Grow Beyond Grades

Grow Beyond Grades

By Grow Beyond GradesEducation
Download on the App Store

Grow Beyond Grades episodes

  • Episode 5 - Grades and the Future of Schools with Benjamin Doxtdator

    This episode features an interview with Benjamin Doxtdator, a middle school language arts teacher at an international school in Brussels, Belgium. Benjamin is probably best known for his essays on his blog Longview on Education at longviewoneducation.org.

    Topics include:

    • How deemphasizing grades reflects Benjamin's commitments as a teacher
    • The potential pitfalls of a more gradeless future
    • The rhetoric of education reform, educational technology, and futurism
    • How tapping into and cultivating community can help us our voice as educators
      • 28 min
    • Episode 4 - Experts in the Classroom with Starr Sackstein

      This episode features an interview with Starr Sackstein, author of the book Peer Feedback in the Classroom and Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School.

      Topics include:


      • What are peer experts?
      • Why use peer experts?
      • How to implement peer experts in the classroom
      • How to maximize the effectiveness of peer experts
        • 21 min
      • Episode 3 - Shift This! with Joy Kirr

        This episode features an interview with Joy Kirr, author of the book Shift This! How to Implement Gradual Changes for MASSIVE Impact in Your Classroom.

        Topics include:

        • Why Joy decided to write the book
        • How to create a positive classroom culture
        • Dilemmas of grading and reporting learning
        • How to implement Genius Hour
        • Other shifts Joy is making after publishing the book
          • 26 min
        • Episode 2 - Why I Don't Grade with Jesse Stommel
          This episode features an interview with Jesse Stommel, Executive Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington. He is Co-founder of Digital Pedagogy Lab and Hybrid Pedagogy: a digital journal of learning, teaching, and technology. In addition to his focus on digital and critical pedagogy, Jesse has been a gradeless educator for his entire career, as he recounts in his blog post "Why I Don't Grade."
          0 min
        • Episode 2 - Why I Don't Grade with Jesse Stommel

          This episode features an interview with Jesse Stommel, Executive Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at University of Mary Washington. He is Co-founder of Digital Pedagogy Lab and Hybrid Pedagogy: a digital journal of learning, teaching, and technology. In addition to his focus on digital and critical pedagogy, Jesse has been a gradeless educator for his entire career, as he recounts in his blog post "Why I Don't Grade."

          Topics include:

          • Why grades are "the biggest and most insidious obstacle to education”
          • How de-emphasizing grades coincides with a pedagogy of equity and social justice
          • Why a gradeless space will not automatically be an equitable one
          • How seemingly neutral platforms can flatten differences and influence pedagogies
          • How we need to think about going gradeless in order it to be liberatory, transformative, an act of resistance
            • 33 min
          • Episode 1 - Providing Feedback to Writers with Patty McGee

            This episode features an interview with Patty McGee, author of the book Feedback That Moves Writers Forward.

            Topics include:

            • How to use the "Power of Three" in feedback.
            • Strategies to help the stuck and reluctant writers
            • The importance of setting writing goals
            • How and when to introduce grammar
            • How feedback works at the middle, secondary, and college levels
              • 28 min

            About Grow Beyond Grades

            From the publisher's feed

            This is the podcast of Grow Beyond Grades. Each episode we speak to educators who are transforming teaching and learning by grading less. Tune in and learn with us!