Paul Emerich France
Professional Learning Facilitator & Best Selling Author
United States
Paul Emerich France (@sustainteaching) is a National Board Certified Teacher, instructional coach, and keynote speaker with over a decade of experience in the classroom. He is the author of Reclaiming Personalized Learning (Corwin Press, 2019/2022), Humanizing Distance Learning (Corwin Press, 2020), Make Teaching Sustainable (ASCD, 2023), and the upcoming My Kids Can’t Write: How to Advance Achievement through Cross-Curricular Writing. Paul also writes a monthly column for Educational Leadership, entitled “Make Teaching Sustainable,” where he shares tools and strategies for more efficient, effective, and learner-driven teaching. Paul has authored over 50 pieces, published in the likes of Edutopia, EdSurge, ASCD’s Educational Leadership, and Learning Forward’s The Learning Professional. Through his consulting company, Paul supports teachers, coaches, and administrators in finding sustainable practices that build agency in students. He regularly speaks around the country, most recently at Annual Visible Learning, SXSW EDU, AMLE, ASCD Annual, and will be a feature keynote speaker at Learning and the Brain in New York City this spring. Paul currently has established residencies with public school districts, and is looking for more partners interested in pursuing sustainable, learner-driven practices. You can learn more about Paul at www.maketeachingsustainable.org.
Keynote
Assessment should tell the story of learning, especially as we pursue innovative, competency-based practices. For assessment to be competency-based, it must be integrated into the learning process. This is easier said than done, and so it's critical that teachers are provided with sustainable strategies to begin their journey with competency-driven assessment. In this session, we will include five practices and tools for lifting competency-based assessment off the ground, so that students are able to tell the story of their own learning journey. These five practices include: (1) learner-friendly success criteria; (2) qualitative reflection through journaling; (3) sustainable goal-setting in response to learner-friendly formative data; (4) portfolio-based assessment that allows for longitudinal reflection; and (5) performance assessments that take into account authentic, real-world experiences and the whole child.
Telling the Story of Learning
Expert Workshop
Shifting to competency-based assessment can be challenging, in part because this term is ill-defined, but also because it leaves many teachers feeling like they have to choose between whole-child practices and cold, hard academics. We must remember that assessment must tell a story; even the most whimsical and creative stories still possess relatively common structures. Structure in our classrooms creates predictability, a sense of safety, and a North Star that guides learner-driven that can sometimes feel messy and plagued with uncertainty. The key to finding direction within this uncertainty is to structure competency-based learning experiences with a clear assessment plan that allows for reflection on both academic and whole-child competencies.
In this three-hour masterclass, we will develop a common definition for competency-based assessment. Afterwards, we will identify sustainable tools for competency-based assessment, which can be integrated into any subject area. In true competency-based fashion, teachers will assess their own learning through a performance task, where they will create a real-world learning experience aligned to their subject area and curriculum, incorporating one or many of the suggested tools for competency-based instruction explored in the first section of our session. Participants will conclude the workshop in collective feedback sessions, receiving feedback in relation to the session's success criteria.
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Participants will…
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Define competency-based assessment.
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Identify examples of competency-based assessment practices.
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Construct a short-term, competency-based learning experience involving an authentic, real-world problem.
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Infuse a plan for competency-based assessment within the learning plan, choosing from a variety of competency-based tools.