In this episode, Sharona and Boz speak with Camp (Dr. John Camp), the head of teaching and Learning at NEIA, the New England Innovation Academy. NEIA is an Independent day and boarding school in Massachusetts. NEIA's mission is to prepare the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams and shape. In this episode, Camp shares with Sharona and Boz how NEIA uses alternative grading practices to break out of the constrictions of traditional grading and support their core principles of innovation and entrepreneurship by constructing authentic learning both inside and outside of the classroom.

Key to their implementation is using their school wide "competencies" as the guideposts for developing their assessments. Join us to explore the details of how school wide competencies can provide the design guideposts for discipline based assessents from Math to Science to the Humanities and beyond.

Camp Bio

Camp is Head of Teaching & Learning at NEIA. He oversees the development of systems to recruit, hire, support, and evaluate teachers and helps teachers develop and implement the curriculum. He's been a leader and a teacher at a variety of schools throughout his 29-year career: boarding, day, single-sex and college.  His experience includes English and writing classes as well as interdisciplinary courses such as “The Art and Physics of Time Travel.” At St. Mark’s School, which bestowed him with The Trustees Chair and the Kidder Faculty Prize, Camp served as the Director of Experiential Learning and Associate Director of The Center of Innovation in Teaching and Learning. A pair of his pedagogical mantras include, “I aim to teach what cannot be Googled” and “I expect you to work hard, so I work hard.”

Links

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• New England Innovation Academy
• Competency-Based Grading at NEIA
• OTUS Gradebook

Resources

The Center for Grading Reform - seeking to advance education in the United States by supporting effective grading reform at all levels through conferences, educational workshops, professional development, research and scholarship, influencing public policy, and community building.

The Grading Conference - an annual, online conference exploring Alternative Grading in Higher Education & K-12.

Some great resources to educate yourself about Alternative Grading:

• The Grading for Growth Blog
• The Grading Conference
• The Intentional Academia Blog

Recommended Books on Alternative Grading:

• Grading for Growth, by Robert Talbert and David Clark
• Specifications Grading, by Linda Nilsen
• Undoing the Grade, by Jesse Stommel

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All content of this podcast and website are solely the opinions of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily represent the views of California State University Los Angeles or the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Music

Country Rock performed by Lite Saturation, licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.