This was such a great conversation with Sheldon Eakins - You can check out our conversation and share your thoughts.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:Welcome to advocates to another episode of Eakins Equity podcast. Podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their skulls. Listen. I have a celebrity in the house. I gotta tell you something. I was at a conference, and I'm just just walking around just seeing what ASCD was offering in our leadership conference in Nashville. And I came across the books, And I found this right here, student led assessments right there by Star Sexton. So I'm just so excited to welcome on our very celebrity special guest here.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:38]:Star, thank you so much for joining us today.
Starr Sackstein [00:00:41]:That's real nice, Sheldon. But to be honest with you, I am definitely not a celebrity. I am just a person who's trying to help teachers do right by kids.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:49]:I love that answer. Well, thank you again. It is but it is an honor. I I definitely appreciate your time and, I'm really excited about today's topic. So before we get into today's topic, I'd love for you to share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do.
Starr Sackstein [00:01:02]:Sure. So I'm Star Saxstein. I've I've been I feel like I've been in education, like, almost half my life which is kind of well actually more than half my life at this point. I was a New York City public school teacher, high school English and Journalism and then I was a lead learner in a district L curriculum director and now I am both the COO of Mastery Portfolio, a small ed tech company that helps schools move toward a mastery based paradigm, and also the state coordinator for Educators Rising in Massachusetts, which is very, very, very new. And I am also lucky enough to write a column for the Kappan Magazine called Career Confidential, which I'm really excited about because I get to give people advice. It's like being the Dear Abby of educators, which is kind of fun.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:52]:K. So you're being very modest, but you sound very busy. So good good for you. First of all, congratulations on all all the things that you're doing. And and so that's that's great. Alright. So let's get into it. We're talking about peer assessments today, and I'd love to get your take on that.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:02:08]:Share with our audience who are primarily educators out there that are interested in possibly going this direction. You have a great book already as well about it. So I'm gonna start off. What is peer assessment?
Starr Sackstein [00:02:20]:So when I think about peer assessment in general, it's when we are inviting students into this conversation and allowing them to provide feedback to each other. It's an opportunity for them to be both learning together, teaching each other, collaborating, and also providing structures in the class that make that doable. In my experience, a lot of folks are really enamored with the idea of peer assessment, peer feedback, but they don't give themselves enough time and space to really let it happen. It's not one of those things you could try once and it goes off without a hitch and you're like, yes, we've done peer assessment. It's actually something that takes quite a lot of effort to build structures, create a safe space where kids feel like they can expose both strengths and challenges with each other, and that that culture needs to preexist before you could expect kids to wanna share their learning with each other in an effective way. So, you know, build good relationships, make sure the kids have good relationships so it's not just them trusting you, but also trusting each other. And that the space that they're in is something that is nurturing and understanding that mistakes are a part of the process. And when we give constructive feedback, which I don't like when people say either criticism or anything like that, and our our words really do matter.
Starr Sackstein [00:03:45]:So when we think about giving constructive feedback, that's going to be the stuff that's going to help them grow. And when we say constructive versus critical or criticism, it's this idea that we all have room to grow. And even though it's hard to hear sometimes getting that feedback is something that's going to help help you get to where you wanna be.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:06]:Okay. This all sounds great start. Great start. Why would we wanna do this? Like, what's the benefits to the students? What's the benefits to the school culture, the classroom community? What what are the benefits?
Starr Sackstein [00:04:17]:Sure. So Eakins need to feel the empowerment that's inherent within them. And I think that when we take the teacher out of a lead role in some of those, we have an opportunity to really give them ownership of the space, have them dictate pace, have them dictate tone. And I think the benefits are that kids really feel engaged in their learning. They feel proud of what's happening. They feel like they have a right to say, I like this. I don't like this. This is what I think is working for me.
Starr Sackstein [00:04:48]:This isn't working for me. And then it also gives the teacher an opportunity to be more flexible on the formative side. So, I'm paying attention to what's going on during these peer conferences that are happening. And then, it also gives me an opportunity to know which kids I need to pull into a small group. It gives me an opportunity to know if I have to teach a mini lesson, if I'm overhearing a lot of conversations, that we've clearly missed a concept that needs to be retaught. And it also creates a more facilitation like atmosphere in the room where it's not the teacher on a timeline just dictating every single thing that's happening in this space. And I found that building an environment like that, kids really value it. And even when I wasn't in school, whether I was out with my son or out at a conference, my colleagues liked covering my classes because kids knew what they were supposed to be doing and didn't wanna miss a day regardless of whether or not I was there.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:05:48]:Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, I'm gonna throw something at you.
Starr Sackstein [00:05:51]:Please do.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:05:52]:So, what do we say to teachers that say, oh, L, I've been doing peer assessments for years. We do spelling spelling spelling words and and then after we get done doing our spelling test, we have the kids trade trade their papers around each other. And so now I'll call out how to spell the words and and then they they correct each other's papers. I've been doing peer assessment. What do you say to someone that that is their definition or they feel like I mean, is that considered peer assessment or, like, what are your thoughts there?
Starr Sackstein [00:06:22]:No. I think that that's more like, just an activity where we're actually grading something. And, honestly, those who know who I am, I'm pretty against grading things. I'm even more against kids grading each other Eakins if it's like it's one thing if you have a learning progression and kids are pulling language from a learning progression about what they're seeing in each other's works, but they could give better feedback to each other. But it's a whole other thing to be the decider of whether or not something is right and wrong. And I don't know, it's a pretty unfair position to put kids in, I think. It does make a teacher's life a little easier because now they have to grade 20 tests or however many kids are in this space. But when I think of peer feedback and peer assessment, I'm really thinking more about teaching kids a vocabulary of learning, helping them understand what success looks like, and then teaching them to be really good providers of feedback.
Starr Sackstein [00:07:18]:Not arbiters of what's good and what's not, but just like, hey. We have these really clear parameters on what this assignment was supposed to be doing. I see that you've been able to do all of these things, and here's where you still have space to grow. And and or just asking clarifying questions to their peers and then trying to get a better understanding of what they're trying to communicate.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:07:40]:Okay. Yeah. Because I'm like just like you said, it's like I'm thinking, oh, yeah. It's it's it makes my life easier. I don't have to grade 20 papers. The kids grade themselves. Now we're doing this collaborativeness. Maybe I'll ask them to write a little sentence at the end of the the paper.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:07:55]:Good job. You almost had it. You only missed 2. Now I can have them give them that feedback. So I'm glad you you were able to clarify that for us.
Starr Sackstein [00:08:03]:Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's gotta be a little bit more substantive than something that's just right or wrong. We want kids to feel like they have some say in what's going on in front of them in the quality or even the communication of what they're looking at. And as an English teacher, mine would have been writing workshops so students would have had opportunities to really help each other grow and develop their drafts. As well as in my 12th grade classroom, students were also helping me design assessment. Like by the end of my classroom time, I had gotten comfortable enough letting go of control to say, Here's how I used to teach Hamlet. How do you want to learn Hamlet? These are the objectives we need to hit. What are we going to do? And the students by the end of the year were able to design assessments with me and then became a lot more democratic in the space where if a couple of kids had ideas about what we should be doing, we would vote on it as a class as far as what we wanted to do to show what we knew.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:05]:Okay. Okay. So here's the next question then because you mentioned earlier about it's not necessarily about grading each other.
Starr Sackstein [00:09:12]:That's right.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:09:13]:And so if we're thinking, like, for example, multiple choice or something like that and students kinda grading those answers, that doesn't that's not pure assessment. But then you also mentioned that you have an English teaching background. My math folks, for example, how do they how can they utilize pure assessments? Because in math, you got formulas. It's it's what's the value of whatever? Give us a little bit of information for our math folks.
Starr Sackstein [00:09:38]:So I I work with a lot of math people to name a a couple, Crystal Frommer and Emma Chapetta, who writes a lot for Ed both of them write for Edutopia also, and my partner, Constance Boro. And we believe, like, it's still the same thing. If there's a system to write to doing a math problem, kids could actually look through those steps to make sure that the steps are in the right place. You could still confer with students about what they know and can do. And if you've read Building Thinking Classrooms in mathematics, there's a lot of different ways where you're actually getting kids to collaborate with each other. So, it's more of a conversation around how to solve a problem. And then through that conversation, being able to arrive at an understanding of the concept as well as the math mathematical computation that they're working on. I mean, if it's simple math, we're talking about kids who are much, much younger and they're just learning their number facts.
Starr Sackstein [00:10:36]:I think it's a little bit more black and white where we might maybe instead of just doing a right wrong, it might be they arrived at it by using manipulatives or they arrived at it by using manipulatives, or they use different kinds of ways to get to their answer if it's not just memorized at that point. But I would say you'd wanna save your peer assessment for the more in-depth sort of word problems or logic problems or problems that actually have multi steps because then they can give feedback on if they missed a step. Or if if they approached a problem a different way, that's a conversation too. Like, why did you make the choice to solve it like this? And how did you get to where you're going? So I think you could still have some really rich conversations around how you solve the thinking behind it, the concepts, and then having kids be able to use their vocabulary around math as well as other math practices, talking through the getting it wrong part, for example.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:11:34]:Okay. So and, folks, you gotta get the book student led assessments, and link is gonna be in the show notes right there. You can grab your copy. But I'm just curious, can you just share a little bit, Star, about because you mentioned earlier that basically a teacher needs to set it up. Like, you can't just say, okay, I want you to give feedback. There's there's a process that you have to go through in order to create that culture. Could you break it down a little bit as far as what does that look like?
Starr Sackstein [00:12:01]:Absolutely. So we have an understanding of the formative assessment process, right? We have clarity about what we're trying to teach. There's an opportunity to teach with clear learning intentions and success criteria. Kids set goals. They do activities. And then from those activities, they get feedback. They go back and iterate again, and then they get feedback from their peers, and then they iterate again, and then they do self self assessment and reflection at the end. If we wanna set that up in our classrooms, we have to be models of those things first.
Starr Sackstein [00:12:33]:So I always say, like, 1st month of school, we are modeling our expectations all the time. How do we give and receive feedback? And that that goes both ways with teachers too. If students have feedback, we have to take the hard with with the good and model that with grace. It's not easy to hear when kids don't like something, but at the same time, it makes us better to understand what's working for them and what isn't working for them. And if we could get that kind of stuff sorted out right at the beginning, it's certainly gonna help the rest of the year. And it sets a tone for what kids can expect from you. So if you say I'm open to your feedback and you respond positively when you get that feedback, it's likely kids will feel comfortable enough to offer you feedback again in the future. If you snap at them when they say something bad to you, chances are they are not going to take you up on that again.
Starr Sackstein [00:13:25]:Right. Sheldon, of course, you're human. Right? You say to them afterwards, oh, I shouldn't responded that way. And I feel like too often we're missing those opportunities to model for kids that as adults, we can be wrong. And when we're wrong, it's important to for us to step up and do all the things we expect them to do too. So building that culture, you and I were talking earlier, Sheldon, about belonging. You wanna build a space where kids really feel like they belong Yeah. Because then they feel like their voice matters in that space, and they will be more likely to speak up if that feels like it's being infringed upon in any kind of way.
Starr Sackstein [00:14:03]:And I'm not perfect. I've certainly had my run ins with kids who tested me in ways that I I am not too proud to admit were challenging at times, bad days or kids that were just triggers because they reminded me of someone from my own life or whatever the situation may be. But I still think that there's a really big need for teachers to demonstrate that grace and honesty and transparency and authenticity with their students where it's like, even though I'm having a bad day right now and whatever happened before I left the house is starting to spill out into this room right now, that is a reflection on me. And I have found that apologizing promptly and in front of the rest of the other kids in the class, acknowledging my own shortcoming in that space, definitely built a lot more trust in that space also. So when kids see the teacher to other students doing that, the way they talk to each other is also really respectful. So if we're modeling that we are learners in this space together and we have a real flat sort of situation where it's not a hierarchy in the room but we're all learners, then peer feedback and peer assessment just becomes a part of that paradigm. Because obviously, if if we are all learners, then it's not on the teacher all the time to be on the front. The kids have something of value to offer.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:15:28]:Okay. So is there language that we teach students as far as that feedback? Instead of saying this, say that.
Starr Sackstein [00:15:35]:100%. And and, again, that comes with the modeling as well. So that whole 1st month of school, you are gonna be so specific on the kinds of feedback you're giving to kids. It's gonna line up with the rubrics you've provided them and the learning progressions. You're gonna have really clear standard or competency aligned learning targets so that they are seeing the language of the content and the strategy and the skill, and they are gonna practice using that vocabulary while they're talking about these things. And then when they give feedback, it's not just this is good or this is bad. It's this works because a, b, and c from directly taken from the learning progression or the success criteria, or I think that this could be stronger if blah blah blah blah blah. So, I mean, we practice with sentence stems depending on whether or not the age and level of the students, and then we start to scaffold out those those sentence stems.
Starr Sackstein [00:16:35]:Maybe you model a first few times how to give that specific feedback. Maybe sometimes you can do an activity even where you look at feedback that's given that's not that effective and then we work together to say how could this be more effective. And when you do set up those peer feedback structures in your classroom, the first few times you do it, you are gonna be giving feedback on the feedback so that kids know you're looking at what feedback they were provided and you agree with it.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:17:04]:Because So you're grading the feedback of the feedback?
Starr Sackstein [00:17:06]:Grading. No grading. Okay. No. You're just providing out. Okay. So you're just providing feedback on the feedback. So, like, like, if I'm seeing something over and over and especially, like, when I teach reflection and I'm trying to give them feedback on their process, It's more like, I wanna know a little bit more here.
Starr Sackstein [00:17:24]:Can you be a little bit more clear here? It's not this is wrong. Do it over. It's like, help me understand your thinking. Pretend like I'm not inside your head and try to make visible for me the things I can't see. And I think that when it comes to giving feedback for peer to peer, you're gonna have maybe 3 types of kids. You're gonna have the kind of kid who is never gonna trust the peers in their space, and they're always gonna come to you regardless of the feedback that they get from their peers because to them, you are the only person who could know what to do best. And the only way you can flush that out is by consistently providing feedback and agreeing with what you see on the paper. Like, being intentional with who you pair them up with is also part of that as well.
Starr Sackstein [00:18:10]:Like, you're not gonna pair a nervous Nelly up with somebody who isn't taking it seriously. You're gonna want them to be paired up with somebody who does a really good job. And your kids will be on various levels regardless of their age. Some of them it'll come naturally to and others will take a little bit more support. Sentence stems here, rubrics on the desk, tape them in prominent places, laminate them so that they could be using the language. And then when you look at their feedback, you could just circle an area and say it would be really helpful here is if you actually took the language of the rubric of the learning progression and used it here so that the person you're giving this feedback to really knows what you're talking about.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:53]:What are your favorites?
Starr Sackstein [00:18:54]:A good starter feedback structure is tag. Right? That's just, you know, you're gonna tell them something positive. You're gonna ask a question, and then you're gonna give some advice. So tell them something positive, t. Ask a question, a. And then give some advice. Very, very, very simple structure and it works really well in every single content area. Then you could get a little bit more structured than that and a little bit more in-depth, there's something called the ladder of feedback.
Starr Sackstein [00:19:24]:I think it comes out of Harvard. I think they were the folks who did it first. And, essentially, what that is is it's 4 basic structures where you start with clarity, and the template actually does have questions that help you frame the way you can ask clarifying questions to get the person to tell you a little bit more. You're gonna be saying what validating something that they've done which is also very important. You're gonna maybe raise concerns for another level and then the last one is making suggestions. And each one of those 4 like could you do that in one class period? Maybe some kids can, but I think that when you're teaching kids how to use the structure, you start with 1. Today, we're only gonna be thinking about clarity. This is a first draft, so we're not worrying about those other things.
Starr Sackstein [00:20:15]:We're just worried about the message we're trying to convey and how well we've been able to do that. So we think about that clarifying piece. As a reader of your work, these are the things that are confusing me right now. And it's not like this is bad again. It's like, I am truly invested in trying to understand what you're communicating, and this isn't clear. So talk to me a little bit more about what you mean to say, and I'm just gonna write down what I'm hearing. And then I'm gonna say it back to you, and you tell me if this is what you meant to communicate. And I think having that dialogue structure so that kids are actively listening to each other, they're asking questions that are gonna get to the heart of whatever is going on there.
Starr Sackstein [00:20:59]:Both kids could be seen and heard and then present a better piece of feedback that's gonna really help move that that learning to the next level.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:09]:I could just see the value, because one of the things I really appreciate in this conversation is you keep reiterating. As teachers, we need to be modeling and doing this feedback ourselves.
Starr Sackstein [00:21:19]:Yes.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:19]:So it's it's one thing to teach our Eakins, okay, this is how you give feedback, but we also have to be showing that as there needs to be some evidence and not just us telling kids what to do, but we're actually living the same thing, and which makes me think, like, there's so much value in being able to learn those, like you said, stems on how to first respond to maybe your your colleagues, respond to your partner, your supervisor, or if you have subordinates. There's so much that we this is so applicable in in life, not just in school, but outside of school.
Starr Sackstein [00:21:53]:Agreed. And, I mean, I think feedback is how we grow. Like, I'm a really big believer that most of the best personalized instruction you're gonna be able to give to your students is through the feedback. So when teachers and administrators talk about differentiation, rather than only thinking about whole class differentiation where you might have level texts or you might have different scaffolds you're providing for different kids in the room, when kids set their own goals and you're responding to those goals with the feedback you provide, it doesn't get much more personalized than that. You have this unique opportunity to provide very structured feedback with different strategies and examples to individual students based on the goals that they have set for themselves as opposed to here's my rubric, this is my expectation, I'm giving every single kid who had the same thing wrong the exact same piece of feedback. That isn't to admonish any teacher who's trying to save time with those kinds of efficiencies because I get it. I had 34 kids in the class. It's a lot of kids to give feedback to.
Starr Sackstein [00:23:00]:But like at the same time, if I really wanted them to grow staggering the, you know, like you're not gonna get to every kid every day, but make sure you get to every kid at least once a week where you are giving that one on one time to those individual kids depending on the size of your of your class and the needs of your learners.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:19]:So do you suggest not having a bank or a list of feedback responses or every response should be more personalized?
Starr Sackstein [00:23:28]:Okay. So that's I think that that's a gray. Like I have a gray answer for that not black or white one. I think it's a good starting point. Some tasks and some skills are going to be a little bit more clearly right or wrong or leading down into a space. And and those kinds of things when there is really only one way to do it, requires a kind of firm redirection. So I would say like if you have your rubric spelled out maybe you have stems for where they are on that progression. If they are missing a piece of something, you might provide similar stuff.
Starr Sackstein [00:24:03]:But, if you have 2 kids, one of them is working on, let's say, choosing good evidence and another one is working on organization. Those kids have 2 different focuses and they might have both of them might have issues with both of those. But instead of focusing on both for both of them, you focus on the one that they're actually focusing on themselves. Because Eakins not gonna be able to take 10 pieces of really robust feedback at once. It's gonna shut them down. So you wanna be strategic in how much feedback you're providing at any given time and making sure that they're receiving it and able to do something with it and that with it seems manageable. So those two things are pretty big issues. You're not gonna wanna bring them both up for any given kid, I think.
Starr Sackstein [00:24:50]:Okay.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:24:50]:Okay. I was curious. Okay. So for those who are listening and or they've grabbed your your book, they're digging in, or they're considering doing this the peer assessments in general, what type of tips could you give or some, like, some lessons you've learned over the years in regards to the peer assessments. I'm just thinking about, for example, like, individuals that are worried that students might give feedback that hurts feelings depending on, like, the lower grades and things like that. So what what are some challenges that you can share or some things, tips, if you will, for our teachers?
Starr Sackstein [00:25:26]:It's about modeling and setting up the space. You're not gonna send kids off to give each other feedback prematurely. You're really gonna offer the time and space. I would even have that conversation. How does it feel? Like, if you have young kids, how does it feel when somebody says something mean? What's an example of something mean? I think we can say constructive things to each other in a positive way. So, I mean, we know the feedback sandwich. We wanna make sure that there's some positive feedback mixed in with the constructive feedback. But at the same time, we want students to, like, almost revel in the challenge of developing further.
Starr Sackstein [00:26:06]:And I think younger kids are actually much better at this than teenagers are. They don't mind being wrong. There's a lot less stigma about it, I think. Like, I remember going to read to my son's, like, 1st grade class a long time ago. I walked in there and when I started asking questions, their hand shot up. Nobody cared what came out of their mouth and what was right or wrong. And if I kept calling on other kids, they didn't stop raising their hand. That same student who I didn't respond to so positively still had their hand up.
Starr Sackstein [00:26:37]:Whereas in a 12th grade classroom, kids have learned to be quite reticent about sharing what they think and the fear of what their peers may say. So if we create a classroom culture where being wrong is valued so long as we're learning from it and it starts with the teacher modeling that behavior, then it's just a part of the learning process as opposed to something that's stigmatizing and hurtful. That doesn't mean Eakins, you know, that you won't catch some negative feelings from time to time. I think that that happens to the best of us depending on how emotionally ready we are to conceive what is being given to us. But I do think that there is a way to create a culture in this space where as the person facilitating, you could pick up on that really quickly and quash it before it becomes an issue.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:27:31]:Alright. Well, listen. I in this time, the short period of time, I I can say I I have learned a lot, and and you've what I've gathered, a lot of this is coming from, 1, you gotta model it ourselves as teachers who can't just tell folks. Again, and I'm big on, like, do what you would do as well, not just give kids stuff just because you feel like they need to have it. But is this is this something that you stand by as well? So I love the modeling piece. I love the fact that we gotta set it up. We can't just, alright, give some feedback, but there's there's a process to this. And, again, it not only supports our students in the classroom, but also outside.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:28:10]:So I have thoroughly learned a lot. I'd love for you to take us home with any last words of advice you want to give to our listeners.
Starr Sackstein [00:28:16]:Yeah. Just remember that it takes time. Give yourself grace because the first time, the second time, the third time, maybe even the 4th time, it it is just gonna come together. You can't quit after it doesn't work the first or second time because it really does take a certain level of understanding and maturity from your students to be able to do it well. And it takes a fair amount of patience from us in this space to deal with the chaos while it's happening and it can be chaotic. My best advice is just it it really is very powerful. I believe, like, if you go back to John Hattie's like metadata, peer feedback and self grading gets some of the highest effect sizes. So they are proven strategies that work for students.
Starr Sackstein [00:29:06]:We just really want to make sure that we're creating the environment and we're not quitting on it when it doesn't go the way we hope it will right away.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:29:14]:Sorry. If we have some folks that wanna connect with you, what's the best way to reach you?
Starr Sackstein [00:29:18]:Probably LinkedIn, I'm on just by my first name your first and last name or miss saxtine@gmail. All of my social is miss saxtine. So my website is miss saxt may miss saxtine dot com. My Twitter account, I am still refusing to call it x. Although, I am slowly moving. Like, the only reason I haven't abandoned that platform completely is because it took me years to build the amount of following and community that I have there. So I am just not there as much as I used to be. I'm I'm far more on LinkedIn these days than I am in other places.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:29:54]:Yeah. I got hacked a couple years ago, and and and I didn't wanna start over over. So I don't use this much. I'm more on Instagram. Thank you so much. Author of student led assessment. I'm so excited to dig into this. I just picked it up.
Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:30:07]:Thank you so much for your time.
Starr Sackstein [00:30:09]:Thank you for having me.
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