In this episode, Sharona and Bosley interview one of their former students. Dr. Mary Reeves took the MAA OPEN Math intensive training on "Redesigning Your Course for Mastery Grading" in the summer of 2023. Subsequently, she redesigned two of the math content courses for future Elementary and Middle School Math teachers. Join us to hear about Mary's experiences working with, and impacting, future teachers.
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[00:00:00] Mary Reeves: I was like, in 35 years I've never seen a student knock it completely out of the park on the very first try the way Isabella just did. And I'm not saying the rest of you didn't do a good job, you did, but this is amazing. And I want you to appreciate how incredible I think this is after doing this for years and years. Afterwards I told her, I'm like, this is going to be an assignment. I'm going to go ahead and put Mastery in your guidebook. You do not have to do it. Because you did it so beautifully the first time. Focus on something else. You've already accomplished everything that I wanted you to accomplish. After class she stayed for a few minutes and told me that was the first time she'd ever been singled out in a math class for something positive. And I'm not going to say that we both cried, but that's entirely possible.
[00:00:57] Boz: Welcome to the Grading Podcast, where we'll take a critical lens to the methods of assessing students learning, from traditional grading to alternative methods of grading. We'll look at how grades impact our classrooms and our students success. I'm Robert Bosley, a high school math teacher, instructional coach, intervention specialist, and instructional designer in the Los Angeles Unified School District and with Cal State LA.
[00:01:23] Sharona: And I'm Sharona Krinsky, a math instructor at Cal State Los Angeles, faculty coach and instructional designer. Whether you work in Higher ed or K 12, whatever your discipline is, whether you are a teacher, a coach or an administrator, this podcast is for you. Each week you will get the practical detailed information you need to be able to actually implement effective grading practices in your class and at your institution.
[00:01:51] Boz: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I'm Robert Bosley, one of your two co hosts and with me as always Sharona Krinsky. How are you doing today, Sharona?
[00:02:00] Sharona: I am doing well. I have a theme for this semester for myself. This is the theme of Exam generation semester, because with the new job I have, I'm writing a lot of exams and it's really making me aware of how much I've enjoyed my alternative grading over the last number of years. Because I haven't had to write exams in probably six years. And now that I have to do it as part of my new job, it's proving to be a little challenging.
[00:02:32] Boz: Well, but give a little bit more detail about that. Cause you're not just writing exams to give. What's going on with your new role that you're having to do that?
[00:02:43] Sharona: So in my new role, I have nine different courses that I coordinate of those nine, seven of them are in a traditional grading format, which means that five of the seven are not standards aligned. So they have learning outcomes, but the work to align the teaching with those learning outcomes hasn't happened. And in those I also have numerous, numerous sections. So I'm having to create exams that have a lot of problems on them. They're all mathematics So they're all having formatting issues. I need many many versions. So it's challenging, because you're working with me on this and you're asking me, so why am I asking this problem? And I'm looking at you going, I have no idea other than it's a section in the book.
[00:03:35] Boz: Well, but you're and the kind of the point I was hoping you would go to is these are all coordinated courses. So you're not writing test for a class. You're writing test for like common assessments. So that is kind of the first step that you've taken with all of these new courses that you're coordinating is you're at least getting common assessments in there as you know, you, and rightfully so, probably couldn't have jumped straight to alternative grading with all of these different math courses that you're now coordinating with six days in advance before the semester started getting the job right.
[00:04:13] Sharona: Exactly. Although I will say that yes, I'd say that the entry points that I have had with this sudden adjustment back into more traditional grading, I'm still me. I can't let things go unchallenged. So I'm very, very pleased to report that a couple of the fundamental features of alternative grading are creeping in right away. So I'd say the first thing is the idea of retakes. Almost all of my classes are offering some form of retake, even if it's not to the degree I would like. And the instructors very much want that, especially because they don't have to generate the exams for the retakes. So that's helpful. And everyone is cooperating to allow these common assessments. So those have both been really helpful very positive steps. We're also using some form of proficiency scaling because we're trying to do common grading. And so we're starting down the baby step paths to all that.
[00:05:09] Boz: So, and that's a key component, and one that I'm actually kind of surprised you're pulling off as well as you are, is anytime you have common assessments, the point of common assessments, you know, is to have kind of a equal measurement through the different instructors. That doesn't happen if you're not also calibrating your grading, which, like I said with as little time as you had and as big as teams as you have and as many that you have, the fact that you're pulling that off is also an incredible feat.
[00:05:43] Sharona: Well, and I have to give a big shout out to my instructors because they're the ones that are open and allowing this. And we have some people more skeptical and some people less skeptical, but everyone's at least willing to listen. And think about what we're asking. So that's been really good. But I am spending a lot of time head down in LaTex code and the things that make mathematics formatting happen.
[00:06:08] Boz: And we're not alone today, are we? So you want to introduce our guest today?
[00:06:14] Sharona: We are very happy to have with us in the virtual studio today, dr. Mary Reeves. Mary is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Northwestern State University of Louisiana. She specializes, her little niche, is elementary and middle school math for teachers, so working with a lot of future teachers on the fundamentals of teaching math at those levels. She has her PhD in education from Louisiana State University. Welcome Mary to the pod.
[00:06:47] Mary Reeves: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
[00:06:49] Boz: One of the things, Mary, that we always like to ask our new guests when they first come on is just how did you get involved in this crazy world of alternative grading?
[00:07:01] Mary Reeves: Well, it was 100 percent a coincidence. I was flipping through my email and I saw a message from MAA about the courses that they were offering for the following summer. This would have been fairly early in the spring. of 2023 so about February, and I just, I don't have anything to do right now, I thought, and I'm just going to take a look and see what the titles are. So I was expecting, and found, a lot of things that were clearly aimed at mathematicians who do different work than I do. Some very content focused workshops that were going on, but the very last one was enticing and intriguing and I don't remember exactly what the description said, but it really spoke to me about some things that I'd been dissatisfied with about my course.
[00:08:00] I taught elementary methods for decades, then I switched into mathematics, still teaching the same population, but at a different point in their studies. But I had been experiencing dissatisfaction with the amount of time I spent talking with students about their grade versus the amount of time I spent talking with them about what they had or had not learned in the course. So they would take exams, they would do not as well as they would have liked and then they would come to me and they were concerned about how they could score more points and get a better grade because they're required to attain at least a C or better. So they have to pass the course or they have to retake it. So I had those conversations that I think anyone who teaches mathematics has had. What do I do? How do I improve my grade? How do I accumulate more points? In a system where once they'd taken the test and we'd moved on, that was sort of finalized and their period for learning was over.
[00:09:04] So in reading, the description of the summer workshop. I just felt like this was something that I'd been kind of searching for....
