Aaaand…segue: if we want good things to happen, we have to create space for them. And creating space isn’t easy.

Since launching the Workshop School five-plus years ago, we’ve spent countless hours thinking about what skills are most important for students to develop, how we help them do so, and how we measure their progress. Our approach has evolved, but in general, we’ve focused on assessing student work in terms of product and process. The former focuses on the quality of what a student produces, the latter concerned with how they go about producing it.

We know that grades, or ratings, aren’t enough. Students need feedback that guides improvement. We also know that self-assessment is probably just as important as teacher assessment in helping students take ownership and internalize high standards.

We took all of these well-founded and well-reasoned beliefs and baked them into WorkSIS, our in-house project design and assessment system. We built in a feature where teachers designed rubrics right in the system, and the criteria they set pushed directly to student dashboards. We allowed for them to add qualitative feedback into those rubrics and post it to students, even if they hadn’t graded the work yet. We developed a ‘notes’ feature to allow any teacher in the school to share feedback with students through a central interface on their dashboard. We allowed students to self-assess, with their comments pushing to teacher dashboards so they could be reviewed when teachers offered their feedback.

None of it worked.

At its most basic, an assessment system is a feedback loop. What we quickly learned was that teachers weren’t updating and posting grades or feedback in the system with any regularity, which meant students weren’t looking at their dashboards, which meant there was no feedback loop. We had created an elaborate accounting sheet.

In hindsight, we made two critical mistakes. First, we made the system too complex, which made it error-prone, which slowed it down and bred frustration among users. Second, and more importantly, we made it a pain in the neck to use. There were too many different steps a teacher had to take to use all of the system’s functions, which dramatically slowed down the process of reviewing and evaluating student work. Maybe if assessment was the only thing we were prioritizing, the burden would have been bearable. But when we’re also thinking about project design, outside partnerships, trauma-informed and restorative practices, parent engagement and a half-dozen other things, creating a system that demanded so many distinct steps was folly. We crowded the space.

Everyone was frustrated. After a fair amount of hand-wringing, we backed up to a couple of fundamental questions:

• How do we clearly prioritize and communicate the skills we value most?
• How do we create tight feedback loops that reinforce these priorities and show students where they are in real time?

This led us to a question that ran counter to our previous development work: what doesn’t need to live in WorkSIS? What can we strip out to make it simpler, faster, and more reliable? We’ve landed on a streamlined system that has almost no qualitative data in it at all, one that requires far fewer touchpoints to update. There are two big bets we’re making about how this will work. First, by making it faster and easier, we’re betting that dashboards will be updated far more frequently, tightening the feedback loop and reinforcing the skills we value. And second, by taking qualitative feedback out of the system, we’re actually making it easier for teachers to give it in a way that guides students toward improvement. We are creating space for the good things we want to happen.

All of this requires a high level of trust. We’re making these changes because our staff told us the existing one wasn’t working. We’re iterating based on what they’ve told us they want, and we’re trusting them to give students timely, high-quality feedback outside the strictures of a formal system. If we were a more top-down organization, maybe our approach would have focused on how to make teachers use a flawed system. (The majority of school districts I’ve been in, including Philadelphia, operate this way.) But next gen learning is, by definition, a work in progress. Our job is to create the space to grow, struggle, and learn together.

This post originally appeared on July 13, 2018 in the Education Week Next Gen Learning blog. 

While places like the High School for Recording Arts, WHEELS, or Youthbuild Philadelphia set a powerful example, in reality the number of “progressive” schools serving highly disadvantaged communities remains vanishingly small. To change this, we need a change in both mindset and systems.

In terms of mindset, we need to let go of the idea that the academic work is the Main Thing, and everything else merely supports that. This sort of thinking permeates education generally: we think the reason to invest in healthcare or mental health or extracurricular programs is because they will improve grades or test scores, as if that were the only good reason to offer these supports. In NextGen world, this manifests in a fixation on PBL or personalization as the real work, with elements like community building in a subordinate role. The problem with this way of thinking is that it relegates critical work to the margins. At the Workshop School, we’re realizing that what matters most to students’ long-term success (especially disadvantaged students) is just as much about restorative and trauma-informed practice as it is project based learning. (The reverse is also true: we have worked with schools that are very strong on youth development principles and practices but have realized that they are at odds with traditional approaches to teaching and learning.) As educators, we need engage students in authentic learning and help them build the skills that are most needed in college and career. But we also need to be youth workers, focused on seeing students’ strengths, attuned to the challenges the face in life, and committed to meeting them where they are and supporting them without judging.

Changing our systems needs to happen at two levels. The first involves drawing clear lines between supports at the classroom level (for which teachers are primarily responsible) and those available at the school level. Our school is very much a work in progress on this front. When a student is sent to the office to talk with a counselor or an administrator, the line between support and discipline is often blurry, as are the procedures and conditions under which that student returns to the classroom. One of our goals for next year is to help all staff develop a repertoire of trauma-informed practices to engage students who are struggling, and to further clarify and articulate how restorative processes work at the school level.

The most challenging aspect of shifting systems to support NextGen learning in high poverty schools is, not surprisingly, lack of resources. Tiered intervention models like Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) or Response to Intervention (RTI) have been around for a long time, and all seek to delineate the links between classroom support and prevention and more intensive levels of intervention. In most under-resourced schools the challenge is that the intensive interventions that are supposed to be in place simply are not. Money is certainly a factor here, but so is the decision to invest heavily in security (metal detectors, police and other security officers) over mental health and other student supports.

The good news is that this work has begun to receive significant attention in recent years. Programs like the Deeper Learning Equity Fellowship have highlighted school and classroom-level projects aimed at improving systems and practices to support our most disadvantaged young people. And here in Philadelphia, the HIVE @ Springpoint is bringing together schools and youth development organizations (which typically live in surprisingly different ecosystems) to collaborate on expanding and supporting the use of trauma-informed practices.

This work needs to continue. But we also need more opportunities to connect and collaborate nationally. I am constantly on the hunt for new schools to go visit, and I’ve been lucky enough to see quite a few. Nearly everywhere I’ve been, these schools have operated in relative isolation, the exception rather than the rule. We need opportunities, both physical and virtual, to wrestle with common questions and share what’s working. As the conversation about equity continues to expand, I hope we see such spaces created in the near future.

This post originally appeared on April 19, 2018 in Education Week’s NextGen Learning blog. 

Like many progressive schools, the students at the Workshop School, a non-selective high school in the School District of Philadelphia, present their work at the conclusion of each quarter.  By the time their sophomore year ends, they’ve presented eight times. Sophomore year finishes with the Gateway project, where they declare which of the upper houses they’d like to try: internship, college, construction, or shop. We emphasize the equality between these pathways so that the kids understand the resources and quality of teachers are the same; what matters is the choice made by the student as they try to figure out what they want to do and why. During our eleventh and twelfth grade years, they continue with presentations so that by the time they graduate, they’ve done sixteen exhibitions. There’s a weariness that accompanies the pride of completion each quarter, but there’s also a comfort with presenting that has become a hallmark of our program.

Keeping Exhibitions Fresh and Powerful

Teachers at any level can dread exhibition weeks: the focus of listening closely to presentation after presentation wears you out.  And no matter how powerful the culture you’ve built with your students, it’s hard for any group to watch twenty-six presentations over four days. As the days go on, the comments diminish and the kids struggle to stay on point. This year the junior and senior students of our advisory brainstormed solutions and we framed the exhibition days out this way: two days of watching, giving feedback, and keeping an exhibition journal. One day of supporting younger students, mostly tenth graders, as they worked through their first exhibition of the year.  And one work day to assemble work or to polish or complete any last deliverables. This process made the week flow better and led to greater concentration during most of the presentations.

Reflection: In terms of the teacher products from these days, I create a letter that I send to all students at the end of each quarter upon which I’ll add my own thoughts; I usually keep an email open that I add points and questions I want to talk over with the students. Students keep exhibition journals where they provide feedback to each other, write down quotes (thanks to DD for showing us the way), and reflect on what they’re seeing*.

Audience: Parents are an expected part of this process, although as the students get older, we tend to leave it up to students to invite their people. I called a few parents to ensure their presence although many came on their own. A typical audience, then, consisted of fifteen students, one or two relatives (unless it’s KS, in which case he brings every single one of his aunts and livestreams it for the relatives who haven’t come), one or two additional staff members from the school (this year my boss’s boss and another thoughtful staff person attended the exhibitions), a few students from the course I teach at the University of Pennsylvania, and, more often than not, one or two visitors from the community.

Student-led: Students introduce each other and set the norms for the presentation. With constant guests, though, I’ll ask the person doing the introduction to explain the purpose of exhibitions (I make a living annoying my students with the “why are we doing this” question.)  AG introduced a peer by declaring that in exhibitions, “instead of the teacher telling us what they taught, we talk about what we learned.”

Capturing Wisdom

Small bits of wisdom make their way onto a wall of student quotes in room 201.  Here’s one example from a wonderful exchange between two students during an exhibition which also shows the humor that is necessary to get through this important but intense week.

 JJ:   “How have you lived up to the four words (the ideals of our classroom)?”**
AG: “Ever since I was able to talk I’ve been collaborative”

Just as humor carries us all through exhibition weeks, close attention to the text of the presentations allows key insights into student progress as well as the culture of the class and the school. I will gather three to four lines from each presentation to use as starting points for future conversations in our room. This blog post is an extended version of this process, so what follows is an example of our notes from a presentation by JY. When you have a good community like the one in 201 you could write a different dissertation every day, but special thanks go to JY for being JY.

“You won’t always get justice but at least you’ll be heard.”

This was JY talking about the end of a project, about why they’d taken it on, and about the impact.  One thing we emphasize above almost everything else is that students are able to explain why they’re doing what they’re doing, whether it’s a small activity at the beginning of a week or a final culminating project. At least in my space, students have taken to asking, in a jeering yet loving way: “Yeah, how does this project change the world?”  As a way of capturing the drive toward justice and a set of projects, this is a non-cynical, thoughtful way of capturing a project’s goals.

“Making honest money.”

There’s a near constant tension in most urban schools. American poverty is everywhere and the structural realities of most students’ lives create potent obstacles to their education and, let’s be real, direct threats to their lives.  We can talk about this reality, we can study it and make it the focus of projects, we can try and foster the skills and the, sigh, “grit” necessary to make honest money.  We’re not remaking American labor markets and we’re not foolish enough to think we can, but we do hope we’ve empowered kids to try and find their own way through a difficult landscape.

“I don’t only have to help the place I come from, I can help people everywhere.”

This was a direct response to feedback offered by a community visitor to our place. After another student had presented, the commenter noted that you could try to help everyone not just yourself. There had been some discomfort in the room–nothing like an old guy in a suit with his fortune made urging students to be altruistic–but I was proud of this response.

“I gotta work extra hard to get these things down pat, things I shoulda got in middle school.”

We are constantly trying to empower kids by highlighting what they might need in the future. We try and do this in a different way–we want them to see the need of a skill or a body of knowledge by completing a project that does work in the world–as opposed to bludgeoning them with their own gaps the way most schools do.  If all goes well, students develop this sort of self-awareness and the strategies they need to keep in mind as they attempt new projects.

“Building ideas on a prototype will get my brain working.”
“Making a model will help me actually engage, make my brain more engaged.”

For all the schooling-by-design talk, for all the clever graphics about the design iteration process, for all the talk of STEM and STEAM and every other reform, these quotes show how JY gets inside of a project.  This consciousness about a work process, a cycle, a way of taking an idea into the world, slowly, with half-steps and missteps, of thinking about how to get your brain running…it’s all bound up in these comments.

“I try my best, my best, my best, to be a part of the community.”

I loved the purposeful, intentional way JY described his role in the world of room 201.  This is not an easy task.  We have twenty-seven powerful individuals in a vaguely industrial room for four hours. What work do we all have to do to make a community that supports quality projects?   What work do we have to do to make sure everyone can be their best selves?

“This was me motivating them.”

JY presented several pictures showing himself interacting with his peers. Only one was clearly staged.

“Work ethic of an African.”

JY was talking of his boxing prowess at a local gym, where they refer to him as “Little Africa.”

Racial and ethnic identities constantly emerge as a topic in our room. Students claim different perspectives, play with them, and talk of them.  KH greets me often with “Good morning, white man.”   It’s this playful talk in a safe space, a space that we build and protect together through constant work. More importantly, that work allows us entry into the more serious undercurrents of race, class, and gender that affect our school and our ability to do projects.  JY’s identity as a boxer is shaped by how the people at the gym see him and his pride in this identity.

“He died this summer.”

Southwest Philadelphia can be a hard place. This presentation saw JY demonstrating the kind of engagement with work we want for all kids. This presentation saw JY demonstrating the kind of self-awareness that any good education ought to foster. This presentation saw JY provide evidence of how he integrated academic and social skills. Yet this presentation ended with a reminder of all the losses, the trauma, and the inequality that shape the lives of too many children.

JY shines brightly. May he continue to do so. But it’s the world we’ve all made together at the Workshop School in these exhibitions that make his presentation possible. JY is one of 26 impressive students in room 201 and their words ring with power each quarter.

*Note:  This article was shared with and edited by the students of room 201.  All names have been initialized.  We welcome visitors who want to continue these conversations.

**Our four words for this year were persistent, collaborative, professional, and motivational.

This post originally appeared on January 22, 2018 in Education Week’s NextGen Learning blog.

Having an authentic audience for exhibitions is an essential part of the presenting experience for students. We would truly appreciate your support and attendance. For more information, or to let us know you will be coming contact Matt Riggan at matthew.riggan@workshopschool.org.

Below: On Wednesday, the sophomores practiced for their year-end presentation. At the Workshop School, the sophomores’ final presentation is called “Gateway”, and is one of the pieces needed to prove their readiness to take college classes in their junior year. To practice for their Gateways, the students presented at Wharton School of Business, which houses world-class presentation spaces.

Roman & Julie, a Philadelphia love story
Written, organized, and performed by Workshop School 9th graders!

Curio Theatre, 4740 Baltimore Ave.
Friday, June 3, 2016
10-11:30am, Admission $3-10
6-7:30pm, Admission $8-20

Reserve tickets today: online RSVP
or call Ms. Katrina Clark (215-272-7091)
or email Jaquana McDonald (jaquana.mcdonald@workshopschool.org)
Donate to our GoFundMe!

Our freshmen have been hard at work putting together this year’s play, Roman and Julie, adapted from Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet. Students in Ms. Melville’s and Mr. Lauterbach’s advisories wrote the script last quarter, and now they are working in groups to learn their lines, build the sets, create costumes and props, design the lighting and music, and organize tickets, publicity, and the program. Follow their progress on the play website and our Twitter, @WorkshopSchool!

To reserve tickets at Will Call, please call Ms. Katrina Clark (215-272-7091) or email Jaquana McDonald (jaquana.mcdonald@workshopschool.org). No tickets will be sold at the door, so get them now!

Can’t make the show? Show your support by donating to our GoFundMe! This will help us cover the cost of costumes, props, and other supplies. Every donation counts, no amount is too small!

Why? Certainly, it’s not that the Workshop School and this private school have the same funding, unlimited resources, or pristine facilities. (Donations welcome here!) In my opinion, the similar vibe is due to both schools’ fundamental belief that all children should be trusted and given the opportunity to grow, learn, and explore as inquisitive human beings.

The Workshop School doesn’t have a metal detector, and students are allowed to move about the school in ways that aren’t militarized or scripted. Students are allowed to use tools and borrow supplies that will support their learning. Students are given real choices and taught how to manage their time on their own. In an educational era that is driven by data, testing, and behaviorist school rules, the Workshop School believes that all children should be trusted, valued, and taught how to think for themselves. We haven’t figured it all out yet, but beginning with trust seems like a great place to start.

Below: Juniors work outside to prep a car for a new coat of paint. Far below: Freshmen use the workshop to create props for the school play on June 3rd.