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Nurturing Learning and Leadership in the New Year

Rhonda Higgins • December 27, 2024

Reflections on my transition to the role of MYP Coordinator and what's next.

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope this time of year is treating you well. I'm holding space today for those of us who are experiencing joy and grief's coexistence during this time. Let this be a reminder to you that you are seen, valued, and held in great regard and don't you forget it! I'm reminded of the familiar sentiment: "Yesterday is history, the future is a mystery, and the present is a gift. That's why they call it the present." As much as we can, we must remember to enjoy the present and truly be present in it. 


Today is the 2nd day in the 7 day celebration of Kwanzaa, a celebration of African American culture and heritage  December 26-January 1st. Kwanzaa means "first fruits" in Swahili and seven principles are recognized during this celebration; 

Day 1 -Umoja-unity

Day 2-Kujichagulia -self-determination

Day 3-Ujima-collective work and responsibility

Day 4-Ujamaa-cooperative economics

Day 5-Nia-purpose

Day 6-Kuumba-creativity

Day 7- Imani-faith 


Today I reflect deeply on the second principle of Self-Determination. This year I was determined to succeed as a new leader and grow both professionally and personally.  With that in mind, I'd like to share with you some reflections I have from 2024. I'll start with my 2024 LinkedIn Rewind, by Coauthor.studio. I think this was rather cool to see!   


2024 proved that expanding educational impact sometimes means creating your own path. From stepping into IB leadership to launching Future Linguists LLC, this year taught me that sowing seeds of equity takes many forms.


As an IB MYP Coordinator, I've seen how systemic change grows from individual transformations. Meanwhile, Future Linguists LLC has allowed me to expand access to language learning beyond traditional boundaries. Both paths share the same root: creating more equitable educational opportunities.


Key growth points this year:


• Founded Future Linguists LLC, bringing language immersion to young learners


• Launched "Into the Linguaverse" summer camp offering Spanish, Swahili, and Portuguese


• Transitioned to IB MYP Coordinator/Academic Coach role


• Developed new frameworks for equitable grading practices


• Established regular blog series on educational equity



The rest of these reflections are my own thoughts and reflections in no particular order.


  • At the beginning of this year I started my small business, Future Linguists, LLC!  I am so proud of myself for beginning this journey.  It was birthed however, out of a lull for me professionally.  After twenty two years in education, I began to lose my joy for the teaching profession and longed for something new and energizing.  I'm so grateful for the people I've met along the way who inspire and keep me going daily.  To the families that have supported me since our first summer camp, play and learn Spanish at the park events, and tutoring sessions, I cannot express my gratitude enough!
  • Not long after launching my business, I assumed the role of MYP Coordinator at the start of this school year. This position has presented me with unique challenges. While I initially had to manage this new role independently, attending training has left me feeling somewhat more equipped.
  • I'm also grateful for the connections I've made with MYP Coordinators around the globe! 
  • As an introvert, I've always been the observer and listener in meetings, but as coordinator, I find that my thoughts are now being listened to in a different way due to my role. I have to be careful because whenever I present new insights or ideas this can sometimes lead to more work being put on my plate!
  • I'm grateful to our new co-principals for their leadership and genuine thought and care for me as a new leader, but also as a valued and respected person in our school community. 
  • Navigating this new leadership role and going into the Fall holiday season has presented challenges for me personally, as it pertains to grief and not having my parents, or sister here physically to share it with.  I empathize with people who have to work on days when they have lost a loved one. Grief has not gotten easier over time, but it has gotten more manageable. Prioritizing my mental health this season has been paramount in my process.
  • Surrounding myself in my school community with people who exude positivity, integrity, and light have helped my transition into this leadership role.       
  • When it comes to equitable grading practices, ethical AI practices, revising IB policies, and planning professional development that will tackle these topics, we have A LOT of work to do!

Where do I go from here?


  • Personal growth goals-The first three days of each month in 2025 I will be intentionally fasting from whatever it is that does not serve me to listen to, partake in, or in other words devote a large amount of my time to. In essence, I will be hitting the reset button each month.
  • Another goal of mine is to get back to having a consistent running regimen.
  • I also want to grow as a beginner gardener. I'm hoping equal parts soil, smashed pumpkins from Thanksgiving, and leaves in a garbage bag will equal compost in the next couple of months! Now what do I do with my hay bales?!?  
  • Professional Growth- I'm excited that I've been asked to contribute to a book based on my contributions to the Grow Beyond Grades blog! I'm super excited and plan to continue blogging and being a voice in the movement to grow beyond grades.
  • The new year will bring many opportunities to develop and present PD about equitable grading practices, ethical AI usage for teachers and students, and the Middle Years Program implementation. One other area I will focus on in the new year is prioritizing my time in order to give timely feedback to my students and to make lessons more effective.
  • For my MYP Coordinators opting in to the Beta trial for Enhancing the MYP I'm excited to implement these new changes and looking forward to sharing the process of how I plan to implement them with my colleagues.  Stay tuned!
  • I will learn more about Artificial Intelligence (AI) ! When I started teaching decades ago, we didn't have AI as a strong presence in education.  Now, it's here to stay and I wonder how much of it will play a part in grading and assessment?
  • There is so much I want to learn about grading and assessment and AI.  I'm starting to think about working on a doctoral degree. It's on the long list of things I want to accomplish!

So what can we do to Nurture Learning and Leadership?


I ran across this infographic and like many people it resonated with me also. 

Number 7 Sharpen the Saw-Continuous self-renewal & Self-improvement: Mental, Physical, Spiritual and Emotional.


These 4 main areas I encourage you to build upon in the new year and years to come.  We can always be better than we were years ago, weeks ago, days ago, or even minutes ago. Let's continue to grow together and be positive change agents and leaders.


Wishing you a prosperous 2025!


~Rhonda Higgins~ 



Learn with me here

Embracing a Growth Mindset in Education

Working with teachers who hold fixed mindsets about equitable grading can be a daunting challenge. However, embracing a growth mindset opens the door to transformative change. By fostering open dialogue and encouraging collaboration, we can shift perspectives and create an environment where equitable practices thrive. I believe that with patience and persistence, we can inspire educators to embrace innovative approaches that benefit all learners. Together, we can pave the way for a more inclusive and effective educational landscape. My hope is that you will continue to grow with me. 



Rhonda Higgins

Founder and Program Director

Future Linguists, LLC

IB MYP Coordinator & Spanish Teacher

By Rhonda Higgins November 29, 2024
Leading and Learning with Gratitude and Integrity... Today is the day after Thanksgiving and my heart is so full. The Fall months into this holiday season are filled with a lot of joy and moments of sadness for me and I'm sure a lot of others, however, in this moment the feeling of love is palpable. Before I dig in to today's post, I want to pay tribute to some of the most influential people in my life who inspired me to take this leap of faith and begin Future Linguists LLC. I'm grateful to my family who champion me daily. I'm grateful to the ungrading community of educators around the world who invigorate, and challenge my thinking to grow from my early years of adopting a more equitable form of grading for my students. Specifically, I'd like to highlight my father, Allen Rice, Army veteran, and inspiration to all who knew and loved him. Sadly, he succumbed to his battle with Type 1 diabetes eight years ago but I feel his presence every day. The second person is my sister, Latrece Covington-Morris. She was taken from us tragically three years ago the week before Thanksgiving, by someone who was driving while impaired. Although these recent physical losses of my loved ones have greatly impacted me, I choose to honor their lives and legacy by continuing to make them proud. They were fierce advocates for students. My father mentored high school students as he coached them in track and field. My sister was just beginning her career in education as a paraprofessional working with students with special needs and then receiving her B.S. in Psychology the year she passed away. I would speak to them almost daily. Their wisdom, advice, humor, and love have carried me so many days of my life. However, even though I can't speak to them in the natural sense of the word, I've found new ways to connect with them through advocacy and giving back to my local community through service to others at my school and in my community at large. I've organized fundraising efforts with JDRF One Walk now Breakthrough T1D . I'm also now organizing an IB Festival of Hope led by high school students in our IB Personal and Professional skills class. This event will bring together thought leaders throughout our community to tackle issues they are facing, whether it's food insecurity, mental health, or others. Our hope is to host virtual interviews, connecting with schools around the country and abroad to foster international mindedness in our students and a feeling of we are all in this together to face the world's challenges. To give you an idea of what this event is all about please watch Festival of Hope Chicago highlights and if you would like to be a part of this changemaking event please feel free to reach out to me here . In my last post, "Sowing Seeds of Equity: What does this look like? we talked about the IB Leadership Capabilities framework shared by Asheka Tenzin, an experienced IBEN educator. I shared how the leadership capability I wanted to nourish is Relational Intelligence which reads; Influencing stakeholders, supporting collaboration, and fostering relationships aligns with the Communicator, Caring, and Principled attributes. Before I jump into "Truly Equitable Grading" with Thomas Guskey a podcast interview on "Leaders Coaching Leaders" , which gives valuable insights into his newest book, "Grading with Integrity" I want to touch on my efforts the past few weeks in building relational intelligence. It truly has been an eyeopener when it comes to trying to nourish this leadership capability. I led one IB PLT afterschool, and included a google form check in with an SEL question of on a scale of 1-10, how are you feeling today? Granted as someone who is still in the classroom myself, I wanted to be cognizant of teacher's time and share information with colleagues that is pertinent to the IB as well as follow up on some information that our IB team needed in order to be able to do the work and move IB forward in our school. My mind quickly shifted to equitable grading practices. Some teachers hold students to the high standard of meeting their deadlines and if they don't , they penalize students for not turning in work on time by deducting points from their grade or some other form of "grade penalty" because "that will motivate them to turn in work in a timely manner! Yet the cycle continues. It baffles me that some teachers want to penalize students for late work but when asked to submit information by a certain deadline themselves, they either don't submit it, or submit it late. The difference is, as a coordinator/teacher I am not in the position nor would I ever penalize teachers for submitting information/work late. Why would I assign a "penalty"? The penalty does not get to the root of the issue. In the United States we are so far behind our international schools in our grading practices. In the video "Traditions of grading with Tom Guskey | Corwin Leaders Coaching Leaders Podcast" Guskey speaks to this point. So I cycle back to the SEL question check in. If anyone answered with a 5 or below (Me: Instantly thinking of the store Five Below!) I reached out in an email the next day asking how can I or our IB team support you. I thought, yes, I'm building on my relational intelligence and reaching out to support my colleagues! No response, not even a like. Now fast forward to the IB conference for The Role of the Coordinator for the MYP in California that I attended last month. I found out I am not alone. This is a universal occurrence. The workshop leader had us do an activity where we went around the room and we wrote on large chart paper describing the IB Learner Profile Traits of teachers, coordinators, and how we can develop and promote attributes of the learner profile in our school. What is fascinating to me is that all of the educators in this room came from a variety of places around the globe and we share common threads in our thinking. Scroll to the end of this post to see chart papers for insights on attributes of the teacher profile, the coordinator profile, and how we can develop and promote the attributes of the learner profile in our school. After reading through the comments, if you are an IB coordinator, or leader in education in general, can you identify with any of these comments? If there are any that trigger you for example, under the attributes of the teacher profile, communicators-read newsletter/email, let me know what you do to help foster better communication in your school. I am open to new insights in how to grow in this area! Now let's take a quick look at "Truly Equitable Grading" with Thomas Guskey a podcast interview on "Leaders Coaching Leaders" . I encourage you to listen to this podcast to glean some valuable knowledge about what we have known about grading, how long we have known it, and also how little we have implemented best grading practices over the years. It is truly fascinating. Guskey talks about this in detail. He reveals that he had an opportunity with the American Educational Research Association back in 2016 as part of their 100th anniversary call out to researchers to summarize research conducted on different educational topics over the past 100 years. He and his friend Susan Brookhart put together a team to review the research about grading. Out of the many educational topics, grading has been the one that has had a great amount of new books to come out in this area. Guskey notes that in the introductory chapter of his new book, "Grading with Integrity" they did a review of the amount of newly published books about grading from 1970 to today. Guskey said, " And we found in that first 20 year period in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, only four books have been published on grading. And three of those four dealt with grading at the college level. The only one that really dealt with it on the elementary or secondary level was a book called What Did You Get? written by Kirshenbaum and Simon. In fact, they just published a-- University of Michigan just published a 50-year anniversary of that issue, which was a tremendous contribution to our field. Then from 1990 to 2000, we had about 14 books published. From 2000 to 2010, we had another, I think, 23 books published. From 2010 to 2020, we had 56 books published on grading. And we've had, I think, another 24 published just since 2020." To me, this is a very clear indication that with the explosion of information about grading in the United States, there is a real need for transformative grading reform in our schools. Not only do we already know this, but the work of implementing transformative grading practices in our schools ultimately needs to come about with intentionality. To summarize how Guskey put it, we need to lead, grade, and teach with intentionality. He says, "And one of the ways to do that is to always make sure that we have a common language and a common understanding." This last statement resonated with me because I've found that in recent conversations about grading and assessment in my instructional leadership meetings each person at the table has their own understanding about grading. Until we can come up with a common understanding about the basic question of what does a grade mean, we cannot begin to implement best grading practices. So I implore you to listen to the podcast , and just as I have, add Thomas Guskey's newest book, "Grading with Integrity: A Research-Based Approach Grounded in Honesty, Transparency, Accuracy, and Equity" to your holiday wish lists. Listening to the podcast gave me a renewed confirmation that writing about equitable grading practices and continuing this work beyond my school walls is so important to the field of education. It really gave me a sense of renewed purpose to lead and learn with integrity and intentionality.
By Rhonda Higgins October 7, 2024
So what does sowing seeds of equity look like? Well, lately I've been drawn back to reading "The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation" by Elena Aguilar. She breaks down the definition of equity in a very easy to digest way. She says, "In its most simplistic definition, equity means that every child gets what he or she needs in our schools--every child , regardless of where she comes from, what she looks like, who her parents are, what her temperament is, or what she shows up knowing or not knowing." She goes on to say that ,"In order to meet the needs of all students we must also transform the experience for the adults who work in schools." Now I propose to you to read those quotes and substitute the word "teacher(s)" every time you see the word child or students. Does the same ring true? I say yes! Imagine if every teacher gets what she needs in our schools? Students cannot ultimately get what they need if the adults in the building do not have what they need. There are so many needs! I feel obligated to address equitable grading practices because of the growth I've had as an educator in this area. For years I have been working in my own classroom making efforts to make my own grading more equitable. In my new role as an MYP Coordinator I feel I can sow more seeds of equity due to having the ability to work more directly with teachers in this role. In the coming weeks, I will have the privilege to be able to walk through my fellow colleagues' MYP classes. I'm mindful that walking into someone else's classroom can bring a sense of angst for some, but at the same time I'm excited to be able to see the amazing things our educators are doing, as well as being able to talk about equitable grading when the time comes.
By Rhonda Higgins September 29, 2024
This is the story of how my passion for equitable grading practices aligned with gardening through the IB personal project of one of my students.
hand holding a plant
By Rhonda Higgins September 21, 2024
My Why....An IB Spanish teacher's journey to sow seeds of equity in schools while simultaneously cultivating her passion for gardening, teaching Spanish to our youngest language learners, the IB, and sharing about more equitable grading practices.
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