For more than four decades, educator and writer P. L. Thomas has been rethinking the relationship among grades, feedback, writing, and learning. In this episode, he explores ungrading, writing workshop, grade contracts, revision, and the challenge of creating more humane learning environments within systems that still require grades.

At New College of Florida, narrative evaluations and other alternative assessment practices helped create a deeply relational, student-centered culture. In this roundtable, former faculty reflect on what made that model distinctive, what was lost during the college’s transformation, and what educators elsewhere can carry forward.