Nate Bowling teaches Social Studies at a US Embassy School in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. He is a past Washington State Teacher of the Year and National Teacher of the Year Finalist. He and his wife blog about living and teaching overseas at BowlingsAbroad.com and he is the host of the Nerd Farmer Podcast on the Channel 253 Podcast Network. He writes a weekly newsletter called Takes & Typos on Substack and you can find him on Mastodon’s Scholar.Social as @natebowling.

Topics include:

Other resources:

Dr. Juuso Nieminen is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong and a Banting Fellow at Ontario Tech University, Canada. He studies the social, cultural, and political aspects of assessment. Why do we assess the way we do? Dr. Nieminen’s research focuses on the student perspective in assessment. He is particularly interested in how assessment shapes students’ identities in higher education and beyond. Dr Nieminen has also examined the matters of disability inclusion and accessibility in assessment.

Other resources:

Vanessa Ellis is an 8th-grade social studies teacher at Veterans Memorial Middle School in Columbus, Georgia. In 2017, Vanessa was named a Georgia Economics Teacher of the Year, and in 2018, she was selected as a Harvard Fellow to study research-based practices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2022, she was honored as Teacher of the Year for her school and for the Muscogee County School District. This year, she officially joined our team here at TG2 and is currently one of ten finalists for Georgia Teacher of the Year. She resides in Midland, Georgia, with her husband and three children.

Other resources

TG2 team member, Michelle Cottrell-Williams, interviews Jan McArthur, Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice in the Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, UK. Jan’s research focuses on the nature and purposes of higher education and how these relate to practices of teaching, learning, and assessment. Jan McArthur coauthored the piece, A Womanist Approach to Care-Full Feedback, with Ameena L. Payne, which received an overwhelmingly positive reception.

Professor McArthur has a particular interest in critical theory and in her published work explores the ideas of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Axel Honneth, applying these to higher education. Her book, Rethinking Knowledge in Higher Education, explores how Adorno’s critical theory can inform our understanding of, and engagement with, knowledge in higher education for the purposes of greater social justice. Her second book, Assessment for Social Justice, uses Honneth's conceptualization of mutual recognition to rethink the nature of assessment in higher education. 

Liz Norell is passionate about great teaching and student success. As a political scientist (well, really, a political psychologist), she's motivated to understand how/why we develop the political beliefs we do...and how to have more productive dialogue across differences. As a faculty member and mentor, she loves brainstorming ways to make classrooms more inclusive, engaging, exciting, relevant, and welcoming spaces for learning. She embraces pedagogies of equity and care, including the full spectrum of ungrading. She loves to talk with other teachers about teaching. You can follow her musings at her blog, www.liznorell.com, and on Twitter @liznorell.

Mike Rutherford is a lifelong teacher and learner. Eight years ago, he returned to the classroom as a middle school English and Social Studies teacher after many years in the education private sector with Blackboard and Just ASK Publications & Professional Development. Prior to his time in the private sector, Mike was a middle school teacher and technology training specialist in Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia, and an EdTech Director for the City of Manassas Public Schools. Mike created gotLearning as a classroom teacher to manage the constant barrage of student learning data coming from so many different sources. Mike lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania with his educator wife, Elizabeth, and two dogs, Luna and Bella, who are two of gotLearning's four official office dogs.

Because ungrading is essentially an emancipatory practice, it cannot be held to one formula or singular standard. Instead, ungrading relies on a robust community of educators to circulate, celebrate, and elevate the practice in its various forms. Lisa Wennerth, welcomes four trailblazing educators—Liz Leininger, Rita Shah, Firas Moosvi, and Taylor Vivanco—whose article “Why There Isn’t One ‘Right Way’ to Practice Ungrading” posits ungrading as a fundamentally open, welcoming, and responsive practice for all—not just the elite few. This podcast originates from an earlier Special Community Gathering, where Lisa first facilitated a discussion with our guests and then opened the floor to questions from participants.

Miriam Plotinsky is an author and instructional specialist who addresses challenges in both teaching and leading across schools with a wide range of differentiated needs. A strong advocate for student-centered learning, she provides coaching and professional development for teachers and administrators. She is the author of Teach More, Hover Less: How to Stop Micromanaging Your Secondary Classroom and Lead Like a Teacher: How to Elevate Expertise in Your School (Norton Books in Education, 2022 & 2023). Miriam is widely published in Education Week, Edutopia, ASCD Express, Middleweb, The Teaching Channel, EdSurge, K-12 Talk, and Education World. She is also a National Board-Certified Teacher with additional certification in administration and supervision.

Sarah M. Zerwin teaches Senior Language Arts and AP Lit at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado, and author of the book Point-Less: An English Teacher’s Guide to More. You can follow her blog The Paper Graders and on twitter at @SarahMZerwin

Topics include:

Resources: