March 1 - 5

  D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update

Weekly Happenings

Let's start with the Art show everyone saw on Thursday. If you haven't - THIS IS AMAZING! Great work Melissa! Appreciate the Jazz band as well Joe!  Consistently amazed by the talented students who walk our halls and our faculty and staff who are able to get the most out of them!   

A very nice story on WSAW this week. Great job to Jeremy Brandt, Tiphany Schmidt, and all the team members to get the coffee shop, and an authentic work experience, up and running this year!  Link to story here

Congratulations to EMMA FOOTIT! She earned the Emerging Leader Honor Award. She is one of 16 DECA members from Wisconsin DECA to earn this prestigious award.

Key Club brought in over $450 in their second volunteering stint at the Humane Society. Check out the Pic Collage below.  Thank you to Julie Rice and Megan Ackley for your leadership with Key Club!

Great work this season by the DC Everest Fishing Club! Big thank you to Joel Deboer, Pete Thorpe, Liz Mammano, and their team for their efforts.  Check out the pic collage below.

Thanks to Mark Schommer for sharing the following tweet with me - Powerful words!

Interesting Information

Getting Started With Culturally Responsive Teaching

Understanding students’ lives can help teachers foster a sense of belonging and ensure that all students feel respected and challenged.

By Nikki Williams Rucker

The world of education is buzzing with talk of being more culturally responsive, but what does that mean, and how important is it really?

When I talk about culture, I’m talking about norms, beliefs, and behaviors that are passed down from one generation to the next—the things that explain why a student might answer a question the way he does or why another might not feel comfortable looking you in the eye when you’re speaking to her. These aspects of culture are among the most misunderstood in the teacher-student dynamic and are often the things that cause students to get into the most trouble in the school discipline system. Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) attempts to bridge the gap between teacher and student by helping the teacher understand the cultural nuances that may cause a relationship to break down—which ultimately causes student achievement to break down as well.

In her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond writes that “by third grade, many culturally and linguistically diverse students are one or more years behind in reading.” CRT is one of the most impactful tools for empowering students to find their way out of that achievement gap. This alone makes being culturally responsive one of the most important things you can learn at this moment.

GETTING STARTED

The first step in being culturally responsive is to do an internal audit—yes, you read that right, an audit: truly digging deep inside of ourselves and recognizing and naming those things we don’t want to look at or talk about. The experiences we’ve had along our journey in life have formed stereotypes which have then turned into implicit bias. These unintentional, unconscious attitudes impact how we relate to our students and their parents, and how we choose curriculum, assess learning, and plan lessons. Harvard University’s Project Implicit has an online test you can take to examine your implicit bias.

Culturally responsive teachers also have to be aware of the sociopolitical context schools operate in and dare to go against that status quo. Students need to understand the system that is working around them in schools. Give them context and don’t be afraid to talk about the tough subjects that may not be addressed in your school. In addition to Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, another great resource is Affirming Diversity by Sonia Nieto. The most important part of this work is a willingness to do something different to get different results, with the goal of increasing academic achievement.

For your audit, take some time to ask yourself hard questions and reflect on past and current practices. Are you operating from a place of critical care within your classroom—a place that marries high expectations with empathy and compassion? Are your students, regardless of socioeconomic status or background, being held to high standards? Has your past interaction with a particular race of people impacted your ability to communicate with parents? Identify those places in your instructional planning where you might have allowed your implicit biases to prevent you from pushing your students to achieve at optimal levels. Answering questions like these might be hard, but in order to create change, you have to identify and unearth the roots of your teaching practice.

NEXT STEPS

Now that you have conducted an internal self-audit, your curriculum will need one as well. What books are students reading? Do they have a voice in what they read, where they sit, how they interact with each other?

Empowering students to take ownership of not just their learning but the environment itself is another critical component of CRT. One strategy for fostering a student-centered environment is having students create a classroom agreement that answers the question: “How will we be together?” Allowing students to answer this question will give you a window into how their cultures dictate the ways in which they want to feel respected, heard, safe, and included in the classroom and in their interactions with one another and with you. This reinforces the idea not only that they belong but that the way they show up at school every day, with all of their outside experiences in tow, has value.

Finally, put some thought into your lesson planning. You have taken the time to reflect and really look into your own biases that may have been getting in your way. You have revamped your classroom environment to reflect your students’ voices, their various cultural needs, and their choice. Now let’s have some fun.             

 For example:

• Encourage students to make a social media campaign that champions their favorite cause, and have them bring evidence of their results to class to discuss the role social media plays in social change.
• Use current songs that students might love to analyze the use of literary techniques and imagery in music videos. Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” is a great one. Better yet, instead of assigning a song, ask students for their suggestions.
• Watch and discuss documentaries like Race: The Power of an Illusion.
• Zaretta Hammond shared three simple strategies you can use to make lessons in any subject more culturally responsive.

Our students need us now more than ever, and we have to roll up our sleeves and do what we must to close the achievement gap. Culturally responsive teaching is one step in the right direction. The outcome is a student body that loves learning, excels academically, and has teachers who respond to their needs.

Being culturally responsive encourages students to feel a sense of belonging and helps create a safe space where they feel safe, respected, heard, and challenged.

Announcements/Week Ahead

A note from Sunshine - A congratulations card and a Target gift card were shared with Brandon Stremkowski and his wife on the finalization of their two adopted children. We’re excited to see their family grow!

AP Review Date - Aspire testing is scheduled for April 28. Typically on this date, we have allowed AP teachers to bring in their students for reviews. Unfortunately, due to social distancing requirements, we are going to need our whole staff to proctor this test. We will not be having the 28th as an AP review day. I would encourage AP teachers to use Flexible Fridays for this practice.

Parent-Teacher Contact Time - A reminder that there are an additional 3 hours built-in for teachers to connect with parents. This can be done by email, phone, WebEx, etc. We choose not to schedule these three hours to increase flexibility for both faculty and parents.

Important Dates:

March:
Three additional hours of flexible Parent-Teacher conferences by March 10

3      BLT Meeting at 2:50

4      CANCELED 45m ELT

5      Final updates to course booklet from Department Chairs/Coordinators due to Mike
8      CANCELED 45m ELT
9      Junior ACT Test, no school for 10th and 12th
12    "B" Cohort Schedule due to ACT on the 9th
17    Happy St. Patrick's Day!
17    Virtual Faculty Meeting, 2:50pm
17    Board Meeting, 6:30pm

February 22 - February 26

  D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update

Weekly Happenings

I'd like to pass on my condolences to all those who knew Coach Steffenhagen.  I have attached the news story from WSAW below.

https://www.wsaw.com/2021/02/20/coach-wayne-steffenhagen-leaves-behind-a-lasting-legacy/

Congratulations to:

Girls Hockey - Lost in overtime on Wednesday in the State Semi-Final. That team went on to win the whole tournament this past weekend. Great season for the Storm and coaches Jacques du Vair, Bart Holtz and Claire Tomczk.

Boys Basketball - A tough double-overtime loss to Appleton North ended the great season! Congratulations to Jerry Pagel, Jon Felch, Jason McFarlane, and Matthew Schulz for back-to-back WVC Conference title.

Ski/Snowboard - Congratulations to our Ski teams for their competition efforts early last week in the state meet and coach Jeff Tobin for all of his efforts. 

Interesting Information

Although we have no intention to include community service as a graduation requirement in the future, we will emphasize service more and more as we continue to discuss what it means to be a D.C. Everest Graduate. Future conversations will include discussing how we include service opportunities within the normal school day so that all students can have access to these opportunities.  This article does a nice job of quickly introducing some of the important benefits for students.

12 Reasons Community Service Should Be Required Curriculum
By: Dr. Melissa Venable.  https://www.redefiningready.org/research-career-ready

For most people, volunteering is an extra; something that’s nice to do, but not absolutely necessary. Although plenty of students do community service, the number of students who volunteer is dropping at a rapid rate.

Consider this: college student volunteerism peaked in 2004 at 31.2%, and in 2010, got down to 26.1%. Nearly three-fourths of students are missing out on an incredibly enriching experience that can benefit them not just personally, but professionally as well. Why is this such a big deal?

Read on to understand 12 reasons why community service is so vital to student success, and why volunteering should be required in schools.

1. Service Learning Associated with Academic Gain

Students who participate in community service learning tend to do better in school. It’s believed that community service is somewhat of a missing link for students, giving them the chance to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to real human needs. Volunteering is a great way to follow up on and supplement subjects that have been covered in the classroom.

2. Students Often Experience Increased Sense of Self-efficacy

Students who do community service work learn that they can actually make a difference with what they do. This helps students better understand their own competence, leading to more self-confidence and a can-do attitude that can spread to their work and academic pursuits.

3. Students More Likely to Grow Up to Become Voters

Youths who take part in volunteering activities become more involved in their communities, and as a result, tend to care more about what happens in those communities. Often, students who have participated in community service will grow up to become young voters and remain involved in their communities throughout their lives.

4. Service a Great Problem-solving Skill Builder

Students participating in community service are often faced with challenges and tough problems to tackle. By working through them as a volunteer, they learn how to better solve problems, and enjoy the satisfaction of overcoming a hurdle.

5. Volunteering Has Health Benefits

Creating a lifelong habit of community service can help students become more healthy over the course of a lifetime. Research has shown that individuals who participate in volunteering have better physical and mental health than those who do not, especially among adults aged 65 or older.

6. Students More Attractive to Potential Employers

Taking part in community service teaches students skills that are valuable to employers, like problem solving, teamwork, and the ability to follow instructions. Volunteering is especially valuable when it is related to a student’s future career.

7. Excellent Networking Opportunities

Community service opens students up to a wealth of networking opportunities, allowing them to build new relationships within their community as they contribute. Students can meet new people, work with new organizations, and strengthen their ties to the community.

8. Sense of Responsibility and Pride

As students work within their community, they learn that they can be responsible for making great things happen. This helps to build a sense of responsibility in students, and a sense of pride when they see what they’ve done is actually helping others.

9. Learning Beyond the Classroom

Volunteering allows students to take what they’ve learned and apply it beyond the classroom. This offers the opportunity for enrichment and a great way for them to see how concepts they’ve learned work in the real world.

10. Opportunity for Soft Skill Building

Participating in community service allows students to build upon their existing skill sets. As students work in a real-life setting, they can use volunteering projects to explore and improve upon existing skills. Students can explore potential careers and find out what they need to develop in order to work in the field.

11. Scholarships!

Students who participate in volunteering opportunities may be able to find more scholarships than they would without such experience. As community service offers students a way to build their network, they’ll be creating connections with more people who can write letters of recommendation, and often, certain community service organizations offer their own scholarship opportunities.

12. Big Team Building Opportunity

As students work in community service programs, they’ll learn how to better work in teams. Often, students will also learn to develop leadership skills as well. This is valuable not just for schoolwork, but for higher education, careers, and further community involvement.

Announcements/Week Ahead

Parent-Teacher Conference Teacher Appointment Schedules - Thursday, February 25, is parent-teacher conferences from 3-6:30pm with a built-in 20-minute break. A few reminders regarding conferences Thursday.  

1. Dawn will be in the main office ext. 4021, if needed.
2. Dawn will email the link for signups on Monday morning.
3. Please view your online schedule frequently. If a parent calls, Dawn will schedule them if there is an open spot.
4. Check your "Parents/Guardians Needing a Different Time" listing and contact them when you have time.
5. Parents can schedule up to 24 hours prior to conferences.
6. There will be individually wrapped treats in the teacher's lounge. Please come down during your break and enjoy.

Parent-Teacher Contact Time - A reminder that there are an additional 3 hours built-in for teachers to connect with parents. This can be done by email, phone, WebEx, etc.  We choose not to schedule these three hours to increase flexibility for both faculty and parents.

Junior ACT Demographics - Please remember to complete the junior ACT demographics Monday and Tuesday of this week.  Please read all the directions on the "2021 Junior ACT Testing Information" sheet and the roster.  EVA students will not be in any ELTs so return those with all the others on Tuesday.  Then return the roster, answer documents (in alpha order with label on top in 2 piles:  completed and absent), and signed confidentiality agreement immediately after ELT on Tuesday.  Students keep the "Taking the ACT Test" pamphlet and  "Non-Test Instructions for Students"

There are a few Juniors who do not have an ELT listed in their activities this year.  We will call those students to meet us before ELT begins on Monday and Tuesday. If a student shows you a schedule without an ELT, please send them to the office.

ACT Confidentiality Agreement - All faculty and staff working with the ACT (room supervisors, proctors, subs, etc.) must sign one of these forms.  Junior ACT teachers have one in your packets you received Friday.  All others will find one in their mailbox Monday mid-morning.  Please complete and sign by the end of this week to Dawn's mailbox or office.  Thank you.

Important Dates

February:

24.          BLT meeting at 2:50. Link to follow

25           Parent-teacher conferences 3-6:30

26           Vacation, Day off for all faculty and staff

22-3/5    3 additional hours of flexible Parent-Teacher conferences

March:

4            CANCELED 45m ELT

8            CANCELED 45m ELT

9            Junior ACT Test, no school for 10th and 12th

12          "B" Cohort Schedule due to ACT on the 9th

17          Happy St. Patrick's Day!

17          Virtual Faculty Meeting, 2:50pm

17          Board Meeting, 6:30pm

February 15 - 19

  D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update

Weekly Happenings

Check out members of the Key Club volunteering at the Humane Society for February's Feel the Love Event:

Congratulations this week

Wrestling State Meet Participants - Demitrio Covarrubias, Freddy Lehrke (4th Place), Orion Boe (4th Place), Easton Cooper (4th Place)

Storm Hockey - Headed to State next week! Big 5-1 win over the weekend to advance.

Boys Basketball - Won the back-to-back Conference title with their win last week.  They begin playoffs on Friday.

Ski Team - Ava P'ng and Annika Nye are competing over the next couple of days at State in La Crosse.

Girls Basketball - Big congratulations on a fine season to our girls basketball team and coaches Bullis, Mathies, Schulz, and Christenson!  The season came to an end in the Regional Semi-final on Friday.

Interesting Information

More and more research supports that the most important thing we can do is focus on building positive and supportive relationships with students.

THE RESEARCH IS IN

A Fuller Picture of What a ‘Good’ School Is

Promoting relationships and a positive mindset toward learning has a bigger impact on students’ long-term success than raising test scores, new research shows.

By Youki Terada
January 29, 2021


Test scores are often touted as an objective way to measure how good a school is. And while this is true to a degree, they don’t tell the whole story. For students who come from disadvantaged or minority backgrounds, schools that emphasize the social and emotional dimensions of learning—relationship-building, a sense of belonging, and grit, for example—may do a better job of improving long-term outcomes than schools that focus solely on high test scores.

In a new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, C. Kirabo Jackson, a professor of education and social policy at Northwestern University, and his colleagues found that schools with robust impacts on student well-being may be helping students in ways that aren’t picked up by standardized tests. These schools may not have the highest test scores, but they’re the most likely to motivate students to graduate and attend college, especially those students who are less likely to do so in the first place.

“Test scores aren’t everything, and schools that promote socio-emotional development actually have a really big positive impact on kids,” Jackson told me. “And these impacts are particularly large for vulnerable student populations who don’t tend to do very well in the education system.”

WORKING TO SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE

This is the latest in a series of studies examining the broad impact that teachers and schools have on students. Jackson’s previous research looked at the impact that teachers had on noncognitive skills such as self-regulation and found that teachers who improved these skills improved their students’ long-term outcomes, boosting not only grades, but also attendance and high school graduation rates. The skills that are valuable for future success aren’t usually measured on tests, Jackson points out. So while teachers and schools are often evaluated by their ability to improve students’ test scores, broader measures should be used.

In the current study, Jackson and his colleagues looked at over 150,000 ninth-grade students who attended Chicago public schools between 2011 and 2017, analyzing test scores and administrative records. They also examined responses on an annual survey students completed on social and emotional development and school climate. The survey covered a range of topics, including peer relationships, students’ sense of belonging, how hard they studied for tests, and how interested they were in the topics they were studying. The data were then combined into a three-part index: one that included test scores and other academic outcomes, a “social well-being” index, and a “work habits” index.

Jackson's team found that schools that scored high on the latter two indices—those that promoted social and emotional development—were also the most effective at supporting long-term student success. In these schools, there were fewer absences, and more students graduated and went on to college. And perhaps more importantly, the benefits were greatest for student populations who struggled the most in school.

“These results are broadly consistent with studies that have found that psychological interventions, specifically things like belonging interventions, tend to have the largest impacts for lower-income students or underrepresented minorities,” Jackson told me. “So the data that we’re finding are consistent with the idea that these particularly vulnerable populations are the ones that benefit the most from the socio-emotional interventions.”

WHY NONCOGNITIVE SKILLS MATTER

Although all students benefit from attending high-performing schools, it’s the schools that provide a well-rounded education that drove the differences that Jackson and his colleagues observed. They discovered that a school’s impact on the noncognitive dimensions of learning—healthy relationships and a growth mindset, for example—were much more predictive of long-term success than a school’s impact on test scores.

For example, Jackson found that high schools that were effective at improving students’ feelings of connectedness and belonging had the biggest impact for disadvantaged students, improving their graduation rates by 3.1 percentage points. In contrast, graduation rates for advantaged students at these high schools increased by 0.6 percentage points.

Schools that were effective at raising test scores had a much smaller impact on graduation rates, improving them by 1.8 points for disadvantaged students and 0.2 for advantaged ones.

Disadvantaged students, Jackson told me, “were likely to be relatively lower on the socio-emotional measures” when they started high school. “They were less likely to have strong feelings of belonging in their schools, less likely to have the persistence or academic engagement that students from more affluent homes may have had. So these are the students who would have benefited the most from schools that improve these things.”

So what’s the big takeaway? Some high schools are better than others at fostering healthy relationships and the skills and mindsets—like grit and good study habits—that promote long-term success. So for Jackson, success shouldn’t be measured in terms of test scores alone.

“If you look at people who are successful in life, oftentimes they have attributes that are really positive, in addition to being really smart,” Jackson told me. “They’re very smart, very knowledgeable, but they also seem to be well-adjusted, for the most part. They tend to be engaged, highly motivated. So there are a lot of other traits that aren’t measured by test scores, but if you look at successful individuals, you see that they have those things.”

Announcements/Week Ahead

Wednesday, February 17th - I miscommunicated with the photographers regarding mask protocols during photos last week.  As a result, we have to redo the morning Cohort A photos.  Makeup group yearbook photos will be taken on Wednesday morning.  With the virtual day on Monday followed by the pictures on Wednesday, this is not great timing for cohort A, however, we are going to continue with the schedule as planned.  Thank you for your flexibility with students on this day. If you have any questions regarding retakes of group A's yearbook photos please contact Mike Raether.  Schedule linked here.

A note from Sunshine - Sympathy cards were sent to Jeff See for the passing of his father-in-law and to Libby Plamann for the passing of her mother. Our condolences go out to them during this difficult time.

Trophies from this year - If you have any trophies or other celebratory pieces from clubs or organizations you would like displayed from this year's students - please give them to Jim Sekel. We will display all awards for the year.

Friday, February 26th - This date has been deemed to be a day off for all employees. There are no professional expectations for any employee on this day - enjoy the long weekend!

Junior ACT Testing - Materials will be distributed early this week.  Additionally, Todd will discuss ACT expectations during the faculty meeting on Wednesday.

9999 - A reminder that any emergency situation (physical, medical, etc.) requires the staff member to use 9999 on any school phone to contact the main office.  You are never wrong if you dial 9999.  The use of this procedure ensures that we have a quick response to the emergent situation.

Parent-Teacher Conferences on February 25th - Conferences on February 25th will be from 3-6:30 p.m. through WebEx or phone call.  There will not be an early release on this day. Teachers will have an additional 3 hours for parent-teacher contact from March 1 - 10.  Contact refers to Webex, phone calls, or emails.  We have chosen not to schedule these hours to increase the flexibility for both faculty and parents.

Important Dates

February:

15           ACT Accommodation Mtg, 2:50pm 

16           ACT Accommodation Mtg, 7am 

17.          Cohort A makeup photos

17           Virtual Faculty Meeting, 2:50pm - Link shared later

25.          Parent-teacher conferences 3-6:30

26           Day off for all faculty and staff

March:

1 - 10.    3 additional hours for flexible Parent-teacher conferences 

February 8 - 12

 D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update

Weekly Happenings

We had a few competitions over the last week. Congratulate the following students when you see them.

FBLA Regional Competition:

     4th place: Agribusiness - Presley Dillion (alternate)
     3rd place: Banking and Financial Systems - Owen Bunnell and Andy Ziemer
     3rd place: Management Decision Making - Collin Socha, Quinn Stack, and Mathew Stepanik
     3rd place: Sports and Entertainment Marketing - Parker Hurt and Kyle Jaglinski
     2nd place: Business Ethics - Aidan Morgan
     2nd place: Marketing - Patrick Burns and Andrew Liegl
     1st place: Securities and Investments - Mike Brierton

Also, congratulate Mike Brierton for all of his work as Region II Vice President over the last year. Organizing a virtual competition was not easy and Mike really came through!

Mock Trial:

Congratulations to Mock Trial and their second-place finish this weekend! Their all-weekend, Zoom tournament occurred at school. A few pictures shared by Ciera!

Wrestling Sectionals:

Congratulations to sectional champions:

    Easton Cooper

    Freddy Lehrke

Additional state qualifiers:

    Demitrio Covarrubias

    Orion Boe

A few pictures from the week!

Curriculum and Instruction

A big thank you to Anne Marie for sharing this article with me this week. There are some excellent thoughts about assessment and feedback in today's environment.

Respond & Reimagine: Academics in Uncertain Times
January 14, 2021 | Volume 16 | Issue 9

Formative Assessment for Remote Teaching: Evidence and Feedback

Dylan Wiliam and Kathleen Scalise

Over several Express issues, we're laying out practical remote techniques for a formative assessment framework's five instructional strategies. Catch up on our first installment, "Understanding Learning Intentions."

Figure 1: 5 Instructional Strategies

Once you are clear about where you want students to go, you need to know where they are. Most people assume that when we remember things, the memory itself does not change. But in fact, whenever we retrieve knowledge from memory, that act makes the memory stronger. The harder the memory is to retrieve, the greater the strengthening effect.

So, when beginning a new topic, it is helpful to get students to write down—or in the case of younger students, to tell you—what they know about the topic. This activation of prior knowledge makes subsequent learning more memorable.

Eliciting Evidence of Learning

Whether in an online session or in face-to-face teaching, teachers frequently test the memory retrieval process with checks for understanding. However, when we think of checks as an assessment process, we have to think about the quality of evidence we have for instructional decisions in terms of depth and breadth.

Depth

Are we asking questions that give us insights into students’ understanding, and are we sure that the right answers indicate the right thinking? Consider the following question:

Two flights per day travel from Newtown to Oldtown. The first flight leaves Newtown each day at 9:20 a.m. and arrives in Oldtown at 10:55 a.m. The second flight from Newtown leaves at 2:15 p.m. Assuming both flights take the same amount of time, when does the second flight arrive in Oldtown?

It is tempting to assume that if students can provide the correct answer, then they understand how to do time calculations. But in this case, the required time calculation does not take the time past the hour, so a student who believes that there are 100 minutes in an hour will get the same answer as one who knows there are only 60 minutes in an hour. To be effective, we must design questions so that students with the right thinking and students with the wrong thinking don’t produce the same response.

Breadth

For eliciting evidence in terms of breadth, it is essential to get information from all, or at least most, of the students in the group. If you are only getting information from the confident students, it's impossible to make instructional decisions that meet everyone's learning needs.

In a remote session, students can indicate their responses in a chat or respond to an anonymized poll. In NWEA's list of digital tools and apps to support formative assessment, at least half involve some sort of shared poll, text, or worked example, from Poll Everywhere to Dotstorming (a visual and crowd sourcing approach) to Five Card Flickr (which tags within image banks).

It isn't always about fancy tools, though. When remote teaching is synchronous, it may be preferable to use the “finger voting” method, where students hold up fingers in response to a multiple-choice question. If we want to create a classroom culture where students feel happy about making mistakes and expressing opinions in a group context, then we should not record every response in a spreadsheet—unless students can use the information to see advances in their own thinking. Collect-and-go approaches that forward to the teacher only can be confusing to remote learners who are in the process of mastering self-reflection. Without having access to the information themselves, learners are left to rely on feedback from the instructor.

By spending time designing questions before online sessions begin, we can make better-informed judgments about whether our students are ready to move on. It can also be helpful in remote teaching to increase the element of construction and richness in assessment tasks (Scalise, 2011; Shute, Ventura, Bauer, & Zapata-Rivera, 2009). Instructors can design valuable questions with formats that offer an interactive edge to support the student experience. For example, teachers in history or economics who are teaching schools of thought or different economic models can allow students to sort quotes on colored "tiles" from the sources being studied, or instructors might employ a drag-and-drop concept map or ask students to populate a timeline. In each of these cases, the technology sparks conversations, reflection, and collaboration.

For remote Mistake-Centered Action Exploration (MCAE), which we discussed in our first installment as an approach that inculcates a love of mistakes, try what we call the "Space Interval" assignment. Extending activation of prior knowledge combined with strategic competence, space interval brings back the opportunity to elicit evidence that students flagged previously while examining their mistakes. Software tools built to keep a tally of how successful the student is on each subsequent attempt let them choose any of the flagged examples for more practice. The likelihood of activating a prior mistake goes down as the mistake arises less often. This creates a type of strategic scaffolding. It also gives students the opportunity to draw on their adaptive reasoning over the range of what they have learned.

Feedback That Moves Learners Forward

What kinds of feedback are most effective? Should feedback be immediate or delayed, specific or generic, verbal or written, or supportive or critical? Research over the last three decades has confirmed that the unsatisfactory answer to all of these questions is, "It depends" (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996).

For diffident learners, feedback may need to be supportive, but for more confident learners, it may be better to "cut to the chase" and tell students what they need to do to improve. Research has also shown that although students tend to express a preference for immediate feedback, delayed feedback can be more effective, perhaps because it challenges students to retrieve things from memory (Mullet, Butler, Verdin, von Borries, & Marsh, 2014).

Despite this mix of recipes for success, some reasonably universal guidelines should work as well in online learning environments as they do in face-to-face environments.

The first guideline, and perhaps the most important, is that feedback’s main purpose is to improve the student, not the work. Feedback that tells students exactly what to do, or worse, corrects their work, is unlikely to help better performance in the future. As in sports, the purpose of feedback is not to correct the last pitch or tackle but to improve future games. Yet, in many classrooms, feedback focuses on how to improve the last piece of work rather than the next one —or, in Douglas Reeves’ memorable description, "an autopsy rather than a physical" (2002).

Second, if feedback is to help students improve, they must engage with it. For example, a student might be told that of the 20 subtractions they have completed for homework, five are wrong, and they must “find them and fix them.” The idea here is that feedback should be in the form of an engaging, concrete task, thus minimizing the likelihood of an emotional reaction—sort of like detective work. If, as Robyn Jackson says, we should "never work harder than our students," then feedback should be more work for the recipient than for the giver.

Relationships Make or Break Effective Feedback

How students react to feedback depends on the relationship between student and teacher. As the work of David Yeager and his colleagues has shown, when teachers stress that they have high standards and believe that the student can reach them, students are far more likely to engage with the feedback (2013).

There is no simple formula for effective feedback, but any teacher can improve by asking their students, “How did you use my feedback to grow?” If the students cannot give a satisfactory answer to this question, then something needs to change.

In remote teaching, one effective tool for this formative strategy has been using on-screen markup to provide group feedback during synchronous sessions. This is done through screen sharing, where students see online what the instructor is drawing, with a chat tool live for “back channels” or discussions among the participants. Live markup and chat as feedback may, in fact, increase engagement, with the moving stylus and a simple visual, even if very primitive, proving helpful.

One easy way to employ on-screen markup is Dan Roam’s "6 by 6" rule from his book The Back of the Napkin, which suggests that teachers learn six quick sketch types and associate them with six major question types: who/what, how much, where, when, how, and why (2008). In this approach, if we are responding to a “who/what” question, the “portrait” is often a quick head sketch or simple shape. For “how much,” Roam recommends turning to the chart sketch; for “where,” a map squiggle; for “when,” a timeline; and for “how,” a flowchart of cause and effect. “Why” can draw on any of these and may also be well-served with a multiple variable plot. With a handful of simple tools, teachers can provide live visual feedback in many contexts.

Applying the Mistake-Making Lens

To incorporate mistake-centered exploration at the secondary level (see our video example), we can offer feedback through the MCAE error log, or a multidimensional display tool that examines what we did and why. An error log for remote teaching in response to an interim assessment in a science or math classroom, for instance, uses green and red bars to indicate correct and mistaken responses (alongside written or vocal feedback).

During the assessment, the student flags which questions or tasks they struggled with or guessed on. Time information helps students understand how they are using their time. Taking much longer than most students but still deriving a strong solution may indicate a missing strategy that the student would like to learn. Taking much less time than other students with a high mistake rate may indicate the student needs support to engage. Below the error log, students classify mistakes and can then compare their feedback to their understanding of shared expectations.

Announcements/Week Ahead

Friday, February 26th - This date has been deemed to be a day off for all employees. There are no professional expectations for any employee on this day - enjoy the long weekend!

Junior ACT Testing - Materials will be delivered this week of February 8th and the first teacher meetings start Monday, February 15th. More information will follow soon.

Parent-Teacher Conferences on February 25th - Conferences on February 25th will be from 3-6:30 p.m. through WebEx or phone call.  There will not be an early release on this day. Teachers will have an additional 3 hours for parent-teacher contact from March 1 - 10.  Contact refers to Webex, phone calls, or emails.  We have chosen not to schedule these hours to increase the flexibility for both faculty and parents.

Important Dates

February:

10-11      Yearbook Group Photos

10           BLT at 2:50

12           Secretary PLC Mtg, 9-10am

15           ACT Accommodation Mtg, 2:50am - details coming

16           ACT Accommodation Mtg, 7am - details coming

16           ACT Meeting, 2:50pm (for all teachers/aides other than accommodations) - details coming

17           ACT Meeting, 7am (for all teacher/aides other than those testing accommodations) - details coming

17           Virtual Faculty Meeting, 2:50pm

25.          Parent-teacher conferences 3-6:30

26           Day off for all faculty and staff

March:

1 - 10.    3 additional hours for flexible Parent-teacher conferences