Your Morning Boost - The Non-Negotiable: How to Partner with Parents on Grading Reform

Welcome to your Morning Boost, brought to you by AWB Education. Here we amplify knowledge, widen reach, and broaden impact in education, delivering your daily dose of professional development. This program is sponsored by Grundmeyer Leader Services, where together we are transforming education, one leader at a time. Now get ready to amplify your day with your Morning Boosted. Happy Wednesday, Boosters, Welcome back to your Morning Boost here on AWB Education. I'm your host, Adam Bush, and I'm thrilled to again all week long have to amazing people that I'm also are authors and got a book out there that we're actually I'm going to give you guys a little glimpse into our question for today. It's going to be tied to your book. So we're going to really check and see if you guys are ready to go for this one. But before we get to that, give me a give us a little limp into what that book is. Where can we find this book, guys? Yeah? The books called The Parents Guide, Grading and Reporting being clear about what matters. It can be found on Amazon, Bloomsbury dot Com, Barnes and Noble. All the major retailers were super blessed to be able to work on it together. We're proud Island educators and implementers of grading reform, and we really felt like it was an awesome opportunity to be able to support parents but also teachers and school leaders as well, just continue a really good positive conversation about what we call modern grading practices within the book. That's awesome. I don't think it's on my shelf. I do own your book. I think it's sitting back in my office. And I'm going to tell you right now, don't give me any quiz questions because I'm not going to be able to rattle them off yet. That's not on my list of memorized books quite yet. I'm getting there. But all right, So, like I said, though, our question for today, question number three, and our five questions this week, it is going to tie to your book just a little bit. So we're going to quickly take a break and then we'll get back into that question number three today, So listeners, stay with us. We will be right back here after this. Hi. I'm doctor Lisa Hill, a longtime educator of nearly forty years as a teacher, counselor, professor and vice principal, and I've seen just about everything public schools can throw at you, and now I'm sharing my tales on my comedy podcast, Vice Principal Unofficed. It's where school leadership meets laugh out loud. Stories from underwear required, parent teacher conferences yes really, two staff launch confessions, and more you won't believe. I'm telling it all with humor and a whole lot of heart. I also tackle the serious stuff too, like what schools really need to change and those behind the scene moments no one talks about. So if you're ready to laugh, learn, and maybe even pry a little, but mostly laugh, join me and my ninety year old mom, my unofficial co host on Vice Principal Unofficed. New episodes drop bi weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast fix. Trust me, this is one detention you'll actually look forward to. Well, if you haven't caught doctor Hill's podcast yet, it's certainly worth the listen. I just every day that I listen to that when I just keep hoping that I just hope this isn't my story that comes on there, because there's a chance that there's one or two of them out there. She could use. But that's all right. That's okay, that's that's good entertainment, all right. Like I said, guys, question number three for Wednesday here we go. Question is, so, regarding your book, what is the most effective non negotiable communication strategy that a district should use to educate parents about grading reform and then also foster partnership with the families. A right, first, a tongue in cheeky answer your question here, Adam. The first the tongue in cheeky answer is buy the book and make sure all the parents read it, all right. So more seriously here, when Chad I wrote the book, what we discovered is it's been around twenty years or so since it's actually been a book actually geared towards parents as readers of a book about grading reform. And so of course we're very proud of that book. At the end of almost every chapter there's a series of questions. And so to answer your question, Adam, I want to refer to the idea of a non negotiable communication strategy. If I'm a district leader out there, if I'm building leader out there, I want to make sure that my parents have these types of questions that are in the back of our book, and I'll give an example here in a second or something similar. All right. For example, we know that most parents just want to know, like, how is my kid doing? And so they ask a series of questions to their kids. They ask a series of questions to their kids teachers. But the questions that they're asking are kind of like they're in the old paradigm, if you will, of traditional grading. And so here's an example. You know, what can my child do to improve their grade? Is a very classic question that a parent would ask their child's teacher. Well, a new question that we might, you know, suggest in this book is instead of asking specifically about the grade, parent ask this question, which standard or standards is my child doing well? And which standard or standards can they still improve upon. So there's just an example of a bank of questions I envisioned, just like we did in the Soul And Community School district. I was there saying, all right, here's a teach art. Here's the old types of questions that you'd ask, here's the new types of questions. And just one more for illustrative purposes. Here the types of questions that parents can ask their child at home. Right, So I'm a parent of four kids. I might ask one of my middle school kids in the old way, you know, what homework do you have tonight? Well, now it's not what homework do you have tonight? It's hey, what do you learn about in school? What standards are you learning about? And which ones are you practicing tonight? And how well are you practicing it? So again, old question, new question. You can envision the school district, you know, creating magnets with a tech chart on it or T shirts. I don't know, mean that's a little overboard there, but at the very least, a one pager to hand out to email home, to have on their website, to have available at parent teacher conferences so that parents can get the information that they want, just asking slightly different questions. I like that idea, I like that. Anything else you want to add to that, doctor Lang. Oh, it's great. We just want to be able to reinforce that idea that grades are just a form of communication and on like a temporary or excuse me, then I'm really like a permanent tattoo forever of chemistry be minus. They may have that impact on a transcript, but truthfully, there's a lot of interaction points beforehand. I think oftentimes when we deal with secondary parents, but even elementary as well, a little bit intimidated by the idea of standards, like what does it mean? What would I even ask? Or you know, worst case scenario, you'd ask me to have to show you how to practice math. That's been a challenge for a number of people. But we actually positive differently. Oftentimes your children they don't really want you to help them with the content, but they surely would appreciate the opportunity to say, what context are you? Is your learning happening? And we know that the research tells us that what major growth happens is when students can self identify, and is tied to John Hattie's work, is where am I? And where do I want to be? Or maybe where my parents want me to be? But just the idea figuring out how much of a chasm is there and what are the actual steps that I would do? Parents are great at being able to ask those questions so seat you can get all these things turned in? Did you figure out how to solve for a polynomially? Yet? Is there anything else that I can do to help you? Should we try to stop in the story, get a study guide or is there a great con Academy episode on that? And then those are just great positive communication type opportunities between the parent and the child, but also the parent perhaps and the teacher as well. Really helps, really helps. I should say, the student own their learning by doing it that way, rights, it is theirs, it's their learning, their journey helps them get that ownership of what it is that they're doing in school. I love that. That's awesome. All right, guys, three questions down, We got two to go back again tomorrow with one more, one more question as we get through our list of grading reform practices. This has been really exciting so far this week, Guys. I keep taking little notes off to the side here for my own work on the daily basis, because there's a lot of stuff here that we can learn from. Regardless of where you're at and standards reference grading or if you're far long down that journey or not, there's still a lot of work to be done. So thank you for being here again, Boosters, thank you for joining us on your morning. Boost be back again tomorrow with even more so tune in to finish up this week as we talk about grading practices. But until that time. Thank you for listening. We will talk with you again tomorrow. That concludes another episode of Your Morning Boost. We hope today's daily dose of professional development helps you amplify knowledge, wide in reach, and broaden impact. Your Morning Boost is an AWB Education production brought to you with the generous support of Grundmeyer Leader Services. Join us again tomorrow for more. Until then, keep boosting your Impact. H