Voiceover: Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. Each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self-paced, and mastery-based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other, so this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. 


Zach: Hello and welcome to episode number 83 of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. My name is Zach Diamond and I am a middle school music teacher in DC, where, of course, I implement Modern Classrooms and I'm also a Modern Classrooms mentor. Tonight's episode is going to be really fun. We are going to be addressing and hopefully debunking some misconceptions about self-pacing. So I'm super happy to be joined by a powerhouse panel of Modern Classrooms MVPs. We have got some returning guests and also a brand new guest to the podcast. Up first, we've got Andrea Mahr, a Distinguished Modern Classrooms Educator, a Modern Classrooms mentor, and a fifth grade teacher at Stanley Boyd School District in Wisconsin. Andrea, welcome back to the podcast. 


Andrea: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. 


Zach: Up next, we've got another returning guest, Distinguished Modern Classrooms Educator and mentor as well, Beth Benavides, who is a fourth grade teacher in Waterloo, Wisconsin. Beth, welcome back. 


Beth: Hi, Zach. Nice to be here. 


Zach: And last but not least, we're joined by our new guest, John Tyler, who is also a Distinguished Modern Classrooms Educator and a Modern Classrooms mentor. And that's when I meant when I said a Modern Classrooms powerhouse panel. John is a middle school social studies teacher and an ELA teacher in Chicago Public Schools. So welcome, John, to your first time on the podcast. 


John: Thanks for having me, Zack. I'm really excited to join the podcast. 


Zach: Yeah, I'm excited, too. This is going to be a really fun topic. I've actually been looking forward to this episode since Toni Rose and I started planning out this season because there are a lot of misconceptions about self-pacing and I'm really excited to sort of tackle them and deconstruct them a little bit and hopefully show that many of them are not, in fact, true. They are misconceptions. Before we dive into that, though, I would like to give you all an opportunity just to introduce yourselves to the listeners. So go ahead and tell us a little bit more about who you are, where you teach, what you teach, and how you started your Modern Classrooms journey. Beth, why don't you go first? 


Beth: Hi. So I teach fourth grade in Waterloo, Wisconsin. I started looking into, I first heard Kareem talk about self-pacing and the Modern Classroom Project in spring of 2020. I took the free course that summer but didn't actually start implementing in my classroom until last year in the spring of 2021. Then I started this school year implementing in math and then recently started some elements of the model in social studies and reading, because I teach all subjects, and it's been really exciting to see it in action in my classroom. 


Zach: I bet that's awesome. Andrea, how about you? When did you go next? 


Andrea: Well, it feels great for best to kind of start this off because she's the person who introduced it to me. So she and I both listened to Cult to Pedagogy podcast. And so she took the free course. I jumped in on the free course, and we were off to the races collaborating. I implemented it fully this year, specifically in math. My goal was just to rock star it in one subject at a time. I do teach everything as well, so I teach fifth grade in Wisconsin as well, and I've loved it. I've loved every second of it, and I haven't looked back. I've gotten my team on board with it, and we're going to just keep diving in. I've implemented it a tad in writing. Next year, my goal will be to do it in reading, but I've loved, loved being a mentor. My mentees have been amazing, and it's been so fun collaborating with everyone and just being a part of the Modern Classroom family and just the welcoming environment. 


Zach: Yeah. No, I completely share that enthusiasm, both of you. I mean, it's been amazing, and I will never look back. Now I'm teaching this way forever, so I totally, that resonates with me. John, how about you tell us more about yourself? 


John: Yeah, thanks. So as Zach mentioned, I teach at Tarkington Elementary on the South Side of Chicago. 7th grade social studies and ELA specifically writing from that ELA standpoint and my Modern Classrooms journey, I can actually pin it to a date. It was November 8, 2020, because that was when episode 158 of the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast came out. And I remember I was just so discouraged with remote learning and all of the things that came with that. And my colleague, Robin, and I had been talking for a long time about is there a way to do some element of self-pacing within a middle school classroom? And we tried a bunch of different things, all of which failed miserably. And so right when I finished listening to the podcast, I actually called Robin at 5:00 at night and was like, “hey, I think this is the thing we've been looking for.” So from there, we both took the free course. We started a PLC at our school with the help of our instructional coach. I took the Summer Institute, became a mentor, became a DMCE, and now I'm also the Chicago ambassador for Modern Classrooms. So I likewise. I'm just kind of a fanboy, and I am all on board for Modern Classrooms. 


Zach: That's awesome. There's a lot of love from our guests on this podcast for the Cult of Pedagogy podcast and Jennifer Gonzalez in general. I think that there's a bunch of episodes that Kareem has guested on and explained different parts of the model, and I'm going to link all three of them in the show notes. So if listeners to this podcast somehow haven't also already heard those, you should check them out, because definitely a lot of people come to the Modern Classrooms project from those Cult of Pedagogy episodes. 


Beth: Absolutely. 


Zach: Cool. Let's dive into these misconceptions. Basically, what I did to structure this discussion is to just sort of make a list of misconceptions that I have heard or that questions that people have asked that have sort of revealed the misconception in their thinking. And I just kind of want to run right down the list and tackle them. What do you all think? 


All: Yeah, that sounds great to me. 


Zach: All right. So the first one I want to talk about is the idea that there are no deadlines in a self-paced class or sort of that we basically just let the students do whatever they want all year. We give them all the work and then let them just have at it. So how would you address that misconception? And I guess, more specifically, how do you structure the time in a self-paced class? And that may be the time of a single class period or of a unit or the entire school year. 


John: So I definitely resonate with this misconception. As a PLC leader, this is one of the misconceptions that comes up the most often, the idea that we are just giving students all of this work and letting them go at it. I want to emphasize that for me, self-pacing does not mean a removal of any sort of deadline. What it looks like instead is a removal of rigid deadlines. In a standard classroom, you usually have the teacher teaching one thing one day and immediately moving on the next day, regardless of what percentage of the class understood it or if there's a high enough percentage, maybe doing a reteach. But what this looks like in a Modern Classroom is more students working on sort of chunk subsets of a unit at a time. So what I do have is solid deadlines for mastery checks. So for particular subsets of a unit, students have a week or two weeks or however much time they are given for that subset to work on the classwork. But then by that given date, let's call it Friday. They are expected to have taken the mastery check. And if they haven't done that by then, then I'm actually pulling small groups. I'm working more one-on-one with students to scaffold and get them there. I would agree that it's not a good model to just give students all of the work for multiple units at a time. That definitely needs to be scaffolded. 


Zach: Yeah, totally. You mentioned that this is a very common misconception, and it's the first one that I thought of. That's why I put it first. And yeah, 100% building in those structures is part of how you make self-pacing work. It's not just sort of a free-for-all. Exactly. 


Beth: Yeah, absolutely. I think that for me, the self-pacing comes within a unit. And so talking specifically with math, because I've been doing the model with math the longest, I still give summative assessments that are separate from my mastery checks. And the summative assessments typically have a hard date. Sometimes if I notice that the whole class is behind pace, I'll adjust that deadline, but only by a day or two. And that's usually because it's a problem with my pacing that I set up right. Like how long I thought the unit would take. But I still give summative assessments and students still take it regardless of where they are in the lessons. And so with that, just like in a traditional setup, you take a unit test on a certain day. So that's not any different, but it's the time within the unit that they're able to work ahead of pace or get additional time on a learning concept. So I think that that's where the self-pacing comes in for me. I also, as an elementary teacher, use my mastery checks, which we call exit tickets, as kind of gates within the unit. And so students, I know that everyone does it different. And a lot of times I hear recommendations for students to take the mastery check and then just continue working until the teacher checks it for mastery. But I actually do have students stop after a mastery check, and then they work on kind of maybe what would be considered should dos or aspire to dos until I give them the go ahead to keep going. And so I think for elementary students, that really works well for me just to make sure that they're not rushing through it. And then I can tackle any misconceptions that show on the mastery check right away. And when I say they have to wait for me, if I'm not working with other students, I'll still check it right away as soon as they turn it in. But it might be ten minutes or 15 minutes or something like that until I get a chance to look at it. And so that's kind of another way that they're self-pacing, but there still is the mastery check as a gate as a way to kind of slow them down so I can make sure that they're on the right track before moving on within the unit. 


Zach: Totally. Yeah. And I was going to ask you like, what do you have them do in that time when they've done the mastery check and then you don't allow them to move on. But having them do the should dos and the aspire to dos is a great option. We have that built into the model already, and so you don't want to let them move on to the next thing, especially if it requires mastery of the previous thing before you've checked it. So that makes total sense. 


Beth: Yeah. And another thing is it kind of helps me if I have students that are really rocking ahead of pace because I know a lot of times that one thing that people ask about is like how to motivate students to do should or aspire to dos. So if I have a student who's really ahead of pace and they turn in an exit ticket, I can intentionally not check their exit ticket right away. So they have to do those should and aspire to dos. And as teachers, we always prioritize things. And so sometimes that just naturally happens. Like if I see someone two lessons ahead turn in an exit ticket, but I'm working with someone who's behind pace, I don't feel guilty about not checking their exit ticket right away because I have to prioritize maybe my student that's behind pace. And then they've got kind of a menu of options that are hopefully engaging and motivating that they can then work on while they wait for me to check their exit tickets. 


Zach: Totally. Well, I guess what's definitely coming across is that it is not a free-for-all, right? Exactly. There is a lot of structure. Andrea, how about you? You haven't gotten to contribute yet. 


Andrea: Yeah. Lots of similarities to what I've heard. I would say I work backwards. I've taught math for many years. I've taught the same resource for many years. So I've had the same units, and I'm mandated to follow those. And so I've used my knowledge of just my past experience to kind of pace out the unit. Like, I know it typically takes 15 days to get through this. If I was trudging through a lesson a day, that might be multiple skills, not exactly 15 skills, but 15 lessons within our resource. And so then I'll work backwards and I will say, okay, after 15 days, that would put a summative assessment at around this time. And then I notice that I have, like, let's say, seven skills within the unit, and then I'll kind of just pace that out. They usually typically are a few days to a skill and that pacing and that strategy has been working pretty good for me. So my soft deadlines would be with my mastery checks just so kids can figure out and stay on pace for the entire unit to get to that summative assessment. And I, too, have that hard date of the end of unit assessment where if kids aren't done with the whole game board, we do it anyways. But if it were a large number of kids, I would be flexible and I would adjust. My kids still have access to all my past game boards, so when we have flex time at the end of the day or different things, they can always go back and work through those. So for my aspire to dos, I gear those more towards the end of my unit. And I never really actually communicate to my kids what my should dos are and what my aspire to dos are. And so the goal is that they get through all of my must dos like earlier on in the game board and then they're just working through those more in depth in the later half of the game board. And so if they don't actually finish the game board, it's not really a big deal because those are my should do and my aspire to dos. But then they're getting everything done that they need to. 


Zach: Yeah, no, I did something very similar and that's a great point. You kind of withhold that information from them, but then if they don't make it to the end, it's sort of like a sort of a cushion, right? If they don't make it to the end, then they're still getting through all the content they have to actually master. And you said something else that interested me a lot, which is that you plan the unit backwards as if you were going to teach it traditionally, one lesson per day. And I do that exact same thing. And I guess getting to the sort of the heart of the question of this misconception that we're giving the kids just all the work, I think that we're all talking about this, but we build in checkpoints along the way to make sure that they're meeting them and not just staying on lesson one for the whole unit. We do have lots of supports that we build in to structure the time and structure the self-pacing and I'm sure we'll touch on more and more of them as we move on. But yeah, definitely not true that we just let the kids have at it and give them no other supports. That is the misconception and I hope that we have put that one to bed. Alright. So the next one I'd like to talk about is the idea that kids just do whatever they want in a self-paced class, that kids are just in the classroom doing whatever because the teacher is not, I guess, standing up “teaching them” quote unquote. So what do you do in your self-paced classes to make sure that your kids are actively engaged and learning in your class and not just doing whatever in the room. 


Andrea: So I just feel like it's so opposite. Right. It's super structured. We have the game board which obviously controls their pathway of what they're learning, that scope and sequence. I do daily check-ins in the morning and just, keeping close tabs. And we also do a daily check-in whole-class with our progress tracker talking about what's on pace and what's not. We do goal-setting so that they can make some goals for what they need to accomplish to stay on-pace for the day. Just going over that pacing tracker and dictating who the small groups are. I think we have so much control, even though sometimes it doesn't necessarily look like we do. Kids are never really doing whatever, right? They have a goal, they have a plan, they have a path. And I couldn't disagree more with the misconception. 


Zach:Yeah. And I think another thing that's often forgot about when thinking about self-pacing this way is that we're still teachers. When kids are just doing whatever, we're people, we can walk over to them and redirect them, or if necessary, we can use our school's discipline systems like, we're still there, teaching the class. The type of control that we are giving up may not be the same type of control that leads to learning. It's just sort of a compliance that I think people sort of expect in the classroom that doesn't equate to engagement and learning. 


Andrew: You know, when you're up lecturing in front of the class, I feel like it's so hard to see when kids are really, truly doing whatever and not listening to you at all. Right. But like, when your instruction is through those videos and those guided notes and now you're walking and you're mingling and you're checking in, you can see so much better kids that are off-task. So I think you can have tabs on them even more. 


Zach: Totally. 


John: Yeah. I was kind of like, silently cheering that whole time Andrea was talking, because my experience also has been that students are actually usually more engaged in my Modern 
Classrooms teaching than they were previously when I was doing traditional lessons. And like she was stating toward the end that self-pacing is based on the progress tracker. And when we're able to use the progress tracker effectively, we actually are having some degree of control. I think a great metaphor for this is controlled chaos. When someone walks into my classroom, they're not going to see everybody working on the same thing at the same time, at the same voice level. But they're more likely to see students actively engaged with the work because the model itself lends itself to students being productive. Because I don't have the student who was absent two days last week saying, Well, I can't do this assignment because I don't have the requisite knowledge. Instead, they're able to pick up where they left off. When I do see a student getting off task, which obviously does happen in any classroom, Modern Classroom or traditional, I can go over and redirect and all my resources are in that one spot on the LMS on the website that I've created. And so I can say, okay, you're confused on this concept. Here's the instructional video I created. Why don't you rewatch this? Or in order to do this assignment effectively, you're going to need to open your book or you're going to need to have this resource open to you. And again, like Andrea said, when you're in front of the classroom, kids can look very compliant by just sitting there at their desks with their eyes on you. But we don't know what's going on behind their eyes and their heads. And so when I'm actually walking around, I can note which students I've seen making progress and which ones I haven't. I think sometimes people focus more on that chaos, but they don't recognize the level of control that actually is there.


Zach: And the level of learning. I guess the chaos will look different depending on what grade you teach. All of us teach elementary or middle school, so we don't have high schoolers who probably aren't quite as chaotic. But the chaos does not mean that they're not learning. It does not mean that they're not engaged with the work. Like you said, we can walk over to the kids, we can sit down with them. Toni Rose and I were talking on the last episode about how when visitors come into Modern Classrooms, the teachers can sort of walk away from the class for a minute and it runs itself while the teacher talks to the visitors. But when there aren't visitors, we can dedicate that time to the students, like one student. If a student needs our help, we can sit down and help them for five minutes and get them back on track. 


John: Right, Zach - so I noticed what you said was that just because it looks a little chaotic doesn't mean students aren't learning. And one theme that I'll probably come back to throughout a lot of these misconceptions is the reverse of that. Just because a teacher is up in front of the room, lecturing and content has been covered does not necessarily imply that genuine, authentic learning is taking place. 


Zach: That's absolutely right. 


Beth: 100%. I've been like bobblehead nodding this entire time while everyone else was talking. I completely agree. I think that a lot of this misconception probably comes from just ideas about education. Yes, that compliance equals learning or quiet equals learning. And I think that more and more educators are realizing that that's not true. And I think that if you approach self-pacing as you approach anything else in your classroom - you introduce it, you practice it, you set expectations, students will follow it. And I think that students that maybe struggle with executive functioning skills are likely students that would struggle in any model. And I like that I can take the time to really sit with them and work with them on some of those skills that I wouldn't be able to do, teaching traditionally. Like if I have a student off-task during a lecture, I have to stop my lecture to redirect their behavior. But if I have a student off-task during self-pacing, the rest of the class continues on learning, and then I can sit with that student and help them get on-task. I agree kind of with what everyone else said, that I think that there's a lot more control than it looks like and a lot more engagement, for sure. 


Zach: Yeah, that is such a great point. The idea that compliance and learning are the same thing. I feel like that's going to probably, you said this, John. It's going to probably come up a lot more. And in my head, knowing the outline, I've been trying to think about where we're going to talk about that. It's a misconception about traditional teaching, right? It's a misconception to say that kids sitting compliantly during a lecture are the ones who are learning the best. And this episode feels somewhat cathartic for us. We're all, like, shoving each other on and nodding. We've seen it in action, though, right? It's true. It really is true. And we've all seen it in action. And that's why all of us are so excited to talk about this. 


Beth: I would like to say this is just like a little anecdote, but my mom is a teacher for 30 plus years, and she's awesome. Shout out to her. And she loves to spend the day of each of her spring break visiting me. And she's done that pretty much since I've been a teacher. And she came in last week, and I was feeling self-conscious because my class was very loud, and they were just kind of felt, like, all over the place. And afterwards, she said she's, like, “the best. They were all talking about the learning.” She's like, “yeah, they were loud.” Like, I had a student cheering because he was scoring better on the vocabulary assignment than he did the last time he took it. And she's like, she's like, “they were so engaged with what they were doing. So what if they were loud?” And that was, you know, I know that. But sometimes you just, like, need someone to say that to you. And that was really I feel like it kind of encompasses what we're talking about right now. 


Zach: Yeah. I mean, I think that the reason this is so enjoyable for the four of us right now and hopefully for the listeners as well is that, like, I don't know about you all, but I still find myself getting annoyed with kids doing the stuff that as a traditional teacher, I would redirect them from doing. I still have just ingrained in me, I guess, from having been a student in school and having been a traditional teacher for long enough. Like this idea that compliance and learning go hand in hand. And so it's nice to hear other people saying the same thing. Right. Like, my classroom is loud sometimes. My kids are sometimes out of my control. Sometimes there are discipline problems. Like, these things happen in all classrooms. And the fact that it's self-paced and kids have to do a little bit more lift in terms of what lesson they're on individually and managing their pacing, it does not mean that they're just doing whatever. And if they are, that happens in traditional classrooms, too. It's not a misconception about Modern Classrooms, and we have the tools to deal with it. 


Beth: Yeah, exactly. 


Andrea: To kind of get off that, to the same thing. But for me, we rotate like, a unit of science, a unit of math, a unit of science, a unit of math. And when we're doing science, we still do our math interventions and extra support and stuff. But I had just gotten out of a week or a few weeks of science, and I started back with math, and I was like, “oh, thank goodness,” because my kids and they kind of had a sigh of relief, too. Like, “oh, thank you. We're ready just to dive in and get started learning and being control again. Like, enough of my teacher blabbing up in front.” It just felt so good to get back into the model. 


Zach: Yeah. All right, let's hit one more misconception before the break. This one I want to talk about is the idea that teachers don't teach in self-paced classes because the students are working on different lessons. I can understand, like, mechanically, it can be difficult to understand if you're stuck to the idea that teachers are standing up and delivering lectures, as in a traditional classroom. But that one is up, especially coming from students. Right. Like, “you're not teaching me.” What would you say is the role of the teacher in a self-paced class? 


Beth: I think that in this, the model allows me to do double the work. So I'm still teaching direct instructions through the videos. But then I'm also able to walk around and check in, help with practice, address misconceptions, all of those things that in a traditional setup, I could only do one or the other. So I think that, again, this is more maybe speaking to education in general. Right. Just the idea that I don't have to be lecturing to be teaching, that I don't have to be maybe addressing everyone at once or everyone on the same place to still be teaching and for the students to still be learning. So I think that this model gives students a chance to do more self-directed learning than teacher directed learning. But I'm still teaching. And like you said, I'm still managing the classroom. I'm managing behavior. I'm meeting with students. It's just concurrent with the direct instruction that might typically be given during more of a lecture style classroom or in a lecture style classroom. 


Zach: Yeah, totally. I mean, there's so much more to the job of teaching than standing in front of a classroom and talking. There's so much more. And we still do all of it, right? We still do a lot of it and more because we have more time. 


Andrea: To go off of that. Yeah. I was just thinking, we are always wishing we want more time. We want more hands, we want more of everything. And when I was reflecting on this question a little bit, one little word that came to me was like “puppeteer.” I feel like a teacher is just like behind the scenes, kind of just like, slowly controlling the show, you know? Like, kids still have that voice and choice and they're still like, learning. But you know, ultimately we're the one picking the practice activities, the aspire to do activities, creating the content. Right? That's a huge part of it is creating the content. I wouldn't feel as comfortable with the model if it wasn't me making the videos. Like, I know exactly what they're learning and how they're learning it. And the thing I enjoy the most is in this role, I get to look at data and be responsive. Because I feel like I'm definitely not like a flip open the teacher's manual, what are we teaching today? And then what are we teaching tomorrow? That is not my teaching style. I like to be responsive, and this model gives you so much data that you can just, like, immediately know “I need to do this.” And sometimes I do it in the middle of the math block and sometimes I wait for the next day. But it's really comforting knowing that I'm making an instructional decision based off of in-time data that I'm seeing with my kids. 


John: I think that this misconception really comes down to a misconception about what a teacher is and what a teacher does. And so I actually wrote down, Zach, what you said, “there's so much more to teaching than standing in front of a room and lecturing,” because in a more traditional model, that would be a heavy percentage of what I would be doing is standing in front of a room and lecturing. Not to mention as well, that when I give live lectures, there are times where I'm spending more time redirecting behavior to make sure everyone's paying attention rather than actually delivering content. Like Andrea said, what's beautiful is that we are making our own instructional videos. So I have heard some misconceptions about how teachers rely on instructional videos. But no, that's actually us making those instructional videos. And one of the things I love about that is that if I make a five minute video, that is five solid minutes of content delivery, as opposed to if I'm giving a lecture in front of the room, I might spend ten minutes and only give four or five minutes of actual instruction because I'm interrupted by kids needing to go to the bathroom and kids playing around in the back of the room or maybe doodling instead of listening. And when I think about why I became a teacher, for me, it's all about working as directly with kids as possible. And so by being able to clone myself with these instructional videos, I am responding to that data, like Andrea said. And I'm actually able to go pull a small group of kids or check a student's work and give them some feedback in the moment rather than them turning in an assignment and getting a grade a week, two weeks later with no opportunity to revise. So in some ways, I'm actually doing more teaching. We just have to redefine what does teaching mean. 


Zach: Yes, you said this, too. When I think about why I became a teacher and what is most rewarding about being a teacher, it's not like I wouldn't leave the building and be like, “man, I gave such great lectures today.” I would be like, my best days. I would be like, “I had such great conversations with individuals” or like small groups of kids that got them to really understand something like those light bulb moments where kids don't happen during the lecture or maybe they do and I just didn't notice. But it was definitely a sense of like in a conversation with a kid, I can help you arrive at the understanding you need. But with Modern Classrooms, that's all I do now. Everything that you all are saying, I fully agree with. And I think that this idea of redefining the role of a teacher just in general and sort of reinterpreting what teachers actually, this is our role. This is what we actually do. Modern Classrooms gives us the time and the space to do it more and to do it better, I think. 


John: Exactly. And in terms of those light bulb moments, I think that I'm seeing them happen a lot more, not just because I'm actually rotating around the classroom, but because Modern Classrooms gives me the freedom to create that culture of revision to where if a student doesn't understand a concept the first time, it's not just, “oh, you didn't get it. Here's your D, here's your C. Go sit back down.” Instead, it's okay. Here's where your misconception was. Here's how we can revise it. And then that same student who's used to just being given that D, that F, whatever the case may be, is actually having the opportunity to truly master something and you just see that light in their eyes like, “oh, my gosh, I actually got it. I understood this. I got, for all intents and purposes, an A and I get to move the block on my progress tracker.” 


Zach: Absolutely right, folks. This is super fantastic. This is such a great conversation. We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, we've got three more misconceptions for you that we are going to tackle. So we'll be right back. 


Kareem: Hi, everyone. It's Kareem here from the Modern Classrooms Project. I just wanted to share some exciting news about our big Virtual Summer Institute this summer, the summer of 2022. Now, as many of you all know, the summer is one of the most popular times for folks to learn our model. It's a time where folks can take a step back from their normal classroom experience and really rethink and redesign their approach to teaching and learning. And this summer, we plan to train 3000 educators this summer. Now, educators come through a variety of ways. You can enroll individually, you can enroll through a school and district partnership. And this year we have some pretty awesome regional scholarship opportunities. These are scholarship opportunities for educators. If you're located in DC, New York City, Connecticut, Chicago, Seattle, the Twin Cities, or Tulsa. These are folks who can just apply. If you're an educator in these communities. And if you get accepted, you get a full scholarship to our summer Institute and some really great perks, including a $500 stipend. So check them out. You can just go to modernclassrooms.org/scholarships to see the right regional scholarships. And you can just go to our website and you'll see at the top announcement bar. You can learn more about our Virtual Summer Institute, see the variety of ways you can enroll individually or collaborate with us on a school or district partnership. I hope everyone's doing all right. Good luck with the rest of the year. Thank you for all that you do.


Zach: All right, folks, we are back with Andrea, Beth and John, and we're going to tackle three more misconceptions for you. The next misconception I want to talk about with you all is a very common one about self-paced classes. And it's a question that comes up a lot, like when we do Q&A episodes, and I see it in the Facebook group and in the Slack, the idea that self-paced classes don't allow for full group activities. So full-group collaborative activities, I guess maybe like a lab in a science class or something like that. How do you all implement full group activities in your self-paced classes? 


John: This is actually a misconception that my principal brought to me when I first suggested running a PLC for Modern Classrooms. And one piece that I really like to always refer back to is that Modern Classrooms is not a prescriptive curriculum or format. It is the very essence of flexibility. It's doing what's best for your students based on where they're at. And so collaboration happens constantly in the Modern Classroom. The first way is through organic collaboration. And that's when we're actually just looking at the pacing tracker and seeing, OK, student A is on the same activity as student D. Those two students should work together. But on a whole-class level, activities can also be planned with a self-pacing element in mind. But that hard deadline like I said on one of the earlier misconceptions, I still have that hard deadline. And so currently, I'm teaching kids a book called Enrique's Journey by Sonya Nazario. And the mastery checks for that are actually discussion groups. So when the discussion group day comes, students need to have all the materials prepared, and then they actually engage in face-to-face interaction and whole-group discussion. Now, of course, there's that element of helping students who are behind sort of proactively get to where they need to be so that when that whole-group activity does come, they are ready and prepared with all of those materials. But you can absolutely plan whole-group activities and in some ways, it's almost more conducive to that because those students who might struggle a little bit, they have those must do items done, and so they can still participate in the discussion. And maybe some students who are ahead of pace have done the should do and aspire to do prep lessons. And so they might have more content to bring. But still those students who were stuck on the must do are still able to participate in that discussion, that whole group activity, and do so in a meaningful way. And then the last piece I'll mention is that I definitely do whole-group reteach of misconceptions when I find them appropriate. Even just today, I had students working in discussion groups, and I recognized that there was a particular question that a lot of students struggled with. So at the end of class, I stopped maybe five minutes early and did a whole-group reteach. So that's still going on. It's just that whole-group instruction is not the main crux of my instruction. 


Zach: Yes. And you made a really great point at the end there about just whole-group reteaches, which is not something that I thought of in the context of this question, which, like I was thinking more about those really very formalized full-class activities, but that's a great one. Just in the moment. You don't have to do it at the end of class either. At the beginning of class, if my students are all working on the same thing more or less and a bunch of them are having the same problem, I will actually stop the whole class and say, “please close your computers.” My school is one-to-one. They all have Chromebooks. So I'll pull their attention to the front, and I actually will deliver a very short little lecture to address the questions that lots of kids are asking me. You can totally do that. And like you said, there's nothing prescriptive or like set in stone about a Modern Classroom. Just because we're our self-paced model doesn't mean that you can't do that. That's part of the self-pacing, and I think it's also part of the learning. Right, to help the kids really be as successful as they can on the activities that they're doing. Great points. Great points. 


Beth: Yeah, I agree with everything that John said. So I still do whole-group every day, almost as a whole group mini lesson, but it's only about five minutes. And I can make it very specific to the needs that I see of my students because the actual content that I'm delivering from my curriculum is happening in the videos. So that's the first thing is that I still pretty much do a whole-group lesson every day. The second thing that I've started doing in math is incorporating a whole-group hands-on activity as an anchor activity at the beginning of every unit. So kind of a creative way to preview the concepts that we're going to be talking about allow students to do some kind of more fun things. It's usually maybe art-based or group-based or something just to get them thinking about the concepts that we'll be learning. And then I also will do whole-group kind of games periodically throughout the unit. My school has about 20% of students that speak a language other than English at home. And so vocabulary acquisition is something that my school is really focused on. And so I'll do a Blooket or a Gimkit or something like that regularly, I would say at least every week where we're using the vocabulary words from a unit in kind of a game-based way, and everyone's doing that regardless of where they are in the unit. So those are some ways that I still incorporate whole-group activities, even with the self-pacing structure. 


Zach: Awesome. Yeah. And you can totally do that. You can totally do that. There's nothing stopping you. Nothing stopping you. 


Andrea: I don't have too much to add. They covered pretty much everything. I was going to say my full group is typically some type of spiral review at the beginning of the block. I will do the intervention lesson or a whole-group reteach, really try to keep it mini-lesson. And I will also do the game thing as well. But the opportunity is there for full-group activities. I think the biggest part is just communicating to kids when that will be and having the scaffolds in place so that they can be ready for it. 


Zach: Yeah. And one thing I do want to add here is going back to what John you mentioned quite a while ago about the sort of assumption that in a traditional classroom, the fact that the teacher teaches the content means that the kids learned it. That assumption, I think that if you come to the structure of a class and then say maybe all the kids won't be ready for this whole-group activity. Like how will you know, I would say that that same argument applies in a traditional classroom, except that here we can proactively make sure that they are ready by building in that buffer time that you mentioned, I think, Beth, and then addressing students who are behind before we get to the collaborative or full group activity. And so we shouldn't assume that just because the teacher has taught the lessons, the kids all have learned it. And I think that this model really allows those full-group activities to really shine because we do get to make sure that every kid has what they need when they get to the full group activity. So definitely, Andrea, like you said, very much possible and very much a part of most Modern Classrooms that I've been acquainted with and certainly, mine as well. So let's move on to this next misconception. This one is also, I think, very common. And the idea is that students are not able to self-pace just because they're too young. They don't have the executive functioning, they're not organized, or they can't self-pace because they're kids. Right. 


Andrea: That's something that we hear a lot. And I would like to hear how you all respond to that. Well, I mean, they’ve got to develop the skills sometimes, there’s no better time than now. And obviously, every good teacher knows the developmental level of their kids, what they're able to handle. And if they throw you a curveball, you can scaffold it a different way the next time. I mean, just to say that you're going to launch this method and not have any bumps in the road is pretty naive. Right. This is very new to kids. They're not used to this kind of teaching. And so at first you will, you will see certain kids struggle with it. And some kids need more scaffolding than others. And when you get to know their personality and since this model also allows you to build relationships so well, I think you can even respond quicker to those. And knowing what the kid or what the student will need, we talk about like, oh, you know, we're worried. So and so they're falling behind. How are they going to feel about that? And I'm okay with a little bit of pressure. I think it's okay to have that urgency there of like, “this is important. This is something you need to do in order to learn and move forward.” If we fail along the way, great, we're learning something. Let's keep going. But I never knew my students as well as I do now. And just because of that, I think I'm able to scaffold better the metacognition and everything involved with it. They're able to recognize when they need my assistance more, when they need each other more. And I think they will surprise you. 


Zach: Yeah, they've certainly surprised me. I mean, my students surprised me. Some of the students who are at least expected to be able to self-pace are the ones who thrive the most. It's very interesting to see. 


John: Yeah, I resonate with that as well, Zach, that sometimes it's the students I didn't expect who are actually able to self-pace the best because maybe they're a very non-compliant student in the traditional setting. But just that feeling of autonomy gives them more motivation to do the work at their own pace. I would also say that it is true that some students come into our classrooms without the executive functioning skills that are necessary for self-pacing. And that's where we teach it. We teach it like we teach any other skill. I have students come into my classroom who don't know how to cite evidence yet, but I obviously don't say, “okay, they don't know how to cite evidence, so that's just not going to be the expectation.” I say, “okay, they don't have the skill yet. So what can we do to build it?” And then also I think it's really important to keep in mind that everything we do, we scaffold in the appropriate way. So, like, I teach middle school. Andrea and Beth, you teach elementary school. And so what self-pacing looks like in your classroom and what it looks like in my classroom is going to vary based on the level of the students. So we're not just throwing them out into the ocean and saying, sink or swim. We're saying, “hey, these executive functioning skills are really important for not just school, but life. And so I'm going to scaffold you until you are able to do this.” And maybe that looks like first quarter we're only self-pacing three days at a time or a week at a time. And hopefully we will eventually get that place to where we can self-pace for longer. But in my classroom, I do a lot of scaffolding activities for executive functioning. Like, I teach them how to organize their LMS, I teach them how to organize their folders and their binders. And then from there, even time management. I'll put a visual timer up on the screen, and I'll teach the methods like, “okay, we're going to work for 20 minutes straight and then give ourselves a five minute break,” or “here's what you're expected to complete between minute 20 and minute ten.” So I think that development of the executive functioning skills is something that has to happen. Like Andrea said, they have to learn it some time. And so now is the best time, especially while they are young and it doesn't feel foreign to them. 


Zach: Yeah, I think those are such good points. And you made a really interesting connection for me. I made the connection, as you said, it between teaching the content and teaching the self-pacing, because like you said, you don't assume that students come into the class knowing how to cite evidence, but you do teach it to them. And so we don't necessarily assume that students come into the class knowing how to self-pace, certainly not in 3rd, 4th, 5th grade or middle school or even in high school. But we teach it to them. We teach it to them just like we teach the content. It's sort of like one of the life skills that we're teaching them. It's not necessarily like in the curriculum, but it is definitely part of being a student in a Modern Classroom is being taught and being sort of coached in self-pacing. So that's a great point. And I think that it's a great response to this misconception. Beth, how about you? What do you think? 


Beth: Yeah, I think that as everyone has said, executive functioning skills are so important. And I think, again, I agree that what that looks like at each level is going to be different. And even within my class. So I have some students who are still working on organization and time management and self-control and for them, I might say to them, “you're going to watch this video and then you're going to come talk to me,” right? And then they'll come talk to me and I'll be like, “great, you did it. Good job. Now go onto the practice.” And so for them, the self-pacing is really like, are you starting the video and finishing the video and able to move on? And then other students, they've got it, and they're able to get out their materials and just get started and go through it for the whole day or the whole lesson without having me to scaffold and help them. So even within my classroom, the level of scaffolding for self-pacing really depends on the students and their needs. 


Zach: Right. 


Beth: And I feel like I'm able to devote a lot more time helping students with that just because the direct instruction piece and the content piece has been put on the videos. And I think I said this the last time, the last podcast I was on that I was that student who was really good at school but really not good at executive functioning. Right? I was the student who did chronic procrastinator, couldn't manage my time. And it was a struggle going to college for me. It was a struggle being on my own and having to depend on myself to do of those things. And so if I can help students at nine get a little bit better at that so that they are able to be more self-directed as they get older and they're expected to do that, then I want to do that for them. 


Zach: Totally. Yeah. This is definitely a misconception. And it is sort of part of our job to make sure that it stays a misconception to make sure that students don't just not learn how to self-pace and then totally fail our classes. But it is what we do as Modern Classrooms teachers. It's part of what the model gives us. Right? And I do want to respond to something that Andrea said also about students sort of having the pressure on and sometimes us letting them sort of fail forward. I wish that I had mentioned this at the very beginning of our conversation when we were talking about how we structure the time. I think that's something really important in Modern Classrooms or in self-paced classes is sort of a fresh start opportunity at very regular intervals. And so sometimes kids who are still developing those executive functioning or organizational skills will actually fail and they'll fail spectacularly. And then the next day or maybe the next week, they come into class and you say, “okay, everyone is on lesson one. We're starting a new unit. This is a fresh start.” And that student who failed, they're like, “okay, I know what happens when I do it the wrong way now. So maybe now I'll trust my teacher when they remind me to put my phone down and get back to work, or I'll do it myself.” Right. “I don't want to feel that again. And so I'm going to stay on pace with the lessons. I'm going to complete one lesson per day” or whatever it may be, having that experience of not effectively self-pacing and seeing what happens. It's just so clear in the data. We had a five lesson unit, and you did one lesson, and so you got an F or a D. And so I think that letting our kids fail, at least at the very beginning of the year, not maliciously, but not intervening so much that they don't learn to self-pace, I think, is an important skill for us as well. 


Beth: If I could add about just the metacognition and the reflection piece, a little shout out to my mentor, Nicole, when I was reviewing her learning design plan. Every time they were doing a mastery track, they were also doing this short reflection. And she had some of those things in there, like, “what can I do better next time in my next lesson?” And things like that, staying more focused and all of those things just to reflect back on “how can I be a better learner?” 


Andrea: Yeah, I wanted to just talk a little bit about reflection as well. Just the idea that when students do have that fail and you're saying fail forward. And I love that. I've noticed a lot more good conversations between students and with me kind of based on what they're observing about themselves. So they might say a friend might ask them to work with them, and they might be like, “no,” I've heard students say, “I think we talk too much or I'm getting off-task. I need to do this.” And that is not a conversation that I think naturally comes up, maybe with other models of instruction. Or I can have conversations with students and say, I notice you're behind pace. Like, what can we do when they might say, “oh, I think I'm getting distracted on YouTube, and I need to stop doing that.” And it's coming from them. And so the level of reflection that can come from that, I think is awesome. 


Zach: Yeah, I've had that very conversation with some kids. Some kids are very self-aware. Like, they're very reflective, and they're like, “oh, I'm getting off track. I need to get back to work.” It's very funny to see and very sort of promising to see that the model is working like that 


Andrea: For sure. 


Zach: All right, so let's move on to our final misconception. So this one's actually kind of related to the previous question about collaborating, but I want to talk more about, John, what you were sort of getting at with your response to that question, which is the organic collaboration. And this misconception, I think, is that students who are self-pacing, they can't collaborate, they can't work together because they're all working on different lessons at the same time, which might be true, but I do think it's a misconception that kids don't collaborate in a Modern Classroom and I don't mean those big collaborative activities. Now I'm talking about the sort of day-to-day, minute-to-minute kids just talking to each other sort of collaboration. How do you all get your students to collaborate in that sort of organic way? 


Beth: I feel like I see a lot more of that natural collaboration using this model for a couple of different reasons. One, I think I share a public pacing tracker with students and they're very motivated to stay on pace with their friends in my room, typically, I allow collaboration on any piece of the unit with the exception of mastery checks, and so they know if they're on the same place as their friend, they can work together. And that's very motivating for students. So with that, I mean, there I would say most of my class is working with someone else most of the time, which is not always typical. And then with that too, they can see who is ahead of them. And so I have students, then they know what other students they can go to to ask questions if I'm busy or if they just want to ask a peer before they come to me for help. They use the pacing tracker to see who's already mastered that and they can go ask them. So I feel like I have a lot more authentic collaboration with this model just using the public pacing tracker. 


Zach: Yeah, that's such a good point. I've talked about this before on the podcast, but for the first month or so of school, kids will come up to me with questions and I'll just, with them like, look at the pacing tracker and say, “who's done that already? Who's mastered that lesson?” And then they'll go and talk to them and after a month they're going to stop coming to ask me because they'll know I'll just redirect them to some other student and it totally works. Like, now it's the end of March and kids just look at the tracker and they don't even ask me anymore. It happens organically. Totally. Great point. 


Andrea: I would say in my classroom, it definitely is the culture. I've noticed, and maybe it's just my group of kids, but they really seem to love to work with each other and they will reach out to each other before they reach out to me. It's like they are very confident asking someone else and they almost see each other as experts. Like, “hey, they're doing the same thing as me. They can help me with this.” I also use the progress tracker, language I use that goes along with that would be like “you can work with anyone in your lane or higher.” And so they look at that progress tracker and know who they can reach out to for help or who they can work with on that journal page or on that video and guided notes or whatever. Collaborating is always on the table. They know they can always be working with a partner except for on our mastery checks. When I think about those kids where, some kids, they just naturally want to collaborate, maybe they have a best friend in the class or maybe they're just a social extrovert and they have no problem. I do have some kids who are a little more introverted and they would prefer to work by themselves and they tend to want to reach out to me. I think they have comfort with the fact that I'm more accessible now as the teacher and I'm around. I'm accessible to them, and they can kind of lean towards me and collaborate with me if they need me. But I also try to not necessarily force collaboration on them, but I do like to build games and different collaborative activities within my game board so that they can't work in isolation the entire time, that they do have to branch out and play a game with someone else here or there. I also do flexible seating so they know they can move around the room and work with whoever. My classroom is pretty small, so I can't really zone it, but I was talking with one of my mentees about potentially using table tents and having, like, “this is where lesson one people are working. This is where less than two people are working” and so on. As another way to just kind of organically have kids confined to one area and collaborate. 


Zach: Yeah, totally. And the space it's interesting that you mentioned, the space because kids will move around to go and work with each other. I've seen this happen in my class with no input from me or no prompting from me at all. Like, a kid will just get up and walk over to another kid and ask them a question. And I'm like, “I love this. I love this.” 


Andrea: That's the controlled chaos, right? 


Zach: Exactly. That's what we mean when we say that kids aren't sitting quietly and compliantly. They're talking, but they're talking about the stuff, and it's not with who you necessarily expect. 


John: Yeah. I definitely wish that the podcast listeners could see me right now, because I've just been, like, nodding “yes” the entire time that both Andrea and Beth were talking, because I definitely do see more organic collaboration taking place in the Modern Classroom. And I want to touch back on what Andrea just said about the arrangement of the classroom. And for me, I'm lucky enough in a few of my classes to have co teachers. And what's so helpful about zoning things is that I can see that “Okay, we have seven students all on this assignment and six students all on this assignment.” And we can do some parallel teaching there and say, “okay, all the students who are working on this activity, you're with Mr. Tyler over here. Everyone who's working on this activity, you're with Mr. Foley over there,” and that's just been really helpful. And one other piece I want to mention is that I think this misconception kind of ties back to that first misconception about students just getting all of this work and being in completely different places. And this is definitely feeding into this misconception because this misconception said they can't self-pace since they're all working on different lessons or different contents. And in reality, if we are using that pacing tracker as formative data and making instructional adjustments based on that data, then we don't have students all working on different activities. There's maybe a range of four or five activities that the 30 kids in my classroom could be working on. And so at any given time, there's going to be other students working on the same assignment as you. You're not going to be that lone wolf who's just working by themselves. Or if you are, it’s for like five minutes while someone finishes a must do to move onto a should do. 


Zach: Yeah, you caught the misconception embedded within my misconception. 


John: Right. 


Zach: You have more students than lessons. They're not all on different lessons. Right. Like they can be grouped together. And I think that's sort of what we're all getting at here is that the pacing tracker and the progress data, that's how we can put our kids into collaborative environments because they can see who to work with. Or maybe if we don't use a public tracker, the teacher can tell them who to work with. Right. We can choose less and All Stars who are way ahead of pace. We can group kids together, like you were saying, John, and even spatially. Right. Or the kids can look at it themselves if it's public and projected or displayed in the room and they can figure out who to work with. So that piece of a self-paced class provides the key to this problem, the solution to this problem, and it takes it above and beyond. I think what we would get in a traditional classroom if we were assigning partners or even just expecting kids to try and ask each other questions because it becomes part of the class culture. Andrea, I think you were mentioning that it's just part of how the class runs now. And so definitely a misconception. Not true. 


John: I think that does back to the metaphor that was used earlier about sort of being a little bit of the puppet master because we are still in control of what's happening. And so we are choosing those lessons All Stars. We are encouraging certain kids to work together, and sometimes we're encouraging them in ways that feel like encouragement and not assignment. It's not you must go work with this person. It's an explanation of, hey, here would be the best people for you to work with. And here are the reasons. And they have that autonomy to feel like they're making that decision themselves. 


ZachL: Totally. Totally. Wow. What a fantastic discussion. To close us out, could you all share how our listeners could connect with you if they wanted to talk? All four of us, actually. But all three of you, more importantly, are Modern Classrooms mentors. So real experts here. And if you wouldn't mind sharing how our listeners could get in touch with you, I think that a lot of people would appreciate that. 


John: Yeah, absolutely. This is John here. I think the easiest way to get in contact with me is my Modern Classrooms email, which is John.Tyler@modernclassrooms.org. And that's J-O-H-N not J-O-N. And I also just recently changed my Facebook and LinkedIn display name so that it sticks out a little bit more. It is JohnJTylerJr. That might make me easier to find than just John Tyler. 


Beth: I also am totally fine with someone emailing me Elizabeth.Benavides@modernclassrooms.org and that will be in the show notes, I hope, because I know that's a very long first and last name. And then I'm also on Facebook and in the Facebook group, and I would love to connect that way, too. If a listener is not on the Facebook group, I would highly recommend it because I think that that's a wealth of knowledge. And I love just scrolling and seeing the questions and answers that are there. So you can find me there as well. 


Zach: Yes, it will definitely all be in the Show Notes. And of course, the Facebook group is in the Show Notes as well. 


Andrea: Yeah, totally. Reach out if you have any questions. I don't have a Modern Classrooms email because I didn't want too many emails. So you can just email me to my Gmail, which would be Andrea.l.mahr@gmail.com. I am also on the Facebook group or within the Slack channel, so you can find me in any of those portals. 


Zach: Awesome. Well, Andrea, Beth and John, what a pleasure. What a fantastic discussion. Thank you all so much for joining me. This has been so much fun. 


Beth: Yes, it was a blast. Loving it. 


John: Yeah. I actually wish this conversation could just keep going. 


Zach: Well, the conversation will certainly go on in our hearts and minds as Modern Classrooms teachers, listeners. Remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org and you can find the Show Notes for this episode at podcast.modernclassrooms.org/83. And of course, this episode is a recap and transcript will be up on the Modern Classrooms blog on Friday. So you can check back at the Show Notes here or on the blog itself if you're interested in checking those out. But otherwise, thank you all so much for listening. Have a great week, and we will be back next Sunday.


Voiceover: Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org, and you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at Learn.Modernclassrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modernclassproj, that's P-R-O-J. We are so appreciative of all you do for students and schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast.