New shoes. New markers and pre-sharpened, long pencils with perfect, nubby erasers. This school year would be better.

Students, simply put, don’t care about school. In their eyes, it’s a place to go, do what they’re told, and memorize as much as they can, then go home and finish their homework before doing something that actually interests them.

Eric is a principal at Hall Middle School in Larkspur, CA. Eric is the co-founder of Global School Play Day which is dedicated to promoting the idea that kids learn more when they play.

Aaron Blackwelder interviews Chris McNutt, a Social Studies teacher at Global Impact Stem Academy in Springfield, Ohio. Chris is the founder of The Human Restoration Project which is dedicated to promoting Progressive Education.

I stepped into the gradeless classroom waters because of my own stress and anxiety. I was spending too much time at home on schoolwork when I should have been bonding with my family and friends or caring for myself.

Aaron Blackwelder interviews Skylar Primm, a co-lead teacher and advisor at High Marq Environmental Charter School and a fellow of the Greater Madison Writing Project. His teaching practice is grounded in Project-Based Learning that allows education to be used as a tool to connect youth with their community and become environmentally conscious citizens.

For an authentic PBL experience, students must be free to experiment, experience failure, and learn from their mistakes. Otherwise, I’m just teaching them to look to me for answers, which is the opposite of what I want to accomplish.

Students need the comfort and stability of knowing that they can fail at something significant and someone will always be there to support and encourage them. Deanna Lough shares how a shift to authentic assessment has fostered better writing—and a real sense of community and joy.

Art education is supposed to cultivate and spur the seeds of creativity, not water them down with subjective evaluations of your worth.

Word is getting around. Teachers who have embraced the gradeless system are sharing their journey with those who aren’t there yet. It's slow, but I can feel a shift, a small wave building.

Jeff is an English Language Arts teacher at Hillcrest High School in Riverside, California. In this episode of TG2Cast, Jeff and I discuss the impact of grades from the perspective of one of his students.

The purpose of schools is to provide students with an opportunity to explore and experience new opportunities. When we choose to equate quality with test scores, families, teachers, and administrators lose sight of what truly is important—the child.