IN CONVERSATION:
Ungrading students, unfixing the classroom, and the power of pimp my ride
UnMapping Project Instructor lead Steve Vásquez Dolph met with 2024-25 UnMapping Course Co-Instructors Colin Hennessy Elliott and Jadzia Watsey to discuss using storytelling in the changing educational landscape.
Edited for length and clarity
Steve: Thanks so much for making time for us. I would love to start with you introducing yourselves as educators and then talking about the course.
COLIN: I came to Drexel [in 2022] as new faculty in teacher education, and I had a couple courses where we had to go hang out with teachers. I didn’t know anybody, so I bothered one of my colleagues, Dr. Val Klein, and asked, “Who should I talk to?” She introduced me to Jadzia... and I was very excited about what she's been up to [at High School For Creative & Performing Arts (CAPA)]. When I thought about the [UnMapping] course and tried to imagine the role of storytelling and teacher learning, she was the first person I thought would be really fun to work with because it brought her back into the Drexel fold and because I've learned so much from her stories.
I got really excited about the possibility of talking to other educators and having them share their stories and facilitating that with my students who are currently student teachers and applying that to their future classroom. I was trying really hard to put together a course that would offer stories as tools for dreaming about different classrooms. I've studied the way that educators think about learning, and the way that student teachers learn: it's about practice. I wanted to bring in this sense of, “How do we help them imagine classrooms?” Because I think a barrier to innovation in education is our inability to imagine classrooms outside the ones that we've been in. How do I give them the opportunity to sort of “be in other classrooms” through the use of storytelling? I knew Jadzia would be the perfect person to bring in.
Steve: Jadzia, do you want to say a little bit about your origin and how you ended up here?
Jadzia: Yeah, I went to Drexel and always knew that I wanted to be a math teacher, so I decided to go to Drexel with a major in math. The Dragons Teach program was just like a lovely coincidental program that started the same time I started. It’s for STEM majors to get certified to teach. It was perfect... I got hired [at CAPA] in April of my senior year, my first six months were in-person, and then the next few months were virtual. We closed in March of my first year of teaching... Then, my second year was 100% virtual. The following year, we were back in person, but that was basically my first year of teaching again... Now, I've been here for six years.
...When I started teaching, I was guessing a lot. I thought I was prepared, and I thought I was ready, and I absolutely wasn't. It didn't cross my mind that I had to consider a bathroom policy or a cell phone policy. It was a lot of trial and error to figure out what I had to do... I think that the stories that I heard from other teachers helped me figure out the best way to go about solving a problem... I have even learned from these other teachers that we visited [in our UnMapping course].
Steve: Before we move on to talking about the nitty gritty stuff of the course, you mentioned that you always knew you wanted to be a math teacher, can you tell us about that?
Jadzia: When I was a kid, over the summer my mom would give my brother and I math worksheets... I really enjoyed doing the math worksheets because I found it easy, and I liked solving a puzzle and I just liked numbers. My brother hated it. There were always fights about the math worksheets, and I ended up working with him to try to make him not hate it as much... Math is very much disliked, and I think that it is disliked because it challenges people and makes them question their intelligence. A big thing I break down at this school is that they can all learn math and there’s no such thing as math people or a non-math person...It's about growth mindset and it's just about how you can change your wording. Instead of saying “I can't,” say “I will be able to.” Change it to say, “This is hard, because it will require effort,” “I'm afraid I'm going to make a mistake, but when I make a mistake, I’ll learn.” Talking about how there's ability to grow... It's just the tiniest things. When a kid gives a wrong answer, instead of saying “That's not it. Does anybody else have an answer?” I say, “That's a really good idea. How did you come up with that?” In talking through how they came up with their response, half the time they figure out what they did wrong. Then, they can describe how they did it differently. It's just little phrase changes that I think are helping build kids confidence in math.
Steve: One of the connections I see in education is that so much of it comes down to the story we tell ourselves about who we are as learners, who we are as teachers... Colin, can you talk a little bit about how you got into teacher learning as one of your practices and what inspired you into that path?
Colin: In undergraduate, I was a physics major and I—similar Jadzia—loved math. I won the math award in middle school... When I got to high school, that became physics because it was math applied to the real world. That was my love, and I ended up majoring in that in college, but I realized towards the end, I do not want to be in a lab for the rest of my life. I fell in love with reading and thinking about the way that knowledge is reproduced, the way that knowledge is shared and the different perspectives on that and the theoretical perspectives on how science is a social practice. From there, I wrote one of my final papers about what this should mean for how science is taught... In the midst of that, I realized I wanted to be a high school teacher. At the end of my master's program, I applied for a non-traditional teacher program and ended up getting accepted.
I became a high school teacher in Newark, NJ, and I was completely ill-prepared. One of the reasons I do this work now is because I don't want anyone else to feel the way that I felt that first year. I love teaching. I love teaching high school, but I was not prepared to teach students who had such a different life experience than me. I was told at all points in my trajectory that I was smart enough to be in the room, yet so many kids that I worked with were not told that. That gave me a real passion for understanding what I can do to make sure that folks feel more empowered to be able to teach in spaces where they don't have the same experiences.
After a couple research positions coming to Drexel, my goal was to think about how we teach people to become teachers that are sociopolitical actors in the classroom and know themselves as that. One of the reasons I wanted that is because I saw that as a language and a lens on helping them feel more prepared to work in solidarity with folks who might be told that they don't belong regularly.
That's what I've tried really hard at Drexel to do when I'm working, especially with my student teachers. Our program is so small that I'm working with student teachers who are teaching kindergarten and who are teaching high school. That meant nothing could be discipline or age specific which is a really cool challenge. One of the reasons I like taking up that challenge of, “how do I think about teacher learning?” was how I continued to think about early teachers relying on making connections within the city. It is learning how to be better through telling stories with colleagues. Teachers learn through that process. This class is about facilitating that.
Jadzia: To add on, having this open learning experience, where we're providing all of these different stories, with different people on the team is cool because they can just apply it to themselves and their own facet of education... Education should be pulling [students’] curiosity. Even though we have all these kids and all these different areas, I think they are really gaining valuable ideas and skills by having these conversations.
Colin: I was thinking about my own university teaching practice too. [One teacher was] sharing about an emerging curriculum where they start the year with certain kinds of activities and notice what kids are interested in, and they start to shape what they're going to do for the year based on those collective interests. I was like, why am I not thinking about doing that in my classroom? I say, my schedule is tentative and most of the students are completely fine with not changing anything about what we're going to be doing for the quarter. So, how would I facilitate that kind of emerging curriculum within the structures of our university setting. It could be really interesting and also harder for the students to follow up because they're so schooled right now.
Jadzia: I was going to say you have to teach them how to...
Colin: How to play!
Jadzia: Yeah! I have to do that in my class. That's so funny that you brought that up. I feel like I have to spend the first quarter breaking their spirit so that they can then learn as a curious person and not a student that's just trying to pass. I have to break them down to get them to change their mindset about what learning should be and what education is. I do see a difference after the first quarter – the kids are having more fun.
“ I was trying really hard to put together a course that would offer stories as tools for dreaming about different classrooms… Because I think a barrier to innovation in education is our inability to imagine classrooms outside the ones that we've been in.'“
— Colin Hennessy Elliott
Steve: Let's change gears and talk about classrooms, the ways in which the classrooms operate as the kind of laboratory as you were describing. Jadzia, you mentioned this memory when you and your brother were at the kitchen table doing worksheets. Do you have another one of a classroom that inspired you or informs your educational practice?
Jadzia: 100%...My high school physics teacher—I remember getting so pissed in his class because we'd be doing a lab, and I would walk up to him and say, “I don't understand what's happening. Can you please help me?” and he would reply by asking me a question. I'd be like, “Sir, you're actually not answering me. I'm asking you to tell me what to do.” But he always asked a question and I hated it. When I got to college and I started learning about educating people, I realized he did that to get us to think about things instead of just requesting an answer... I feel like I was the perfect example of the kid that had to be broken to change this idea needing to know and needing to get it done so I can get an A... I remember when I got my first B in a college class. I was very upset by it, and I realized, this is about learning. It's about making mistakes. About the growth...
Steve: Thank you for sharing all that. What about you, Colin? Was there a classroom in early life that inspired you?
Colin: I'll share my high school physics teacher. I will always remember—that was a time when my friends and I did and learned a ton. We also talked non-stop about Pimp My Ride. Just like during work time. Her style of class was very much, “I'm going to give you a little thing to think about. I'm going to have you try it out and then we'll come back and discuss it as a class and then you'll do some lab.” It wasn't this like high pressure need to do everything right away, need to do everything super quickly vibe. Yet, we were all super successful regularly. I learned so much, and yet I still had an opportunity to have this concurrent, really silly conversation with my friends. She had no problem with that. One of the reasons I think about that when I'm working with teachers now is because I think about what would have happened if she told us to stop talking about it. Or saying we’re off task, and this idea of off task in K-12 schooling as a monster that we're so worried about all the time. It inspires me to think about what we actually mean by off task. Maybe we were using Pimp My Ride to actually help us figure out the problems we're doing or not, but we were still being really successful.
The other one I'll share is from my first year teaching. I share this with my student teachers regularly. I had a class with a lot of squirrely boys, 9th graders who very much wanted to push every boundary possible with me, and they knew that I was new. But I always remember this one moment when I was in that class and the kids were challenging me and being sarcastic and being silly. Then, one of the kids just raises his hand. I go, “OK, Stephen, go ahead.” He's like, “Mr. Elliot. I just want you to know that I love you.” I had no idea what to do. I thought 1) Is this like a kid trying to mess with me and see what I say? 2) What do I say to that? And 3) What are all the kids in the room thinking I'm going to say when I say? The reason it stuck with me now is because I'm like, what the hell was wrong with myself? Why wouldn't I just say it back? Like, why wouldn't I just make that kid feel loved in that space? Even if he was being sarcastic, why does it matter? I think a lot about me as a first-year teacher and that fear of the kids trying to mess with me rather than being fully genuine. Why was I afraid to love in the classroom? Now, I hope at least I would say, “I love you too. Let's keep working on what we're working on,” something like that because maybe that's what he needed in that moment. When I'm thinking about working with teachers and even with my students, Jadzia and I have had some hard conversations with some of our students recently about how they're feeling and thinking about the emotional aspect of learning. So much is important, and I had no idea what to do.
Steve: The last question is about UnMapping classrooms —what does that mean? My sense is that you've answered it as, ‘bring a person into the space and the students will respond.’
Jazdia: It makes students feel more comfortable in spaces when they can view their teacher as a real person that actually has hardships. That’s kind of what [Colin was] saying, teachers have a fear of that, and they want to put up a barrier and they want to have a very specific line. I do try to remain professional obviously, but I think there's a lot of things that I share with my students. Just trying to be open.
For example, the other day I had an algebra one class in here and I was having such a bad day. So, I started off class by saying, “Listen. I'm having an annoying day, and it says nothing to do with you guys, but I just want you to know that if I seem grumpy or if it seems like I'm making a not normal face at you, it's not because of you. Just because I am having an annoying day and I honestly don't know why I'm having an annoying day, but I am.” I didn't really share a lot about myself, but sharing lets them know that it's OK for them to have an annoying day and not know why and to still be able to push through and do the things that they have to do. I think they also look at me like I'm a real person, and it makes them feel more comfortable coming to talk to me about their issues. I've noticed that a lot this year...
Colin: Being vulnerable for me is really important. When I was initially thinking about UnMapping, the other thing I was thinking is that vulnerability has to be reciprocal with students, and it also means we have to get grades out of the way. I've done this research with my students, with my youth researchers. Part of UnMapping means that we have to “UnGrade.” The practice of being assigned a grade or a letter has gotten in the way of the ability to have an authentic relationship. That feels like one of the boundaries we have to transcend, among other boundaries. I see [grades] as a barrier for vulnerability, for creativity, for growth mindset, for lots of these things that we're saying are important.
Jadzia: I totally agree, and that is something that I also tried to do in my classroom. Harder because it is a requirement for us to post 2 grades per week. That's what our union contract said. We have to post 2 grades per week. The way I go about doing that is I grade based on effort. I tell the kids as long as they’re here and trying to learn math and asking questions when they’re confused, they will get an A. I don't care if they're making mistakes because mistakes are part of learning. Were they able to figure out why they were wrong? Did they ask me? Did they talk to their team? That's more of what I'm grading them on, and I think that that is a big part of why they end up having more fun and being naturally curious is because they're not scared of the consequence of not being able to learn everything in that moment.
Colin: I want to add for UnMapping and go back to the core of the course. It’s designed around imagining. How do we imagine classrooms differently? One of the things we have to transcend in UnMapping is our understanding of what classrooms can be. Far too often, even in Higher Ed spaces, it's hard for folks to think outside of meeting for X amount of time here in this one classroom, and we're going to have these discussions. Thinking outside the physical, material structures, and also the social structures of what we think classrooms should be like. And I've been really excited that UnMapping has given me a reason to do some of that.
Steve: Yeah. Well, thank you both so much for taking so much time and giving such thoughtful, genuine, wonderful answers to these questions. I really appreciate it.
Jadzia: This is great. I love chatting about education. It's so fun.