Transcripts can be found via our website, humanrestorationproject.org.

Today we are joined by Dr. Susan Blum, Dr. Blum is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, and the author of many works and articles, including her recently released: Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), which features fifteen different educators, such as Arthur Chiaravalli, Jesse Stommel, Aflie Kohn, and Laura Gibbs, speaking on their ideas and implementation of the practice. And as an interesting side note, more than half of the educators in the book have appeared on our podcast! 

In this conversation we'll be talking about ungrading, framed on the ideas found in the book - the “how” of the practice, and particularly how ungrading fits within COVID-19 and promoting equity as a whole.

Dr. Susan Blum, professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame and active author, with a recent focus on ungrading.

• Ungrading Book Club (assembled by David Buck)
• West Virginia University Press: Ungrading, edited by Dr. Susan Blum
• Human Restoration Project Ungrading Handbook
• Human Restoration Project Ungrading Course

• 78: A Way to Ungrade, Floop w/ Christine Witcher
• 74: The Research on Assessment w/ Dr. Astrid Poorthuis
• 54: Making the Switch to Ungrading feat. Abigail French, Dr. Susan Blum, and Dr. Laura Gibbs
• 47: Redefining Assessment by Implementing Gradeless Learning feat. Jeffery Frieden, Aaron Blackwelder, & Nick Covington

Transcripts can be found via our website, humanrestorationproject.org.

Our conversation today will center on teaching organization and collective activism. Essentially, we find ourselves at an important crossroads, as the administration shifts to new policies - teachers will be at the whim of new federal (and likely, state) policies that will have massive ramifications on classrooms, especially during COVID-19. And I hope out of this conversation, we’ll be able to address - what should I be concerned about? What problems may exist? And then, okay...what can I do to actually mitigate these problems and demand an equitable education system?

Dr. Kevin Gannon, the Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and a Professor of History at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, and author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. Further, Gannon actively writes and teaches on the science of learning, racism and race in education, and building inclusivity online and offline. You can learn more on his website, TheTattooedProf.com and on Twitter @TheTattooedProf.

• The Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire
• Pedagogy of Hope by Paulo Freire
• Radical Hope by Kevin Gannon
• HRP Book Review: Radical Hope

• ThinkUDL with Kevin Gannon: Radical Hope for Online Teaching

This is a recording of our Teacher Powered Schools Virtual Conference 2020 presentation: Sharing Power with Students: Reframing Systems Toward a Liberatory Pedagogy. This session dives into why reform doesn't work, how teachers can use collective action to change systems, and what really, is the point of us working against inhumane structures if not much is actually changing?

• One Teacher Can't Save the World by Nick Covington and Chris McNutt

• Introduction: Human Restoration Project

Today, Chris and I (Nick) are joined by John Hale, whose biography you will hear at the beginning of the interview. John was recently the guest of a Soho Forum debate on the topic of pandemic pods, which you heard excerpts of at the beginning of this episode and confined in its entirety on YouTube.

Since the Human Restoration Project has primarily been focused on pedagogy and changing the structures of school, I wanted to have John on to talk more about the history and ramifications of education policy and help us unpack what's really going on in our current conversations about pandemic pods, voucher programs and the recently announced Bezos Academy. How can we simultaneously acknowledge that schools need to change while being critical advocates for the need for public institutions and employee unions? How have market oriented takes on so-called school choice actually subverted the original intent of independent and charter schools? It's a really interesting conversation and it was great to talk to John. I'm sure we'll have him on again to talk education policy, history and organization in the future.

Dr. Joe Hale, professor of educational policy, organization, and leadership at the University of Illinois, Urban-Champaign, and author of the forthcoming book, "The Choice We Face" (working title)

• Jeff Bezos is opening a tuition-free preschool for underserved children (CNN)
• Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
• Small Schools and Choice Revisited by Deborah Meier

• Are ‘Pandemic Pods’ a Symptom of the Public School Monopoly? A Soho Forum Debate (YouTube)

Today we're joined by Dr. Erin Lynn Raab. Erin is the Co-founder of REENVISIONED, a movement to redefine the purpose of school.
  REENVISIONED aims to change the conversation of school away from standards, norms, and improving the status quo, toward human flourishing, community, democracy, and collective liberation. Erin and her co-founder, Nicole Hensel, both graduates of the Stanford Graduate School of Education, aim to collect 10,000 stories of students, teachers, and community members to develop a shared vision of what school could, and should be.


The organization works with schools and individuals to catalyze new conversations and create new visions.  They provide a tried and true process for opening space for truly eye-opening conversations between young people, educators, and other adults in their community about what we all really want out of our education system and for our live. You can read some of these interviews at REENVISIONED.org.

In our conversation together, Erin talks about systems-based thinking and transforming the system, rather than upholding the status quo. It's a deep, complex discussion centering on history, psychology, and more. I hope you enjoy!

Dr. Erin Lynn Raab, who earned her Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University, where her scholarship pertained to the question of how we can transform education systems so they foster individual flourishing and thriving democracy, and is the co-founder of REENVISIONED.

• REENVISIONED: Hundreds of interviews on the purpose of school, with free resources and activities to help facilitate these conversations by yourself or with classes.
• “Why School?": A Systems Perspective on Creating Schooling for Individual Flourishing and a Thriving Democratic Society” - Dr. Raab’s Ph.D. Dissertation
• The End of Policing by Alex Vitale (referenced)

Shorter, broad audience pieces by Erin:

• If We Want a More Just, Equitable Society We Have to Re-envision School. Here’s how to start. 
• Designing School for Human Flourishing & Thriving Democracy   
• The Four Purposes of Schooling

• 43: The Good Life feat. Steven Gumbay, REENVISIONED, The Future Project, Anne Connolly, Richard Loeper-Viti, & Gamal Sherif

Today we're talking about ungrading with the EdTech tool, Floop, short for feedback loop,  found over at FloopEdu.com. Now, we don't normally talk about specific tools and strategies at HRP - we get into the theory and pedagogy of progressive systems...but the most common question we're asked is: okay well, is it even possible to do any of these things? It seems like a ton of work and it'll be overwhelming, and everyone is against me!

Well, one potential solution is Floop! In summary, Floop allows you to easily provide feedback to your students. You create dropboxes on the platform, students upload their assignments, and then you are given audio and text-based tools to comment on what they've done. You can assign feedback visually, through comment banks, see growth over past revisions, and you can see if students have read what you've said. I personally love that Floop is committed to ungrading - and you don't need to enter in any grade whatsoever. The company actively promote practices to distance ourselves from grades altogether.

I, myself, started using Floop this year and I'm excited to share it. I think it's a great example of an ed tech company using their tools for actual education as opposed to maintaining the status quo, and it's affordable and ethical as you'll soon find out.

Christine Witcher, a current middle school STEM educator and co-founder of Floop, founded in 2017.

• Study: LMS, Grading, and Comments
• PD on Feedback-Driven Learning
• The Floop Curriculum

• Teach Better Podcast: 94: A Two-Way Conversation – Christine Witcher chats with us about the importance of feedback, and how to make sure our students are emotionally ready for it, and prepared to learn from it. 

Today we are joined by Evan Whitehead, a veteran educator who is the director of special services at a K-8 school in Illinois. Evan has served in a variety of roles, from crisis and behavior interventionist to Latino parent outreach coordinator to Title 1 director. Further, Evan actively presents on reaching at-risk youth, leadership, and self-care for everyone in education, and is a national consultant for the Aha! Process.

We discuss how educators can best prepare for self-care, especially now within remote and hybrid contexts. Further, we focus on conversation on two themes: 1) how can we build systems (e.g. breaks, SEL check-ins) to ensure teachers are supported by administration, and 2) how can we ensure that toxic positivity doesn’t ignore equity and social justice in the “name of” self-care?

Transcript available here.

Evan Whitehead, a leader in social-emotional learning, leadership, and self-care, and director of special services at a K-8 school.

• How Self-Compassion Can Help Prevent Teacher Burnout
• Dena Simmons: Without Context, Social-Emotional Learning Can Backfire

• The Innovator’s Mindset: Balance, Boundaries, and Breaks (YouTube)

In this podcast, Nick Covington (of HRP) and I, Chris, discuss the "return to learn” plans of school and what we must think about as we reopen. We call upon other educators to hear their thoughts, including Dr. Jessica Zeller, Rachel Lawrence, Shane MacLeod, and an anonymous caller.

Three key themes emerge in our conversation:

1. We need to recognize that asynchronous learning is just as valid, if not more valid, than synchronous learning in both content knowledge and equitable practice.
2. Our conversation of “reimagining education” has been replaced with maintaining control. Teachers must push back to change the status quo.
3. Teachers are facing massive cognitive dissonance of wanting to return to the classroom and help students, while simultaneously recognizing the safety and logistical concerns of the situation.

Also, we experimented with a new recording set up so I apologize for the decrease in quality…always attempting to do better!

• Death and Teaching, COVID-19 by Chris McNutt
• Referenced Rubric (@k_shelton)

This is an audio version of our Summit on August 1st, 2020. Here's the video!

Inspire Citizens is an innovative organization focusing on active, informed civics through social justice, sustainable development, collective well-being, SEL, and ethical media literacy. Out of the Blocks is an NPR program focused on capturing the sounds on the street of Baltimore, formed on the idea of interviewing every single person on a given block. And Evan Whitehead is a school leader and educator of over 20 years with a focus on social-emotional well-being.

Check out this podcast between Inspire Citizens and Out of the Blocks on how this work can involve students.

Further, this Padlet has a huge collection of ideas shared today. Further, check out our write-up on writing.humanrestorationproject.org.

Our Summit focused on endorsing student voice through activism in a hybrid/virtual setting. How can we help students become involved in their community when it's difficult or impossible to actually walk around the community? How can we use technology (e.g. podcasts, photography, interviews) to help connect others? How can we promote social justice when it's difficult to build interpersonal connections?

Look out for future Summits via Human Restoration Project’s website and social media.

Let’s put this into perspective: the United States is planning on the mass reopening of schools when COVID-19 has still not ended its first wave. Millions of people have been diagnosed, and the CDC has issued little concrete guidance on how schools will actually reopen next month. The US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has essentially ignored questioning of even the notion of remote learning and does not believe that this is a serious issue that will effect children (flat out refusing to acknowledge the adults in the room too.)

This podcast addresses the anxiety and real chance of death due to COVID-19 in the classroom. It calls upon teachers to organize and demand remote learning. Let’s face it, there’s two options:

1) We go back to school, cases increase, and more students, teachers, and faculty members die. This isn’t a hypothesis. There are ample facts presented in this podcast on why this is the case.

2) Teachers stand up to districts, using their extreme leverage during the pandemic, to stay remote and minimize destruction.

I encourage you to listen in. - Chris

• Parent Letter Template - We Demand Safe Schools!
• “There Will Be No Teachers Left”
• School Virtual/Hybrid Reopening Demand Template Letter (Florida)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b8Kg_a4Omo
• https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases
• https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-restrictions-us.html
• https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2020/05/26/children-transmission
• https://www.businessinsider.com/how-coronavirus-travel-through-air-droplets-aerosols-2020-3
• https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/12/us/arizona-teachers-coronavirus/index.html
• https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/11/politics/cdc-documents-warn-high-risk-schools-reopening/index.html
• https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/07/10/889848834/nations-pediatricians-walk-back-support-for-in-person-school
• https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/concerns-mount-in-chapel-hill-over-prospect-of-students-returning-to-unc-amid-pandemic/19183462/
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-13/covid-19-reinvades-u-s-states-that-already-beat-it-back-once?srnd=premium
• https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-battles-new-wave-coronavirus-infections-after-reopening-n1233139
• https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/asia/south-korea-coronavirus-shuts-down-again-intl/index.html
• https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3092174/coronavirus-third-wave-fears-escalate-hong-kong
• https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-hongkong/hong-kong-tightens-social-distancing-again-as-coronavirus-cases-rise-idUSKCN24E1L5
• https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/07/10/889376184/photos-how-hong-kong-reopened-schools-and-why-it-closed-them-again
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JSGOO6GiI8
• https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-coronavirus-and-school-closures.html
• https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13/us/teachers-covid-19-return-school/index.html
• https://fortune.com/2020/05/28/us-unemployment-rate-numbers-claims-this-week-total-job-losses-may-28-2020-benefits-claims-job-losses/