RBERNing Questions

Ungrading: A New Way to Look at Assessment with Babi Kruchin

• Yasmeen Coaxum • Season 3 • Episode 2

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Episode Summary:
Does receiving a grade help students focus on becoming better writers or getting better grades? What is the concept of ungrading and how is it implemented? How can you stop students from making “superficial changes” to a writing text instead of digging deeper to improve their writing? What is portfolio assessment, and what are the advantages of it? These questions and more will be addressed as Babi Kruchin discusses her methods for inspiring students to improve their writing skills by truly understanding and internalizing the criteria necessary for better academic writing. Learn the difference between “assessment of learning” and “assessment for learning,” and how you can use this knowledge so that students can take ownership of their academic writing development and become “a community of readers and writers” who are also able to self-assess in order to develop. If you want to establish a “toolbox” to help your students grow in their writing abilities, this episode is for you!
RBERNing Questions for this Episode:
1- How exactly do you implement peer feedback in your writing course, and what are the direct benefits?
2- Can you explain how this could be implemented in a middle, high school, or elementary setting?
3- What have been some challenges you’ve faced with ungrading, and how have you overcome or dealt with them?
Bio:
Babi Kruchin is a Senior Lecturer in ESL at the American Language Program at Columbia University, where she teaches “Academic Writing to International Students,” academic skills for graduate students, and courses in the Intensive English Program. She has trained ESL teachers on both campus and online courses in Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and often presents in TESOL conferences. Her interests lie in teacher education, teaching academic writing, and the effective use of technology in the classroom. Babi Kruchin received a Spring 2021 Provost Teaching and Learning Innovative Course Module Design grant for her project Improving International Students Writing Skills through Reviews and Teacher Feedback in an Academic Writing Course.
Resources:
Websites/Social Media
https://sps.columbia.edu/faculty/babi-kruchin
http://www.susanblum.com/books.html
Email: bs2214@columbia.edu
Books mentioned in this episode:
Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) (Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) First Edition, by Susan Blum
Other Media
Columbia’s Center for Teaching & Learning Panel in 2022:
Improving International Students’ Writing Skills through Peer Reviews & Teacher Feedback in an Academic Writing Course w/Elizabeth Walters

** Since the recording of this episode, Babi has worked with her colleagues at the American Language Program on the Writing Task Force, changing a high-stakes timed writing exam on unfamiliar topics to Portfolio Assessment, which she believes serves students better and helps them develop their writing skills instead of testing their ability to write under conditions such as timed-writing on unfamiliar topics. She says, "This way, our practices align with the type of writing they will be required to do in their academic and professional lives. This is moving in a positive direction!"

To find out more about Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES' services, listen to season 1 of the show with host Collette Farone-Goodwin, or to receive CTLE credit for listening to episodes, click here: https://midstaterbern.org/


Babi:

Honestly, yeah I became intimidated, by how well those Europeans could write as opposed to me. Nothing against Europeans, you know, but I was like, okay, they went to different schools, they learn different things, you know, and I think just telling people to read something is not enough because I think model texts are very valuable when you're teaching writing, but I think students need guidance.

Yasmeen:

Welcome to RBERNing Questions, a professional learning podcast where we answer your most compelling questions about teaching, serving, and supporting multilingual learners. I'm your host, Yasmeen Coaxum, and through our talks, I look forward to bringing the methods, philosophies, and stories behind teaching multilingual learners to light. Let's get into the show. Hello, Babi Kruchin. It's so nice to have you on RBERNing Questions today, and I'm just going to let the audience know. how we met, right? So we are actually colleagues at Columbia University in the American Language Program, but I'm going to allow you, Babi, to tell us a little bit more about your current role at Columbia University. Great. Thank you

Babi:

Yasmeen, and thank you for inviting me for the podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm honored. So I'm a lecturer at the American Language Program at Columbia University, and, I just really enjoy teaching writing. I enjoy teaching English as a second language to multilingual students, but I honed into the skill of writing, and I think for academic purposes, but I think it all happened because, as you can hear, English is not my first language. I'm actually originally from Brazil, and as, as I was preparing for exams that I took to become a teacher, I was in the UK, and I had to write essays, and in Brazil, I hadn't learned how to write an essay, and the teacher, Ms. Joan, she was this older lady, she actually told me to read the other students essays, and they were tall, Swiss, and French, and I was this little Brazilian girl, and I read, and I didn't really know about essay writing and the structure, and then it was a bit of a traumatizing experience. So I just think that writing is a skill that needs to be taught, and if you are writing in another language, you need to be able to understand the conventions and everything in that other language. So I think sometimes when we learn something, it's a good thing to pass it on. so that's where my writing teaching background comes from, from, oh, I have to learn this, so then I, yeah, so that's where I came into this and that's where I am.

Yasmeen:

Excellent. I think a key word that you mentioned was conventions, to learn the conventions, because, oftentimes, especially if you haven't been taught about conventions, structures, etc., you think, okay, I have a good grip on the vocabulary, I have a decent grip on the grammar, I should be able to do this, but there are, structures and conventions that are really necessary to really level up in terms of your writing. So that's really great that you're giving back after the experience that you had. So do you think, you said that at the start, you had no idea really about how to write, how to, structure an essay, but then your teacher, Joan, that she had you read other people's essays, and so do you think that actually helped build your confidence or what, how did you feel? Yes and no, you know,

Babi:

honestly, yeah I became intimidated, but by how well those Europeans could write as opposed to me. Nothing against Europeans, you know, but I was like, okay, this, they went to different schools, they learn different things, you know, and I think it, just telling people to read something is not enough because I think model texts are very valuable when you're teaching writing, but I think it students need guidance. For example, how did this person start an essay? What is the introduction? What is the main claim that this writer is making? Where is that main claim? What support is in this text to, to support the main claim? So I think as with anything we learn in life, we need someone to hold our hand at the beginning until that becomes something that we master. So yeah, so reading is valuable, but reading with guidance is even more valuable.

Yasmeen:

Yes. Excellent. Okay, and, before, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into this idea of peer, editing, peer reading, peer support, et cetera, but before we do that, I want to just go a couple of steps back to what actually inspired you to become an educator of ELLs

Babi:

Um, well, well, Yasmeen, you're digging, digging deep when I was, so I'll tell you the story. So to become an educator, I went to university to become an artist and I had gone to afterschool programs to study English. And when I was at university, they invited me to teach English as a second language, as a foreign language, it was in Brazil,

Yasmeen:

to young

Babi:

kids, and I enjoyed being gr paid rather than being graded. And then I thought, oh, okay, so maybe I can drop out of school and do this, So I did it. Wow. So it was oh, I can do something that I like and I get paid for it and I don't need to study, and but then I went back and I did, went back to university to study. Actually, I did my BA, my BFA in Fine Arts, and after my BFA, I realized I still don't have a marketable skill. So I did my, graduate studies in TESOL, and I became a teacher, but it, what inspired me was, I, it's not that I studied to do something. I started doing something and then I studied it. so it was more learning by doing, but it wasn't brain surgery, so I didn't damage anybody, so I, so that's not so

Yasmeen:

bad that you chose to take the backwards approach. I guess you could call it that. Okay. All right. So now, last year you were featured on a panel from, it was Columbia's Center for Teaching and Learning, a Teaching and Learning panel, and, your presentation title was Improving International Students' Writing Skills Through Peer Reviews and Teacher Feedback in an Academic Writing Course, and you had, a co-presenter, Elizabeth Walters as well, right? So I would just like you to take our listeners through what happened in your classes before, I guess we want to call this kind of like ungrading, right? So before this, like ungrading, and then after you implemented ungrading.

Babi:

Yeah, sure, Yasmeen, I'll walk you through this. Yeah, it's been, I've been teaching this, first I want to set the context of the class that I teach, and I've been teaching this course for many years. It's called Academic Writing for International Students, and it's actually a course for matriculated Columbia students who need more help with their writing before they continue on to their studies and before they take the undergraduate writing, what we call is the first year comp classes. So basically they are all multilingual students and they all need to become better writers. So the way I taught, and this is a high stakes course because they need to pass this course in order to move on to a more advanced course for multilingual studies or to move on to university writing, which is a combination of domestic and multilingual, domestic students who might be multilingual, but basically they are not just grouped with international students. So they take an exam at the end of the course, which is read by a committee of readers from my department. I'm not in this committee. So basically I'm coaching them on how to write a good academic essay, argumentative academic essay. So that's my role. I am the coach and in order to prepare them for this, writing which is a timed writing on a topic that they don't know in a language that is not their first, I used to practice that. So we would have two short readings on a certain topic. For example, traveling is too good for the environment or traveling is bad for cities, and then they would have to take a stance and write an essay in two hours. And then I would read their essays and I would write copious comments on the feedback and I would give it back to them, and they would write a second draft and sometimes there would be a grade, but I already, I didn't like to give them a grade, but I would write a lot of, I would give a lot of feedback and they would write a second draft. I would read the second draft and I would give it back. So it was like the bicycle spokes. It was the students write, the teacher reads, the teacher gives feedback, students read the feedback and the students rewrite. So but there was something that was missing. So being a reflective teacher that I am, I tried to think what, what is happening here? Because some of the problems were that the students sometimes made very superficial changes. I spent a lot of time and I wrote as teachers I think we all do. And then they fix the grammar errors and they give you the second draft and you say,"Hang on a minute. I just wrote that for this claim that you made here, you have no support, and you had a week to rewrite this essay, and still you just fixed the grammar mistakes." So the research says that as much as students want a lot of feedback, just giving them a lot of feedback doesn't necessarily lead to deeper changes. They, sometimes those changes continue to be at the superficial level. Something else that I noticed was happening is that sometimes I would say, there is no cohesion between your introductory notes and your main claim here in the introduction. And the students wouldn't ask me any questions, but they just didn't know what the word cohesion meant. What did I mean by this? It's not that the students are not capable of understanding, but of course I was using jargon, but there was no clarification and sometimes the students just wouldn't ask questions on what came on that feedback. Other times students would simply not read the feedback. You know, the time that we spend on the student's essay and they just wouldn't read it, but for that I could just give it to them in class and give them time to read it and then so I would know that they had laid eyes on the feedback. So there were all these issues, either not addressing the feedback, sometimes having questions about the feedback and not asking them, sometimes not reading the feedback. So I felt that it was, and I was the sole reader of their essays. So I just thought that something had to happen, right? And I started thinking of assessment, that I didn't have to do an assessment of learning, of what they could do, but I could use the assessment, the critical reading of a text, for learning or as learning. And then instead of, me being the sole reader of the text, the students could read each other's texts and assess their peers texts and be a learning experience for the reader and the writer. So I started, changing the process. So the students would write the first draft. They still wrote the same text based on the two short readings on a topic they don't know with offering two different views on that topic. So for example, immigration benefits the economy or immigration hurts the economy, right? And they had to take a stance.

Yasmeen:

And

Babi:

then I would collect those essays and yes, I would provide feedback on development, organization, grammar, and vocabulary, and I would also ask the students to give the text to a peer, and they would provide each other feedback, not on grammar and vocabulary. Simply because they become overly critical of the, their peers grammar sometimes, or sometimes they might not know, and, but I really wanted them to focus on the development of ideas and the organization of an as essay. Are the ideas well developed? Are they well organized? Are they cohesive? Are they logically organized? Are they coherent? So on and so forth. And I started doing that, and so the students would come back a week after having written that essay and they would sit down with their peers and they would give each other feedback. And then at the end of that class, I would give them my written feedback. Sometimes I would organize student conferences and I would give them my feedback. So they received feedback from at least two people on each piece of writing. And I would try to do it as a teacher student conference so they would have an opportunity to ask me questions and say, oh, so and so told me the same thing, so on and so forth. So that's how I changed, and it. it became feedback, not grades. So they would receive peer feedback and teacher feedback. And that's what happens, and, there were absolutely, there were gains. So for the students, there was a significant improvement in the writing, because by reading their peers texts critically, they began to see this thing. Oh yeah, this is just an idea. There is no support for this idea, and then they could transfer that to their own text, let's say. There was a greater engagement with the writing process. They began to feel as writers, not test takers. You know, I have a greater audience. There was a community of readers and writers. In addition, there was a deeper understanding of this assessment criteria. What does it mean to have a well developed idea? What does logically connected mean in this text? What does it mean to have a concrete example for a main claim in an essay? And it created a community of self-directed learners. The students could regulate their learning in the sense that they could evaluate what they had done, what they were doing, and set goals for what they wanted to do. And it de-emphasized the focus on grades. Even though they received a grade at the end of the semester. They would either be promoted to the next level or they would have to spend more time in this class. so ungrading the idea that is in a book, compiled of essays by teachers compiled by Susan Blum, ungrading doesn't mean no grades, but ungrading means de-emphasizing grades and focusing on the feedback, focusing on the learning, on the experience, on the intrinsic motivation, rather than the grade itself. But with it, there were some challenges, it wasn't all, pink. There was resistance. There are some students, they just want to work for that A+ you know, I want to get my A+ that's what gives me satisfaction. So there was resistance from some students because of their learning patterns and what they are used to, and that's fine, it's not every course or every pedagogy is ideal for every student. People learn differently, people have different expectations. So that happened. I think there was, sometimes commitment, like if you prepare peer feedback and then the students, one of the students wouldn't show up, that can be a practical problem that the teacher has to think about to overcome. I think part of the resistance is that there is an ingrained culture of disempowerment in the part of the students, so they feel I'm not the one who has a say on what works and what doesn't work in an essay. So that's something that you have to build with the students. Sometimes, the students express that it was very difficult to say something negative to their friends. It's cute. They use the word friends, it's hard to say that they don't think their hook is connected to their main claim, for example.

Yasmeen:

And

Babi:

yeah, so, and another issue, not a challenge, is that they are still learning the skills that they are giving feedback on, and it's something that, but it's, it can work two ways. That can be a challenge, but that can reinforce the learning that can make the learning stronger. So yeah, so it comes with challenges. But, but the end result, I think was very, is very satisfactory. I'm very satisfied with the greater engagement and the taking the focus from the grade and putting it back on the feedback because the motivation, grades motivate students to get a better grade, but not necessarily to learn. So I think that's a part of the issue, and we want students to learn to be rigorous writers. so that's how we changed and it's an ongoing process because now I find that I am implementing together with the peer feedback, the self assessment. In other words, for example, when students write an essay now, before they give it to a peer or to the teacher, they go home and they annotate on a Google Doc and they have time to reflect, especially because this is a timed piece that they wrote in class. So they go home and they have time to say, I feel that this paragraph needs a stronger example, and then, when the peer and the teacher reads the essay, they have, they read it with the self assessment already there, which is, I think it, it helps the students to, to grow as writers and critical readers of others texts and their own texts. Wow,

Yasmeen:

I really love that kind of evolution, right? I love this idea of, because I know that during this panel, you mentioned towards the end that peer feedback is connected to self assessment. So I was going to ask you how it is connected and now you've laid out a step by step process of how those two things can go hand in hand and really help with development. So there were so many really excellent things that you said, um, and I'm sure a lot of it teachers can really relate to, especially when you said that initially students just made changes at the superficial level, right? And it's like, okay, I've made these superficial changes now, again, because when you give grades, the focus is on the grade now that I've made these superficial changes, my grade should be bumped up and it's as you said, they didn't really internalize the assessment criteria, right? They just said, okay, I've made these, these basic level changes. So um, the process that you're describing definitely helps them to internalize more how they can go through this improvement, and I also love what you said about the spokes. So about the bicycle, you said, you realized your class was being run like a bicycle wheel with spokes and, I learned

Babi:

that from Carol Numridge, my colleague.

Yasmeen:

Yeah. You like that image. Yes, because it goes hand in hand with what you said, about this culture of disempowerment, right? So it's like the teacher is in the center and the students are these spokes and the wheel is going around, they hand something in, you write some, you write your feedback and then they, they do something, they hand it back in and the wheel is just going in a circular motion and not really driving you somewhere, right? I really love it.

Babi:

Because if you really think about it, writing is so fundamental for, especially academia. If these students are going to be at university, they are, they will be writing for at least two or four years, so they have to master the skill and they have to master the skill to become independent writers, not to be giving, to be able to look at their text critically with guidance, not as just a Joan, my teacher then, who said, read her text, read her text a lot, so it's almost like giving the students a toolbox. Look, I'm guiding you this semester, you are going to get this toolbox that you can use for the rest of your life, for the, but at least for the next four years that you stay in university, you are going to be writing papers for your professors, and use what you're learning here. So yeah, that's the moving forward piece, that's yours now.

Yasmeen:

Right, and then, of course the power dynamics change in that case, right? And you mentioned that it becomes more of an exchange at that point. So just to recap a little bit for, the audience, Some of the benefits of this, of course, there's writing improvement, there's greater engagement, there's more, self direction in terms of the learning, right? and then you also said, it became like a community. I love this phrase that you said, a community of readers and writers, right? Because that's often where there's not enough focus, as you said earlier, on the reading aspect of this, right? So how is the reader actually going to receive what you're writing? And then they can really get that, though, through this peer review exercise. So, um, I think it's really great. Now, some of the people that are listening out there might be saying, okay, but, This is like high academics. This is university level. So how can this situation be implemented in middle school, high school, or even maybe at the elementary level, what elements of it would you keep the same or maybe change if we're talking about implementing this in grade school?

Babi:

Yeah, thanks for asking that, and that's the question that I've been thinking about this, if we want change, the first thing that needs to change maybe is the teacher's belief in this philosophy. If somebody doesn't believe in peer feedback, in learning from peers, then I don't think it can be implemented. But I think the first step is to really believe in the pedagogy, right? So that's for us teachers to believe in it. And if we do, I don't know, I think of a scenario of kindergarten or elementary school when they have to draw something. Let's say they have to draw the schoolyard or they have to draw their path and they all bring their drawings and they put them on a wall and together as a class they have to talk about things they notice. Peer feedback doesn't have to be binary, good or bad, pass or fail. It could be like, what do you notice? I noticed the way, you did the beak in this bird, and it's really sharp or, we're talking about elementary school. This is the cutest

Yasmeen:

image ever. It's so cute. It's so cute. Okay, keep going.

Babi:

I try to see this teacher with the kids going around the wall and looking at like the yellow used for the sun, it's like, so that, that is one, but the other piece for moving upwards, like for high school, let's say, or for, I think it's important to know that when we use peer feedback, we need to spend a lot of time and effort training the students on what it is that we expect them to do. So it's not that I give the students the peers' essay and they have to write feedback. No, we take an essay, we do it together in class and then then we talk about the comments that everybody made, and then we do another essay where people will write individually, but we combine the comments in class. So there is training for peer feedback for whichever topic it is that you do. Do it all together as a class once or twice. Do it in a form that everybody is looking at the same piece. It could be a drawing, it could be a paper that a student wrote, it could be a feature film, a short, if students are in a film class, and then write your individual feedback and then together we'll look at it and comment. So it's something that you build. So I think believing in the philosophy and then teaching the students or training the students on how to give peer feedback is a key element of this. And, and the third element is that teach the students how to deliver the feedback. It's teaching people how to talk to other people, basically, and to say things that they will need in an academic and professional life later in life. So I think these three elements, believing, training, and teaching the communication part, Instead of saying, that's wrong, you could say, I think it would be better if, or this hedging language, this way of addressing criticism that makes people want to hear what you have to say, rather than shutting off. So, but I think it can be applicable at any level. If there is a belief, even if the teacher is working within an environment, which I think most of us are, where grades are required. I think that ungrading doesn't mean no grades. It's, it means like focusing on the feedback, focusing on the learning, focusing on the intrinsic motivation and foster that at any level. I don't know if I answered the question.

Yasmeen:

You definitely answered the question and then some, and I want to re-focus on the comment that you made about this being an assessment, going from an assessment of learning to an assessment for or as learning. Okay. And I also want to go back to those two, the two pieces in terms of these steps and implementation, right? So of course, believing in the pedagogy, right? Believing in the philosophy, definitely. It's very important, but then you also mentioned teaching the students how to do this. And I love the model that you suggested, but I'm also thinking that there's probably some kind of rubric or something that they follow when they're, when they have to, be in pairs later after the group. Thank you, Yasmeen. I was

Babi:

almost forgetting the rubrics. Yes, absolutely. This is part of the whole process. Criteria. What are we looking for? What are we looking at? I mentioned in my scenario, in an argumentative essay, we look at organization, development, grammar accuracy, and vocabulary sophistication. And then there are descriptors for all this, and there is a four scale rubric in which the teacher and the other students give feedback. So your, maybe your development is weak, but your grammar is perfect. So yes, rubrics are the tools that guide this feedback, you don't just look at an essay and say, give feedback. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for reminding me of the magic word. Yes. So every, I think it's always, we need to have objective criteria to provide feedback on whatever it is that we are doing. and yeah, so that all, that is always part of the puzzle and it goes for elementary school. If you're looking at drawings, look at the colors, look at the shapes and look at how they depict the animals that they are, so

Yasmeen:

yeah. Okay. And then I want to,

Babi:

okay. The rubrics have to always be there. So,

Yasmeen:

Right, and then I want to talk about this third piece, because I think this is also very important. So the language for talking to their peers, right? Because I often think that, the nuances in language are what can trip our ELLs up a lot of the time. It's difficult for them to pick up or understand how to use, language with a certain type of nuance. particularly when you first started learning, when you first started learning another language and the ability to do that, giving them the ability to do that, really, it takes away, I think, this fear that you mentioned as one of the challenges, the fear of talking to their peers, right? So this is

Babi:

Or saying negative something negative about their peers. Right,

Yasmeen:

right. Talking to their peers in terms of the feedback is, yeah, is what I meant, and so I think that this is, that's a really great way to tackle, that in terms of that being an issue.

Babi:

And it's also cultural learning, because that's how people If they are going to stay in the United, that's how people talk to each other, to understand that the people that it's somewhat rude or too direct to say, this is really bad, It's that, that, I don't know if it's acceptable in any culture. It's not in Brazil, but it's, it's much better to say, I think you need to include an example if you are going to make the claim that this is true, so putting it in the positive using hedging language. It's a cultural skill that they learn. Yeah.

Yasmeen:

And, you mentioned a few people, you mentioned something about a book or something where this was discussed, this concept of ungrading. I'm wondering, are there a lot of studies on this in terms of its effectiveness or just from word of mouth from colleagues of yours that have decided to implement this type of method of teaching writing and maybe the results that they were able to have from this?

Babi:

I don't think there is a lot of research. I think there is a lot of research on assessment for learning on peer feedback, that yes, but the concept of ungrading this book, it's called"Ungrading," and the person who organized this collection of essays, her name is Susan Blum, B L U M. It was published in the last for years or so, but it's more, it's more a collection of essays on how people use and then grading is not one thing. It's different for different teachers, for different subjects, so in this book, there is, teachers who talk about how they use it in their science class, how somebody uses it in their language class. So that it's a collection of essays, but in terms of research of, um, with specific data on how students respond, I'm sure there are, but I'm not, I don't know offhand of how students respond to feedback versus how students respond to grades. I don't think there are great there isn't a lot of research on that, but ungrading is this book and there is a lot of things you can find online. I think Susan Blum herself has a website, a blog. Yeah. Susan, it's Susan Blum.com. Susan is S-U-S-A-N, Blum at BLUM and she talks, and so these are the basics of ungrading and I think what people do is adapt it to their own environment because you have to take into consideration all the stakeholders and thinking of elementary school, you have the school administrators, nobody wants to do something in the classroom that would end their careers, or you have, you're accountable to the state, to the city, to the parents. So yeah,

Yasmeen:

Okay. Now, speaking of that accountability, right. I just want to clarify the logistics of this. So at the, cause you said it doesn't mean not giving grades, it's just deemphasizing the grade in favor of development. But so at the very end, is that when students finally see their grades or how does it work in terms of that?

Babi:

I think it varies from teacher to teacher. I think, Susan Blum and Jesse Stommel is another person who writes an essay in this book. Susan Blum does conferences with students where she asks the students to grade themselves.

Yasmeen:

Whoa.

Babi:

And Jesse Stommel also does that. Not talking about high stakes, but what grade do you think you deserve for this essay? And I think students, more often than not, will undermine their achievements. They will always say,"Oh, my grammar is so bad, or I, my vocabulary, I need to work on my vocabulary, when it may be somewhat true, but a lot of the time, it's not true. So many scenarios. One is that based on the rubric. Sometimes what I do is I start giving the students the rubric and they can see high, low, or mid, and that is not a grade, but it's an indication of strength and weaknesses.

Yasmeen:

Yes. Uh,

Babi:

at the end of the course, they do receive a grade that is given by this committee of readers that grades their essay that they write in class. But, thinking of any other course, It could be a grade that the teacher discusses with the students, or that the peer gives a grade, and the teacher gives a grade, and the student gives a grade, and then justifies the grade. Why did you give this grade? Maybe based on a rubric, so I gave this grade because the grammar is excellent, but the organization needs some work. So I think the grade, and if the institution requires teachers to give a grade for a certain number of assignments during the term, I think the issue is that the grade is transparent for the students. If they've worked with a rubric, they would know why it is that they are getting a B minus, not an A plus.

Yasmeen:

Okay, all right. Um, and this transparency, that definitely helps with feeling like everything's been handled fairly. It's a

Babi:

contract. It's the contract that you establish with the students, early students, early age students, to it's giving them responsibility. I was talking to a friend who went to Beacon, when Beacon started using portfolio assessment, and the student had to go in front of a panel and show the portfolio and talk about why they've chosen these pieces and what each piece highlighted. So ungrading, I think the idea of portfolio assessment, where there is a portfolio where the students choose a lot of pieces that showcase their strengths. is something that goes hand in hand with ungrading as well. Yeah,

Yasmeen:

for sure. For sure. That sounds like a great way to, to kind of, uh, something else to, you know, add to this element of really self reflection and self direction as well. All right. Babi Kruchin we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us today, and before we let you go, I have two more questions for you. So first, I know that you presented the same concept in Spain this year, right? Yes.

Babi:

Yes. It was, with another colleague, with Brittany Ober, we spent, we talked about the nitty gritty on what it is that we did in our classroom. So it was very descriptive, like two approaches to peer feedback.

Yasmeen:

Yes, and then, so where can people find out more information about your work? Do you have any upcoming projects or publications, that you would like to make the audience aware of?

Babi:

of my work I haven't published. I am a bad writer. No, I haven't. So people can get in touch with me. I'm a faculty of Columbia University. So where you can find my information, my email is bs2214. But if you just look for my name, you will get to me. And, yeah, I usually present at the, at least at the ALP Winter Conference and sometimes at other conference like TESOL around the world,

Yasmeen:

but

Babi:

mostly in person because I haven't published much.

Yasmeen:

Okay. We're going to, wait for you on that. We're going to, we're going to wait and see if maybe it's something that you're going to start or continue. I would

Babi:

like to, I would like

Yasmeen:

to. Yeah, continue spreading the word on this, right? On grading and peer review. So, okay, my final question is what burning question should today's educators consider in order to improve their service to the ELL community?

Babi:

Oh, thank you for asking this because the question is why do you teach? Why do I teach? Why do you teach?

Yasmeen:

And it's

Babi:

a simple question that I heard from Susan Blum when I went to one of her talks, and it's, she started her talk asking, why do you teach? And if your answer is, I teach because I like to grade, good luck.

Yasmeen:

I can't imagine any teacher really saying that because they like to grade, but you know, everybody's different. But if

Babi:

you think about it, I think it's a profound question. Why do you teach? Okay.

Yasmeen:

So that's definitely something for our audience to simmer on, and, we've definitely enjoyed this conversation. It was full of lots of practical information that, teachers can take into the classroom and try to use and see, how it hits, what type of results you're getting, and if you can form more of this type of community when it comes to students and their writing. So thank you again so much for your time today Babi.

Babi:

Oh, thank you. It was a real pleasure,

Yasmeen:

Yasmeen. Thank you for tuning in to RBERNing Questions, produced by Mid-State RBERN at OCM BOCES. If you would like to learn more about today's guest or any of the resources we discussed, please visit Mid-State RBERN's webpage at OCMBOCES. org. That's O C M. BOCES. ORG. Join us next time where we hope to answer more of your burning questions.