Episode 72: Teacher Spotlight - CTE, with Evin Jarrett


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. 


Hello, and welcome to episode 72 of the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. My name is Tony Rose DNN. Shihar Pronouns, a program manager at Modern Classroom, and I am joined by an all star CTE teacher and implementer, Evan Jarrett. Welcome, Evan. Hey, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast. And it's so exciting to be in this space with you. So first of all, happy New Year is 2022, and you just let me know that we have another guest, actually. So go ahead and introduce your guests and we'll go right into our conversation. Okay, great. I have my assistant principal here with me, Ms. Embellish, to let you know about the demographics of the Mayfair school. Hello. My name is Daim Ballet, and I'm so excited to be a part of this podcast today. Currently, I'm the assistant principal at Mayfair School for grades three and four. And I wanted to just do a Sidebar really quickly. One of the things that Mr. Jared is also doing, along with all of the other wonderful things that he's doing, he is taking fourth graders, some of my fourth graders and allowing them to learn these trades in the after school program. So I'm really excited about him getting students acclimated earlier on. But anyway, I just want to talk a little bit about Mayfair School. Mayfair School right now we have almost 2000 students. We're at 1668 students right now. We have 9% black or African American. We have 34% students that would identify as Hispanic, 23% students that would identify as white or Caucasian, 32% students that would identify as Asian, and 2% of students that would identify as multi rate. And our school day goes from about 08:00 until 254. And we are a kindergarten to 8th grade program. Well, you see, she said they start at 08:00. I get in here every day at 615. So let's just put that in there. Yes, he does. So let's get started. Awesome. Again, thank you so much for joining us and giving us a little bit more context of your school. I really appreciate that. And I appreciate your time as well. So, Evan, again, thank you for doing that. We've never actually had that before where AP came in and did a little bit of background, so that was really exciting for me. I was a little bit flustered because I was unprepared. But thank you again for that. I really appreciate it. Problem? No. Yeah. So how are you feeling today, Evan? You said you go into work at 615 every day. How is that for you? Yeah. I'm here every morning at 615, because what happens is I figure if I can get more hours in my day, I could get a lot more accomplished. I get here, try to record at least two lessons each day. And once I get those lessons recorded, it's a full production in my classroom. I got to edit the lighting, everything. It's a busy day for me. Busy day for me. Yeah. And I really like that. We just jumped right into it. And so for listeners, I'm going to give some background context as well, me and you. So I kind of learned about Evans work, or I did learn about Evan's work through our social media, actually, at first and on Instagram. And then Evan is one of our really engaged members on our Facebook group. And so I really appreciate your engagement. You always talk about your evaluations, your lessons, what the students are doing. You're always constantly sharing your MCP journey. And so tell us more about who you are and how you started with MCP. All right. I'm a former high school teacher. I love teaching. I love high school because I felt like I was getting the students ready for a career. One thing about career in tech, we started off with in 10th grade, you could take construction one. Once you reach 11th grade, you could take level two. When you're a senior, you could take level three. And what happens is with my seniors, my juniors and seniors, I would have them every day for three and a half hours each day. So it was block scheduling, double block. We got a lot accomplished. My first year, I felt like I was drinking from a fire hydrant, turned all the way up. It was just like I couldn't catch up. I was thrown in a classroom with 17 juniors and seniors, no curriculum. It was like, oh, my goodness, what am I doing here? We got through the first year. I learnt a lot about classroom management, the different personalities. And one thing that I learned there is that if the students don't like you, they won't learn from you. That's my biggest thing. You got to learn how to build relationships, especially if you want to implement this. I'm going for my personal journey. If you want to implement this, you got to definitely build your relationships with your students because it's a lot of work on their end, but it's also a lot of work for you. So there has to be a buy in. You don't want to have students constantly saying, oh, you're not teaching us no more. You're not teaching us. You're just giving us videos. No, because what happens is the videos that I do, I'm teaching as if the students are in front of me. My lessons are probably a half an hour to 45 minutes, and we think that's too long. But I got to get these students ready for a career. And if you want hands on, strictly hands on in the classroom, you got to do theory. You have to do your theory work to touch tools in my classroom. Oh, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing. I mean, I definitely understand the whole drinking out of a fire hydrant on full blast. It is not a good feeling. And I hope that not a lot of our teachers are going through that. But I'm sure that everyone is because of covet and everything that's happening right now. Right. I really like the fact that you also just highlighted the importance of having relationships with students because regardless of what you try in the classroom. Right. Our students, if they're already bought in and they know that you care as a teacher, as a human being, they're down for whatever you throw at them. And so I really appreciate you saying and really just starting out this conversation with relationship students is vital for anything really to work in your classroom. All right, cool. So then how does the modern classroom model work for your content area? And thinking about all the pictures that you posted of students doing hands on things, how does that work? Modern classroom actually works perfectly in the middle school setting. We come in the videos. I actually upload theory on Fridays. The students, they do the theory work over the weekend. If it's not completed that Monday, they can come and work in class. The students that have completed, we could actually strictly hands on. They're learning everything. It's a strictly hands on class. But my students that need help now I'm able to float around the room. They can raise your hand. Mr. Jared, I need some help. I can come over there and give them the individual attention that they need. That's really great to hear. And so when you have those specific structures in place and I know that you had mentioned, you started with a journey with a modern classroom journey on March 15, which is two days before my birthday, by the way. Woohoo. Okay. So that was really exciting for me to hear that you've actually started implementing this for some time now. And you also mentioned previously that you kind of made these things that competition for your classes. Right. So, like, fifth grade is doing the same as being as 8th grade. How does that look? Like, do students sign up for your classes? Do they take it more than once? How does that work out? See, well being as though this is only the second year and actually my first year in person, I really can't say that's above my pay grade. When the kids come in, I teach. That's what I do. I'm the teacher. I don't know how they get in. I'm the teacher. So what happens is I make it competitive. I'm a liar, too. When the kids come in because I tell my fifth graders, look, my 8th graders are better than you better do a good job. And so they're like, Ms. Jarrett, we're going to do it. I actually sent you a video of my fifth graders, actually their mastery video on how to join Copper Pipe. Like I said, we're using real tools, everything. Safety is the most important thing. So we actually go through it. I run a high school program in the middle school. Like I said, with your social media, the pictures, it just seems so engaging and so entertaining. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I would love to be in Evans class. And so quick question. Now that you mentioned safety, which is actually great, how do you ensure student safety when your class is self paced? Well, what we do is the first two weeks when you get my class, the first two weeks. Within that first two weeks, what we do is we go over safety. We go over shop. Safety tool. Safety. Power tool safety. Construction safety. You can never get too much safety in my classroom. One of the things that we do is I try to spoon feed them for how I'm going to do how it's structured. I actually go along with them the first lesson and do it with them, show them how I want it done. And once I show them, they take off running. And then my biggest thing has been that students are moving ahead. So now I have to lock the lessons so they don't move ahead to see what's next. Yeah. And I love that too, because I know you're also toying around with the self pacing. Right? I know on Facebook, you posted a picture of your pacing tracker. So can you tell us more about your thought process and how you create that pacing tracker? And it was really cool, too, because it's not a computer based pacing tracker. It was something that you had up on the board on the chalkboard, and you tracked it that way. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. Like I said, the evolution of this is still going. Right now, what I do is my pacing tracker. I actually moved it and I don't have the chalkboard no more. I have it on a Cork board because it's actually easier for me to do it with push pins instead of tape. The stuff is falling down. So what happens as soon as you come in my classroom, you can actually see the pacing tracker and the students can know exactly where they're at a lot of times. My biggest challenge right now with the pacing tracker is that students, they will complete assignments after I check. Because one of the first things I do when I get here, like I said, I get here 615 in the morning, I check to make sure everybody's assignments done. I write down the board who can have hands on who's doing theory, and when they come in. Mr. Jared, I completed Mr. Jarrett, I completed. So now I'm wasting time trying to go back to see. Okay, you can do hands on. And like I said, the pacing tracker has been great. It's something that I take pictures of share with the parents. When administration comes in, they could actually see where the kids are at. If you having a problem with the kid, you can actually see, why is he over here? I can pull up their Google assignments. You can see why he's there. It's great. It's great. I love it. And I think that that's something that's really important for new implementers to keep in mind. Right. You started out with one pacing tracker, and then you realize, oh, my gosh, the tape is falling apart. I'm going to switch to another thing. And that's also. Okay. I also wanted to name the fact or just acknowledge really that you said you spoonfed students when you first started implementing the model. Yeah. It's a lot of hand holding. Right. And I would say that's actually the best way to do this model because students, again, they don't know how to be active learners, really. Right. They've been so passive for a while now. And so to do a model that's modern classroom where it's self paced, blended learning, mastery based grading, they're going to need a lot of support. And so what were some of the challenges that you had when implementing the model? Well, when I implemented the model well, my main challenge right now is the pacing board just updated it because I have five classes throughout the day, straight through. My prep is at the end of the day, just trying to keep it updated. Like I said, I may switch this again. It may be digital now. I don't know. Like I said, I'm still finding my way through this. Like I said, there's a lot of trial and error with this, but I love it. Like I said, the kids love it. And the main thing is my classes is we have a class of 30. They split the class up. So what happens is I will have one half of 15, another teacher, half the other half. So what happens is when the students come walk past my class, they'd be like, oh, I want to do what they're doing. We just didn't get here. We have to do certain things. We have to do theory work. And what happens is they was like, when do you all do theory? I said, we do it over the weekend. Everybody's still amazed. Like, the kids are actually working over the weekend to get my theory work done. And it's great. And like, right now, the school is shut down. We have no students in the building. All the teachers are here. I just don't know. It's a lot going on. But as far as my classes, we haven't took a hit yet. Everybody's still working. Everybody's still engaged online. They ask a lot of questions. Parents are asking me questions where their students, where their son and daughter is at on the pacing tracker. We're doing good over here. We're definitely doing good. And that's really great to hear. And so I guess I have a follow up question. So now that everything is virtual because you don't have students coming in, how does that impact your instructional, instructional videos with your students? Right. Because when they come in, it's all very what's the word like? It's very much like hands on experiences, right. But now they're not coming into school. How does that look like? How does that look like right now? It's still functioning like a regular class right now. Like I said, it's a lot of relationship building in my Google sessions. It's a lot of fun. Like I said, it's a lot of fun. They're learning and they don't even know it right now. We just started wall framing. So the assignment was actually posted over the weekend. A lot of students got it done. So what happens is instead of the hands on in the classroom, what we're doing is the students are making 3D CAD designs on Tinkercad. So now they're actually building houses in Tinkercad. So they're still getting that construction field for it, just from the architect standpoint, not from the actual builder standpoint. I love that. That's actually such a great idea. And I also just really like that you have your theory, right. Like, students really need to know the theory behind certain skills and that you have the option or you give the option to students to do it over the weekend, which majority of them take, but also giving them the space that if they needed to do it on a Monday, right when they come in, they're able to do that as well. I think that that's so great because then there's not a lot of pressure on students, right. Like, oh, if I don't get a chance to do this over the weekend because of whatever happened that weekend, they can still come in and not be penalized. So I really appreciate that. So you would consider yourself a career and technical education teacher, right? Yes. Okay. And that's just beautiful. I'm still learning. I feel like I've been in education for ten years and I only know basically English because that's what I did. And so I'm still learning about CTE. And I know that we get a lot of questions from teachers who are CTE educators. And so what is one tip that you have on implementing the modern classroom model for hesitant CTE teachers? I would honestly say, as far as your videos, don't worry about being perfect. Just be yourself. The students will definitely appreciate that. Also, the most important thing is honestly, it goes back to building relationships. You want to make sure for this to succeed, you got to have relationships with the students, and that's the most important thing. And stay firm. Like, for a CTE teacher. If you're teaching culinary, if the student's theory is not done, they don't go in the kitchen. You got to stay firm, because if they sense that they can get by just by not doing it, then they're going to continue just to try to squeak by and don't do the work, separate the room. And what happens is, honestly, it's actually better for the teacher because you're allowed to divide and conquer. Now instead of having 15 kids or 20 kids, you have your students that completed the theory online. They can go ahead and be in the shop. The ones that didn't. Oh, they don't want to sit there by themselves. Now they're going to get their work done and get on the other side of the room. And that's such a good point, too. Right. So then how do you determine what students need to learn? So, like your must do your should do aspire to do? Do you do lesson classifications in your class? Well, what we have, we have a task grid. It's actually what the state says that the students should learn by the end of taking your class. So what happens is it's a three year test grid, and it's just pretty much at the end of that, the students will have to take a knocky test. And your knock the score pretty much since I started this, all of my students scored advanced, which has been an excellent thing. I'm proud of. Now it's just like I'm running a high school program. I'm just taking the same steps when I'm teaching middle school. And so what happens is when these students graduate and if they decide to go to high school with the CTE program for construction, they will be set up. They'll be definitely good, in good shape. Congratulations on that, by the way. Evan advance, that's amazing. Yeah, I'm actually proud of that. That's what I'm proud that we were able to do that. Yes. Yeah. And it's a pandemic happening. And just like the whole world falling apart, your students are still crushing it. They are. They definitely are. I'm proud of them. I'm proud of them. I love that so much. That makes me so happy. And because you're talking so much about establishing relationships with students, can you give some examples of how you do that? Honestly, like I said, last year was my first year at the school, I accepted the position thinking that I was going to be teaching students in person. The whole year was virtual. I'm a new teacher, new program, teaching virtually. And it's that was a recipe for failure. And what I did was you had to build relationships. And I feel as though, like, for me, the pandemic has made me a better teacher because I didn't have the tools in the shop to rely on because usually kids want to get in class or they want to cut wood or they want to bang a hammer. They want to scream, play music in the shop? No. It was just like I had to build relationships. I had to make these students want to say, oh, I'm going to log in Mr. Charles class. And for me, like I did when I was in high school, I created a family atmosphere. If you ask any of my students about me from when I told high school it was a family atmosphere, we help each other out. I don't call it groups. Go get in your group. I say, go get with your family. When I break up the classrooms and Google classroom, we have our breakout rooms. All right. This is such and such families go with their family. It's a family atmosphere in here, and we want to see everybody succeed. Students want to go where they feel successful at. A lot of teachers, I won't whisper this because they're still in the building. But a lot of teachers, they wonder why a lot of students flock to my classroom. I have a lot of students that come to my door that's not even on my roster. Mr. Jarrett, can I come in? It's just students want to be filled where they're successful at, and it's a safe place. And I created that in my classroom. We call it the dope culture. But listen, I'm just here for the kids. I want them to be happy. Evan, it's beautiful, right? I mean, I know that you call yourself the dope teacher, which I don't even know you, but I can already feel that energy, the vibes. And I also would want to peek in your classroom every single day. And I think that's the biggest compliment as a teacher when you have students who peek in all the time just to see what's happening. Right. Because that was similar to my experience, too, is that I welcome distractions because the model was self paced and the students are self directed learners. Other students could come in and say, hello, what's up, Peep? And see what's happening. And so I really like that about the model as well, is that anybody can really just come in and catch my attention for one to two minutes and then keep it moving. Right. And so I completely agree with you about creating a sense of belonging in the classroom and that safe and brave space to fail and to learn and to be really a part of a family. I really like that you call it a family. Really? I've never done that. I've always been like team or group or peers. But I think it's another layer when you call it a family. Yeah. Honestly, like I said, one of the main things that I do in the beginning of the year is I reach out to the parents as soon as I get my roster over the summer, tell the parents about me just so they can know who I am as a person and my expectations once the students know that you're in contact with their parents. You don't have behavior issues. Another thing is you see how you said that you would give the students a minute? It's never a minute in my classroom. They would come in and buy us wearing masks and we have to wear safety goggles in here. I can have a student in my classroom that's not on my roster. And I wouldn't realize until the end of class. And I'm like, no, he was in here the whole time. And they'd be like and start smiling and just leave. I'm like, all right, I'm looking out for you.


Participant #1:
Yeah. Everything you said is just really great. I think it's really important to be transparent with caregivers and families and so that they're aware of what's happening. And I think your videos are also on YouTube. Right. So everyone can access some of the videos are. But what happens is I have a lot of the videos unlisted, the ones that we use for our lessons, they're unlisted. And then also the students their instructional videos. I have those unlisted as well that I only share with the parents. If they decide to share it out, they can. It's just like I said, I want the kids to actually see their work and actually be proud of it. That's the whole thing. We just want the students to be proud of the work that they put out. Yeah. Do you mind if we link some of those the things that you've shared on the Facebook group, if we can link it in the show notes. So that our listeners definitely. Yes. Okay, great. So listeners, you'll have some of these things so you can see Evan in action and his kids really, because they're just amazing. And so what do you hope to see in the future? What goals do you have? My goals. Let me tell you something. I never want to be administration. I like it where I'm at me there. Like I said, honestly, this school where I met, I really enjoyed. They're going to prime me out here. I'm never leaving. It's just honestly, just to give the students the opportunity, just to see that you have options in life. Like I said, I'm a teacher. And more than that, I don't know, I just enjoy what I'm doing. I enjoy what I'm doing. One of my goals that I want to have, I want to open up my own school for the building trade school because I feel as though if we had more opportunities and just education and mentoring, a lot of the problems that we have right here with the youth, we wouldn't have because they wouldn't want to get in trouble because they know they have something to lose. So that's one of my biggest things that I want to push for with probably within the next ten years. I like that idea. I know for me, I've been reflecting on who I am as a human being. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I've never actually done any hands on anything, so I would love to do more hands on things. And just giving that opportunity for our youth, like you said, is going to be impactful. So good luck with that. And I know you're going to kick butt, and I'm going to just see more updates from you. So I really appreciate you sharing your story with us for a little bit. And so before we go, how can our listeners connect with you? If you want to connect with me, you can go to Instagram, Mrjar. Underscore Construction Tech. You could always search me on YouTube. Evan Jarrett. E-V-I-N-J-A-R-R-E-T-T. See what my classroom is doing. Like I said, any tips or anything you want to offer, any suggestions? I'm all for it. Or you could just get me on Facebook. Evan. Jared. Yeah. And if you're not part of the Facebook group, please join the Facebook group because you'll see Evan post. You think I post too much? No, Evan, keep it up, please. I scaled back because I was like, I think I'm showing off. Let me stop. Let me stop. Please continue to show off. We want to continue celebrating our teachers, and I feel like the group really loves hearing from you. I know at the modern classroom, we're always talking about, like, hey, has anyone talk to Evan? I'm like, yes, I talked to Evan. I got it. I promise you. I'm talking to Evan. I had scaled back because I was like, I might be posting too much. Let me slow down. No, please continue to post. I love the transparency. I love the vulnerability. I love your growth and the progress that you're sharing. And then you're also constantly responding to posts as well on Facebook in our Facebook group. So please continue to do that. I learned a lot from that group. I learned a lot from that group. It really helped me out. Even just looking at other posts for different suggestions I should take. Honestly, I just learned a lot. There's a lot of teachers that I actually see what they're doing and see if I can implement into my classroom. So, yeah, it's a great group. Yeah. And, I mean, we would never know about all the cool things you're doing if you didn't post, so please continue to post so that we can continue to celebrate you. Evan got you. We'll definitely do. And I know that Zach and I were talking about how we don't have any CTE teachers on the podcast. And so when I started seeing your journey, I was like, oh, no, we're getting Evan on our podcast, like, ASAP. Honestly, we need a CTE group. A CTE group for us. It's kind of weird. It's kind of weird to say because we are a hands on class, so just a place for us to meet and discuss what we do. I think we definitely need to do that. Yeah. And you know what? If you have the time and the capacity, I'd love to work with you on creating some kind of group because I know we always get questions from CTE teachers and I'm like, I don't know, I don't know. So I'll get you up, Evan. I got you. But again, thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast. I really appreciate you sharing your story, Evan, and it's so nice to finally have a chance to talk to you as opposed to just texting you and chatting with you via Instagram and Facebook. Listeners remember you can always email us at podcast Atmodernclassrooms.org and you can find the show notes for this episode at Podcast Modernclassrooms.org. 72 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.