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. 


Toni Rose: Hello, and welcome to episode 85 of the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. My name is Toni Rose Deanon, she/her pronouns a program manager at Modern Classroom, and I am joined by two of my favorite implementers, Brandy and Pierce. Brandy is one of our mentors and our Slack moderator so I've had the pleasure of working with her pretty closely this past school year. Welcome, Brandy. 


Brandy: Hey. 


Toni Rose: And I've also had the pleasure to be a thought partner for Pierce this school year and getting to know him and his classes better. Welcome, Pierce. 


Pierce: Hi. Thank you.


Toni Rose: It's so exciting to be in this space with you both. And thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast before we get started. How are you feeling today? 


Brandy: I'm doing great. I'm actually working from Hawaii this week. My sleep schedule is way off, so I'm pretty tired, but I'm really enjoying the views and the weather. 


Toni Rose: So jealous. How are you doing today, Pierce? 


Pierce: I'm doing fine. I'm recovering from a pretty brutal cold, but I feel like it's the first cold I've had in a long time because we just took our masks off in Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago, and now everyone's getting sick. But, yeah, I'm feeling a lot better than I was a couple of days ago. 


Toni Rose: Well, I'm glad you're feeling a lot better, and that is something that we didn't take into consideration. Right. When we take off the mask, we get all the other sickness that we haven't been getting. 


Pierce: Exactly. 


Toni Rose: Okay, so let's go ahead and get started. Tell us more about who you are and how you started your Modern Classroom. Brandy, we can start with you. 


Brandy: Okay, so quick background. My degree is actually in engineering. I really enjoyed it in school, and I thought that's what I was going to do. But in the field, I didn't really find it very satisfying, and I was definitely not utilizing all of my strengths. So a lot of soul searching later, I ended up switching to teaching and moving out to Texas, where I got an alternative certification. So I'm in my fifth year of teaching science now, although I've also had the pleasure of teaching algebra and engineering since I got the cumulative certification comprehensive for math, science, and engineering. But, yeah. So ever since my first year, I was looking for different ways to do things. I was the student that was very bored in class, and a lot of my friends were struggling, and I was trying to help them. So I've seen, like, both ends of it. So I wanted to be that teacher that would provide what my kids needed. So I started with Google Classroom, putting extra videos and links and helpful things on there. My first year teaching the Math Department in my school was starting mastery-based grading. So I watched what they did, and then my second year teaching, I got our Chemistry Department to do the same thing, which was really cool. My third year teaching, the world went crazy, and we went virtual, which gave me some extra time to work on my practice. And through that, I came across the famous Edutopia video. I looked up the school and was so disappointed to find out that Kareem didn't work there anymore. And I just Googled his name to find out what he was doing because I wanted to talk to him. I was like, this is awesome. I want to know what to do. And I found the Modern Classrooms Project. I was so excited to see, like, the free course and that all the resources were there. So I grabbed my other chemistry teacher, Jenny, and I grabbed an English teacher, Steve, who I bounce ideas off of all the time, dragged them with me through the rabbit hole, and we never looked back. 


Toni Rose: I love that journey for you, Brandy. I don't think I ever knew that, so that was really good. Thanks for sharing. And, Pierce, what about you? 


Pierce: Well, interesting, Brandy, I actually have an economics degree as an undergraduate, and then I went and spent most of my 20s playing in bluegrass bands, so that doesn't make any sense. But I eventually found my way to a middle school teaching, and I did that for a while and eventually made my way to this high school position at New Liberty Innovation School in Salem, Mass. And my title is humanities teacher, so it's kind of a blend of English and history. So I started there at the start of the 2020-21 school year. So I'm just finishing up my second year in that role, and we had some really, sort of forward-thinking folks, Holly O'Leary and Jenny Clock at our school, who were trying to figure out last year how to solve some of the attendance issues that we have at our school and just trying to think about the best way to meet the needs of our students. And they also came across, I think, the Edutopia video. And we started working with Modern Classroom last year, and we're still going strong this year. 


Toni Rose: That Edutopia video. I feel like it just went so viral, and I'm so glad that it got to a lot of people's hands. So welcome, welcome. I'm so excited. And so here we go. For this episode’s topic, we're talking about self-pacing in a nontraditional school setting. So, Pierce, can you tell us more about your school, like, demographics, class sizes, tech, anything really that you want to share? 


Pierce: Sure. The title of the school is New Liberty Innovation School. And the Innovation Schools are a designation in Massachusetts, sort of within school districts. So we're a public school, but not a charter, but we basically have the ability every five years to kind of reimagine ourselves and kind of apply for whatever autonomy from the district that we feel we need to meet our mission. So we have a lot of flexibility around our schedule and our curriculum and staffing and all kinds of things that make it possible for us to do what we do. And we're really meant for students and families, high school students, not only from Salem, Mass, but from the surrounding communities who are looking for something a little different from the mainstream. We are competency-based school from the outset when it was founded about ten years ago. We've been competency-based. So that means for academics, we have a lot of flexibility around when and how students can show what they can do. We think of ourselves as kind of a three-pillared school where academics is one of the three pillars. A second one is a really robust and trauma-informed Counseling Department and coursework around that material. We call it our Essential Habits curriculum. And then the third piece of what we do is the College and Career Readiness, where we really make a big deal about trying to think about post-high school plans, getting kids into internships and job shadows, and really customized planning for what they want to do after high school. Salem itself is a pretty diverse city, and we have only about six -we max out at 65 students our enrollment, so we're a tiny little school. Class sizes range from about twelve to 20 at the most, but our attendance is such that we often don't have more than eight or ten kids in the room at a time. 


Toni Rose: And I really like those three components of your school as well, kind of just making sure that we touch base in the different parts of our students' identities. Right. So the College and Career Readiness as well. It's like trauma-informed teaching. And because we're looking for something that's not traditional, because the traditional schools don't really work for everybody, this is a great option. I didn't even know that you only had 65 students in your school. I don't think I ever knew that, and I should have probably known that a long time ago. But thank you so much, Pierce, for sharing that. Brandy, what about you? 


Brandy: So I work at a virtual public school here in Texas, so everything is 100% online except for state testing. Students actually have to come on-site to take those, but it works just like any regular public school, except that it's online. So we have a lot of students that didn't feel comfortable going back with the mask mandate being lifted. We have students that just, like, work better at home. Maybe they have social anxiety. Maybe it just works better for their schedule. Maybe they're more independent. We have all kinds of students. We have multilingual students. We have students with 504 plans, and are just like at an in-person school, I personally have about 210 students right now. That's actually gone down a little bit. And that's just in my one class. So I'm teaching 9th-grade physical science this year. The other thing that I found very different is that students and teachers are encouraged to have, like, a texting relationship. So in-person school, like, you never would get a student's phone number and text them. But here they want us to actually give out our cell number so that students can have another avenue to reach us since it's online and we don't see them every day. Most of us get like Google Voice numbers. That's what I have right now. And it's just posted everywhere. And so I'll have students texting me questions and helping them out in that way. 


Toni Rose: Yeah. And it's interesting, right. Because I feel like with Pierce, Pierce was saying twelve to 20 students in the classroom. And then when I found out that Brandy teaches 210 students??


Brandy: And it's not like it's broken up into different classes of 20 to 25, they're all lumped together in one class. 


Toni Rose: Yeah. And I know that, Brandy, you and I were trying to figure out how self-pacing would work as well with 210 students. Right. Because again, that's an overwhelming amount of students. I know the most amount of students I've taught, when I taught in Baltimore City, I had 126 students, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, and I thought that was a lot. So yours is like double that number. Really. And so I'm so interested in seeing how self-pacing looks for you, for you and your students. Really. So Brandy, take it away. 


Brandy: So self-pacing is pretty much built into the system. They have asynchronous time and synchronous time. So we have live sessions at the high school level. Because I'm not a state-tested subject, I just get them twice a week in my class, and some other classes will have them more and have like, goal sessions. But for science, we have two sessions a week. They're broken up into two sections that are supposed to be split somewhat evenly. But because it's alphabetical, I have like 80 in one and 130 in the other. And during the synchronous, we do kind of have a typical class style. But then the asynchronous is really where the self-pacing kind of shines. In the course, they have daily lessons for the student to complete. But of course, it's not the nice must do, should do, aspire to do that we do in Modern Classrooms. So I wanted to kind of bring that to the table, especially because the only lesson material that they had was, like, a reading material. And even though it does have a lot of visuals and sometimes there's manipulatives, a lot of my students don't like reading or they struggle with reading. And so they would just skip those. So I break it up and give them a lot of additional stuff. They get a link to a slide. And on the slide, I've got the learning objective. I've got some must-do assignments, some should do assignments and an aspire to do assignment. And then I've got a link to a post-lesson survey. And so that's what you and I were kind of bouncing around ideas on how to track it. So we got the post-lesson survey this semester that really gives students a chance to reflect on what they learn, give me feedback on how they're doing, and I can, thanks to the magic of spreadsheets. I can track who has completed what lessons. 


Toni Rose: Yes. And that was like a whole beast on its own, right. I know you were so excited when you finally figured this out for your large group of students, and so I was excited with you because I don't think I would have figured that out. And so, Pierce, what about you? How do you handle or what does self-pacing look like in your classroom? 


Pierce: I've experimented with a few different things, and obviously the nature of well, not obviously. The way that school has been operating, at least in our part of the world, has really been through a few different iterations in the past year and a half. So we've kind of been adjusting as we go here, and the district uses Schoology as the kind of platform so all the assignments can be posted there. And so last year we were just kind of running everything through Schoology. We had students who weren't coming into the building at all. We had students who did kind of a blend, and then we had some students who came in more often. But this year we're not doing remote for the most part. And I've really found that students are pretty fatigued from all the kind of online Chromebook stuff in the past couple of years. So I put everything on Schoology because there is maybe like 10% of my students who still want to work from home sometimes and pull assignments off of the platform. But the vast majority of my students have really expressed over and over again that they would prefer to work with pencils and paper and books as opposed to stuff online and even videos. It's been a little harder this year than last year to even get kids to sort of do that, to sort of learn via video. We've got assignments up there, but I also have a folder system in the classroom, super kind of organized, where all the assignments for the unit are accessible at all times. No matter where you are in the unit, you can kind of find where you are. And in terms of like a pacing tracker, last year that was sort of all online and accessible via computer, this year I've actually gone kind of low tech and put it just on regular old chart paper on the wall with little checkboxes and kind of leaving it up there so that students don't have to open a computer and I don't have to dedicate my projector to that. It's just all sitting there and they can come in and look at the chart, see where they're at, and kind of grab what they need from their folder and get to work, ideally. We also use little entry tickets. We call them. I don't know if other people call it that, but it's kind of like a do now, of course, where students everyday kind of ask them how they're doing, but then also ask them to kind of check-in and figure out where they're at in the unit. And then I like to give them a third question, like a prompt of some kind that connects with what we're studying in some way, something they could respond to no matter where they are in the unit. A lot of times kind of dealing with key concepts or vocabulary or essential questions, kind of circling back to the essential questions and trying to see if we can add anything to our understanding of what we're getting at. So that's basically how it looks. It's pretty low-fi compared to how I started out, but it's working fairly well. Students seem to feel like they can figure out what they need to do when they come into the room, and that's really all that matters to me. 


Toni Rose: And I love that Pierce. So you were able to be responsive to your students' needs, and you listened to them, and so I'm sure they feel valued and supported that way. So I really love how you switched from a lot of tech to low tech and that Modern Classroom is still able to happen with low tech. Right. And so you said a couple of great things here. The video fatigue is real. I know when I was implementing that in my classroom, my students felt it, and I felt it. And so we would take breaks. I would incorporate some funny jokes in the Edpuzzles. We would watch the Edpuzzles together just so that the students felt like there were different options for instructional videos. And so I really just love the fact that you're responsive to your students' needs. As well as, you know what, you're going to put it up on Schoology just in case. For those students who still want to do it online, they have that. And that's kind of where you housed all of your resources, which I think is also just beautiful because now learning can happen anywhere. So even if your students were inside the classroom and they wanted to just check back and see what they learned, again, they could access those in Schoology, which I think is really great. 


Pierce: Yeah. I also just wanted to mention I've just sort of figured out that the directions on the assignments, it makes a big difference. So rather than having to click on a video and me kind of model what I'm looking for on a given assignment or whatever, I've tried to make the directions really crisp and clear so that you can actually figure out what to do from the directions, make sure the vocabulary is really explicitly on the paper. And then I also just returned to my roots as a middle school ELA teacher and just started really relying on anchor charts, just like good old anchor charts on the wall as a way to kind of have them be able to get their notes, internalize certain concepts independently without me having to be teaching them for each individual lesson. 


Toni Rose: Yes, and you're absolutely correct about directions. I know my colleague, Emily, I always talk about her. I know. But we always had very concise directions because we knew that if we had wordy directions, our students wouldn't read it. So it was just straight to the point of what they needed to do. “Step one, do this, step two, do this, step three, do that,” and we practice it over and over again. So students were clear with what we expected. And so I think that's a really good point. Pierce, I appreciate you sharing that. And anchor charts are also amazing resources for students to utilize whenever they need. Right. So middle school, elementary school, high school. I think anchor charts are definitely super useful. I also really like the idea, Pierce, that you added a third question in your entry ticket about just kind of aligning or asking them an open-ended question about the content and the skills that you're teaching in class. I don't think I did that on my own SEL do now. And so I would have definitely added that because I think it's great. Right. It's a retrieval practice. You can kind of see where students are at based on that question or even just see what their misconceptions and assumptions are based on the question that you ask. So thank you for sharing. That's a really great idea. 


Pierce: You're welcome. 


Toni Rose: All right, share with us one to two celebrations and challenges of self-pacing. I know that we kind of already voiced some of that, but if you could just reiterate or just share anything else, Pierce, what would be one to two celebrations and or challenge about self-pacing? The thing that I think is so important about it in our school and probably just in any school that runs classes this way is just normalizing the idea that students are going to be in different spots at different times. Whereas when I was teaching in a traditional school, it was like if you missed the day you came back and you had the stigma of being behind and you have to stay in for recess to get caught up or whatever. But what I just love about this system and about the way that Modern Classroom deals with this sort of naturally occurring thing. Like students miss class, they miss school, they miss stuff or whatever, and they work at different rates at different paces. And that's just sort of normalizes, all of that. So if you're a little behind, you're among many who are a little behind, if you're on pace, good for you. If you're ahead, fantastic. But it's not like this sort of negative association of being behind in this way that is like considered not normal. I don't know. That's the biggest thing that I think is important about this system, whether it's happening through high tech or low tech means, is that normalization factor. 


Toni Rose: And even as an adult, sometimes I'm a hot mess. So I'm going to need more time to process things that I need to do or learn. Right. And so I really like just the fact of normalizing that life happens normalizing, that there are so many disruptions and distractions happening in our lives. And you're right about self-pacing. Self-pacing allows that. Self-pacing allows you to just kind of take a breather whenever you need a breather. Right? 


Pierce: Kind of, yeah. And obviously, I don't know if you can kind of read between the lines, but our students have a lot going on in the background of their lives and have been on the receiving end of a lot of kind of social inequities and just schools that kind of demand that they keep pace with no excuses are acceptable. I think those are the very kinds of schools or kinds of attitudes that have not worked for our students. So I think it's a really big part of what makes our school work for kids is that we're not bringing that it's not that kind of environment. And I think that's really key. 


Toni Rose: Yeah. And I'm really glad that students have that option to go to a school that's like yours. So thank you for sharing that. Brandy. What about you? One to two celebrations or challenges about self-pacing with 200 students? 


Brandy: Yeah. So doing the post-lesson surveys and figure out how to track who was doing it in itself was a huge celebration. But mixed that with Google Voice and a Chrome extension. And I'm able to quickly and easily send positive text messages to guardians based on how their student is doing. So if a student is completing all of their lessons or majority of their lessons, I'll send occasional, like, positive text home because we always have to do all those negative phone calls about how so-and-so is missing this, so-and-so is really behind. So I really like having that positive message home. And I've gotten a lot of good feedback from the students and the parents. So that's been really fun. My biggest challenge is getting students to participate in the lessons because they're not graded. The only things that are graded in the course are labs and unit exams. So my average participation is about 30%, even after I started offering bonus points. So for every lesson that they do, that's two points on their unit exam for that unit. I still only have about a 30% my students participating, which is disheartening, but I'm working on it. 


Toni Rose: It's definitely a tough thing, right? I mean, it speaks to a lot of educators just that there's a struggle with trying to get students to participate in lessons that are not graded because we've just always graded everything. Right. And so if there's no grade, then we don't have to do it. And I think we're shifting that mindset slowly but surely. And I know, Brandy, you and I talk about tracking data all the time. And so I'm really glad that you're able to track data with your self-pacing and being able to see like, oh, my goodness, there's only 30% who are really participating in these lessons. And so trying to navigate and manage, like, okay, how can I get more motivation or how can I get more buy-in from students? So I really like those conversations that are the reflection that you're doing. And also just thank you for bringing in caregivers and families and guardians. Right. That's really important that we communicate with families as much as we can, just so that everyone is on the same page. There's transparency about what we're learning in the classroom. And so I love that you brought in families and caregivers as well just to send those positive emails or texts. And I know that I remember you sharing with me like, you figured out how to do your Google voice and a Chrome extension to send positive messages automatically, which I thought was so fascinating because I used to do that individually. So I'm sure now it's a lot more efficient and not as time-consuming. So that's really cool. 


Brandy: Yeah. Figuring that out, I've been able to communicate a lot more with the guardians and the caregivers, which has been phenomenal because we spent so much time with the students. We're such a big part of their lives. I feel like we're all part of a team. All the teachers and the caregivers, we're all on the same team. So I try to keep open communication, which is a lot for 210 students. 


Toni Rose: Just a little bit. Just a little bit not too overwhelming.


Brandy: But I try. 


Toni Rose: Okay, so we'll move on to our next question. How are your students responding to self-pacing so far? Brandy, I know you just started implementing the tracker. How are your students feeling about it? 


Brandy: I think the self pacing works really well for our students. Like we said, a lot of the students that are doing online school, it's because they either have a lot going on or they have social anxiety. Maybe they get bullied at in-person school. Maybe they have anxiety about the mask mandate being lifted. And so a lot of our students struggle with depression or anxiety or they have a medical condition or they have extra responsibilities at home. So they have good days where they're able to get a lot done. They've got a lot of energy or a lot of time, and then they have not so good days where maybe they're, like, feeling overwhelmed or whatever medical condition is flaring up or their responsibilities are kind of taking over. Like Pierce was saying, with the high absence, it's kind of like having a lot of absences. But when they have their good days and they're there, they know what to do to get the learning and complete their assignments. And then when they're not there, they don't have to stress about all the work that they're missing because they know it will be there when they come back. 


Toni Rose: So, Brandy, just a follow up question. The students that you have, have they been doing online school for a while, or do you have some students where this is their first year doing all virtual? 


Brandy: It's about 50-50. So the virtual school this is my first year at the virtual school, but my understanding is we had an influx with COVID and everybody going back to in-person school and then lifting the masks. We had a lot more people come to the virtual side of things. So about half my students have been going to virtual school for more than just this year, and about half this was their first year. 


Toni Rose: And I'm sure there are some challenges with that as well. And I feel like we could determine who's been in an online school for a while versus someone who really needs a lot more time and support to get used to online school because I know definitely when I started working remotely, I struggled with my schedule. 


Brandy: Yes. 


Toni Rose: All right, Pierce, how about you? How are your students responding to the charts that you have in your class? 


Pierce: I would say we're on an upward trajectory. This is the best semester yet. I should knock on something. But so far, just in general, I think we're slowly coming out of this really traumatic global experience that we've all been through. It's just been brutal, as everyone knows, for mental health of students. It's been brutal for families. So much trauma in so many ways. So it's taken a while. We've been trying to really adjust and flex what we do and make it work for students and families in every possible way that we can think of. But nevertheless, you can't solve trauma necessarily just by changing a few things about school. So it's taken a while to, I think, get this sort of critical mass of students to sort of generate that positive momentum. But it's starting to, this winter and this spring, I feel like we're starting to see a real uptick with students who are comfortable at school again after having been uncomfortable for so many reasons and teachers kind of settling in finally a little bit after all the wacky things that we were trying to figure out how to do when things went remote and the systems we're working out the kinks of our systems and finding kind of a streamlined way to get our work done and still be creative and joyful about the things we're doing. So I think we're in a good place. Your question was about students, how they were responding, and I'm talking about teachers, but the students are responding better, I think, because they're hopefully starting to feel more and more comfortable being back in school. And staff as well are starting to get their legs under them a little bit after a year and a half of topsy-turvy. 


Toni Rose: Yeah, it's definitely an adjustment. And like you said, the pandemic, the global pandemic that's happening, it's very traumatic. And like you said, you voiced and you shared students are going through it. Families and caregivers are going through it. Pierce and Brandy, teachers are going through it, too. And sometimes you forget, like, teachers are also human beings. And we're also going through a whole bunch of stuff because of this pandemic, because of life. So that's really great to hear that it's on the come up. I'm excited to hear positive things. And that's really great because I know that Pierce, you and I have had conversations where it's like, okay, this isn't working. What can we do? What is another thing that we can try? What is another thing that we can try? And you were constantly playing around with what would work with your students and your classes. And so I appreciate your openness for that and just the flexibility that you've had this whole school year. Thank you for sharing. So, listeners, we're going to take a quick break. And so when we come back, we will talk a little bit more about self-pacing in a nontraditional setting. 


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 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, and see the variety of ways you can roll 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. 


Toni Rose: All right. And now we're back with Pierce and Brandy. So, Brandy, we mentioned again, over and over, that you teach over 200 students, and we talked about the sheets that you created automated for your students. Tell us more about that as well, as well as how you've managed that so far.


Brandy: Yeah. So I use Google Forms and Google Sheets just because the last school I was in was Google. So I got really comfortable with all of that. So for the Google Form, at the end of each lesson, they have to enter in their student ID, which hopefully they put in the correct number because that's how I track if they completed it or not. I also have them give first and last name, and then they tell me how they did on the learning objectives, which parts did they do? The must do, should you aspire to do, what they found most helpful. Then two open-ended questions where I asked them, what else do you need to know more of? What do I need to go over in class? And anything else that you'd like me to know. I get the results. So with Google Forms, if you're not familiar, you can look at the results and you can put the results in a Google sheet. You can either start a new sheet or you can add it as a tab to an existing sheet. So I add it to an existing sheet. So I have one sheet for the whole unit. There's an overview page. It's got the student IDs. Their, we call them learning coaches, but their guardians, phone number, students first and last name. And then across the top, I've got less than 4.1, less than 4.2. And then underneath it will say complete or incomplete based on if the system finds their student ID on the tab associated with that lesson. And then because when I started the bonus points, I also have a column that counts them up and then another column that multiplies that number by two so I can see how many bonus points to add to their unit exam. 


Toni Rose: I really like that. Right. So I think you created a system that works for you. I have a follow-up question about revisions. Do students know when to make revisions? Is that what the incomplete is? 


Brandy: Incomplete is just if they haven't - well, incomplete, as if they haven't filled out the post-lesson survey, which to me tells me that they haven't done the lesson, like, at all. 


Toni Rose: Got you. 


Brandy: But revisions. I'm glad you asked about that, because I forgot to mention that one of the beautiful things about being able to track it is when a student fails an exam and comes to me and asks for a redo, I can look and I can see if they actually have been participating in the lessons or not. They have to go back, and I only make them do one of the lessons. They get to pick some of them choose to do more than one, so they have to do one of the lessons and the review lesson. So a total of at least two. And then they can earn a second retake. And if they don't do well on the second retake and want to earn a third, that's when I make them go back and complete every lesson in the unit to earn that third retake. 


Toni Rose: Yes, that sounds like a plan that works for you and your students. And I really love that you utilize that complete and incomplete to figure out, okay, you failed your assessment. So let's take a look at why exactly that happened. So that's really cool, Brandy. And so, Pierce, we've talked about this. You teach an older alternative school, New Liberty, which is an awesome school with a pretty interesting schedule. So you and I talked about challenges with student motivation. How do you keep your students motivated and engaged in your self-paced classroom? 


Pierce: Well, that's a bunch of things that go into it. I think it's a little bit of a cliche, but we think a lot about relationships. The mantra that we have at our school is reach before you teach. And these are students who aren't going to respond really to, like, any kind of pressure if you don't already have a kind of a bond of connection at the interpersonal level. I think the really first and most important thing that we think about at our school is really connecting with students on that level. And then secondly, for me, the vibes in the classroom are, I think, really important. The lighting. I got a bunch of lamps in there, and I got music going. I got house plants. I got student art on the wall and just sort of truly trying to make it a friendly and kind of living roomy sort of environment as opposed to like a classroom sort of feel. I don't know if that motivates students, but hopefully it gets them to sort of start to feel more comfortable. In terms of Modern Classroom moves. We talked about this idea of having pacing trackers that are kind of permanently installed on the wall. So I have these laminated, oversized graph paper charts where students can kind of go up after they finish an assignment or a lesson. They can go up and kind of with a whiteboard marker, a dry erase marker, kind of check off the assignment for themselves, which is motivating for some, not for everyone, but some students kind of do seem to enjoy that sense of accomplishment. I got like sort of clothesline, yarn, strings going every which way in my room with student work, hanging, exemplary work. I have a whiteboard I call it my wow board, where I kind of shout out students who are on pace or at a pace. So those are all factors, I would say super clear indications of credit. My students are really pretty focused on what do I have to do to graduate from high school? And so they want to know for any piece of, if they get themselves into the classroom, they sit down and they're going to focus in and get something done, they want to know how does this move me closer to my high school diploma? So I kind of try to make it really clear how it all fits together on their credit. A lot of students are pretty disengaged when they first arrive, or at least school has not worked for them in the recent past. And so really try to scaffold down as far as necessary to sort of get them some small wins to build up some momentum. So a lot of audiobooks, a lot of graphic organizers sending starters, anything I can do to kind of make it doable and kind of give them credit for these little things that they do and try to build up some wins before we start to dial up the rigor. Once there's a little more trust there and a little more positive feeling about what they're capable of. So those are some things. I also have some rewards for students who are on pace. They can read in a group or work outside the classroom if they're on pace. A lot of students gravitate towards our cafeteria, which they're not supposed to do. But if they're on pace, then I let them do it. I let them pick the music if they're on pace, give them a lot of choice in the projects that I assign. And if students are really not into the material, then I have so few students, especially compared to you, Brandy, that we can sort of customize assignments for students if they are not interested in one topic. I can get at the same standards or the same skills by giving them some kind of independent research project. Or I have a student who writes his own songs, and so I'm trying to figure out ways to kind of use his songwriting in my class to give him credit for what he's doing already. So those are some of my moves that I try to keep kids engaged and motivated with. 


Toni Rose: And these are all, I swear, Pierce, you're speaking my language, and I just have such feel-good feelings right now just listening to you talk about your classroom. I think the biggest thing that I got out of that is that you empower your students to take control of their learning and that you are not a gatekeeper. You are a thought partner for them, and you listen and you value them, and you create those vibes. Energy and vibes are super important. Right. So creating a welcoming and soft teaching and learning environment is really important as well as just pivoting. Right. This has been my favorite word lately is pivoting. So if something doesn't work, having those conversations with students and really trying to figure out what could work. Right. So making it culturally relevant and culturally sustaining as well. It's just like knowing your students. I love that, Pierce, and that's great. And you know, when students know that you care, they will do about anything and everything for you, and they'll continue to be successful, which I absolutely love. So here's the next question. What is the tip that you have for teachers who teach at a nontraditional school setting when it comes to self-pacing? Pierce, we can start with you. 


Pierce: My tip is probably most relevant to humanities or English teachers, since that's what I do. I've just found that right now, right now in one of my classes, we're reading Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. And I'm finding that it's working pretty well. And I think it's because it's a text that there is an arc to the whole book, which we're reading. But there's such a high sort of churn rate at my school of students arriving mid-semester or stopping out mid-semester, I think it's really important, or it really works well, if you have an anchor text for a unit that works as a long-form, like a book, but also each kind of chapter or lesson kind of works on its own as well so that students can kind of jump in midstream if you choose to do that or if they do miss some days of school, you can decide whether to at times kind of bring the whole group together and read something together and kind of generate that sort of communal feeling of interpreting something together and reading something together, which we all know, at least all of us English teachers know that's such an important positive energy builder. But then you can also do it in a self-paced way, but to sort of be able to kind of straddle those two approaches as necessary works really well. If you have a text that can be read, either everything in order or a little bit here, a little bit there, and it still makes sense. So that's my tip.


Toni Rose: And stories bring everyone together, I feel like. So that's a great tip. Thanks, Pierce. What about you, Brandy? 


Brandy: Just try stuff. Just go for it. Just try it. Last semester, I first started trying to add in these supplemental materials like lesson videos and mastery checks and extra things to help my students have alternatives to the reading. And it was not pretty when I first started, but we made space to get feedback from students. So at the end of every unit, we do a Nearpod in the live session where we would reflect what went well, what didn't go well? What am I doing that they like and find helpful? What am I doing that's not helpful? And slowly my students helped me figure out things that worked better for them. Figure out a better organizational system that worked for them. But you're not going to get that unless you just start. Unless you just try. 


Toni Rose: I love that try stuff. Just try it. I know we shouldn't be afraid of failure, right? Failure is part of our learning process and so embrace trying out different things. Embrace trying out and failing and that's also okay. So how can our listeners connect with you, Brandy and Pierce? 


Brandy: Honestly, if you just Google my name, Brandy Netherton, my website pops up, my blog, my Twitter. I'm pretty sure I'm the only Brandonotherton on Facebook and my LinkedIn will pop up so you can connect with me on any of those things. I'd be more than happy to accept a connection. 


Pierce: In my case, if you Google Pierce Woodward, you get this much younger than me guy who makes jewelry and is extremely successful at it. So you're better off tracking me down from my school website, new Liberty Innovation school. You can find it in the Salem, Mass. Public School District website and then you can find my email address there, which is very long, but it's PierceWoodward@Newlibertysalem.com. 


Toni Rose: I love that. Thank you so much again for spending some time with me today, Brandy and Pierce and sharing your expertise and experiences with their listeners so 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/85. Thank you all for listening. Have a great week and we'll be back next week.


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.