human mind only has the ability or capacity to pay attention for a short duration before some significant transition is made to a new topic or domain. (Medina, Attack of the Teenage Brain, 2018)
Return to Structure
While my ideal environment in the classroom is one of pure inquiry, I do appreciate how an elegant structure can elevate a guided inquiry. The combination of the questions that are being asked and answered, the activities in which the students are thinking and doing, and the connections we make between ideas are what is most valuable to me in a classroom experience.
In addition to thinking about inquiry, I focus on experience, or what students are doing; and how what students are doing, and learning can be integrated or connected (1) to students personal lives, and current/developing interests; (2) to the modern world outside the walls of the school; and (3) to other classes, students are currently taking or have taken, or other academic disciplines.
| Inquiry | Foundation of Information | Experience | Integration |
| Guiding question to frame the inquiry for the class | Information on which the remainder of class will be built | Collaborative Activities | Connections |
| 5 Minutes | 10 Minutes | 45 Minutes | 10 Minutes |
| Class Road Map | Mini-Lecture or Collaborative Activity | Class or Group Activity | Wrap-up |
| Overview of class with a tie to previous class experience | Partnered activity that ties to the previous night’s homework | Structured Student Activity (simulation, Socratic seminar, class discussion) | Summary of class and rationale for homework assignment either solidifying knowledge for the current class or preparation for the next class. Student feedback can also be solicited at this time. |
While building the different segments of a class. I am thinking about designing the sequence of activities that I think are best for student learning. As I think about sequencing, I also give attention to transitions between the different segments of the class.
Intentional transitions with clear goals and time limits keep the class cohesive and on track. -Rick Mackenzie, PDP Feedback Team Member
Shared Text: The Class Agenda or Framework
I have written agendas in plan books, on scraps of paper, in my head, and on whiteboards in various conditions. When thinking about how structure contributes to the success of a class, I am drawn to the positive impact of the technological tools teachers now have at their disposal; perhaps the most flexible and useful tool in this domain is the OneNote Class Notebook.
I ask students at the start of each class to go to the OneNote agenda that I have prepared. My agendas are frames for learning experiences that have flexibility built in. As students get used to reviewing the agenda with me at the start of each class, there are times when they suggest a different sequence of activities or remind me that I have committed to going back to some topic or concept during the previous class.
Transitions
Having as much experience as I do in a block period format, I am mindful and deliberate when I am planning class activities, and the transitions that I use to move from one to the next. In my most successful teaching periods, students should be able to walk out of the room and explain the narrative arc of the 70 minutes that we just shared together within framework of the class agenda. They should be able to describe the content and ideas that were introduced, how they were able to contribute to the classroom exchange; and whether or not if felt like an enlarged understanding was built for everyone in the room.
Classroom Presence
Depending on what activity is in progress, I am actively moving about the room. A teaching mentor of mine frequently referred to the concept of the warm demander; the teacher who obviously cares about their students and their success and holds elevated expectations for them at the same time. For me, a primary practice as a warm demander is using my physical proximity in the room to help students keep better focus.
The better a class period is designed, the more I have to restrain myself from engaging with students while they are collaborating or processing individually; sometimes well-designed lessons result in the feeling of a little bit of aimlessness for me as a teacher as students engage themselves and each other. In these moments, I work to afford myself the ability to think through each of the subsequent activities that are planned for the remainder of the class, and how I might segue or transition from one to the next.
Tech Tools
Playing the role of the warm demander is especially effective as I often have 18 students on 18 laptops doing 18 different things. If laptops are going to be open during a class period, my expectation is that students are doing something with those laptops connected to class activities and outcomes. Technology is not an opportunity to go or be someplace else when the goal is for us all to be working and learning together.
Amazingly, almost all of the students had their laptops open and focused on course resources. Not a lot of digital distraction.
-Caitlin McLane, PDP Feedback Team Facilitator
Wrap-up | Synthesis
As I walk through a class progression and come to the conclusion of a class period, I have established a muscle memory, or automaticity for summarizing the progression of the class; revisiting the expected takeaways advertised at the beginning of the class period, and modeling the kind of synthesis that I’m looking for. Sometimes this synthesis comes directly from me, especially if we are short on time. Often my practice is to invite multiple students to help me summarize and synthesize what we have engaged during the span of a class.
Current and Future Practice
| Indicator | Area of… | |
| D.1 | Begins class sessions with a clear statement about the lesson’s objectives and place in the progression of the course | Strength |
| D.2 | Designs and implements varied activities in each class period | Strength |
| D.3 | Brings each activity to closure effectively and transitions intentionally to subsequent activities | Strength |
| D.4 | Ensures that students are using technological tools effectively | Improvement |
| D.5 | Concludes class with a summary and clear tie-in to the next class | Improvement |
Reflection
While I feel confident in my ability to manage technology use in the classroom, I would like to be more explicit with my expectations for students connected to tech tools in the context of our class outcomes. In addition, the class summary and tie-in remain an area of improvement for me. In the future, I would like to have a device or mechanism that asks students to generate and share a class synthesis, followed by my explanation of the next homework assignment reinforced by a visual of its description as the final entry in the class agenda.
Differentiated Instruction & Assessment |
Teach What You -ASSESS- What You Teach
I wrote a paper in my first year in graduate school, titled Teach What You | ASSESS | What You Teach. For me, this phrase captures the connection between differentiated assessment and differentiated instruction. Twenty-three years later I am much clearer in terms of what I want my students to learn and what it is I want them to be able to do. In the context of the courses I teach, the most important takeaways for students are: (1) they better understand how the world works in theory and application, and 2) they are thinking about, imagining, and practicing how they might navigate that world as individuals and collaborators.
Identifying a Baseline for Each Student
Each of the classes I teach is multi-grade adding an extra layer of complexity to identifying a baseline for what students know and can do. At the start of an Evolution of Society: Economics and Technology class, a ninth grader who has never taken Undercover Economics before, starts in a very different place than a twelfth grader who has just finished taking Undercover Economics, and is looking to apply their understandings from that course to an analysis of the Big 5 Tech companies.
At the start of each term, I take time to both review my class rosters and student names and to review any accommodations and/or learning plans that students have. Starting with that foundation, I build relationships with the class as a whole and with individual students in the context of our course concepts and ideas. As I design and build class assignments and class experiences, I create a suite of opportunities for students to produce content that I can watch, listen to, and read, so that I can assess what students understand, what they know, and what they can do. I observe how they perform in the classroom in large and small group settings, as well as individually.
Embedding for Accommodations
I use a number of different mechanisms to ensure that students’ accommodations are embedded in their classroom experience.
For example, when conducting quizzes or exams, I use the Canvas quiz builder, which allows me to moderate the assessment experience. I am able to build in extra time for each of the students who have accommodations and be precise in allotting them double or 1.5 times the amount of regular time for each assessment.
A student felt it appropriate to tell you the last homework assignment was a bit long. You received that feedback and addressed it to the whole class within a few minutes.
-Rick Mackenzie, PDP Feedback Team Member
Working Understanding
In each of my class sections, I focus on working understanding through both expressive and receptive lenses for each student. This concept is derivative of, and analogous to, John Dewey’s double movement of reflection where students are continually practicing moving from inductive processing to deductive processing, and back again. In this case, students are moving from taking in or receiving information to putting out or expressing information.
When thinking about differentiation, working understanding frames how I teach, assess, and adapt instruction for each student and for the full class.
(1) Expressive Skills are students’ ability to communicate what they know and understand, clearly and conversationally; Students’ expressive understanding is their ability to think critically, as they communicate what they know and what they know how to do; and the nimbleness and flexibility they employ when communicating about course content and skills.
(2) Receptive Skills are students’ ability to listen, read, and deconstruct information they are interacting with in the content domains we are exploring. Receptive understanding is students’ ability to think critically as they receive, or take in, what others communicate they know and what they know how to do.
(3) Transferability is students’ ability to transfer what they know and can do to other contexts and scenarios outside the walls of school.
DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION
A Diverse Range of Voices and Mediums Through Which to Contribute
At the start of many classes, I ask students to review the class’s discussion posts that have been constructed connected to the reading from the night before. One of my objectives in this assignment is to have students working on both their expressive and receptive skills with each other. In addition, students have opportunities to reinforce content understanding and critique each other’s thinking in these assignments.
Choice, Agency, and Collaboration
In each of my classes, I have a different, collaborative opening activity that is 7 to 9 minutes in length. In these activities, students are either presenting partnered notes, where they help us take a step back into the previous class; or presenting partnered papers on unique course topics. In both cases, students present with a different partner twice in the term, which ensures that a diversity of student voices is brought into the room to start each class.
When students are making these types of presentations, I assess them in real-time, observing their content understanding and their ability to synthesize information. These activities give students the opportunity to choose their own topics and formats, and me the opportunity to ensure that all student voices are included, to assess each student in real-time, and subsequently, reinforce concepts that students need more experience with through varied mediums whether during that class or in a later one.
Analogy, Metaphor, and Multiple Examples
Cognitive science tells us that one of the primary ways people learn is by associating new information with the knowledge they already have. Knowing this, analogy and metaphor are core devices in my teaching practice. As I work to construct and share alternative explanations with students, my ability to draw analogies, make comparisons, and share multiple examples makes for more effective teaching and learning.
Helpful use of examples and modeling from course content, from examples beyond urban planning (ex: doing integration statements with their course work at EPS to better understand the concept of integration)
-Caitlin McLane, PDP Feedback Team Facilitator
CONSTANT ADAPTATION | DIFFERENTIATED ASSESSMENT TO DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION
Since I wrote that original paper in 2000, the most significant contributors to the evolution of differentiated assessment and instruction have been the tech tools that teachers and students now have access to. The most significant tools for my practice are video recording applications like Microsoft Teams, where students can record what they know, and the OneNote Class Notebook, where I can track students’ individual progress in their personal OneNote sections.
Formative Assessment: Reviewing Student Work In-Real Time
OneNote might be the most flexible tool that teachers can use for differentiated assessment and instruction in the classroom at EPS.
Within these digital notebooks, there are three primary sections.
(1) A Content Library where teachers can post course materials without the danger of them being edited or deleted.
(2) A Collaboration Section that all students in the class can contribute to and edit.
(3) An Individual Section for each student which only they and their teacher can see.
With the complement of the Class Notebook Add-on, I am able to distribute standard notes and assignments to students in their individual sections, and assess them in-real time while students are working on and representing their ideas.
The example to the right shows a formative assignment that is connected to the final Urban Segment Design in Urban Planning. Here, as students worked on constructing integration statements for different elements of their projects, I was able to see both that they were engaged, and how they were thinking. This gave me information that enabled me to adapt to students one-to-one; and to adjust how I processed the integration statements with the full class, as I worked to close out the activity and connect it to their overall project work.
Formative and Summative Assessment: Partnered Videos
When I assign videos, I stress working understanding, describing to students that the goal is to be fluid and conversational in what they are explaining, without the need for help from a peer or notes, to express their understanding. When students create and submit videos at different points in the term, I can quickly assess what they know, and use what I’ve learned from their submissions to adapt my class design for subsequent days. I also have the opportunity to ask students to go back and watch their videos, and/or the videos of their peers or partners, and use their receptive skills to assess their expressive skills and understanding captured in videos.
Current and Future Practice
| Indicator | Area of… | |
| E.1 | Considers and addresses each student’s learning profile | Strength |
| E.2 | Designs class activities and assignments that engage and accommodate for both individual students and a diverse group of learners | Strength |
| E.3 | Builds in opportunities for each student to contribute during each class period | Strength |
| E.4 | Provides alternative explanations of course concepts | Strength |
| E.5 | Adapts instruction based on formative assessment | Improvement |
Reflection
One of my long-time goals has been to be able to assess students in real-time and elegantly adapt the class experience to their learning needs. While the tools described above are great assets, I need to dedicate more time to constructing class experiences that have built-in feedback loops for students.