Revolutionizing Student Motivation: Assessment Strategies That Actually Work with Tyler Rablin

Join me in conversation with coach and author Tyler Rablin to explore transformative approaches to student motivation and learning. Focusing on his book Hacking Student Motivation: 5 Assessment Strategies That Boost Learning Progression and Build Student Confidence (Hack Learning Series), Tyler shares innovative strategies for assessment, feedback, and building student confidence. 

Drawing from his experience as a high school English teacher, he discusses how educators can move beyond traditional grading to create learning environments that empower students, foster autonomy, and help them see their own potential.

You will gain practical insights into creating meaningful learning progressions, providing effective feedback, and motivating students through choice and personalized learning approaches.

Episode Mentions: 

• Larry Ainsworth & Priority Standards
• Albert Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory of Motivation & Social Learning Theory
• John Hattie & Effect Sizes Related to Student Achievement
• Daniel Pink

Some of Tyler’s favorite resources that connect to our conversation:

• Ohio's Learning Standards extended
• My Assessment Resource Document

Tyler’s published writing and work:

• Hacking Student Motivation
• Tyler’s blog
• Tyler’s Edutopia author page

#Education #HackingStudentMotivation #StudentMotivation #AssessmentStrategies #TeacherInspiration #LearningProgressions #Feedback #StudentConfidence #EducationalTechnology #TeachingMethods #StudentEmpowerment

When teachers, coaches, administrators, and families grow together, schools change. Students get engaged, get support, and get the chance to thrive. 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

[00:00:00] Olivia: Hi there. I'm so happy you're here. Here's what you'll gain by listening to the very last second of this conversation with Tyler Rablin. In this episode, Tyler and I discuss why reimagining student motivation is not about changing everything at once. But, about creating small, meaningful opportunities for students to see their own learning potential.

[00:00:25] Olivia: You'll learn how to transform your feedback and assessment, and why traditional grading systems limit student growth. Tyler also offers strategies for building student confidence through strategic autonomy, and how to prioritize learning over scoring. Stay with us. I'm so excited to have you join our conversation.

[00:00:46] Olivia: This is Schoolutions: Coaching & Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom, a show that offers educators and caregivers strategies to try right away and ensure every student receives the inspiration and support they need to thrive. I am Olivia Wahl and I'm excited to welcome my guest today, Tyler Rablin.

[00:01:11] Olivia: Let me tell you a little bit about Tyler. Tyler Rablin is an instructional coach, a former high school ELA teacher, an assessment and educational technology consultant, and author. In each realm of his work, Tyler's goal is to help educators and students see their competence, embrace their confidence, and experience their awesomeness.

[00:01:36] Olivia: Our conversation today will focus on Tyler's book. I have it right here. It's a beautiful cover, uh, Hacking Student Motivation: Five Assessment Strategies That Boost Learning Progression and Build Student Confidence. Tyler, it is an honor to have you as a guest today. Welcome. 

[00:01:55] Tyler: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

[00:01:58] Olivia: I'm psyched too. When I jumped into this book. I read it with multiple lenses, and so I read it as an instructional coach working and supporting with school districts. I read it as a caregiver. I have two boys, one is a sixth grader and the other, uh, junior, both going into their senior and seventh grade years.

[00:02:17] Olivia: And, um, you know, my junior in high school is very motivated by grades. And I kept reading this book, thinking the teachers that he connects with the most don't focus on grades. They focus on every aspect of what you speak to. And he cares deeply about success, but. It's the teachers that connect with him and everything, every other way that resonates.

[00:02:42] Olivia: So that struck me, um, and that's why I'm so excited to jump in and have you speak to this book and the work. Um, what I would like to do though is I want to jump in actually to pages three, four, five, and six, because that's where I paused. I did some highlighting. And I absolutely love your language of the rapidly changing attention economy.

[00:03:05] Olivia: Yes, yes, yes. Um, I mean, we're living that as educators and classrooms and, you know, how do we capture students and motivate them at the same time? Um, and then you go on to say, it will continue to be frustrating so long as we try the same tactics to motivate students. Um, you offer hacks that are incredible.

[00:03:26] Olivia: But this issue on page five, this really got me, uh, because I think this is what we're also struggling with. So I'm quoting you directly. In the planning and scrambling to try to get students back on track and get credit recovery systems in place, the education system overlooked one critical component.

[00:03:43] Olivia: Many students lost their reason to move. I love that idea of movement and we've got to get kids engaged, we've got to get ourselves more engaged, um, and I think this is the way to do it. So. Before I have you jump in, page six, this is what got me, and this is you speaking. What I'm most passionate about is helping to create students who are motivated to move the needle of their learning for meaningful reasons, empowered to make a difference in the world around them, and confident enough in themselves to try without a grade or other measure hanging over their heads.

[00:04:25] Olivia: Boom. So let's jump in. Let's jump in. The structure of the book is super accessible. I appreciate it. And then as I was reading, uh, you and I have talked before we jumped into record. The publisher has a set structure for the series, the hacking series. So then I was wondering as, um, a writer, was that structure constraining for you?

[00:04:52] Olivia: Because often I say to teachers, don't offer a structure up front, go with meaning and ideas. So how is that for you as a writer? 

[00:05:00] Tyler: It was a really interesting process for me. I, I had a lot of my thoughts and ideas that I knew I wanted. And so at first the structure was actually somewhat limiting for me. I had a really hard time taking my existing ideas and making it work.

[00:05:15] Tyler: And, um, so, so that was actually, I felt like I started to lose a little bit in the drafting process. Um, and I, you know, spent a lot of time working with the publisher and figuring out how do we make this work? And I ended up just sort of writing it how I needed to write it and within those sections. 

[00:05:31] Olivia: Um, 

[00:05:32] Tyler: but the part, it became really useful for me in the editing stage because it helped me think about my ideas in ways that I may have overlooked or things that I may not have been necessarily thinking about.

[00:05:44] Tyler: Like I, there's a section in each, uh, chapter that really looks at. anticipating the pushback and being able to respond to that. And I think I do it internally all the time, anytime I pitch a new idea. But having that out there, especially as thinking about, you know, an educator who might be going to an administrator to say, I want to try doing this, to be able to be sort of armed with that language and that preparation to go in and say, I know this is a concern, here's how I might be able to address it.

[00:06:13] Tyler: Um, I, I really liked, it just sort of pushed me outside of the, the lens that I have always been thinking about some of this and really pushed me to think about it in new ways and new ways to approach it that, you know, my way of looking at things isn't the only way of looking at things. So that structure helped me think outside the box and think about how might other people need to interact with this information.

[00:06:34] Olivia: I appreciate that. And it also moves to solutions based thinking. Which, if you're proactively thinking of the pushback, you can have answers or ideas of how to solve that pushback. Um, so, just so readers, listeners can know, you start off by naming the problem right out of the gate in each of the chapters.

[00:06:53] Olivia: I appreciate that. Um, and then you offer a hack. And I, I love the language hack. Uh, because it's just that. You have an inspirational quote, you give a beautiful narrative of how that connected to yourself. And your practice, and then you jump in, here's what you can do tomorrow, right out of the gate, go.

[00:07:12] Olivia: And beyond that, break each hack down with action steps and however many action steps it's going to take. It's in that chapter. And then you also include the thinking about the pushback. So each chapter is so tight. Um, but I, I do want to just go back to where we started that. Offering structure ahead of time can hinder that flow and idea production.

[00:07:38] Olivia: I really appreciate how you said it helped with editing. And I think teachers can consider that as well. You know, structure helps some and it also paralyzes others. So it's just interesting. Right. 

[00:07:50] Tyler: I think about it with, with like my, so I taught freshman English for most of the time that I was in the classroom.

[00:07:55] Tyler: And. If I hadn't gone into that structure with an idea already, I think if I had been put into that structure and then had to try to come up with my idea within that structure, I think I really would have struggled. And it made me think a lot because I was in the classroom while I was writing it. And so it made me think a lot about.

[00:08:13] Tyler: Structure is super valuable and I think can be a helpful scaffold for some students, but it really reinforced for me that my emphasis should be on what do you think? Like, let's get your idea. Let's get you thinking about a topic first. And then once you have that idea, that thought, then if we need a structure to scaffold or support as you go, but, but really making sure that there's space for Sort of creative exploration before the structure might be there to put walls around that thinking.

[00:08:42] Olivia: Yeah, I, I think that makes a lot of sense. And then I also, you, you focus a lot too on that idea of traditional grades are not what's going to motivate our kids. And I, I like the language, you know, moving from what we want students to do to what we want students to know. So I'd like to speak to those two pieces.

[00:09:02] Olivia: And then you took the plunge into creating an informative grade book, and that was not easy. So if you could speak to those pieces of your practice, that's what you believe to be true. So. 

[00:09:14] Tyler: Yeah, um, there's, there are two things that are helpful in terms of thinking about that shift from grading doing to grading learning.

[00:09:22] Tyler: Um, for me, it was a story I had an experience within my first couple years of teaching. I had to walk my grade book down to the office and I had, I remember flipping through it and having this very stark realization of like, this is not useful information for anyone right now. Like if I gave this to their next teacher, I don't think they could use this to continue supporting that student in their learning.

[00:09:42] Tyler: And so that to me was a recognition of if I'm just putting quiz, test, homework, whatever it is in the grade book, it's not information that really anybody can use. And so I had to start thinking about what might that information look like? And it really came down to what is the learning that I'm engaging in?

[00:10:00] Tyler: And where am I at in that process? If I'm given that information, that's useful information. So that's what started me. I didn't know how to do it, but I knew that that was the direction that I really wanted to move. Um, and the, the, the question then that really got me thinking about my gradebook in a different way is thinking about if I'm not able to average scores over time, how will I know where the student is at the end of the term?

[00:10:25] Tyler: Because I think oftentimes when we're averaging over time, it's really easy to just focus on The tasks, right? It's a collection of isolated incidences. We're going to analyze, or we're going to average that over the course of the term. And the average is where we end up at the end. 

[00:10:41] Olivia: Yeah. 

[00:10:41] Tyler: And that doesn't sit right with me for numerous reasons.

[00:10:44] Tyler: Um, but when I take that away and take out that possibility, then I started thinking, well, what does it look? I can't fall back on that. That's how I was graded. That's how I know everyone else was graded. What are the alternatives? And it really came down to do I know what I want the student to learn? And do I know where they're at in relation to it at this current point in time?

[00:11:03] Tyler: And I think once I started thinking about that, there's a lot of nuts and bolts that need to happen to figure out how to make that work in a classroom. But I think if we can get, if, and for me, when I wrap my head around that big picture, this is what I really want. I want usable information for me and the student and whoever else might need it.

[00:11:22] Tyler: Once I had that, then it was, okay, we can figure this out from here. 

[00:11:25] Olivia: Yeah. And I, I want to just point out too, you offer really lovely graphics. So it's, it, you go and show this is what I did before, and then this is how it changed. Um, so what did you actually start keeping track of and focus on with students?

[00:11:43] Tyler: So it sounds like a, a really, I don't know, simple or logistical change that made a huge difference for me. So, if you think about a traditional grade book, typically, your rows are students, and columns are the tasks. 

[00:11:56] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:11:57] Tyler: And I really just added a column above that where I could organize those tasks under specific learning outcomes I was looking for with students.

[00:12:07] Tyler: Okay. So depending on how you approach those might be the standards that you're focusing on, your power standards. It could be just, uh, learning objectives or pieces of essential learning. But having a category above the tasks helped me think every time we did something, how is this connected to the learning that I'm hoping students are going to engage in?

[00:12:27] Tyler: And the other piece I loved about it is then it created space for students to have multiple attempts at that. As opposed to in a traditional grade book, I felt like it was. You get this attempt in October and this attempt in November, and it wasn't clear how it was building towards something or all connected together.

[00:12:43] Tyler: And so simply reorganizing and having that category for the tasks. of saying, this is the learning, these are all your attempts at it. It gave students opportunities to try things multiple times, but it also gave me an opportunity to be able to point and say, look, you're growing. And I had a really hard time doing that in my traditional task based gradebook.

[00:13:04] Olivia: Yeah. So I'm interested, um, did the categories that you create from unit to unit, were they similar? Did you find they varied a lot? 

[00:13:14] Tyler: Often time there was overlap. So. Like my, this is not going to sound like a lot, but we were on a trimester schedule. And typically in a trimester, I would try to cover about eight, um, either standards or I call them pieces of essential learning, maybe a subset of a standard or a part of a standard.

[00:13:31] Tyler: Um, but I would cover eight of those. And so most units we'd cover three ish. And so oftentimes, you know, there might be a very content-specific or unit-specific standard that doesn't show up in the next one, but typically, there would be. A carryover or a couple of carryovers. So, you know, it's not like that unit ends.

[00:13:50] Tyler: That's your last chance to demonstrate this, but that unit ends. We're going to spiral this into our next unit. Here's how it's going to show up again. So students, you know, if I'm at the end of a unit and I'm still at a, you know, level two or level three out of five, that's not the end for me. I've got a chance to keep going and keep working on it.

[00:14:09] Olivia: Yeah. So I appreciate that. And I think the other amazing thing about having categories, it helps students see transfer. It helps them transfer their learning too. So you're thinking and you're planning strategically that way for the students, but it gives them a whole new level of access to the information.

[00:14:27] Olivia: And so they can transfer that into their own lives. That's, it's interesting. You also talk a lot about progressions. And, um, I, as a teacher, I go back and forth with rubrics because it depends on what, again, that means to a student. And so if we're working on a one through four rubric scale, um, I know students that if three in their mind is meeting grade level and four is exceeding, they're like, peace out.

[00:14:55] Olivia: I'm good with a three. And, you know, I, I have a hard time sometimes talking to them and saying, well, here's, you know, what would you do for the four or what, that idea of motivation. So a lot of the work I'm doing in schools focuses on target rubrics where you start with that four in mind and you craft a target rubric, um, for the unit of study.

[00:15:18] Olivia: And, and it doesn't really have categories one, two, three, four. Uh, but I'd love for you to speak to your progression work because I think it's illuminating. And also, you know, how does it engage and motivate? I need your tips and tricks for that. Um, and then also that idea of priority standards, you've already mentioned it.

[00:15:37] Olivia: It is a hot topic right now. So I'd love to know who you lean on for the research when it comes to priority standards. 

[00:15:45] Tyler: I'll start with the priority standards. Cause otherwise what I say about learning progressions feels like an insane amount of work and I don't want to leave people there. So, um, for the priority standards, I really love Larry Ainsworth.

[00:15:55] Tyler: I know his work has been used in other spots, but, um, he has a few books around priority and power standards. I think he, his simplicity of. His model is endurance, leverage, and readiness. So endurance, meaning how much does it apply outside of school, leverage, how much does it apply in other classes, and then readiness, how much does it apply to future classes?

[00:16:16] Tyler: Like, I think just having those three scales is a really useful way to look at our standards and, and identify which ones are going to be the ones dead, worth dedicating more of our class time to. Um, and so that's why when I say that every trimester I had seven or eight, Um, that's really how I used his work to determine what are the seven or eight we're going to focus on this trimester.

[00:16:39] Tyler: So, um, and that's why, before I talk about learning progressions, I'm only doing this with seven or eight standards or even pieces of standards for context there. Yes, important. Um, yes. But, um, so my work with learning progressions really started from a similar spot of feeling conflicted about rubrics.

[00:16:56] Olivia: Yeah. 

[00:16:57] Tyler: Um, I just remember being told. Like early, you know, early on in a unit show students the, the rubric and that'll help them guide their learning. And I just wasn't seeing that. And I think part of it is the way we design rubrics. There's one, I call them access points, but one, one way of accessing the learning.

[00:17:15] Tyler: So let's say I have a, a rubric around, I don't know, developing compound sentences. 

[00:17:22] Tyler: The only way that I can access that learning on the rubric, it'll say I can write compound sentences properly. Okay. Cool. Above that is somehow they're combined with complex sentences. Below that, it's just levels of not being able to do that.

[00:17:35] Tyler: And so what I realized is when I was giving those to my students, there may have been students who knew what a compound sentence was, and they would say to themselves, I know how to access this, like I can be successful here. But for students who didn't know what a compound sentence was, there was no earlier access point for them.

[00:17:51] Tyler: So their message is, I can't do it. I'm on one of those levels of being told, you can't do this. But there wasn't a ton of informative, uh, pieces in that rubric to say, how do I get there? And so, Learning progressions. I view, I, I never wanna say rubrics are bad. There's huge and important reasons to use them for equitable purposes to, you know, uh, diminish the impact of implicit bias.

[00:18:15] Tyler: Like, but they're a tool for evaluation. And so I wanted to know what's a tool I could give to students to support their learning? And that's where learning progressions came in. So a learning progression is really a series of concrete steps that a student could take in learning. Uh. a specific learning outcome or standard.

[00:18:35] Tyler: So I'll use the, did I say compound sentences? Was that my example? Okay. Yeah. So like using that one, I would go, like, I would have a phase in there that is I can write a compound sentence correctly. That would still be in there, but the levels before it, instead of saying, I really can't do it, I can kind of do it.

[00:18:54] Tyler: It's maybe that first level is I know what a subject and verb are. So thinking all the way back to. What does it take to, where do, where could I start to build up to that? And so from there, maybe the next level is I can identify and explain independent and independent clauses. And so it's sort of scaffolding that complexity so that there are more access points for, for students.

[00:19:17] Tyler: So, you know, the issue, I think sometimes when we just have that one access point of I can write a compound sentence, we're overlooking the inevitable gaps in learning that students are going to come to us with, or we're assuming. Hey, you should have learned subject and verb way back in elementary school.

[00:19:33] Tyler: There's no reason. And I think I've learned over and over in my career. Every time I assume something I'm leaving kids out. So that was just sort of like, I'm not making assumptions. I'm going to try to lay this out as clearly as possible. Not so that students have to follow it step by step so that they have a reflection piece when they're stuck is really how I view it.

[00:19:52] Tyler: Um, I love, I'm a big hiker. And I think about it in terms of how I use a map while I'm hiking, like I'm not staring at the map the whole time I'm walking through the trail, that, that's not an enjoyable way to hike. Not enjoyable. Yeah. I think if we're asking kids to do that with their learning of just stare at this learning progression, do exactly that.

[00:20:10] Tyler: But it's really, when you come to a crossroads or you're not sure you're on the right track, This is something to consult, to check to see what's something I may have missed along the way. Where did I go wrong? So that then, instead of just being stuck in a spot of, well, I can't write a compound sentence and I don't know where to go, I know I can't write a compound sentence yet.

[00:20:29] Tyler: What do I need to do next? 

[00:20:30] Olivia: Yeah. I, I also appreciate it takes away the privilege of those who have background knowledge going in and those who don't. And so, um, I, I think that offering those previous access points and you really could go back to previous grade level standards, um, or language standard strand to break down, what does it take?

[00:20:49] Olivia: But Tyler, again, it goes back to your planning. And so thinking through the book is structured with action steps, but That, that idea of how do students get to this point? And there are so many educators that I work with that are experts in their field, social studies, science, and you really do have to pause and say, I know this.

[00:21:15] Olivia: It comes naturally for me, but what does it take? And I appreciate the idea of the learning progression, um, because it does offer multiple access points and it's a perfect segue into assessment as a tool to build competence. Right? So, the idea of a progression, that's building confidence. And you just use the word yet.

[00:21:34] Olivia: So, even when I'm, uh, working with adults and coaching, it's, I ask sometimes, what's your not yet? What do we need to do? You know, what's, what's holding you back? Is it you don't agree? Is there, is there confidence building we need to do? So for students, how can we craft assessment to be a tool to build confidence?

[00:21:55] Tyler: I think, um, and this is kind of connected to learning progressions. Every student, every person in order to believe that success is ahead of them has to have evidence of some success early on. Um, and this is, you know, every time we talk about grit and resilience, like those are important qualities, but sometimes I worry that we put that burden on kids as opposed to as educators planning.

[00:22:18] Tyler: How can I, how am I giving them evidence early on? I love, um, I still talk about confidence a lot, but I use the term self efficacy even more because, you know, I, as a student, can feel super confident about my abilities without any evidence that I know what I'm doing, but self advocacy is all about, like, do I have hard, tangible evidence that I'm growing or I have success in my past?

[00:22:44] Tyler: Yeah. And so this is where I love those learning progressions. So, you know, maybe the goal is to write a compound sentence and we're going to do that in a much more complex form of writing, which is really intimidating to a student who struggles with writing or who hasn't been successful in English classes previously.

[00:23:00] Tyler: But in my assessment series, if I'm thinking about how I'm structuring that, maybe my first assessment for students starts with that level one or level two progression of, can you identify subjects and verbs? Like. Let's start there, something that, and ideally in a format that they could attempt it over and over with some reflection between so that early on in that process, they have evidence that I may not know how to write the compound sentence yet, but I've got this piece, like I know I can do this and really building on that, the more and more I think about, and not even think about, but research the importance of confidence or self efficacy, even going back to like John Hattie's work, one of the highest Uh, rated effect sizes as student self reported grades, and a lot of that boils down to what do students believe they can do?

[00:23:48] Tyler: And if they don't have evidence of success in the past, they're probably not going to believe they can do a whole lot. So I view it like my role as an educator, it's sort of incumbent upon me to really plan out early on, not, not inventing false praise, but really early on giving students assessment approach, a beginning assessment that they can eventually get to a spot where they can say, I did that.

[00:24:13] Tyler: I was successful there. I can be successful on the next step. 

[00:24:17] Olivia: Well, it also allows for them to know they're on the right track. Uh, because it's that cross-checking going back, like, okay, I'm not here yet, but I'm on the right path, as you would say, as a hiker, too, right? Yes. Yeah. Right. But I also, I think so much of our growth as learners, it doesn't matter the age.

[00:24:37] Olivia: It also has to do with safety to be vulnerable. And a lot of the learning lab work or bigger group learning work that we do as coaches is with teachers. It has to feel, trust has to be built and it has to feel safe to a degree. You can not take away the anxiety of teaching in front of other people. I don't think, and I think some of that's healthy too.

[00:25:00] Olivia: Um, but how does the idea of confidence also lend itself to students being more vulnerable? 

[00:25:08] Tyler: Yeah, I, I mean, vulnerability, I think there's, there's the internal and external components of vulnerability. And like you were talking that. That, that safety, that trust, I think with the teacher for the student is super important and also with their classmates and just sort of building that environment around them.

[00:25:23] Tyler: But the internal piece too of, you know, it, it takes a level of confidence to be vulnerable. I have to, I have to believe that I'm either on the right track or, you know, like that I have the, the, the capacity of success within me to be willing to ask for help on something. Yeah. 

[00:25:42] Olivia: Yeah. 

[00:25:43] Tyler: Um, And so, like, that's really, when I think about my assessment process and the importance of building student confidence, I'm always thinking about, like, the more evidence I can give a student that they can do it, the better.

[00:25:57] Tyler: Um, and, and I think, too, letting them experience environments where they can make mistakes. Um, this is something that I struggled with in my previous approach to grading, where it was very much you average scores over time, there wasn't room to make mistakes, and as such, I'm in that environment, I'm not going to be vulnerable there.

[00:26:15] Tyler: I'm going to panic and make sure that I get all the points I can because any mistake is going to be held against me. So, and this is actually one of the hardest things at the beginning of the year with my students is convincing them that they can make mistakes. 

[00:26:27] Olivia: Yeah. 

[00:26:27] Tyler: They're, they're, it's just so ingrained that everything we do is high stakes and, And so I, I really intentionally, when we first come in, there's like three series of assignments that we do where they, they make all the mistakes they want and it doesn't go in the grade book and it's not held against them and they have to sort of have this, I love, I call it my moment of disequilibrium of like, wait, that's what school was, what is this, I don't understand, and that's the moment where we can start talking about like, Hey, your growth is what's important here.

[00:26:56] Tyler: So let's talk about how that's going to show up, what success will look like for you, things like that. 

[00:27:00] Olivia: Well, and, and I think the other layer is feedback, right? And so, yeah, I have so many conversations with teachers around. How much feedback is a good amount of feedback? And do I have to give every student feedback all the time?

[00:27:16] Olivia: What does that look and feel like? And you've done copious amounts of research around feedback. So I'd love for you to speak to that. And you know, how did you offer all of your sections feedback and still hike and have time with your family? 

[00:27:32] Tyler: Uh, I mean, the, the most encouraging research I ever read is one that looked at how much feedback can students even use? They said the maximum length of a full-length essay is three comments. And so, like to me, as an English teacher who would spend so much time leaving feedback for students, That was, I mean super eye-opening. I ended up getting to the point where sometimes I would offer two but typically there would be one Comment either at the beginning or end of a student's piece of writing That said, this is the next thing we're going to focus on.

[00:28:05] Tyler: A lot of the feedback research uses the term advisement, and I love thinking about feedback as advisement, because an advisor is going to take all the information they have, and then they're going to say, this is the best direction for us to move forward, or this is what I'm going to recommend. And so typically my, my comments would be, I noticed you're struggling with comma splices in your writing.

[00:28:25] Tyler: Here's a resource, resource to help you with comma splices. Let's move forward with that. Um, and doing that as opposed to marking every single error or mistake. I mean, going back to the student experience in that assessment process, if I'm being told, this is the, this is the thing that we're going to work on.

[00:28:43] Tyler: And here's a resource to move forward with it. That gives me more hope in success than opening up an essay and every single comma splice is marked. At that point, it's just. Um, I'm just, it's like a word search for, or a mistake search for me as the teacher. And that's, you know, it's entertaining, but it's not good for the kid because all they're seeing is fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail.

[00:29:03] Tyler: And no one's going to build confidence based off that versus, you know, I'm, I'm not, it's not praise. It's not saying you did great. I mean, there's a little bit of encouragement in there too, but it's, Hey, we're going to move forward with this specific piece. Here's a, here's a, a tool, a resource, something that's going to help you bridge that gap between where you want to be and where you're at now.

[00:29:23] Olivia: Yeah, I appreciate the idea that it's also you're giving a resource, so the student has to seek out, and, and I, I would be motivated, like here's an example of something I'm noticing. Here's a resource that can support you, um, and I, I think that idea of a conference in writing for the student and so they can follow back, how often did you give that level of feedback to each, how many different preps did you have when you were in the classroom?

[00:29:50] Tyler: So, uh, Typically, I had two. My ideal schedule, I taught three class periods of freshman and one class period of debate, and I was fortunate to have that for at least the last couple of years that I was teaching. 

[00:30:01] Olivia: Yeah. 

[00:30:01] Tyler: Um, how often I would do it really varied. It sort of depended on how busy I was, but my goal would be, um, you know, if we're doing, let's say we're just writing a paragraph, I would be able to give them that really detailed feedback in their draft.

[00:30:18] Tyler: And then the piece that actually became most important in my feedback process, I started using something called learning portfolios or feedback portfolios. Where when I would give students their feedback, they would actually take that and put it on, it was nothing fancy. It was a Google doc, but. There were columns that would be, you know, the assignment description, uh, link to the assignment, and then spots for, I, my favorite one just had glows and grows.

[00:30:43] Tyler: And so under the glows, they would record, here's the things that I'm doing well. Maybe that's feedback I gave them. Maybe it was peer assessment, maybe a self assessment, but they would record, here's what went well in this piece of writing. And then on the grow side was, this is the thing that I need to work on.

[00:30:58] Tyler: This is my grow for the next time I write. The reason I ended up loving that is. I felt like I actually had to leave less feedback because I didn't, every time the student needed feedback, there was a document that had all of their feedback throughout the course of the term on there. 

[00:31:15] Olivia: That's awesome. 

[00:31:16] Tyler: And, I will say that I didn't anticipate this when I started doing it, but the other reason I loved it is I would often get comments from students where, An earlier piece of writing, something that was in that grow column of like, this is something I need to work on.

[00:31:30] Tyler: They'd realize a few lines later or a few assignments later, it had moved over to the thing they got to celebrate. And they would never get to see that. I didn't plan on it. I got kind of lucky with that and I realized it after, but they would never get to see that if it was just feedback left on those isolated assignments.

[00:31:46] Tyler: Cause they go in the, you know, the, the digital storage system and they never see it again necessarily. And so it's still in a spot where. I could say, Hey, going into this assignment, pull out your feedback portfolio. What are, what are the things you're working on right now? And it would really target their approach to that piece of writing.

[00:32:03] Olivia: Yeah. So we, we say feedback loop. That is truly a feedback loop. And then I'm picturing the image of you walking down the hallway. Let's go back to that for a second. With your grade book in hand, just the idea of each student being able to pass on that Google doc to other teachers, I, I think we also have to If we're doing a really awesome job in education of being smart, how we're connecting with other teachers in our building, it's not just that you're an English language arts teacher.

[00:32:38] Olivia: It's that, how are you connecting with the global one teacher? How are you connecting with the pre-calc teacher or the geometry teachers? So that they can see how these students are living and breathing as writers in every part of the day. Uh, because what's been fascinating to me is through learning labs to have mixed triads.

[00:32:57] Olivia: So we have a couple ELE teachers, a math teacher, a social science, a social science or whatever it is. And they get to see students in other environments that maybe, you know, I know we're about motivation, Tyler, not every student loves English though. It's heartbreaking. And yet they may be super passionate if they're in the global studies class.

[00:33:19] Olivia: So it's beautiful to think of that feedback loop of encompassing the PLC work that the building's taking on perhaps. I think it's really exciting. Um, and then I'll segue to the idea of autonomy. We both appreciate Daniel Pink's work, um, around autonomy, agency, and mastery. So how does this way of thinking, the idea of motivation, Autonomy is a direct path to motivation.

[00:33:46] Olivia: Can you say more about that? 

[00:33:49] Tyler: Yeah. So it's interesting with, with autonomy, there's, there's it. Autonomy also requires a level of confidence going into it. Um, I, I think about some of the first times that, you know, I was told, Hey, choice is great in the classroom. And I'm like, okay. I'll offer choice to students.

[00:34:06] Tyler: And I hadn't laid any of the groundwork. And students froze, like it was very intimidating to be told, you can approach this however you want. And they're like, will it be held against me if I don't do well? You know, and all this stuff. So there's that fear of failure often can stifle the value autonomy can bring.

[00:34:21] Tyler: So there's a level of foundation that has to be in place. A lot of what we're talking about is their clarity and what students are learning and how they can get there. Is there space for them to attempt things multiple times and make mistakes? Once that's there, autonomy, I've talked to a lot of teachers in the last couple of years that there's a sense, and I, I felt it in my classroom a little bit.

[00:34:44] Tyler: There's a sense that students aren't taking ownership of the learning, maybe in the ways that we used to expect or used to think happen. And I think part of that is because school changed and got very confusing for kids for a while. And they're still kind of grappling with that. Um, I think part of it, some kids lost a little bit of confidence, but I also think for a lot of students, they didn't, They didn't have a ton of autonomy or experience with autonomy.

[00:35:10] Tyler: And autonomy is almost like, like, it's like a muscle, like you have to work it out to know how to do it. And so my goal with autonomy is, you know, there are still times where like, if we're doing a writing project and it's narratives, I don't, I have no reason to give them the specific narrative. Like I want them to write, use some of their autonomy there, but, but I also focus on little moments of practicing autonomy.

[00:35:29] Tyler: So. It might be an entry task where students show up and there's our three pieces of essential learning we're working on for the unit. And they've got 10 minutes to say, use your information, your feedback portfolio, which is the one that you think you can learn something next. Which, which you closest in growing, choose that.

[00:35:49] Tyler: And here's a resource for 10 minutes. I want you to dive in and then at the end we'll reflect. And so it's. I think I used to think autonomy was like, I have to blow up my whole classroom and you know, but I think for the teacher that's uncomfortable with autonomy, there's a lot of value in sort of those small doses, both in helping us get comfortable with autonomy in the classroom and what it looks like, but also in helping students get comfortable with, I can make choices about my learning that it's going to benefit it.

[00:36:15] Tyler: Like I can be an informed piece of that learning process to say, okay, have the information to help me choose. I can choose and do something about my learning. Um, and that as the more often we do it, like that muscle, it builds for students and builds for students. And then you'll, you slowly start to see students who are more confident and comfortable taking that autonomy on their, on themselves and larger ways around their learning.

[00:36:40] Olivia: Well, and that's what we want for the students going out into the world. That's what we want for our next generation to. I appreciate too, how you start and it was an introduction piece in the, um, the beginning of our conversation that you want all people that you work with to see their competence. That idea of.

[00:37:04] Olivia: I, I, I have this knowledge. And as a coach, it goes to that idea of facilitative coaching that you believe that the people you're working with, they have it within them and we're just peeling back the layers or coaching them into you've got this until all of the work, you know, you are a facilitator in this work alongside the students.

[00:37:25] Olivia: And that's why I really, I flew through the book. I read it twice. I always read each book twice, but it was such a, a, a beautiful read and ready. I was ready to go. It really could be five different podcast conversations for each hack. Uh, but I think, you know, we've given just enough because people have to get this book.

[00:37:48] Olivia: Um, and you are the solution along with your thinking and work. I love to have guests share an inspiring educator from their life. Would you share with listeners? 

[00:37:58] Tyler: Yeah, uh, I have, and he's actually one of the first people I mentioned in the book in my sort of, thank my, my appreciation, um, and it's Ralph Brown.

[00:38:07] Tyler: He was my first principal when I started teaching and he was the one who asked me the hard questions when I needed to be asked really hard questions around how my grading and assessment practices were impacting students. So, I mean, that put me on the right path, but it was really cool to just see him care about a school and the kids in it in a way that.

[00:38:27] Tyler: You don't often, you don't always see, um, he's, he's a fantastic person and a great educator. 

[00:38:32] Olivia: I think that the way you approach student learning, um, teacher learning is just it's next level because this is where education's going in the world. And, um, teachers out there, if you're, if it makes you nervous, I get the book, but also practice, I, I, I like the idea, Tyler, of practice giving small pieces of choice to your students.

[00:38:56] Olivia: Um, and I promise the engagement will go through the roof when students have choice and feel like they have a way to gaining the knowledge, um, themselves. So Tyler, thank you for your work, um, and getting this book out there into the world. I appreciate you. 

[00:39:14] Tyler: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on. I love getting to talk to you.

[00:39:16] Olivia: Yeah, absolutely. Take care. Schoolutions: Coaching & Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son Benjamin, who created the music that's playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcast or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Thank you to my guest, Tyler Rablin for sharing how we can reimagine motivation by creating small, meaningful opportunities for students to see their own learning potential. Now, I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email at schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com.

[00:39:56] Olivia: Let me know how your school or district provides meaningful feedback and assessment. What strategies do you have for building student confidence? And how do you prioritize learning over scoring to understand what students really know? Don't forget to tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care.

[00:40:23] Olivia: Stay tuned for my bonus episode every Friday, where I'll share how I applied what I learned from the guests in schools that week. See you then!