Mastery Connect

We are all learning to use Mastery Connect, the new program for standards-based learning.  It is a challenge and a breath of fresh air.  It is a challenge because you cannot teach or assess the way you always have for so many years.  You cannot think in the same way as you used to about grades, and what they mean.  In fact, it is a great deal like learning a new language.  If you really want to learn a new language, it is essential that you learn NOT to translate from the old language to the new language.

You cannot give a test that has scores from 1-100 and then translate that into progressing, mastery and exceeds, because you will not be thinking in a standards-based way about learning.  Instead, it becomes about the grade, yet again, and it is even worse, because students believe that the numbers are not well-representing the "grade".  It has never been about the grade, it is about the learning!  It has become about the grade for so many years, and so we are very accustomed to seeing numbers and letters for our grading, and we are also used to taking what we know and relating it to something new.

 This is not the way to understand standards-based learning or assessment.  We must forget about what we know, forget about 1-100, A,B,C,D, F, and instead, think, what do I want my students to learn?  What do the students know about what they are learning?  Have they learned it?  If they have, they get a mastery level recorded in the program.  Have they learned some of it?  Then, they are "progressing".  If they have learned it, then they get to move on.  That is what learning is supposed to be about, moving on, getting better at something, going onto a higher, more complex level.  If they haven't learned it, then they get to try again, they get to find another way into it, they get to have more chances to learn it in different ways.

All of a sudden, it is about learning, not about the grade they got.  And that, is a breath of fresh air!  If they learn to sing a song, or learn to play a song on the piano, then they can perform it, and then they get to learn a harder song, or learn how to compose a song, or learn how to analyze music, because they can read the notes.  This "new" way of teaching and assessing is the way we learn things when we are small children.  If we practice talking, we get good at talking, and we are able to move onto more and more complex ways of communicating with everyone around us. Did we get grades then?   If we practice walking, we get good at walking and we move onto other more complex ways of moving.  Did we get grades then?  Of course not.  We got feedback, maybe, and that is important, and we got the satisfaction of knowing we were getting good at something, and we continued to receive feedback all along the way, to help us get better at all of our skills.  It is just as good a way to share information about learning as it ever was, and in fact, it is more descriptive, more thoughtful, more directed, clearer, gentler to children and parents, and more compassionate and less judgmental as well.  Carry on, and keep getting smarter and more skilled all the way along!