Elliot Washor's TGIF 09.19.2025

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder

There’s something happening here ...

This week there was lots of connective tissue making up more of a whole for the International Big Picture Learning Credential. To start off, along with 6,500 attendees, Andrea was at the National Association of College Admissions Counseling Conference where, at one of their large sessions, the IBPLC was noted as a top priority for this group in advancing alternatives for assessing merit and college readiness. This is unprecedented and a big vote of confidence in what we are developing. NACAC has 28,000 members worldwide.

 Then, Building ‘Āina-Based Education In Hawai’i a wonderful article just came out in Kappan on the Namahana School written by Kapua Chandler. As told through Kapua’s life journey Namahana’s approach to aina-based learning is “translating” scientific measures of 21st-century learning to a geographically unique context that integrates both old and new wisdom in pursuit of a new approach to education. To this end, “it is the first start-up school in the world where the entire staff is being trained from the beginning to use the International Big Picture Learning Credential — a personal form of student assessment developed in collaboration with Australia’s University of Melbourne. Using algorithms to map to traditional exam-based assessments to the Big Picture Learning Goals, this credential offers a more complete profile of students’ abilities and helps students successfully graduate to work or college.”  

And, last week in San Diego we had a training of the IBPLC. Our newest potential partners, the Life Long Administration Corporation is sending staff to get trained up on the IBPLC and are keenly interested in getting their students out on internships and becoming Fellows. LLAC is an umbrella organization with many moving parts, even more than BPL. They have been around for 23 years and manage a vast number of charter schools in CA and beyond for students ages 17-24.

Also, in large part thanks to Andrew’s unrelenting nature, we’ve advanced to the final round for the IBPLC with the Spencer Foundation. Spencer is a gold standard for research and getting this grant would be incredible

And there’s more...

 Joy, Love, Rigour

I always love going to Winnipeg even though, for some unknown reason, I still have a struggle getting into Canada. The folks there have me right from how they present their Strategic Plan, which for me fits in well with why, what and how I feel a plan should be imaged through a flow and current in everchanging waters, and not static. What other district has something that looks like this?  Taylor and my time in Winnipeg with our eight schools, and meeting with the district that embraces BPL, was just wonderful. Working with the principals of these schools to grow advisories, real-world learning, learning plans and more, has been a joy. Of course, there’s lots to work out, but the culture emanating from district leadership by Matt, Shelley, Garth and so many others makes this work so promising and doable. The schools we are working with are not “start from scratch” schools and, as we all know, changing culture and practice as well as shedding old identities can be challenging to say the least. Two the of the middle schools want to get trained up on the k-8 scaffolds of IBPLC. In particular, our Learning Frames fit really well with their Global Standards. It is part of the work we will do on Zoom during our time away from one another. Also, this group of principals is putting out an APB to other principals of BPL schools who have successfully made such transitions. Please let me know if you are interested in talking with their group on a regularly scheduled zoom.

All this said about the IBPLC I feel we are always watching carefully for new and better ways to deliver this assessment system that is way different in meeting the wants and needs of everyone concerned by eliminating or minimizing all sorts of biases of standardized testing with its ranking and sorting. We have found an entry point, and our advances should be regarded as work that is meaningful and that matters. What’s unreasonable is to demand that the people who are doing the very early work come up with the whole final product. That’s crazy!  

And to end with a big WoW!

In one of my latest reads I was pointed to this group called Wowhaus. Given I’m putting together a book with Pam Roy on Meaning, Mattering in our current obsession with AI, Wowhaus takes common factors everyday life to understand how things, places and relationships acquire meaning by engaging communities that shape a sense of place connecting people to place. Sounds like there’s something happening here. 

Be well and Plenty, plenty, bye, bye