Grow Beyond Grades

Jesse Stommel is a faculty member in the Writing Program at University of Denver. He is also co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and Digital Pedagogy Lab. He has a PhD from University of Colorado Boulder. He is co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy.

Jesse is a documentary filmmaker and teaches courses about pedagogy, film, digital studies, and composition. Jesse experiments relentlessly with learning interfaces, both digital and analog, and his research focuses on higher education pedagogy, critical digital pedagogy, and assessment. He’s got a rascal pup, Emily, a clever cat, Loki, and a badass daughter, Hazel.

Originally aired as a live Community Gathering, where Vanessa Ellis interviewed Jesse on his book, Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop, and then opened the floor to questions for participants.

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Mike Flanagan is the CEO of the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC), a growing group of high schools creating a digital high school transcript that opens up opportunity for each and every student—from all backgrounds, locations, and types of schools—to have their unique strengths, abilities, interests, and histories fostered, understood, and celebrated.

Mike oversaw the design and development of Mastery Transcript software products, connecting with members and advisors to manage the MTC product roadmap until May 2021. He is an experienced education technology executive, most recently having served as CEO of the Services Division at the National Association of Independent Schools, where he led a complete redesign and relaunch of their School and Student Services financial aid platforms.

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Alex Shevrin Venet is an educator, author, and professional development facilitator based in Vermont. She teaches community college and graduate teacher education. Previously, she was a teacher and leader at an alternative therapeutic school. She is the co-founder of the Nurturing the Nurturers collective, a healing community for educators. Her first book, Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education, is a bestseller at W.W. Norton. She is also a long-time ungrader!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.