EduCon 2027Noticing Growth, Not Grading It: Human Skills for an AI Age
Schools have long claimed to teach collaboration, resilience and judgment, then organized the day around content coverage and test scores. Generative AI makes that gap harder to ignore: if a chatbot can draft the essay and solve the problem set, what is school uniquely for?
ADAPTABLE is my attempt at an answer, still a work in progress and not yet implemented. It names nine human skills, from attention and self-direction to systems thinking, perseverance, collaboration, AI fluency, making, learning agility, and emotional and ethical intelligence, each with observable growth from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The aspiration is something concrete for classroom teachers: not a one-off digital literacy lesson, but a way of noticing each child's growth over years and supporting it on purpose. Observation to assist growth, not to grade it.
I'll take ten minutes on what it is and why it exists. Then I'll open it up, because the assumptions behind it keep shifting as AI changes what students do and what schools are for. I see ADAPTABLE as something that should evolve as our experiences change, which is why I bring it as a conversation.
Together we'll ask: Where in a school's day do these skills actually grow? How can teachers observe growth without turning it into another grade? Is AI fluency one skill among nine, or the context that changes all the others?
My hope is that we review, ideate and arrive at answers that hold something new for everyone, the framework included.
Conversational Practice
The session runs 90 minutes. Only the first ten are mine: a one-page overview of the nine skills, the problem they respond to, and where the framework stands as a draft.
Mapping (30 min). Small groups get a large-format "school day" map with lanes for core subjects, advisory/SEL time, specials, unstructured time, assessment and reporting, and school culture. Groups place cards for the nine skills where they actually grow in their own schools today, not where they should. A short gallery walk compares patterns across grade levels and school types.
Observing growth, not grading it (30 min). Groups work with a sample of draft classroom observation indicators for one skill, such as perseverance, and test them against their own students. What would a teacher actually notice in a normal week? What makes an observation helpful to a child, and what turns it into a label? A fishbowl conversation with an open chair follows, where we try to name design principles for an observation system that serves growth.
Building it together (20 min). Everything goes into a shared, openly editable document linked from the EduCon conversation page: maps, revised indicators, open questions, and proposed changes to the framework. I'll publish an updated version afterward that credits contributors and shows what the room changed.
No comments have been posted yet.
Log in to post a comment.