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 82 of the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. So my name is Toni Rose Deanon, she/her pronouns. And I am currently a program manager at Modern Classrooms Project. So Zach and I are finally here together in the same space. I feel like it's been so long, Zach. 


Zach: It's been so long. Finally we're back together. 


Toni Rose: It's a little wild. And to think that it's only March. Right? Like it's wild. It's a wild ride. 


Zach: Yes. It's both only March, and it's like already March. I don't know how to even think about time anymore.


Toni Rose: Here we we are. And also, I just wanted to give you a shout out. Zach, I was actually fortunate enough to check you out in person recently, and it was such a cool thing to experience, and I loved the engagement of your kids, and it was just such a cool thing to just be in. So thank you for welcoming us in your space. 


Zach: Of course. Thank you for coming. It was great. Always fun to hear different teachers giving their perspectives on what I'm doing. 


Toni Rose: Yeah, no, thank you. I'm always about observing other teachers to kind of steal ideas from, right? And that's why we always talk about finding that teacher bestie or even connecting with an MCP implementer around your area and visiting each other's classes if possible. If it's possible, because I know some of our mentors are actually taking trips and, like, reaching out to see, like, “hey, is anyone in this area? And I want to check out your classroom.” And so it's actually really cool to see. 


Zach: Yeah, totally. Because I think there's no better PD or training than seeing a teacher who really knows what they're doing. 


Toni Rose: I completely agree. So this is our third Q and A for this season. How exciting. And we'll start with feedback. Zach, you want to talk about the feedback we've gotten? 


Zach: Sure. So we got a couple of emails that I wanted to call out. First of all, we got one from a listener who was just thanking us for the last week's episode on Adult Education. She said that it resonated with her because she feels kind of lonely in the adult education MCP space. And I can understand that we really mainly talk about K through twelve, although you and I have been sort of trying to intentionally build in more of those unique and sort of less represented teaching populations into the episodes. I know Modern Classrooms as an organization, has also sort of started to address different teaching situations and even administrators. And so I appreciated the email. And I think that it just shows you and I that we need to keep doing that and intentionally building in episodes specifically so that we can hear the voices and the perspectives of people in non-k through twelve teaching situations. 


Toni Rose: Yeah. I mean, we're definitely getting a lot more school leaders and instructional coaches, right? And I know that we've partnered up with some universities as well. So it's definitely something that we are going to be intentional about, as well as, like, making sure that we have resources for all types of educators. So thank you for that shout out. 


Zach: Yeah. This listener actually is from what I could tell from her email, she's actually like a professor at a business school. So she's not even in the world of teacher education. It's just adult education, sort of writ large. And I think that even that is something we didn't address that much on that episode. And so I'd be interested to even look more into that. So another email that we got was just an email from a listener sharing their progress tracker with us and something that they mentioned resonated with me because this is feedback, actually, it's a question that I've been asking my mentees lately. The listener shared their tracker, and what they said was that they found it redundant to be updating a physical tracker and also a digital tracker. And the reason that I put this into the outline tonight to talk about it is because I actually want to put a call out to the listeners to see if there are any listeners who use physical trackers but also keep digital records, because that does feel a little bit redundant to me. But at the same time, we've seen so many awesome game board trackers and wall displays, trackers that teachers put up on the wall to move the kids names along and stuff like that. And I'm curious if and how those teachers keep digital records, because I personally find keeping a digital tracker to be super useful. I've shared a lot about that and I'll put my, sort of anonymized tracker in the show notes for anyone who is interested to see how I use it. But it's super useful to me and I don't feel like I could do the extra work to also update a physical tracker. So I'd be curious if there are any listeners who do both to hear from them. So podcast@modernclassrooms.org, if you're a teacher who does that, I would love to hear about it because I'm very curious just to be able to share with my mentees because a lot of them have put up physical trackers. And I always ask them, have you thought about how you might keep digital records as well? So yeah, let us know if you have a system for keeping track of both a physical and a digital. 


Toni Rose: Yeah. And it's such a great question. Right. Something that we don't think about. Listeners, if you don't know Zach and I used to teach at the same school, and so we were very tech-heavy and so very similar to Zach's experience. I really love the digital trackers only because it was so much more efficient for me to be able to keep up with. But I also really enjoy all the physical trackers that have been popping up. So I'm really excited to hear from our listeners on how they determine just how to manage all of these things. So thanks for bringing that up, Zach. Yes. All right, so let's go ahead and get started with our Q and A. 


Zach: All right, speaking of the email address, this first one actually came in by email. “How and when do you break up the work time in a Modern Classroom? Do you make all kids stop for a brain break?”


Toni Rose: This is actually a really exciting question for me only because I love brain breaks. I know as an adult I need brain breaks, and those have to be super intentional because sometimes I forget. So I have a timer on my phone to kind of remind me to go take a quick brain break, get those 250 steps in for the hour. And so what I do with my students, actually, is that sometimes it differs. So sometimes it's individual brain breaks, and then sometimes it's a whole-class brain break. So depending on the energy of the class, I'll just say, “hey, you know what? Let's take a quick pause. Let's stand up and do some stretches,” and we do that together. And so that's a quick one, two minute brain break for my students. We sometimes play Simon Says as well. And so it's just different ways for students to just pause, take a break, and just recenter and reset. There are also times where in the instructional videos when I know that my students are getting a little bit, like the video fatigue. Right. What I would do is I would insert or have notes in the questions or in the video, and I would say, okay, if you're at this part, stand up and stretch, right? Or if you're at this part, go to Ms. D. and whisper these keywords or whatever in her ear. It's just a fun way to get students up and moving. And sometimes with the notes in the Edpuzzle, I could say like, oh, go to the right corner by the door and put a Post-it note on the question that you want to answer and, like, write your answer on the Post-it note. It's a way to break it up so that it doesn't become monotonous and students remain engaged. And so when we had the code words for students to whisper in our ears, they really, like, just chuckled. Now, mind you, I did teach 6th grade. So this is something that 6th graders loved. And they're just like, “oh, this is so silly.” But then they did it. But then I also knew where they were in that part of the instructional video. So it was a great way for me to kind of keep track and see like, “oh, the students are reading the notes and they're also at this part of the instructional video.” And so that's how I would do it independently. And then that's how I would do it with whole-class if I know that the whole class's energy is really low, we do a quick brain break. I know that sometimes some implementers also say to students or have a schedule like a weekly schedule where it's like “on Fridays we're going to do all games.” And that's kind of another thing that I did with my students. They know that every Friday we're going to review everything that they learned for that week, regardless of the lessons that they're on. But it was just a way to collaborate with one another, play games. And so that's like a brain break per-se for the week. But my students really looked forward to Fridays. What about you, Zach? What do you do? 


Zach: Yeah, the first couple of things you said I also do. I know a lot of teachers actually use that in the Edpuzzle that sort of like secret code or whatever it is that gets the students to get up while watching the video. It's also sort of a sneaky accountability tool to make sure they're actually watching. But yeah, I would do things like ask them a really, really hard question that they could maybe Google the answer to and say, if you get the answer, I'll give you a high five. And then a couple of them would walk over to me and just stick their hand up and be like, give me my high five. And we taught some of the same students, actually. So I teach middle school as well, so I don't know how that would work in high school, but definitely with younger kids, they really get a kick out of that. Actually, I also really liked what you said. I was going to mention this as well. What you said about sort of spontaneously building in brain breaks is not necessarily like every day at 2:15 we're going to stop for three minutes. I wouldn't necessarily do that, although I do like the idea of a day of the week like Friday. But I like the idea of what you were saying, like a sort of a spontaneous one where it's like you just gauge the energy of the class and if the class needs it, you can take a second and reset and recenter and get started again. But that's not a structured thing necessarily, at least in the way that I would do it. It would just be a one-off in a given class and it may not happen in the next class and it may not happen in every class. It would just be sort of random, which is a nice thing about Modern Classrooms is that you have the flexibility to do that. Right. We're not stuck to a structure every single day, but talking about how we do structure our time, I have for my 6th graders before built in, like, the first ten minutes of class for just silently watching videos, and then the rest of the class, and my class, periods are 50 minutes long. So we're talking about five minutes for attendance, ten minutes for videos, and then the rest of the class 35 or 40 minutes, depending on the time to work. And then there might be more video watching later, too, depending on if a student finishes a lesson. But that's how I structure my classes. I don't do it for all of my classes. Some of my 6th grade classes don't even need that. And certainly my older classes might not need that. But yeah, that's how I break up the work time in my Modern Classroom. We also got an email from a teacher who has a really strange schedule where he sees his students for 2 hours once a week, and he was asking us for advice. And what I said was, you really need to structure that because two straight hours of whatever is going to be way too long and certainly unstructured 2 hours, you would lose your mind. I mean, like, that would be a really awful time by the end. So there are definitely ways to break up the time into different types of work, right? Like, maybe a collaborative activity, maybe silently watching videos or maybe specifically dedicated small group time, stuff like that. You can definitely be creative with how you break it up. And I guess that those are just some ideas. 


Toni Rose: Yeah. And one of my dear colleagues, Emily Dia, she actually implemented the model when she had 90 minutes. And so what she did was like, she did like ten to 15 minutes of silent reading in the beginning, and then it was like 30 to 45 minutes of self pacing, and the rest were like collaborative tasks. So you can really break it down if you would like another beautiful thing about this model, too, when we think about brain breaks, especially for students who have those accommodations where they need those breaks, I know that there's a Pomodoro technique. Have you heard of that, Zach? I think I'm saying it correctly. 


Zach: Yeah. With the tomato. 


Toni Rose: it's like 25 minutes of work and then three to five minutes of break time. So my students who had those accommodations knew that they could just take a break whenever they needed, but they knew that they were being timed as well. So it's just kind of like holding our kids accountable and also them being able to advocate for themselves. It's just being like, hey, Ms. D, I need a break right now. And that's also. Okay. So again, your brain breaks could be teacher-led, it could be student-led. It could be whole-group, it could be independent. It's really up to you. But you really want to be intentional, engage your students energy as well and needs. 


Zach: Yes. And talking about the Pomodoro timer, I guess the key with that is that the break time goes hand-in-hand with the work time. So you really need to make sure that and there's going to be some questions later in the outline that I think we're going to touch on this. But you want to make sure that kids aren't taking a break for the entire class, obviously. So the timers are really great for that because it's like saying you have this amount of time to relax because you need it. And then after that, we're going to get right back to. 


Toni Rose: Timers are my best friends. I really utilize timers a lot in my classroom. Okay. So let's move on to the second question. So this question is actually from our Facebook group, and this teacher, this implementer was wondering if there were any other ESL teachers out there because it seemed like there was a loss of fun in their classroom. And so this implementer was really curious about like, “hey, how do we continue playing games? How do we continue cooperative learning, talking?” Because it is ESL. It's really supposed to be fun and just collaborative and talking. And it seemed like there was none of that with the implementation. What is your insight, Zach? What are your thoughts? 


Zach: Yes, I think actually this sort of ties in with what we were saying before about structuring the work time, because you can definitely stop the self pacing and do a collaborative activity. There's no mystery to it. right? Like, you can just do that the time that kids are spending in front of their computers watching instructional videos, that's time that we would not be playing those games anyway, because at some time I would imagine you have to teach them some content, right? And so think of it in the way that you structure your traditional class. Just build in supports for them to self pace and maybe build in a soft deadline so that they have everything they need for the game or the conversation or whatever the activity may be before you get to it. But don't take away the activities. Don't take away the fun. That's definitely not the way to implement a Modern Classroom. And we don't want the kids sitting in front of computers for the entire time. Certainly not watching videos for the entire time, but even not watching videos and then doing their work alone. We want them collaborating. We want them getting up and moving around. We want them taking those brain breaks. And I actually taught English as a second language when I was living in Peru, and there was nothing less fun than teaching English, whereas you can really learn English by playing games, by doing fun stuff, by messing with the activities in the textbook. Definitely. I'm 100% in favor of having fun in all classes, but I agree that games are a great way to teach these kinds of classes. And so finding ways to build them in is definitely important. But it shouldn't be that difficult. I think that it's just a matter of making sure that the students have the knowledge, the content knowledge they need to participate in the activity before you start the activity and then go from there. Do self pace, do individual, independent work on the stuff that needs to be learned. But stop the self pacing, pull everyone together and have the fun activities in your classes you want. 


Toni Rose: Yeah. And Gamification is always so exciting. Right. And so even with Kahoot and Quizziz, you don't necessarily have to do it all together. They could still play those Kahoot games. They could still play those Quizziz games on their own time. So it's kind of like I think it's like the homework review or homework feature. Quizlet is another tool that I use a lot when I'm teaching emergent bilinguals or English learners, right? And they have that matching game that could be a lot of fun for students as well. And so I think, like what Zach said, just be very intentional with where you put those collaborative tasks in. I know that we could say, like, you know what, on Wednesdays, we're only going to do collaborative tasks, right? Like, there's not going to be an instructional video. You've been doing instructional videos on Monday, Tuesday, we'll take a break on Wednesday and do the talking, do the speaking and listening skills on Wednesdays. And you could, of course, put in little bits of activities for speaking and listening on Tuesdays, on Mondays and Tuesdays, but also just making sure that you focus on that for Wednesday. So continue to have fun with the model. I know that this implementer also said, since all of the students are doing their own thing, the pace is very slow and people either talk all the time or not at all, and they're just feeling a bit discouraged. So that's okay. You just started out. You're kind of feeling out how the model works for you and your students. If the pace is very slow. Something that I would do is pull a whole group instruction to kind of keep the class going or if my time is free because I'm no longer live lecturing, I pull small groups, I partner up students with, I have, like, the student teachers who can help out other students and so kind of building those supports for all of the students. And if you see that people are like the students are talking all the time, typically I don't go against that. So when I see that my students are super excited about something and they want to talk, I just say, you know what, for the next two minutes, go ahead, we're going to talk. And then I put that timer up, and then I'm like, “okay, after two minutes, we're done talking. Let's refocus on the work that we're doing.” And also it's interesting because I know going into Zach's room when I went to go check them out, it was an organized chaos. Like there were so many different conversations happening. But it was also very beautiful, right? So sometimes our Modern Classrooms are really quiet and sometimes they're not really quiet where all the students are just talking about, you know, their work or if they get off task for a little bit, they come back to talking about their work. 


Zach: Absolutely. And I think the other thing that you found and that I felt relieved to hear that you found was that you could walk up to any of them and they knew what the task was, even if they were talking about something completely unrelated. Adults do that. I do that. When we do professional developments, we'll have side conversations. I get distracted sometimes. I'm not 100% focused for two straight hours when we do PD. It happens. We're human. And so that's something to be okay with. I truly believe that it would be possible to play these ESL games every single day. I guess it might be like sort of a mean teacher move, but you could withhold the games from students who haven't finished the self paced part yet. It sort of pains me to say that because I just feel bad for those kids, but if they're falling behind, it is sort of a natural consequence, but it might motivate them to participate as well. So I think that there are ways to build in these games. It's just a matter of intentionally planning out your time and planning out the path that students will take to learning the content before you play. 


Toni Rose: Yeah, definitely don't feel discouraged. I know it seems like, “oh, my gosh, it's not working well,” but I definitely had to pivot so many times when I started implementing the model. So it's okay, you can make those changes and then also just ask your students what works and what doesn't work, and so you can continue building that community and creating that teaching and learning space together. So do you want to move on to the next question, Zach? 


Zach: Yes, let's do it. This one, I believe, also is from Facebook, and it says “starting my first unit today, what do you do when the majority of students are working on the notes? Like today? It feels like I'm doing nothing. Since we are just starting the unit.” What do you think, Toni Rose? I feel like this teacher is in the opposite situation where every kid is doing this. 


Toni Rose: I'm actually chuckling at this only because I remember implementing this model for the first time and then realizing that my students didn't need me anymore. And I was like, “oh, my gosh, what do I do?” 


Zach: Yes, you heard me laughing when I was trying to read the question because I said so. 


Toni Rose: I mean, it seemed like the class ran itself and what was my purpose? They didn't need me anymore. And so what I did with this is I actually sat with students and got to know them, right? So I would do check-ins and it'd just be a quick like, “hey, how are you feeling about this thing? Like, what are you learning so far?” And just having those quick check-in points with students and so they know that Ms. D. will come sit with them and kind of just check in with them. Social emotional learning, right? And making sure that it's not causing too much of a distraction. Sometimes when I feel a little playful, I do tend to crack jokes and banter with my students. And then I'll be like, “okay, I got you off task. My bad. Go back to what you were doing,” and then I'll move on to the next student. But, like, my students really love that quick two, three minute check in because it was just a way for us to get to know each other. 


Zach: Yeah, absolutely. Just to keep adding onto these anecdotes. I remember when you and I and a bunch of other DCI teachers took this training together over the summer, another teacher, Dan, Ms. B, who was actually on this podcast several episodes ago. I had my planning period before I ever taught, and she had taught. And so she came up to me and she was like, “Zach, it works. I didn't have to even do anything.” And so I feel like that's just the universal experience of teaching, at least the first day of a unit in a Modern Classroom. And yeah, I said it to Kareem, too, because Kareem would come and visit my classroom and I would stand there talking with Kareem, just the two of us, for like ten minutes, not having to do anything. And the class runs itself. I did this just the other day on Monday when you all came to visit my class, and I took, I don't know, probably ten minutes to stand outside and answer people's questions and chat about Modern Classrooms and things. The class was happening, and that's my biggest class. Like, there were kids, I don't have enough chairs for the kids in that class, so there's kids on the floor. It's a pretty chaotic class, but it was still fine without me. And obviously, there's a lot for me to do. I think that in particular, this question is getting at a particular time in a Modern Classroom, which is the first day of a unit when every student is on the same lesson, after that, after they start to sort of branch out and work for different amounts of time on different lessons. Most days in a Modern Classroom, there's more movement than that. But definitely on the first day of a unit, every kid knows to watch lesson one of whatever unit. And they do. I guess also, like, as the year goes on, kids sort of start to get more rambunctious and run around and talk more. And so maybe not every unit is like the first unit. But yeah, the sentiment of this question, I feel it. I sometimes don't need to do anything. And if I'm in that situation, I will just sort of walk around the room and look at their screens and see what they're doing, right? And I'll ask them, like, “did you understand what this word meant or whatever?” There's plenty of stuff I could do. I could definitely building relationships with kids, like you said, cracking jokes with them, being silly, being there with them. And that makes the classroom feel like a positive, pleasant place to be, which I think is not necessarily curriculum, but does matter. So, yeah. 


Toni Rose: It's really funny, too, Zach. Before I went on school visits, I was told Modern Classroom teachers love to talk to visitors because we now can, right? It was okay to be interrupted. The learning still continued, which was really great. And so another thing, too, that sometimes we kind of need that permission, right, where it's okay if you have nothing to do. You know what? Take a step back and just celebrate your class for running smoothly. Take that five-minute breather to just kind of hang back and see all the magic that's happening in your classroom. That's also okay. Like, as teachers, we're always on the go, go, go. And with this model, sometimes it allows you to just kind of settle in just to kind of observe and see like, “wow, my students are amazing. They're learning, they're collaborating, they're having conversations. This is all running without me.” And so, yeah, take your breather, go use the restroom, find someone to cover your class and go use the restroom. Because I know as teachers, we struggle with that. 


Zach: Yeah, no, that's a great, great, great point because we always feel like we need to do something. If the kids don't need us in the moment, as long as there's somebody keeping them safe, right, we don't need to necessarily always be doing something. And I love that. I love being able to just look at them and be like, “look, you're all working. This is so much fun for me because I don't have to do anything.” This is a win for this teacher. It's not like you're doing something wrong. This is a victory for you. This is a win scenario. Just enjoy it. 


Toni Rose: Definitely. All right, moving on to the next question, Zach. So basically this is from the Facebook group as well. And it says this implementer is really struggling with students not working in class, totally wasting time and getting further and further behind. It seems like it's a constant battle with cell phones and feeling like the work they're doing is just busy work. So how do you all handle students who just won't work or working at a snail’s pace. This implementer is always trying to improve. So anything you got, Zach? 


Zach: Yeah, this is tricky. Motivating students has always been the challenge, one of the big challenges of teaching. And I've talked about this before. I'm thinking about this a lot lately, developing sort of a sense of urgency when the unit is self paced. I guess some Modern Classroom techniques would be to chunk your units into smaller segments and have hard deadlines with grades so that they can't just say like, “oh, the deadline is in a month. I'm going to wait till the due date and do it.” But yeah, I don't know. I guess in some ways you can still use your teacher techniques. You can take kids' phones away if that's allowed at your school. I think also it's important to let kids see what happens when they do that, at least for one unit, to let them slack off and see what happens, which is that they get very low grades. I don't know. I don't have the answers to this because it's something that I also struggle with with some of my classes and not others. It depends on the kids, I guess. But yeah, I mean, you can probably hear. I'm sort of dithering and waffling. I don't have that good of an answer to this one. Do you? 


Toni Rose: I have some answers, some options. So I had the opportunity to watch one of our mentors, April, in action as well. And I noticed in her slide when she was talking to her students and kind of just talking about the work that they were doing and the content and the skills that they were learning. One of the signs said “cell phones. If you are ahead of pace, you can use your cell phones.” And I thought, wow, that's a really great way to get students motivated to finishing so they can use their cell phones, right? 


Zach: Yeah, because they want them. Yeah, exactly. 


Toni Rose: So it's kind of like one of those things where students are going to use the cell phones anyway, right? There's like school policies where it's like “no cell phones, no cell phones,” depending on your schools, I'm assuming. But really trying to work with them and figure out, okay, how can we make this? How can we agree on what cell phone usage, if you are able to do that in your school? Another thing, too. It says right here that students feel like it's just busy work. And so I would really encourage the implementer/teacher to invite the students in to have a conversation as far as, like, why do they think it's just busy work? Is the curriculum or the content that we're learning not relevant? Is it not engaging? What are some ideas that students have to make it more relevant and engaging for them, right? And sometimes I know we have curriculum to follow and maybe, like, our should do and aspire to do is to really connect that curriculum with current event news, with things that are happening in our real life so that our students are a little bit more motivated to learn. Yeah, that's a great thing. And I think another thing, too, is that our students really want to know why we're learning something, right? So what is the purpose of this skill? What is the purpose of this content? And even if you post that question to students, right? If you're teaching about theme, ask students, why do you think we're learning about this skill? How can you use the skill outside of this classroom? Because everything that we're learning in school hopefully should be able to help them become better learners as they get older, right? And it's something that they can utilize outside of the four walls in that school. And so really just having that conversation of why are we learning this? And then also engaging and inviting students to talk about why they feel the work is unnecessary? Because I think sometimes as teachers. Right. We think we know what's best. And then it's like, actually we want to invite other people to kind of check in on our blind spots so that we can have a better teaching and learning environment for our students. Another thing, like if they're working at a snail’s pace, because again, this is a whole new model, right, Zach? Our students, they are so used to traditional teaching. They're so used to being like hand-held. They're used to just teachers telling them the answers what to do, and then teachers just moving on. With this model, there's a lot of accountability. So sometimes students are really afraid of that and they try to avoid it and ignore it and just kind of, like, mess around and not really take it personally because there's some kind of fear. There's a fear of being seen as not as smart or fear of not knowing how to do something. And so I think really trying to figure out what the underlying issue is and also knowing that, like, you know what? This is a whole new model. Our students are probably going to have some feelings about it, which is totally normal. And so when students are working at a snail's pace, I really want to look at the curriculum and look at the lesson classification. What are my must dos? What are the most important things that students have to do? And if they're working at a snail's pace, really being hard on the hard deadlines and the soft deadlines, right? So what I mean by that is what I did was I had one lesson per week. You had the whole week to work on that one lesson. That's still self pacing. But, you know, by Friday, you better have turned everything in because we're moving on to lesson two. And so that week, I'm able to grab the students who are struggling with the concept or who need a little bit more support. So throughout that week, I'm able to do the small group, do the independent, the one-on-one check-ins with students. And so we can all move together so that nobody is getting behind, nobody's getting way too ahead. And that's kind of like where you should do and aspire to do tasks come in as well. So for your students who are a little bit more advanced, they can move on to the should do and aspire to do. But for students who really need that help, they can have that time to use, right? Like that time that whole week to really master that skill that you want them to master. And then also just like catching them right there and then. Then next week you move on to lesson two. 


Zach: So did you grade these lessons every week? Was that an actual grade or was it like a soft deadline with a self pacing consideration? 


Toni Rose: So every lesson had a mastery check and we graded that mastery check. Oh, okay. 


Zach: So that definitely puts some urgency on it. It's five days, but it's still like, you got to get this done. Five days go by pretty fast. 


Toni Rose: Right. And sometimes our implementers think that with self pacing, you just release them for the whole entire unit and like, goodbye, see you later. Actually, you can have a lot more control than that. One lesson per week, one lesson every two days. But you're giving the students a chance to learn at their own pace, but also knowing that on this day we're moving forward. So either you use your time wisely or you're doing this at home and then also go ahead and connect with caregivers, with all stakeholders, from day one so that everyone is aware of what is happening. And so having your students send that email out every week will be really impactful, CCing you caregivers, their co-teachers, their Sped teachers, their advisory teachers, so that everyone knows where that student is. So I would do that as well, because then now it's not just you and the student, it's everyone else who's involved in that student's learning. 


Zach: Yes. Constant communication with families, definitely. I'll link the blog post that I wrote on how I use mail merges. This is why I was talking about keeping a digital tracker, because I use that data to send specifically that to families. And not only does that involve the families in the kids' learning, it also motivates the kids a little bit to not have their family see that they're falling really far behind. So I tell them every two weeks a progress report is going to get sent out and whatever you've done is what you've done. And so finish the lessons before Friday because that thing is going out. It's not even a grade, actually. It's just a progress report that goes to the families. And so definitely something to consider. But yeah, it's tricky. It's a tricky question. Just keep tweaking your Modern Classroom and don't give up on it because it can work. Definitely. Yeah. 


Toni Rose: We haven't said this in a really long time, Zach, but trust the model. It works. 


Zach: Yes, it does. And you mentioned this on a previous episode that we've been saying that there's no wrong way to do the model, but actually there could be some wrong ways to do the model. And if this is not working for you, it's not the model and it's not you and it's not your kids. There's some implementation detail that you might need to tweak or change, but it can definitely work. It can work. 


Toni Rose: All right, Zach, do we have time for one more? 


Zach: I think we do. 


Toni Rose: All right, here we go. So I was wondering how many lessons people, teachers implementers usually put in an elementary school unit? 


Zach: Well, I can't speak to elementary because I don't teach elementary and I never have. But in my middle school music class, I put in, usually around ten lessons in a unit just for some numbers. My class meets twice a week for 50 minutes. And so depending on holidays, spring break, things like that, usually my units are about six weeks long, and that might seem pretty long, but I break up the units, like you were saying, into smaller parts, some of which are graded, some of which are just progress reports. So the progress reports that I was talking about go out every two weeks. And so that's four lessons in a progress report. And that's a soft deadline, but a deadline nonetheless, because the thing goes out by email and that's happening no matter what. And every about six lessons or I guess six lessons into the unit, I will have a draft critique. So they're making songs. And so when we come to the draft critique on lesson six or seven, I will download their songs in whatever state the songs are in, and I will share them with the other students in the class. And so if they don't want to be, like, horribly embarrassed by their terrible song, that's not even 5 seconds long or whatever, they'll try and get it done before then. And I give them warning, right? Like we're having our draft critique. It's going to be lesson seven. And I tell them that at the beginning of the unit and then a week or two before the critique, I'll let them know as well. But ten-ish lessons, I've had as much as twelve, and I've had as few as eight. But I'm also not an elementary school teacher. And you'll have to take my answer with a grain of middle school salt. 


Toni Rose: And it's funny because when we were looking at this question, you and I both were like “elementary. Oh, snap.” But it's also interesting because I feel like what happens in elementary, you could do in middle school. You could do in high school, right? So I'm thinking if Zach has ten units, maybe in elementary, depending on whether it's like early elementary or upper elementary, really toying with that, right? So I would start out with maybe five lessons and then increasing it every single time. And so I know with elementary they definitely need and require more hand-holding. You're probably going to have to do some self pacing, blended learning, mastery check with them for the first two or three months of school just so they can understand the routine. But other than that, I would really say maybe five, starting out with five lessons for the unit. So even if you have a large unit but chunk them into many units so that students don't feel too behind because again, keeping in mind, this could be elementary, middle or high school. This is a brand new way of teaching and learning. And so students really need that practice to get better at this model and also have an opportunity to start over. So after five lessons, if they didn't do so well, at least they know that after five lessons they can start all over with the second mini unit. So really working on that self confidence and self esteem as well is really important for this model. So I'm thinking for elementary school, like, depending on how young your learners are, three to five lessons per unit and just kind of starting off with low lift activities when you're introducing the model and then just increasing the rigor, the more that your students get used to it. And that can apply to any grade level. Really? 


Zach: Yeah. I guess also, just in terms of my numbers, I only teach six units in an entire school year. My class is very much project based, so they're all big projects, and every lesson is a little piece of one big project. I know a lot of classes are not structured like that. And so if you have a lot more units than six in an entire school year, they're obviously going to have to be shorter units, and that's fine. I guess in some ways, as I think about this, it really all just comes down to how you structure the sort of arc of a single chunk of self pacing. Right. Like how you structure the deadlines so that there is that sense of urgency. And it's not like you can fall 25 lessons behind because we never want that to happen. There needs to be a fresh start point and there needs to be deadlines and grades along the way. It's not like, “hello, welcome to school. It's September, and I'll see you in May.” 


Toni Rose: Definitely not, right? 


Zach: Yeah. And so elementary, middle school, high school, adult, college, anyone? I think that as long as there are clear established, not deadlines necessarily, but sort of like arcs to the amount of work that you do before you have to be done with something, whether it's a unit, whether it's a sub-unit, whether it's a project as long as you thought about when it's going to be done and you set a clear day for that so that students know when they need to finish it by. I think that that's the key and how many lessons that winds up being may depend on who you're teaching, but I think that's the key is thinking about how that time is going to be structured. 


Toni Rose: Yeah. Thank you for that, Zach. You want to wrap it up for our listeners? 


Zach: Yeah. I love these Q&A episodes. They're real fun. 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/82. You can also read a recap of this episode and a transcript of the episode. We'll have that for you. I think we've decided that's going to be on Fridays now, so if you check back on Friday, you'll see those in the show notes for the episode. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday. 


Toni Rose: Thank you so much. And Zach, again, it was a pleasure being in the same space with you. 


Zach: Yes. Finally, we got to do it more. 


Toni Rose: I know.


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.