S1 E11: Talking Grades with Cory Henwood

What does a letter grade really tell us?  Does it tell us if a student mastered the content or does it tell us a student finished all the work and behaved appropriately.  Join us as we begin a new series of episodes on grading students.  The traditional letter grade system, like so many other things in education, is something we do because we have always done it.  Throughout the course of these episodes we will discuss our frustrations with this current system and explore alternative methods for grading students.  In our first episode, we have the privilege of meeting with Cory Henwood about his experiences with competency based grading.  Cory is a speaker, consultant and coach.  Additionally, he is the Innovation Coordinator for Iron County School District in Cedar City Utah where he founded  Launch High School, a new high-tech school focused on entrepreneurship, design thinking, and personalized, competency-based education.  He has also recently started directing Iron County School District's Online Education Programs.  He brought a wealth of experience and knowledge to the show and we hope you enjoy listening to him as much as we enjoyed talking to him. Additional information about Cory Website: coryhenwood.com twitter: @CoryHenwood TEDx Talk: The Empowering Future of Education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_M6LuABO48&feature=emb_logo Information about the mastery transcript consortium: https://www.the74million.org/article/the-mastery-transcript-consortium-has-been-developing-a-gradeless-transcript-for-college-admissions-this-fall-it-gets-its-first-test/ Tweet of the week comes from @yanceysanderson Strategy of the week:  We asked Cory to leave us with a strategy of the week and he left us with a vision for teaching excellence.  Rather than give us a strategy, he talked about teachers working side by side with students on purposeful projects as co-designers.  We asked him for a strategy and he gave us a pedagogical shift.  Thank you for your insight Cory. Contact us thepegdoesntfit@gmail.com Erich's twitter: @erichjstephen Ryan's twitter: @RyanDBartel1 Do you have it a tweet of the week?  Retweet it with our hashtag at #thepegdoesntfit Leave us a voicemail at anchor.fm/thepegdoesntfit