Zach Diamond  0:03  
Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. Each week, we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other. So this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. 

Zach Diamond  0:28  
Hello, and welcome to episode number 156 of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. My name is Zach Diamond and I'm a middle school digital music teacher in Washington DC. And tonight I'm joined by Dacia Guffey, a social studies teacher and Canvas coach in Durham, North Carolina, and Paul  O'Donoghue, a high school math teacher and track coach, both of whom are distinguished modern classrooms, educators and expert mentors, and also returning to the podcast. So both of you have been on the podcast at least once before. Welcome back. Welcome back to the podcast. Dacia and Paul, how are you?

Dacia Guffey  1:03  
Doing great. Thank you for having us, Zach, we really appreciate the opportunity.

Paul O'Donoghue  1:09  
Yeah, same year, Zach, good to be back.

Zach Diamond  1:10  
Yeah, we're super happy to have you back on the podcast. This is obviously another one of those episodes where the the panel of guests has more experience than than I do, right. So we our listeners, you and I are definitely going to be in good hands. Tonight, we have a lot to learn from Dacia and Paul. And this is the topic that I've kind of been teasing this whole month. Leading up to this episode, we're going to be talking about the sort of distinction between tracking progression and assigning grades to students, which I think is a really important aspect of the modern classrooms model. It's sort of wrapped in with how and why we use pacing trackers, and how we present them publicly and all of that kind of stuff. So we're gonna get into that shortly. But before we do, even though, both of you have been on the podcast before, and I am going to link all of your episodes in the show notes for this one. Go ahead and reintroduce yourselves to our guests. Tell us a little bit more about yourself who you are and how you started with MCP.

Dacia Guffey  2:06  
Okay. Well, I have been teaching for the past 25 years in North Carolina, in public schools, all over the state. Primarily, I've taught a lot of low income students, I've taught a lot of students who sort of come to the classroom with a lot of struggles, a lot of learning deficits, that's just sort of in my lane all the way through. And I discovered modern classrooms. In 2019, I was working at a dropout prevention High School, and I was really looking for that self paced that blended learning model. And this idea that students were going to just keep going the next day, because it was Tuesday, they needed to learn the skills before they keep progressing. And that was what I discovered when I you know, came upon the modern classrooms project, it was actually the Edutopia video that a lot of people saw for the first time during that time period, and got connected with cream and was able to get my entire high school on board with modern classrooms and brought it to our district. So that's been a really amazing journey became to become a mentor, and all of that. So it's really transformed my educational practice in a major way.

Zach Diamond  3:21  
Yeah, yeah. I love that love that call back to the Edutopia video. You know, it's interesting, people used to mention that video all the time on the podcast. And it's interesting to me, because people have sort of stopped. And I'm wondering if the reach of modern classrooms is expanding beyond that video, people are finding modern classrooms and other ways, which is actually very cool. So yeah, and of course, the self pacing, fully agree with you there. The self pacing is such a great hook, you know, you see it, and you see you understand it immediately. And it just makes sense. Definitely. So thank you. Disha. Thank you, Paul. How about you introduce yourself?

Paul O'Donoghue  3:53  
Yeah, so I am in year seven of teaching, I taught in Massachusetts for five years right out of college, which is my home state. And I've been in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the past two years. And sort of similar timeframe is deja around, it was around COVID. For me, you know, we all went home in March, and the next year was kind of remote hybrid. And then school just, you know, was not working for me or for the students. And kind of exactly as Dasia said, I found a Edutopia video, I think just on Twitter, like, it just kind of popped into my feed and, and I watched it and immediately I was like, Oh my gosh, this is this is game changing. And this just makes so much sense for the classroom. And from there, it was kind of process of taking baby steps into it. So I, you know, sort of started doing instructional videos and kind of tried to do self pacing as much as I could, but in, you know, sort of the remote hybrid settings of schools or in COVID It was really challenging. You know, we were all just trying to survive at that point, like tread water in school. So it was actually almost kind of nice to kind of, you know, take some beginner steps and then once we were kind of back full time in the classroom, I was just all in Um, and yeah, incredibly rewarding experience, I basically started at my third or fourth year of teaching. And now I'm kind of in year three of a full time and modern classroom. So having done it kind of in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, and now here kind of in more of an urban districts in Grand Rapids, it's just been, you know, life changing for my teaching, and just really good for my students. It's so fun to make tweaks every year and to, and to do stuff like this, where I'm meeting other educators and having great conversations. So yeah, it's been, I'm so thankful that I found it at this point in my education career, and now I get to kind of continue to build and learn going forward.

Zach Diamond  5:40  
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. I remember that, that you're coming back after COVID. And just being like, I need to change a lot. But modern classrooms is definitely giving me like an anchor here. I can know what I can, where to start from, and it does continue to evolve, right? Talking with people, like you said, Paul, talking to teachers doing this podcast for me, listening to teachers and learning more about modern classrooms. There's so many different ways, you know, and it's definitely a big a big world out there. So. So I guess we all agree, well, definitely in the pocket of modern classrooms. I think that we're definitely all MCP Oh, geez, on this episode, because

Dacia Guffey  6:16  
that is for certain. Definitely.

Zach Diamond  6:19  
Yeah. So is it going to be a good one. So we're going to talk about progression versus grades. That's how I wrote it on the document. And I want to kind of cut straight to the chase here. The the topic idea for this episode came up when Tony Rose and I were thinking about topics for this podcast season, because people ask all the time, if using a public tracker, you know, causes anxiety for students, or if students are anxious or nervous, or worried about having their data displayed publicly. And that's what I'd like to talk about here. My kind of line on this has always been that it's about how we frame the data that we're putting up on the board, in my case, or on the tracker, you know, if we frame it as progress data, it just feels very different to me, than if we were putting up their grades, right? If we were putting their grades up there, I can definitely see how that would cause anxiety. And I think that goes back to what we've been talking about previously, this month, relating to grading on how there's like sort of this emotional weight to grades, whereas progress is a little bit more objective, a little bit less emotional. So, you know, that's where I'm coming from here. But I just want to have both of you talk a little bit more about this distinction. The distinction between displaying progress data and grades, right? So can you talk about that distinction, and maybe talk a little bit also about how you frame your trackers, with your students and in your own minds to alleviate that anxiety around displaying their their progress data publicly?

Dacia Guffey  7:50  
I think part of it is a having a conversation really early on about that fact that this classroom is not one where you're going to have bad grades. Like I want to really establish that hardcore when I start out, you know, when I start talking to the students about we're doing the modern classrooms model. And, you know, maybe you've never been exposed this before. But one of the key things is, you're not going to have bad grades in here, because we're going to revise and we're going to reassess. And we're gonna go back and fix the things we need to fix and change it, you know, do what we need to do to fix misunderstandings. So no one is going to have bad grades in here. And I think that is also a big cultural shift as teachers because we've been so accustomed to I give you the assignment, you do the work, I give you the grade, we move on. And instead of being able to say okay, I've given you the assignment, let me give you really quality fight feedback on this assignment, go back and make edits and then let's revisit it because we tend to not build the breathing space within our own curriculum for that to even happen. Right. So you know, from the get go if you're establishing that perimeter, then the tracker is is irrelevant when it comes to grades the tracker is literally just where are you? Where are you in this move forward progression we're all moving towards and you know, first I've done this you know, I've done the pacing trackers in person and in the virtual environment, but you to the Virtual Academy now. And in person I gave my in there, this is high schoolers, I gave them little magnets so that like spaceships and they moved them across the board, and they loved it. They loved that sense of achievement they were getting there, and that forward momentum. And then with my virtual kids, we have like we've used the auto tracker, we've used game boards where they move little icons. And again, it's just really about achievement. Like, look, you're moving through the levels of the game. That's what we're doing here. But it really disassociating the eye idea that this is about who has the highest average, or anything like that? That's like that's fundamental to the model to begin with, before you even touch the pacing factor, I think.

Zach Diamond  10:11  
Yeah. And I think that the idea, you mentioned this, at the beginning of that response, the idea of revision being a thing that we're going to do no matter what. So, whatever the progress data, say, right now, your grade is going to be fine, you're gonna get good grades, because you're gonna go back and fix anything that is wrong, you know, address anything that you've had, you've misunderstood. That's an interesting way to frame that too. It's like, Don't worry about your grade, it's going to be good. In the end, we're going to work our way there and maybe at different paces. But I really liked that. I want to ask you a follow up question Dasia? Like, do you ever find that the progress data becomes sort of like a surrogate for the grades data, and students start to feel nervous about the progress, or like even stigmatise being behind is that happened in your class at all?

Dacia Guffey  10:58  
Well, I think that that's that piece falls into your court, as a teacher, you should not be letting your students get ridiculously behind the rest of the pack, managing the pack, as I put it, so that everyone is kind of in the same ballpark is on you. So that means if you see a kid who is starting to fall further, further behind, you're having those individual conferences with them, maybe you're taking away some assignments off of their to do list, you know, you're exempting them, maybe some aspire to dues, or should dues or whatnot, you're sending them through a pathway that's going to allow them to catch up and get back with the rest of them. And with by the same token, if you see kids really just bursting ahead, are you giving them challenging enough aspire to do assignments to keep them sort of pulled back with the rest of the group? That's your I think that's the biggest piece. And honestly, the hardest piece of managing the modern classroom model is learning how to leverage the different types of categories of activities and lessons so that you can keep your students kind of in almost in lockstep with each other. You'll have some amount of variance, of course, but that's what you're doing. And so if I see as a teacher is pacing trackers like we've got kids and in less than one and kids in less than six, then that you're not doing that piece. I

Zach Diamond  12:23  
don't think that's a great point. That's a great point. And yeah, I've definitely I asked this because it occurred to me, as you were speaking before, I've had this happen. I work with middle schoolers, which is definitely an interesting age. And I have heard them say like, Oh, yes, he looked at me, I'm ahead. Right, as sort of in a not friendly, competitive way. And so it like it, it occurred to me that like that could take the place of those emotions around grades, right. And we don't want that I think that we definitely want to sort of foster a sense of progress being the goal, we're all working towards the same thing. But yeah, that's a great point. I hadn't even thought about it that way they show that's a very, very good point that it's in our court, it's our job to make sure there aren't those wide gaps for students to think about that way in the first place. Paul, how about you? What would you what would be your take on this, this topic of, you know, anxiety around progress trackers and displaying progress versus displaying grades,

Paul O'Donoghue  13:17  
I definitely focus at the start of year to really emphasize to kids the importance of, or I should say how important self pacing is, and can be in a classroom, I start my year in with a unit zero, and one of the first activities we do is, is we make origami butterflies. And I start this activity by playing a YouTube video at the front of the room for everyone to watch at the same time, and I don't pause or rewind the video or anything, I just let it play. And within seconds, kids are freaking out about, you know that it's going too fast, and they can't keep up. And it's about a three minute video. And at the end kids have crumbled their papers, they've ripped it, they have a couple folds, because they're so frustrated and stressed. And inevitably, there's also a few kids that have been able to keep up and finished it. So you get this huge range of, you know, ability, just enable in watching this video, and then I say to the kids, okay, so clearly that didn't work for everyone. Now I want you all to open your own devices, find this video and complete the butterfly, the origami butterfly at your own pace. And then when you're done, I want you to hang it around the room. You know, we'll we'll we'll put it up on the bulletin boards. And so by the end of class, we have, you know, if it's a class of 30, we have 30 butterflies around the room. And I talked to the kids about how, you know, when we were all watching at the same pace, it didn't work for everybody. And we all needed something different. And so then when you went to watch on your own or work with a partner, you're able to do what works for you. And so that activity really helps with with telling kids about how in a self paced classroom, you're doing what works for you. And there's gonna be some lessons and some units where you're gonna learn quickly and you're gonna you're gonna need less time and there's gonna be other lessons and units and units where you need more time. And so I really hard I really emphasize that the start of the year about you know, You're gonna get a chance to self paced in this class. And so that leads into the Progress Tracker. And by the time I sort of introduced that to students, we've talked so much already about self pacing, and that how we're all kind of, we're gonna go at the speed that works for us. And so it immediately shifts the focus away from what your grades gonna be, just to really how much time do you need. My principal at our school often says, time is the variable, right? It's, that's the thing that students, you know, it's going to take the dictate how much they are going to accomplish. It's just how much time they have. Right? If they have a lot of time, they can accomplish something as much as someone who might not need a lot of time. So yeah, I think I think with how much I emphasize self pacing, and every every student kind of needing their own their own space and time to learn something, by the time we get to that Progress Tracker, we've really, you know, we've cut down on the importance of thinking about grades, and more just thinking about making that progress and moving from one left lesson to the next, and having the time and space to be able to do that in the classroom.

Zach Diamond  16:01  
Yeah, well, that butterfly activity is awesome. I love that. What a good idea to sort of make it resonate with kids, right? It's the connection that you make to the lessons later on where they're like, Okay, you know, every lesson is different. Some people will need more time, I have this conversation with my students a lot, where, you know, some, I tell them, you know, some one of the lessons is going to be on making a drum beat, and one of the lessons is going to be on writing your lyrics, right. And even if one of you actually were smarter, and I'm using air quotes with my fingers here, if one of you actually were smarter than the other, which you're not, right, we're all just different. Even so, one of you would prefer writing lyrics and one of you might prefer making your drum beat. They're just different things. There's no, there doesn't need to be any judgment or stigma around one or the other. And which one you do faster, you might just want to spend a lot of time crafting a really, really intricate drumbeat. Or you might just want to get the drumbeat done with so you can get to the lyrics and spend a lot of time crafting, like beautiful, poetic lyrics, or whatever. They're just different lessons. And yeah, you might just want to take different amounts of time for them. That's but yeah, I don't know, I like the the butterfly activity, I think I might want to steal that and try it out with my kids bomb. Because what a what a cool way to like, bring it home and make them realize,

Paul O'Donoghue  17:26  
yeah, I'll really need to like write up a lesson plan for it. Because my myself and my colleague, Byron Comerica, who's another MCP, mentor, and, and has been doing monitor classroom the same amount of time as I have we, we kind of set that up together, we've shared it with staff, we've shared it with students, and it's really been a big hit. It's just like, such a great way to kick off, you know, modern classroom with students and the whole idea of self pacing. And yeah, so I think I'll have to, I think I'll have to write up a lesson plan and and put it out there.

Zach Diamond  17:54  
Yeah, well, if you do, let me know. And I'll go back and only give them the show notes for the episode. Absolutely. So data, how about you? Do you have any, like routines, anything like that, for communicating this type of framing with your students? Like it could be something formal, like that very cool butterfly activity, or it could just be like, informally as these discussions come up. I guess I'm also curious to hear in the virtual space, how that works, like how you actually have those conversations with students. But I guess the real gist of my question is like, how do you help the students shift their mindset, in that same in that same way that you're shifting your mindset to progress as opposed to grades? How do you help the students see that in that in that way?

Dacia Guffey  18:33  
It is, it is a difficult transition. They've just been so very intentionally programmed to to to value that grade point average, no matter what, yeah, it does also, in my own mind, tie back to a lot of ideas about grading for equity. And the problem that I have fundamentally with, like 100 point scale, just out the gate. But we spent a lot of time in my class, just spending, bending, like the first couple of units, dragging them back way from the culture of completion, into the culture of mastery. And, you know, and that's a hard shift for for kids, especially the older ones who've been in school for a minute. Getting them to understand that, yes, I see you did the activity. You also did it very poorly. And we have to sit down and go and look at where were you getting these answers from? Where were you getting this information from? Were you really trying to learn it and get it or are we just trying to knock something off of your checklist? And, you know, realizing that I'm just going to very stubborn lingo, no, we have to go back and do this correctly. No, I need you to look at my source that I linked into this Google slide. That's the one I Aren't you to look for and read through not just random Wikipedia article that you went to, to see what you could find real quickly. And just teaching them the difference in that quality of work is more important to me than quantity of work. And that was, honestly, that was a huge shift for me as an educator, because I had grown up with the school of thought in education, where it's like, we got to teach bill to Bill, we've got to fill every moment with activities, right. And part of that was just classroom management. If I keep the kids busy enough, they can't get into trouble. But I am not leaving any room, in that for revision, I'm not leaving any room for them to go back, rewatch a video, learn something through a different type of activity. And there's no space, if I do that. And so when I started building my courses, especially for my virtual, you know, my virtual school classes in Canvas, I had to think hard about it. How can I find the balance between putting too much in my Canvas modules, so the students don't have enough time to finish it all, and certainly don't have enough time to, you know, craft revisions. And then the on the flip side, not putting enough in Canvas, and then I've got kids are like I finished unit one today. And so finding that balance was was something as well. But just like for the first unit, I don't really honestly have nearly as many of activities, as I might have later on as we go further into the course, simply because I'm I'm going to be really tough about what they're they're turning into me. And I'm like no, no friend, that's not we're going to send that back, I need you to read all my comments I put in your Google Doc. And I need you to revise that and then send it back to me. And we'll do that. We'll do that as many times as we need to. And it again, is they will they will bug about it. They will be frustrated at first because they have gotten used to I turned it in. What else do you want for me? And I'm like, Nah, we want to do this, right. And I'm one I think one example I gave to some of my kids was like, if you go work at Burger King, and your manager tells you to mop under all the booths at Burger King, and you mop under one booth. And then you go back to him and say I'm up, guess what he's gonna do, he's gonna send you back to mop all the booths. And I'm sending you back because you only did a small fraction of what I asked you to do. And getting them to understand that that difference in the mindset to quality versus the quantity.

Zach Diamond  22:44  
Right. And then I think that even maybe after a little while, you can start to help them see like, getting sent back is actually me telling you, I think you can do a better job. And I'm telling you how, and don't you want to do a better job. I'm trying to think about how to connect this to progress that like, you know, you shouldn't be progressing if it's wrong. And and yeah, I've been seeing a lot of that it's the beginning of the school year, you know, I have I teach sixth grade class, these students are brand new to middle school. They're brand new to my building, right? And they're obviously brand new to my class too. And I get a lot of that, like, wait, I did it. I had to do it again. What do want me to do? And I'm like, Well, let's talk about it. And yeah, I think that like that, that loop that sort of iterative loop of continually being sent back. My personal experience has been like students don't, you're right that they buck. I mean, they complain, right? But they see the value in doing it. Nonetheless, like they, they go back and they do it because they want to get that X on the tracker, the little check that shows that they did it.

Dacia Guffey  23:53  
They usually have this weird aha moment. That happens. And it happens a different times. But they'll have it and they'll go oh, so I am going to do much better on the mastery check if I do the things you told me to do. Right? Like, yeah, it's crazy.

Zach Diamond  24:11  
Right? I know what I'm talking about. Yeah, I actually have some knowledge.

Dacia Guffey  24:15  
But I think another piece of it. That's the big that. I see the kids who are normally like that a honor roll students, they get more frustrated with it. Yeah. Then the kids who have struggled, yeah, because what the kids who have struggled academically, I'm going is fine. But we'll just look at it again. And here's some guiding questions. And here's some extra scaffolding for you. And they're like, really, you mean I'm not just a failure? Because I failed at this first time. No, we're, we're learning together. Do go back. We do it again. And then versus some of my kids who are used to Well, I'm a good kid and I did the work and I use complete sentences. So I got a right and I'm like, no Not Not really.

Zach Diamond  25:01  
Yeah, yeah, it makes you realize how much those kids are sort of driven by grades. Right? Which, which I think when, when push comes to shove, I guess, like when, when you start looking at when you start sending them back, like you said, and making them redo or revise their work. And they complain about it, it makes it's, it's, I guess, strange to say, but it's almost a little sad, right? It's like, these are our best students. And what's driving them? Is this sort of like, it's not real, it's the it's the grade layer. Right? But the actual learning that's underneath? You know, it's, we need to we need to tap into that. Paul, do you have anything to add here?

Paul O'Donoghue  25:39  
Yeah, so much. But I'll, I'll keep it short, in the sense that dish I totally kind of resonate with, with what you're talking about, I'll often have kids come up to me, like holding their, their practice worksheet for whatever lesson they're on, look like they're trying to turn it into me, like they're trying to give it to me, because they're, so they're sort of so conditioned to that, that completion is progress, which will lead to a grade, right, like just getting the assignment done is worth something, whether or not you sort of showed any understanding on it. And so I'm always sending kids back, just because I, I'll say, like, listen, these aren't, you know, you're not doing this, for me, I'm not collecting this, like, I barely collect anything in class, you know, for my students, other than mastery checks. And so that's a huge shift to getting kids to realize that their progress is gonna come from actually understanding and they're not just sort of checking boxes of completion. So I think that's sort of another important part of this, too, that it's not really progress. Progress by completion, it's progress by understanding, right, and then the grades kind of follow, like, then your grades become from mastery and understanding and not just because you've completed a bunch of assignments. And the same goes for the students with those executive functioning struggles, who just struggled to turn things in on time, or struggle to turn things in at all, and then their grades get crushed from it. So they get a zero in the gradebook, and then it just, you know, they're and then they're failing when it's reflecting just their completion of something rather than, you know, their actual understanding of the content. And so I just love how modern classroom gives students who might struggle with those executive functioning skills, that chance to revise that chance to go back and try again, and show progress based on understanding because, you know, really, if you take that weight off their shoulders of needing to turn things in on by a certain day, or, or, you know, they know their teacher is going to be collecting something, take that weight off their shoulders, and then they can just focus on really learning something, and then have that sense of accomplishment as they're moving forward. But like we've kind of talked about, it's a huge mind mindset shifts. And they should I sort of agree with some of my honors classes, those are sort of the kids that sometimes struggle initially, because they're so used to, they're really good at completing things. And so they're used to that sort of reflecting in their progress, and then therefore, their grades. But when you sort of ask them to go back and really understand something, then it gets a little bit trickier. So then they they're realizing that, oh, I actually have to sort of spend time with this. And just because I completed it doesn't necessarily mean, I'm ready for a mastery check and ready to move on to the next thing. So yeah, Dasia all all great stuff there. Definitely.

Zach Diamond  28:15  
Yeah. Okay, so I'm starting to see the connection now, between this and the progress topic, right, progress versus grades. Because I feel like in a lot of ways, what what we're really saying with this is like, the progress isn't even the x's on the tracker, the progress is happening inside of your mind, it's the learning, right? Like you personally are making progress by mastering more and more of this content. And so the thing I'm putting up on the board or the little magnet station in your class, when you were in person, like, that's just nuts. It's a tracker, like the actual progress is happening within your mind. It's your learning. Paul, something that you said, I thought was really interesting and resonated with me a lot, which was that you don't even collect most of the things besides the mastery checks. And so I guess like a cynical viewpoint would be like, Why don't have to do any of this is not collecting, and he's not grading it? So why do it? But the answer is, in order to do well, on the mastery check, you have to know the content, right? And so if you want to learn the content, here's a lot of stuff. Here's a whole bunch of scaffolding and structures and activities and questions and all this stuff, videos, of course, to help you learn this content. So when you get to the mastery check, you're ready for it. You do well on it, not because it's easy, not because you're good at doing well on assignments, but because you know this stuff, right? You can you can do well on the mastery check. And that I think that that feels like progress sort of inherently internally. And of course, you get the nice validation of seeing your little check mark on the board. Right, but, but that's really not what it's about. It's about the learning within the student.

Dacia Guffey  29:52  
Yeah, definitely. I think that they need to see growth. As the most valuable thing, yeah. And changing that mindset is hard. And I think I've seen it more. I think in my virtual learning environment, we get a lot of students in our virtual academy who have high anxiety about a lot of things. It's one of the reasons why they chose online school when they could have chosen person school. And for many of them, you know, that idea, I have to be perfect, but first go around is is just like crippling for them. And getting them to understand that growth is positive, it's valuable. Know, you're not going to always get it the very first time. And that's normal. And that's okay. And it doesn't mean you're not smart. And it doesn't mean you're not a good learner. It doesn't mean you're not a good student. It just means that everyone across the board it learns in different ways and at different time spans. And, and again, I think it does, really vol, the honest does really, though, fall on the educator, to look at the movement on the tracker, as an indicator of where you need to push in. So that every student is feeling that forward momentum, whether they're, you know, right on pace, a lesson behind or listen to hit, they're feeling the forward momentum, because you are offering the right kind of challenge and the right kind of support and scaffolding for them to get that progress.

Zach Diamond  31:31  
Yeah. You reminded me of the I, on the on the previous week's podcast I use the example of if I were trying to learn to play the oboe. I couldn't expect I'm not an oboe player. I'm not any kind of witness trumpet player. So I shouldn't expect to pick up an oboe and know how to play it. Right? It's going to take me a very, very long time to sound anywhere near decent oboe being a double reed instrument. I don't know that much about wind instruments. But I know that oboe is hard. So we shouldn't our students, I think that the mindset here is that you shouldn't expect to necessarily do something very well, the first time if you do great, you might you might come into this class, already knowing how to do this. And that's great. You might come into my class, being an oboe player, for example. Right? And be great. But you might also not and that's that's not like, it's not a judgment. I think that a lot of students who are accustomed to getting very high grades and those sort of those types of students, right, it comes easy, because that's what they're good at. That's like their area of skill is doing well on school assignments. And that's fine. But when we ask them to take a different approach, it can be it can be unnerving, I think for them, because it's like, this is how I saw myself, I am a person who gets good grades. So why are you making me revise this? Normally? I just do well. And I think that that's probably healthy. Although it can maybe be scary for them. Right? I think that you're right, that it's about growth, it's about giving them the tools to grow. And also I think putting up the data to show you are growing, you are making progress. And I think that the students know, because we are kind of bullish on these mastery checks, and we will send them back over and over like you were saying before, Paul, that the progress on the board on the tracker is very real. You know, it's it's, it's validation coming from you that you have made this progress in your learning. So these are these are very, very good points I love I love this discussion. And I hope that anybody listening that maybe a little bit apprehensive about trying out a pacing tracker is opening up to the idea. I think that we haven't even talked at all about how the tracker itself can be a motivator for the students. But But I think that it's it's probably somewhat obvious from the way that we're talking about it that when students are making that progress when they're seeing those checks appear. It's it's just affirming for them what they already know, which is I have learned something, I am moving towards a goal by learning more and more. And I think that it's real, right, it feels real to them. So folks, we're gonna go to a quick break. We have some really exciting actually announcements for you this week. And when we come back, we're going to talk more about this distinction between progress and grades. Hey there listeners This is Zach with the announcements for this week. First of all, as you know, at modern classrooms, we deeply believe in student centered learning. We've seen it in classrooms all over the world. When you step down from the front of the classroom, and commit to self paced mastery based instruction, you are actually able to meet all students needs. But we also know this style of teaching isn't necessarily mainstream. So if you're looking for support and launching your modern classroom, join our free online course. Or sign up for our virtual mentorship program where expert educators can support and mentor you through creating your first fully self paced unit. Scholarships are available but you need to apply by October 6. to join our fall session, you can visit modern classrooms.org. To apply and learn more. We also have another really exciting announcement that I'm personally super excited about, which is that this week we're celebrating the launch of a new podcast by the modern classrooms project. It's called catalyzing classroom change. educators, researchers and institutions are developing cutting edge instructional strategies that support both student learning, and teacher wellness. But we know that educational change can be slow when it's adopted at scale. At the modern classrooms project, we know firsthand how a single spark can catalyze classroom change. And you can listen and join the conversation with leaders in the education space to explore the newest frontiers of classroom led innovation wherever you get your podcasts, and you'll be able to find a link in this episode's show notes. All right, folks, we're back with Paul and Dasia. And we're going to carry on this conversation about progress versus grades. And for my next question, I want to ask if you could both share a story of a student with whom you had some kind of a breakthrough on the tracker. And I asked this because I've actually never had a student who experienced anxiety around the Progress Tracker. But I've heard it from so many teachers, like concerns that students might be anxious, or I have students with anxiety. So I don't think this would work for me. But that's just never been my experience. And so I wanted to ask if either of you has had that experience with a student and maybe help them to move past it.

Dacia Guffey  36:42  
I honestly have not had a ton of pushback. And like I say, I've been doing this since since early 2020. And, and I've had quite a few, you know, iterations of class classes doing, I really have very few students who even really blink at it. Even with, like I said, my high anxiety kids that I some of whom I teach. Now, I think because I'm framing it very carefully. In the beginning, they're not as likely to push back on it, I will say this, I did have a sort of a breakthrough with one group of kids, I had a student who was trying to take a mastery check. And they had taken it once and not done some great, I've given them some feedback, they've gone back to take it again, still had some misconceptions. And that second time before they even really got back to me, they sort of just very loudly frustrated said, I don't understand why I can't get this right, you know, just like really frustrated. And I'm sitting there and the rooms fairly quiet. But like three kids look up from where they're working. And they're like, dude, grades aren't permanent in here. Just give us government give you some tips, and you can fix it, and it's fine. And they were so nonchalant about it. But I was like, Oh, that was such a wonderful moment. Because the kids got it. They understood. It's progress. It's just about making progress. Dude, it's not chill out, go go do what you need to do. And for the kids to recognize and express that. I think that was a big huge moment for me and for them. Because they get it. They're like it's it isn't about okay, well, you made a 60 this time and you made a 75. That's it. We're not that's not what the equation about the equation is about? Can you make the revisions? Can you go back and read and figure out where your misconception is? And make those those changes?

Zach Diamond  38:35  
Yeah, I love that. I love the you're right, the nonchalance, right? Just the sort of like, hey, it's fine. No more about it. Yeah. And even even held, that student was not even so focused on the tracker, just like, frustrated with I don't know that maybe you only gave a brief little overview of the story. Right. But like, it sounded like the student was frustrated because they couldn't understand the content, which is exactly the kind of frustration we want, right? I mean, we don't want our students to like, give up enough, right. But, you know, if they're frustrated, because they're struggling with the content, that's so much better than any, like, surface layer thing. Like, I can't get a good enough grade on this or whatever. Yeah, very cool. How about you, Paul, do you have a story of like a breakthrough you had with the student who was struggling with the tracker idea?

Paul O'Donoghue  39:19  
I wish I did, Zack, and I don't know if that's good news for us that are sort of three for three right here with these, you know, with us teachers, not having a lot of these breakthrough moments. I think, you know, like I said, I do a lot to frame the self pacing part before I actually introduced the tracker. So by the time my kids see the tracker, we've talked about self pacing so much that we've kind of we've kind of normalized it. I know in my first year I was I was the one that was hesitant to show it because it is such as a mindset shift to think like oh, man, I'm going to show every student's progress to them on the board publicly every day to start class. It just seems like such a daunting task. And so originally, I wasn't doing that public Progress Tracker. But I had kind of what he said earlier, like a, just a physical tracker in the room, I just hung a piece of ribbon and the students wrote their names on clothes pins, and so then they would move their clothes pin up up the ribbon. And that seemed a little less intimidating than putting like the digital tracker up on the board. And then the following year, I was just like, You know what, I'm just gonna try it and see how it goes. And I talked about self pacing, we did the origami butterfly activity. And then I showed the Progress Tracker, and we jumped in the first unit, and no student ever mentioned anything to me. And that's not to say that there might be some students out there that are a little hesitant by it, and maybe a little bit anxious from it, I make sure to tell them, you know, come come and talk to me if you have any questions, if you sort of want to dive into this, but I've never had a student come up to me one on one to, to mention anything. And I think it's students taste that little bit of progress, where they see, you know, their name, move across the tracker, they see that they master the lesson, I think that's kind of all they need to sort of buy in. And they love that sense of satisfaction, it really is almost like, you know, beating levels in a video game where you're seeing your progress Level to Level and you keep, you know, beating the boss to move on to the next stage. And there's that sense of accomplishment with every piece. So I do think the kids end up liking it, they come into the classroom, you know, sort of if they see like they're behind, or they're on pace, and they want to move ahead or get caught back up, they're sort of, you know, instantly motivated, like you mentioned earlier. So yeah, in short, I haven't had any breakthrough moments with students. But I think that's a good thing. Because there's a nice sense of buy in, kind of right from the start. So hopefully, hopefully a nice motivator for any teachers out there that are maybe hesitant, like I was initially or thinking about it, that it is worth it. And it is such a great experience for, you know, kids to feel that sense of accomplishment with their with their progress. So I definitely recommend going for it.

Dacia Guffey  41:50  
I think more hesitancy comes from parents and administrators than it does from kids. To be real honest, I think most of the time when teachers are like, Ooh, I'm scared of that. It's not even the kids, it's they're worried about parents being feeling, you know, not right about it or worried about administrators pushing back on it. And again, it does come back down to is it? How are you framing it? And I think putting a lot of positives, like having shout outs on your pacing tracker, if you're projecting it on the board, you know, recognizing that forward momentum for what it is, is is is helpful, as well. But I think that that a lot of the, you know, worry about, or anxiety from educators about the forest trackers, stems more from how parents and admins gonna react and as from the kids themselves.

Zach Diamond  42:43  
Yeah, 100%, I fully agree with that data, I think that's a very good point, because I too, have really never had a student even like blink an eye at it. It's just there, it's just part of my class, and they don't think about it, you know, sometimes you'll get like a little offhanded comment, like, Oh, I'm an X ahead of you are like that. And you know, because they're, I mean, like I said, these are middle schoolers, and they make fun of each other, pretty much constantly. So you get what you get. I did have a colleague, a monitor classrooms educator, who was at my school for several years. And he he did have an experience where a single parent, I guess, made enough noise that he had to sort of update his format, which I say that just because it can happen. But interestingly, it came from a parent, not from a student. And I mean, it's rare, I hope that I didn't just like scare away any of the people that you brought in, Paul, but like, the story is a singular one off thing that happened of a single parent who made a lot of noise.

Dacia Guffey  43:43  
And it is rare, and it is always easy to adjust. You know, if I, I've had some some times where I had some parents or administrators who were kind of on the fence about and are like, I don't feel like this is great. I'm like, it's no, it's no big deal. We just, we changed to having avatars or we changed to having like, because I teach social studies, everybody picks a historical figure, that's who you are for the rest of the year. So now look, Thomas Jefferson's in, you know, ahead of pace. And we just rolled with it. And I didn't make a big deal about it. I just continued to use the tool. And and so you know, even if you're on the fence, and you're worried about those possibilities of pushback, there's always ways to adjust and still be able to use it, you know, in a in a positive way in your classroom.

Zach Diamond  44:31  
Yeah, and I honestly think that so that's a great point. First of all, you can anonymize the tracker and still have it be public. But I also think that it's worth the risk because the benefits are so incredibly great. Compared to the trade off, which is the possibility that somebody will complain like that. And, I mean, the students see it too, like the students use that tracker. You know, we talked a little bit about the motivation that they get from from move Looking ahead from seeing an ex show up, they asked me, Mr. Diamond, I submitted lesson one, where's my ex? I didn't I don't see my ex yet. Like they want that thing. So it motivates them. But also they use it. Like, I'll use it in discussions, if they asked me what to do, I'll say, well, What lesson are you want? And they like, look up at the tracker, and then say, Oh, I'm on lesson three. Okay, I know what to do. And it's like, it's a very tangible thing that's useful in the classroom. And so, you know, people push back for everything. And I think that a lot, lots of times, people will sort of critique innovative approaches to things without applying the same critique to what's happening currently, which I think is also not working. And so, you know, having that having discussions like this one, where we can talk about how we're framing the data that we are putting in front of the classes helps us to communicate this with parents to communicate this with administrators who may be hesitant to let us do that, or to have that happening in the classrooms. You know, this is why it's so important to frame it this way. I had a student this year, a brand new students in my class, a seventh grader, who on the very first day, I showed them the tracker, and he said to me, that's gonna be up there every day. And I was like, yeah, and he was like, everyone's gonna see everyone's progress. And I was like, yeah. And he was like, Oh, I'm gonna have to do all these lessons, then. I was like, Okay, if that's how you want to look at it, great, I think you should do the lessons, because you want to do the lessons, was the closest I've ever come to having a student who, who really was afraid of the tracker, he wasn't afraid of it. It energized him to participate in class. So great. So this has been fantastic. Again, I think this is an important discussion to have just to help teachers think through this. So we can communicate with those stakeholders who may push back, but just in general, to be thinking about this right and for our for ourselves, to communicate with students as well. So thank you both. So much for this has been amazing. Before we close out, I like to ask you, both of you have been on the podcast before we've heard from you, you're already doing modern classrooms. And we're kind of in it now. Right? But what goals do you have? Like, what where do we go from here? Now that we're doing when our classrooms are fully bought in? What do you hope to see in the future? What do you maybe goals you have for this school year?

Paul O'Donoghue  47:17  
Yeah, so I think teaching ninth grade, and it may be similar for you teaching sixth grade, Zach is that you're sort of getting kids at this new, you know, this new juncture of school, this new juncture of life. And so, a lot of times, I think, especially in ninth grade, their middle school experience, experience is so formative, that when they get to that ninth grade year, they've kind of already decided, you know, who they are as students, essentially. Or they, they think they've decided who they are as students, and so they either feel like, they're really good at school, and they enjoy it. But maybe it's starting to get stressful because of grades and high stakes grades start to matter in high school, or maybe they've faced a lot of struggles or barriers to learning. And so they've just kind of checked out. And, you know, they're not interested in trying to make that progress and, and be successful, even though they, you know, they certainly could, you know, they certainly are able to so, I think what I want to continue working on this year is just is reminding kids to, I always tell them, like, give give my class a chance, right? Like, if you can sort of forget about, you know, any bad or overwhelming or stressful math, middle school experiences you might have had, give this class a chance, you can have total redemption in this in this class, especially because, you know, assuming they haven't been in a monitoring classroom, amount of classroom before and so getting to mind could be a totally different, you know, new changing experience for them. So, I think what I want to continue focusing on this year is just, you know, individualizing, the learning experience, and making kids, you know, feel like their needs are being met, you know, versus needing to keep the pace, you know, keep up with the pace that the teacher is setting. So those, you know, the students that are ready to move ahead, I want to make sure to challenge them so that they're enjoying school enjoying the challenge, but I also want to focus on those kids that have had those bad experiences and, and, you know, try to give them that redemption year so they can taste that little bit of success that can hopefully kind of lead them into a good start of their high school career. So that's my goal. It's a tall task. But yeah, I'm gonna keep at it.

Zach Diamond  49:18  
I love that give my class a chance. And I love that because I think it connects with this, right? Like, students who are used to getting bad grades. It's it's a change in mindset that will open them up to trying right to giving your kids a chance to try to make that progress and seeing that they can. It might not be as fast as they had expected because they're used to the idea of going at the teachers pace, but but they can and if they give it a chance, they'll they'll see that they can I love that. I love that ball. How much you Dasia what what do you hope to see in the future? What goals do you have for this year?

Dacia Guffey  49:50  
Um, well, I mean, I've been building slowly my library of video content and building up you know, my Canvas courses over the past several years. So I'm feeling in a in a pretty good place. As far as that piece of it. I know a lot of times when people first start modern classrooms, that is the piece that feels the most daunting, is building their video library. And I feel like I'm getting to a sweet spot with that. But I'm really working hard to try and build a lot more student choice into my lessons and into my activities I want to give, you know, I'm actually starting to sort of test run mastery paths with some of my Canvas courses. So students can go in different directions based on where their achievement levels are, and where they're able to, you know, where they need more support, or, you know, sending those kids straight to those aspire to dues if they're, you know, ready for them. And just building more of that student choice into my lessons and into my modules than perhaps I ever had before. That's, that's been my goals this year. And that's what I'm working towards right now.

Zach Diamond  50:56  
That's awesome. That's awesome. I love that as sort of like, where do we go from here? Because yeah, it's after doing modern classrooms for long enough. I also feel like I'm kind of in a sweet spot with the videos. And it's really great, honestly, because I know what's what's coming, like I don't have that much planning to do right now. And so I can focus on other things like I can focus on individualizing, sort of my teaching where it's needed, really using the data on my tracker to make to make sure that the students who are falling behind, get the attention they need, I can focus on reaching out to their families during my planning periods when I would have been making those lessons. And so yeah, it's definitely nice to get to that point, and have that time back, right, have invested the time and now kind of have it back to really, really work with the students closely. Because my videos are pretty much done, and I'm not gonna lie. It's really great. It's really nice.

Dacia Guffey  51:45  
It's a great moment.

Zach Diamond  51:46  
It is it is good, you let us know how our listeners could connect with you. You're definitely all over modern classrooms, both of you so people might want to reach out because you've been on the podcast before and your name has come up. So let us know how can our listeners connect with you if they wanted to talk more about progress or I guess anything MCP?

Dacia Guffey  52:07  
Definitely they can reach out to me with my I'm a modern classrooms email, they should dot GFI at modern classrooms.org. They can also reach out to me for my personal email, which is deja 1976 at gmail either one of those I'm happy. Always happy to hear from other educators I love to share resources, especially for social studies, folks, I have a plethora of things I love to share and I just love love working and connecting with other educators so please don't hesitate to reach out

Zach Diamond  52:37  
Paul How about you?

Paul O'Donoghue  52:38  
Um, um, you know, the monitor classroom probably mentor directory. If you search my name there you can probably find information about me but yeah, I'm I'm decently active on Twitter. My handle is at Paul Donahue underscore. And so you'll find like, lots of reposts about MCP stuff grating stuff I'm really passionate about the occasional professional running seen might might hit your feed here and there. But I do try to make it pretty, pretty education based. So Twitter's a great spot. Feel free to go back and look through my feed, send me a DM at DM, if you have any questions or want to chat more, that would be a great place to reach out.

Zach Diamond  53:17  
Awesome. Cool. And I'll link your email your modern classrooms, email as well. To both of you thank you again, I can't say enough how much I've enjoyed this conversation and they're just talking about this stuff. Like, you know, we can dive so deep on this one singular topic, right? It is a very big aspect of modern classrooms. But it's been a very, very good discussion. And I've definitely enjoyed nerding out on the on the tracker kind of thing. So thank you both. Thank you both for joining me. This has been incredible.

Paul O'Donoghue  53:45  
Thank you, Zach.

Dacia Guffey  53:46  
Thank you, Zach, appreciate it.

Zach Diamond  53:48  
Definitely, I appreciate it as well. listeners. Remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org. And you can find the show notes for this episode at podcast dot modern classrooms.org/156. We'll have this episode's transcript uploaded on Friday, so be sure to check back in the show notes if you'd like to access that. And thank you all for listening. We'll be back next Sunday. 

Zach Diamond  54:18  
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 dot modern classrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @modernclassproj that's p r o j we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project podcast.