After 10 years of teaching, I left the classroom in 2023. I’ve earned an Ed.S. and passed comprehensive exams in the fall of 2025, making me a Candidate for a Ph.D. in Teacher Education. I research grading and classroom assessment, and work with pre-service educators. Here are my most up-to-date practices—frozen in time like Pompeii or Herculaneum right up to my last day in the classroom—that were fundamental to my teaching, making all the daily activities possible…
Continue readinginterpersonal communication rubric
Rejoinders: Teacher vs. Students
This year, I’ve begun each quarter by sharing new (or “new”) expectations. These are simple reminders of rules and routines expressed in a slightly different way to keep management tight. For example, Q2 featured “less English, more Latin” to address increased chatter from students becoming more comfortable. This week, I introduced Q3 with “mostly Latin, almost no English.” However, I still don’t require or expect students to speak Latin (i.e. forced output). Here’s how that works…
Continue readingCI Flow: Participation & DEA
Scott Benedict just blogged about his current Pagame system, which is essential for a CI class to flow. If class doesn’t flow, we begin to consciously learn. If we do too much conscious learning, we don’t acquire as much. In place of a participation system, I use an adapted version of Bob Patrick’s DEA. I agree with Scott and the grading experts (e.g. Marzano, O’Connor, etc.) that traditional participation scores should be reported, but never included in an academic grade, especially when using proficiency-based grading systems. There is, however, one distinction that I, Bob Patrick, and other teachers using DEA make, that justifies including it in the grade.
Magister P. 