Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:
Welcome, advocates, to another episode of the Leading Equity podcast, a podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their goals. Today's special guest is Camp. So without further ado, Camp, thank you so much for joining us today.

Camp [00:00:17]:
Thanks, Sheldon. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:18]:
Pleasure. I'll just tell you

Camp [00:00:19]:
a little bit about myself if you want. I'm the head of teaching and learning at a school called New England Innovation Academy. And what's cool about this school is it's a start up school. We're in year 3 of be starting a school from scratch. So I was a founding member. I also teach humanities. So it's a super exciting time to rethink education, rethink about how to do things, how to do things well, and how to bring in students who want that, how to bring in constituents and families who support it, and to bring in teachers to help deliver that mission. So it's pretty exciting times here.

Camp [00:00:51]:
Obviously, a hugely daunting task. I call it the most exciting and most challenging thing I've ever done in my career.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:57]:
Alright. Well, I'm excited for our our topic today. We're gonna be talking all about assessments. And before we really dig into some of the strategies that you wanna share with the audience, I'd love to kinda hear a little bit of Forrest. Why do we you know, in 2024, why should we be looking at our assessment practices today?

Camp [00:01:16]:
So this is my 29th year teaching and throughout my career, I've looked at many different methods. And one thing that's always fascinated me about assessment, even when I was in school, is how you could go from 1 class to another and have completely different assessment methods, ways of recording how, how you performed and those types of things. And it just doesn't seem fair or equitable. And they're always in the, you know, the major problem with education is it's so rigid and so difficult to change. And when when you're talking about assessment, which is really about helping students deliver skills and understand those skills, the fact that the system has been so rooted in the same practices and crazily the same discordant methods, you know, methods and passages of the assessment system is kind of mind blowing to me. Like I really am like shocked that school still proceeds the way it does and there aren't people clamoring, you need to change this, you need to create a more equitable system. You need to be thinking about this all the time and then actually doing something about it. So that's really where super fortunate to be at a startup school where we could step in and build something around what we think are the best practices.

Camp [00:02:31]:
And, and again, fortunately for me, I've been around a long time and I've done a bunch of different L, standards, standards based, competency based, no grades that we can talk about, all those types of things so that we can get together as a collaborative teaching staff here and talk about what, what is the best way and, and roll that out in our, in our system. One of the biggest key things is everybody in the school does the same system. Does that mean it's perfect at GECO? Absolutely not. But the goal is at least we're all on the same platform and then it's all about training and everybody understanding and most important thing, putting the student at the center. Right? And how is their experience equitable and fair in that they understand that they totally understand how they're being assessed and why they're being assessed.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:03:15]:
I love this. So you said that you noticed that there are a lot of things that were unfair. I've heard you mention that a couple times. Could you share maybe a few examples of some of the unfair

Camp [00:03:30]:
L grade English, right? And I was big on extra credit. I thought extra credit was like a cool way to get kids interested. And one of my big things was you could get extra credit if you find a grammar mistake anywhere out in the public. So you'd have some kids being like, you know, taking pictures at Starbucks, everywhere, like, and their extra credit would all pile up, which is cool. Like cool. Those kids was like being attentive to that. In the classroom next to me, literally same class, 11th grade English, that teacher wasn't giving extra credit. So right away, talk about fairness and equitable practices just wasn't happening.

Camp [00:04:09]:
And that's just talking about like extra credit. And it's like, you know, obviously kids are always like, can I get extra credit for this? And I'm always like, no, worry about regular credit now. So that's just an example though. Like in individual classrooms, yes, awesome to have autonomy. But the second that you start branching away by how kids are being assessed in a similar course, in my opinion, the whole system breaks down. You lose all foundations of credibility and equitability in the system.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:34]:
That's a great example because, you know, you got me thinking based off of what 1 teacher does or their practices, that may or may not impact the student in a negative or positive way. Like, I know some teachers, for example, you miss you know, you turn in your paper a day late, 5 5 points off or 10% off and, you know, all those kind of things. So if 1 teacher's doing that policy and the other teacher isn't literally the same class or one is giving extra credit and the other one's not, you could see how that could make some challenge. Are there any other examples maybe that you could think of that when it comes to unfair practices?

Camp [00:05:09]:
Yeah. Because I think that students should understand how they're being assessed. One of my biggest things that blows my mind is when a student will be like, oh yeah, I have this grade, but I don't really know how I get it. I'm like, how is that possible? Like you as a student have the authority to say to your teacher how and why? Explain this to me. And I think any good teacher should be able to defend their practices, why they're doing something, what's the, what's the groundwork behind it. And so I think that when a student is unsure about the practices, then again, the whole thing breaks down. They're just gonna get this grade and then have to, how can they learn from what their skills are or understand even where they're at in that type of situation? So I I think that also creates a serious, serious like failure in fairness because how can it be fair if a student doesn't even understand? So, and again, some students will be like, great, I got a B. I don't really care about any of that stuff, but it's that, that shouldn't take away from the integrity of the system that you should be building so that students do care actually about how they're assessed and what skills they're improving.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:14]:
Okay. I'm gonna throw this out there because I I think this is important because we we talked about there's some discrepancies with maybe teacher practices and then also the actual assessments themselves. Yeah. You have developed you say you're in year 3 of your school, and you've before we hit record, you said that you got it. You figured it out, and and I'm just curious. Tell us about what is what's going on over at your school where the assessments are are are that's that's what we need to be following.

Camp [00:06:43]:
Will do. But here, 2 caveats for you.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:44]:
Okay. Okay.

Camp [00:06:45]:
The first is we haven't got it all figured out. We have a system we believe in. Right? And in no system is ever figured out. We are at at this school, we are always iterating. So we feel really good about our base and what we're doing. So, yes, that. But, like, do we have it all figured out? No. Second thing is we are blessed with the opportunity to be a new school.

Camp [00:07:05]:
Mhmm. Right? There are people who've been at who are teaching at schools and around for 300 years, a 100 years, and they probably don't have the freedom we have to be like, we're gonna change this. That doesn't in my opinion, that doesn't mean you don't try, though. But again, like, as a school in year 3, we have the freedom to experiment with things without the drudge of history behind us to say like, this is how it's always been. So again, that's a caveat because some people will be like, oh, you're a new school. You can't do that. You can do that. We can't.

Camp [00:07:36]:
And I disagree with that. Like, I understand that you definitely have structures in place, but it doesn't mean you you shouldn't try. So now our system, we call it competency based. But, and I'll explain why in a moment. But the, it's actually, I call it a mashup of competency based, standards based, mastery based, no grades, and traditional. So 5, like, assessment systems. Just the fact that there are 5 systems out there tells you that that's students all over the, know, if we're just talking about the United States, students all over the United States are getting different experiences based on the assessment system that's being used at the school. And I would argue, the assessment system being used in the building.

Camp [00:08:18]:
Right? You could go in a lot of schools, you go to 1 class, they're using letter grades. You go to the next class, they're using it. It's all out of 10 points or whatever. Like, it's all over the place. So what our system does is we have a competency based and competency would just be our name for skills. So we have certain skills that we assess. So on any given assessment, rather than getting it back and a student has a 75 or a b plus, they're assessed on the competencies that were tagged in that assessment. So in our system at our school, we have 16 competencies to go across the school.

Camp [00:08:51]:
So I'm a humanities teacher. I can use one. One of our competencies is I connect new ideas to previous learning. So the skill of here, I'm gonna ask you this question that's new, this new version of a question, I'm expecting you to draw on things you've already learned in this class or maybe in another class and then do whatever you need to do with that task. So I can be using that skill on an assessment in humanities, but a math teacher can also be using that same exact skill, the skill of connecting we don't just have, so we have 16 that go across the whole school. Each subject area has 3 specific competencies that pertain to that subject area to show, you know, so you could look at a student's record and see like, oh, they really, you know, excelled at science because they did well with I extrapolate competency. So what we do is we, any teacher, when they're giving assessment, they can tag however many competencies they want, and they can call from either the 16 that go across the school, their 3 competencies in their subject area, or what's most common is a mixture of both of those so that you're on any assessment, you're not stricken to just math competencies, but you can tie in these other skills that we believe are important and relevant for real life future focused skills. So then what happens is, and here's the really important part on the teacher.

Camp [00:10:23]:
So let's just say I'm tagging 3 competencies on an assessment. I have the wording of the competency, that literal wording that's published everywhere here. I connect new ideas of previous learning. But then underneath that, so the the key to understand is is the I connect. So that's what the student will be doing, I connect. The teacher then underneath that for each particular assessment writes in what I call the teaching of the competency, the you. So I would write, you respond to the Harlem Renaissance unit we did while applying that to the current events that happened on January 6th or something like that. So now I've taken that competency.

Camp [00:11:04]:
I've contextualized it on this assessment that they're doing. Okay? And then they know that's the scale they're being assessed on. So I would do that for the 3, 3 competencies, 5 competencies, whatever you want to do. Then when the student does the assessment, they're assessed on each one of those competencies. And we assess them on 3 levels that we call surface immersed in deep. We We have the explanation for each one of those, and that does convert to a grade. I'll get to I'll get to that in a minute. But in terms of surface immersed in deep, rather than get a B plus or a 75, like I said, they get back and I connect immersed.

Camp [00:11:40]:
I write surface with feedback, obviously, just like a no grade system, like feedback is paramount in our system. You know, I analyze deep or whatever. So they're not getting 1 data point, a single data point of like a B plus They're getting as many data points as there are competencies on that assessment. So they can literally see, oh, on this skill, I perform this skill in this way on this assessment rather than having the whole assessment lumped into one basically arbitrary category out of a 100 or in a through f scale?

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:12:15]:
Okay. Let me jump in because, it forgive me for my ignorance. Sure. It it sounds like a form of a rubric. Is does that is that accurate at all?

Camp [00:12:26]:
Yeah. So our if you wanted to talk about it as a rubric.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:12:29]:
Okay.

Camp [00:12:30]:
Our rubric would be 3, 3 levels of the rubric. Right? What we use almost entirely across the school is a single panel rubric where in the center of the panel is the competency Eakins the u part of the competency like I just described. Then on the two sides of the rubric, we call it exemplary and L, and you put in your feedback there. So technically, by looking at the rubric afterwards, you could see if I had writing on the on the exemplary side and writing on the developing side, that's probably immersed. That's probably like the, the middle of the assessment. And so the reason why we use a single panel rubric and don't lock everybody into a traditional rubric with all the because I believe very strongly that when you have like a 4 point rubric or whatever, and each box is explained like the thesis statement is exemplary, blah, blah, blah. The thesis that you know what I mean? Mhmm. That you're locking the students' work into that little box with no room for movement where, like a no grade system, this system allows us to give feedback specific to that student's work on that assessment that's not locked into the wording that was in that rubric.

Camp [00:13:41]:
So it's sort of like a flexible rubric method.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:13:43]:
Okay. Okay. Okay. So I was just about to say, so it's more flexible when it comes to the okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. I'm visualizing folks that may not be watching this.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:13:52]:
They can see your hand because I'm following you along, but I this I'm thinking about my folks that are listening. And okay. So that that makes a lot of sense. Now you said that there's a way that we can associate some sort of grading behind that as well?

Camp [00:14:07]:
We do. And and let me also I can tell a quick little story that when my school, New England Innovation Academy, that we call NEEA, when NEEA opened, we, I had been the architect of the teeth. So a student would only get surface, immersion, PEAP, end of story. Like feedback related. So just like a no grade system. In year 1, our constituents weren't super cool with the fact that they didn't understand it totally and they weren't getting that most traditional, of all traditional things, a letter grade. So crazy town, we took that feedback and that's real feedback, right? You're a new school. You don't want to be yelling at any constituents.

Camp [00:14:48]:
You do want to be able to share what you're doing to the external world of which most people understand the A through S scale. So we literally converted our competency based system into a grading system in March of year one. So we went with no grades and then we converted it in March. And so basically it's like a, it's a relatively simple system. It's nothing groundbreaking where surface immersed in deep are 1, 2, and 3. We have that 3 point scale built into a, a ratio that works for how we equate that to letter grades. And that's how a grade is produced. So, but just in, in terms of how that happens.

Camp [00:15:25]:
So again, on any given assessment, say you add 3 or 4 competencies on an assessment. On that assessment, it's not gonna say, it'll say surface, immerse, immerse, deep. It's not gonna say 1223. It won't say that. You could technically like add up those numbers and do the math and understand what your grade was on that particular assessment. You could do that. We don't do it. We don't talk about it that way, but a student could do it.

Camp [00:15:49]:
And that's totally fine. How we route the grade is every single demonstration of a skill in assessments throughout the course, all funnel into a grade for that course where each competency is weighted as itself.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:02]:
Okay.

Camp [00:16:03]:
Okay. And so those all get compiled and they turn into a course grade. And we need, we use a very specific learning management system called Otis who tailored their system to to what we needed, which is awesome, like phenomenal customer service, phenomenal record keeping for us and what we needed. And so now a student or family can go to Otis at any time and see an updated course grade for their grades. They're not going to see in a traditional grade book, oh, this was a B on this assessment. They'll see in this course, they have this letter grade that's built on all these different skills that a teacher is assessing.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:41]:
So remind me, is this academy, is this high school, middle, L? We're we're what is what level?

Camp [00:16:47]:
We're we are a 6 through 12 school.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:49]:
6 to 12. Alright. So a child graduates from high school, goes to college. How does that your system, I guess, communicate to maybe your traditional set or, let's say, a student's in the 10th grade and transfers out or transfers in Yeah. To your school? How how does how does all the grading line up, I guess?

Camp [00:17:06]:
So if you saw a transcript of ours, it looks the same as any transcript at any school anywhere. It's got your courses and your LOTA grades. Again, that course grade that is built on the funneling of all those, competencies. So it's the same way if a teacher had 10 quizzes all worth 50 points, they would funnel into a grade, right? That would just be their mechanism for doing that. Where at our school, everybody uses the system. So that's really one of the key elements of the equitable part. And they all funnel into that grade. So our transcript looks the exact same as anybody.

Camp [00:17:38]:
Now, and I would argue like some people might say, ask a question. You said like, oh, when they get to college and they have a traditional assessment where they just get a letter grade, how are they going to do with that? I'm like, great, because it's not about what they get at the end. It's how they do the skills on the actual assessment. So hopefully they do awesome because they built the skills and we've given them feedback to help groom those skills more directly and, you know, and acutely than perhaps a traditional system.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:07]:
Yeah.

Camp [00:18:07]:
Yeah.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:08]:
I I wasn't worried about okay. Well, what happens when they get to college? Are they gonna be able to do the do the work or whatever? Like, are they gonna Yeah. I wasn't worried about that because based off of how you described it, it's like it's more of we're looking at the Eakins, and 2 plus 2 is gonna still equal 4 either way it goes. So it to me, that made sense. I was just worried about, let's say, if someone transferred in or out or graduated and those, you know, those kind of things, will those that that you that they accumulate throughout the GPA if it equals or if it's, I guess, recognized. But it sounds like that that's the case, so that's good too.

Camp [00:18:41]:
Yeah. It's the exact same as a grade from anywhere. That's why when we, when we made that system, we kept the integrity of our competency based system without grades, built a system that is very fair for producing a grade that you know is the same as a B or an A at any public school or private school, whatever. It's the same same grade.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:19:01]:
As far as the assessment go, so it could still be a written format. It could still be multiple choice. It could still be short answers. It could still be because of the the, what did you say, surface, immerse, and deep as part of the assessment. So it doesn't necessarily matter how that assessment is given, the scale or the the way it's ranked or rated. I'm I'm probably not using best words, but how that comes back, it's still the same. Right?

Camp [00:19:28]:
Correct. Yeah. We call those measures. We call surface immersity measures of the skill. But yeah, that's a great question because it's not about like in my whole explanation of our competency based system, one of the key tenets is us, the competency system is not based on assessment methods like a quiz or multiple choice or whatever. It's not about that. It's about the skill. So you can give a quiz.

Camp [00:19:49]:
You can give a test. You can give a project. You can give a speech. Whatever you want. You can do whatever method you want to help cull the skills from the students that you've been working on in your class. So, and, and it also, this is a question I get internally a lot. It's like, well, what about the waiting? Like something's worth 50% or something like that and we don't wait. Like I our weighting is every single competency is weighted as its own self.

Camp [00:20:15]:
And that's the only weighting we do, which also, like some people might a criticism would definitely be if you go to college, like your midterms worth 50% or whatever. Fine. That's kind of arbitrary because you go to another college and it's worth 40%. Right?

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:20:31]:
Right.

Camp [00:20:31]:
So, so we just believe strongly that that's that's how our system works. And we think that that's the fairest way with every skill having the weight of its own self. We're not being the arbitrary one saying, oh, let's do this, be 10% of the grade and this 40% or those types of things. Because then you can all decide as a group that that's great and that's awesome. I'm not criticizing that system. I'm just saying that in my opinion, that's arbitrary. That's a group deciding on the percentages and weights of the assessments.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:02]:
Okay. Let's transition to maybe the other side of things. Let's just say you have students that aren't meeting the competency skills. What type of tutoring or support enrichment support can we provide or do you provide to students that maybe they didn't they're only getting surfaces or maybe they're getting a little less than surfaces. Those kind of Eakins set, what type of I don't know. How how do you support those type of needs?

Camp [00:21:29]:
Great question. So supporting those types of needs, honestly, like one of my lines is it's just good teaching. Like good teachers should be supporting a student who's got a bunch of surfaces. But in our, in our program here at our, at our school, we have a built in extra help block every single day from 3 to 3:30. Right? So that's the time where the teacher I'm a teacher. Right? And I see in my Otis learning management system grade book that you've had, you know, for the I Write competency, you've had 3 services in a row. You're going to come meet with me during extra help and you're going to see my feedback on that competency. And we're gonna talk about what's happening here.

Camp [00:22:08]:
What's keeping you from doing this? And it's that sort of support for the students. So we really like lean into the extra help block is really important. And also the feed like the feedback mechanism that's, that's, that's key for a student to take in the feedback, which we know adolescents don't love, you know, reading their feedback and acting on it. But again, that's the teacher's job to facilitate that and really work with the students to do that. So and, you know, like our school, we have a learning support program. So if a student was struggling in ways that a teacher was having difficulty sort of ascertaining exactly what they could do, we can communicate with our learning support program. But, but here's the one thing too, like the cool thing about our Otis system is I could go in and choose Sheldon. Right? I can go to my grade book and choose Sheldon and choose the Iconnect competency and hit a button.

Camp [00:22:58]:
And I would see a graph of every time you were assessed in Iconnect, okay, in the surface immersive deep graph. And, and so I could say like, Oh, you were like this. And then as a teacher, I'd be like, Hey, let's talk about why you have that undulynt path. Right? And here's the cool thing about the way the system works is I can hover over the points and see what exactly that assessment was. So I can be like, oh, listen, this was a multiple choice assessment, and you got surfaced here, but you get deep on this speech about Iconnect. Let's talk about how like, why? What happened there? And it just like, you know, the, the reflection on, on learning for a student and how they learn is so key to me. Like, I don't know, as a, just as a teacher, I'm always talking to my students about metacognition and thinking about how they think themselves. And really one of the most important things you can do as a student is understand how you learn best and then hone that as much as you can because everybody learns differently.

Camp [00:23:58]:
We know that. And I think one of the ways the system helps with that and from an equitable and fair spot is we, we we are honing in where somebody like might not be, have that best skills as a writer. Right?

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:24:10]:
Right.

Camp [00:24:10]:
But there are 2 or 3 other competencies on that assessment. So, okay, they might get surface or immersed on EyeRight for that assessment, but the other 3 are strong. So that's great. That gives them like positive encouragement that, you know, it's it's a combination of these skills rather than all of it lumped together to equal this one thing. That, in my opinion and through all the research I've done on assessment, is damaging the Eakins' psyches about how they their relationship with grades.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:24:38]:
As I'm listening to you say, look, we went through the data and we saw maybe you're doing you're not doing as strong in multiple choice. However, your you know, this assessment style seems to be your strength. Are students able to be able to just kinda go with their strengths? And when it comes to their how they because at the end of the day, we just wanna know that they have skill. So it it are they able to okay. I'm I'm a better multiple choice person or I'm better written person. Are they able to to go to towards their strengths, or is it more like we understand or we recognize probably you're not as good in multiple choice? However, this I'm just kinda curious. Is it more is there some universal design for learning built into the way a student can be assessed once we start to develop or understand what their strengths are when it comes to their assessment styles?

Camp [00:25:28]:
Yeah. Definitely. We're we're very flexible at our school in terms of we want students to be able to learn how they learn best. That might mean, hey. You struggled on this multiple choice. It doesn't mean I'm never gonna give you a multiple choice again.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:43]:
Sure.

Camp [00:25:43]:
Right? Because let's see how you do this. But it might also mean like, hey. Yeah. Why don't we for this next assessment, you can do something like this. Without a doubt, that happens I I think that happens all the time. And some people would argue that's not equitable, but it I actually argue that it is because if you're working on the skill, right, the competency The

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:26:03]:
skill.

Camp [00:26:03]:
How you arrive at that competency doesn't matter. So it's that whole, you know, graphic of the kids looking over the fence and the big block and the medium block and the little block. So I think a teacher who can be adaptive and responsive to get the best out of the student's skill, that's what we're looking for. And that does, that's not one size fits all. That's not one situation fits all. So that's sort of what we embrace and deal with the messiness of it the best we can and really put, you know, articulate it's the student at the center. That's what we're looking for.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:26:35]:
Yeah. I'm with you, Cam. I mean, I I I totally agree. I mean, that to me, that is equitable to you know, if we know that this student is excelling with this type of assessment, we just wanna know if they know the stuff, whether we that they have the skill. They L that whatever the competency is. We just that's all we're looking for. So however they bring it to us, that should matter. And what because if they don't if they're not good at multiple choice testing and they know the skill, but it's is it accurately portraying that they know the skill or not if if that's not their strength? So I I'm I'm totally with you.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:07]:
To me, it sounds very equitable. But I think when people don't really understand what equity is, they tend to but, again, you say differentiated instruction, oh, they'll be totally fine with that. So that's just kinda how those things go. So let me ask you this. Alright? So I know there are some school leaders. There's probably some district folks that are listening to this, directors of curriculum instruction folks that are listening to this, or some some teachers maybe that are looking to, you know, polish some assessment opportunities. How hard is it to adopt this type of system? Like you said, you're a brand new school, so you kinda did it from the ground up. But for those schools who are already Eakins, quote, unquote, traditional styles of assessments, what type of tips would you give to them that are looking to maybe transition into this style?

Camp [00:27:50]:
Love that question. My tip is to experiment, to, to bring in your teachers or your administrators and be like, this is an idea I have because I want to think about assessment differently. So it started the heck out of no grades. And I will, I'll tell a quick story about my previous school, a colleague and I wanted to do no grades. Very traditional school, by the way, like wanted to do no grades. We had like an 8 page proposal, research in there, everything. Brought it to our director of academics and she's like, no, you can't do that here. And so it was frustrating.

Camp [00:28:26]:
So instead, rather than like take the defeat, I was like, okay, how can I use the tenants of the no grade system within this system that we have? And And so I just started that, like a building assessment where I was still, it was almost all feedback based, but still had, was able to establish a grade, those types of things. And I also would say if your school does have in fact different levels of assessment methods or ways that you would arrive at a grade. Like I said, like 1 teacher uses a 100 points, 1 teacher uses 5 points. Right? That's, that's widespread. If that's the case, then you should totally be able to run a standards based system in your class because you're still arriving at a letter grade the same as the teacher using a 100 point scale. So my tips are like, do it, experiment, but you know, don't, don't go all rogue. I think you got to include people in and let people know what you're doing and why you're doing it. Run a little like this unit will be done on standards based or this unit will be done no grades based and, and see how it goes.

Camp [00:29:29]:
Again, because I think in most systems it's not equitable around the building, how people are assessing. So in most of those systems, it's, you're kind of able to try a standards based or something like that in your, in your class because everybody's doing something a little bit differently. So so, you know, analyze the playing field, include, communicate, communicate as much as possible and give it a whirl and say, Hey, we're going to try this. And and the reason why is because it's about student learning. That's what it's about.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:29:58]:
At the end of the day. Yeah. I got you. Alright. That's that's a great answer. I was just curious for for my folks. I know I I try to anticipate the kind of questions that folks are probably gonna be doing. So I I I think that's that's important.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:10]:
So, listen, Camp, I I thoroughly have learned a lot about, you know, assessment style, and I think it's very important. I think you and I are both on the same page. I'd love for you to share maybe any final word of advice to our listeners.

Camp [00:30:22]:
My main advice is be courageous. It's so easy in the educational system that's been around for 200 years. In the school year, not going to let me or something like that. I think be courageous. It's about student learning. If you feel like assessment can be better than what you're doing it right now, be courageous and give it a try. Commute, like I just said, communicate, experiment. That's the most important thing.

Camp [00:30:53]:
I think having the courage to stand up against this system that's been around for so long and is just plodding along, which by the way, you know, sad, as sad as it is, the whole system of education in the United States, letter grades, getting into college, that's how you're measured, all that type of stuff. That's crazy that we put so much weight into those things that, you know, quote, shape somebody's future. We should be like clawing to improve the system that arrives at that thing that we say is so important. So in my opinion, it's courage. I was courageous at my previous school and got shut down. So I, I redirected my idea. I eventually changed over to standards because that worked better with what it was, all those types of things. That's my advice.

Camp [00:31:37]:
Be courageous.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:31:38]:
Be courageous. If we have some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Camp [00:31:42]:
Yeah. So you can definitely reach out to me at my email. It's camp at neiacademy.org. If you go to neiacademy.org, the website, I can easily be found there. That's the best way. I love hearing from other educators that I could talk about assessment all day, as I think you can tell. And again, back to the original point, like we don't have it all figured out. I'm not saying sitting here like on a mountain being like, you know, we are the champions of assessment.

Camp [00:32:08]:
It's it's always it always should be iterative. So any ideas, any holes in my system, any advice? I'd love to brainstorm about what's best for student learning.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:32:17]:
Alright. Well, Cam, it has truly been a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Camp [00:32:21]:
Alright, Sheldon. I appreciate it. Thank you.

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