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.

Toni Rose Deanon  0:28  
Hello and welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast. My name is Toni Rose Deanon, they them pronouns, a designated hype person here at modern classrooms. And I am joined by Kim Weaver, She her pronouns, a former classroom teacher and current stem and Ed Tech coordinator for the Olympic educational service district in northwestern Washington state, and Erin Luckhardt, an instructional technology coordinator and future educator Academy co teacher for Charlevoix Emmet Intermediate School District. I hope I said that correctly, Erin, because I was looking at that spelling and I was like, oh my,

Erin Luckhardt  1:02  
it's not, it's not what it sounds it's Charlevoix. But all good, yeah, Charlevoix.

Toni Rose Deanon  1:06  
But welcome Kim and Erin. Thank you so much for being in this space with me and saying yes to the podcast. And so before we get started, what is expanding your brain lately?

Kim Weaver  1:18  
Well, I have to say AI, and I know the a lot of folks are saying that AI is going to shrink our brains, but I'm having the opposite experience as I explore the potentials and try to avoid the pitfalls of AI, and I'm getting so many requests from teachers, schools and districts for that support, and it is definitely expanding My thinking, 

Toni Rose Deanon  1:41  
I have to do a follow up question, Kim of like, how are you finding those resources, and how are you ensuring that those resources are vetted and and, you know, quote, unquote good.

Kim Weaver  1:55  
I don't think it's about resources. I think it's about how we approach AI as a thought partner, I do a lot of support for teachers in prompt engineering. It's not the same as just doing a Google search, where you put in search terms and you get what you get. It's a process of refining, telling the AI tool enough about what you are looking for and what you are not looking for, and then that iterative process of getting exactly what you want. I see a lot of people putting their initial question into AI. They'll say, I want a lesson plan about photosynthesis, and then they don't like what the AI gives them, but it's because they weren't specific enough in their prompt. So I don't necessarily think that there are good tools and bad tools. I think it's about understanding how you interact with the AI to get exactly what you want.

Toni Rose Deanon  2:45  
Oh, thanks for that call-in what a great way you just expanded my brain. Kim, so I love that so much. It's about how we interact. And I think it's such a great skill too, to be specific with what we want, right? Because I think that's a skill that society. We're just very vague. We want people to read our minds, and so when we play with AI, it's like we get frustrated because it's not giving us what we want, but we're not also being specific enough, and so it's really pushing that part of the brain where we have to be specific with what we want. So thank you for sharing that, Erin. What about you?

Erin Luckhardt  3:18  
I feel like I have three book studies going this summer with local educators, because why just do one, right? But I love reading their reactions, their comments, their feedback. One of the books is Rob's book meet every learner's needs, and it's that just brings me a lot of joy going in and reading how teachers are reacting and what pieces they're thinking about, and how they can pull different elements into their classroom, and just kind of being able to be a thought partner, but in a little bit more of a relaxed way during summertime too. You know, we joke that you can read at the beach or on the boat or while your kids are napping, whatever works for you. So it's super fun to just get to engage in those conversations where teachers are having a moment to pause and reflect and think differently about how they want to design learning in their classrooms this upcoming school year.

Toni Rose Deanon  4:15  
And it's such a great way, a great reminder, honestly, that learning is continuous, right? We're, we're always learning. It's not that we pause and break during the summer. It's actually like, Oh, now I have more capacity to learn the things that I've been putting off because I don't have 100 kids in front of me. So I am actually going to reach out to you, Erin, too, because, you know, we're doing book clubs for modern classroom, and we do that every semester, and so it'd be really cool to figure out what your best practices are for book studies and how what you know just what has been successful and what has not been successful. So I'd love to connect with you on that. But thank you again. I think again, this question is just a reminder, right, that teachers were constantly learning like learning never stops. And I think. Even just adults and humans in general, our learning continues regardless. So again, thank you for entertaining that question. I really love that question. So you know, before we before we even jump into, like, another follow up question, because I know that my coworker, colleague, Jackie, was like, Hey, I have two guests who would love to get on the podcast to talk about professional development. So that was, like, the story that I got. Can y'all tell me a little bit more about how that came to fruition? Of, like, oh no. Like, this would be really great, because you two are from different places, right? So you're not even working together, like, different states, really. And so I'm curious, how did this, how did this happen?

Kim Weaver  5:39  
Sure. So both Erin and I, we met just a couple of months ago at the modern classroom project leadership day, and we ended up in a breakout room with Jackie, and we were just talking about our work and what we do, and I've also led some blended learning book studies. And Erin was like, I do that, and our jobs are kind of weird. And so when you meet someone that has a similar job, it's like, oh my gosh, you're like me. And there aren't very many people doing this weird job that is hard to describe sometimes. And so I really enjoyed, you know, learning from Erin about what she's been doing, and I shared some stuff about what I was doing. And then that's when Jackie was like, Hey, you two need to take it on the road, on the podcast.

Erin Luckhardt  6:23  
Yeah, I think just lots of connections about Kim and I's role are a little bit like, non traditional in the sense of, we're not classroom teachers. We're not administrators or, like, I don't serve as an instructional coach for one district. I serve multiple districts, and so we're a little bit more removed from that kind of like day to day classroom, and maybe as such, have to get a little bit more creative. At least for me, I feel like I have to get a little bit more creative about, how do I introduce new ideas or different, you know, concepts for switching up learning design in classroom or making sure that we're engaging students in their learning. And it just seems like, like Kim said, we kept being like, Oh yeah, that's that's me too. We also both live, like, very close to water, and have cute dogs, and so clearly that those are things that you bond over as well.

Toni Rose Deanon  7:19  
This is so great, and I think that's one of the best things about MCP, is that we're really good at providing opportunities for for everyone to connect with each other, right? Of being like, Hey, you're the only person that's doing this at your school. What are you doing? I'm the only person that's doing this at my school. So it's really this creating community. And so I was really excited when Jackie reached out and was like, Hey, I have two amazing folks who would be so good on the podcast. Just talk about, you know, engaging professional development. And this is actually right on time, because there's lots of conversations about how we want our teachers to differentiate for our students, yet we don't differentiate for our teachers, right? So professional development is seen as, I'm going to sit here, take notes, be on my phone, nod my head when you need me to nod my head, and then just go back and do what I was doing, because none of that made sense anyway, and I'm not going to put forth the effort. And I'm only saying this because I was also that teacher of like, this is so boring, and being neurodivergent, I can't pay attention for 6090 to 90 minutes to two hours just being talked at right? And so this, again, I'm just so curious to see what your experiences and your expertise are all about, so that we can continue pushing forth this like engaging and relevant and differentiated professional development, because we really need that. So thank you again for that. Now tell us a little bit more about who you are, something that we haven't covered yet, and then how you started your MCP journey. Because I'm always so curious to see how people have heard of us. Sure.

Erin Luckhardt  8:49  
So I'm Erin. I've been in the classroom for about I spent about eight years in a classroom, and then have done a lot of kind of different roles in terms of professional learning, blended learning, and then now I get to co teach a CTE class. So in addition to being an instructional Tech coordinator, I co teach a class for high school students who are exploring the field of education, which really brings me a lot of joy, and it's great to see like these are the kids that are going to be, you know, world changers and life changers. I first heard about modern classroom. I think the summer of 2020, probably, like many people, Kareem podcast with Jennifer Gonzalez and Cult of Pedagogy was something that was really powerful. I was working with teachers and kind of an online summer learning opportunity. Anyway, we were talking about, what are we going to do when we go back to school, how do we use instructional videos? And that podcast was just really a succinct way to think about, how do we create videos and what kind of impact can they have in our classroom? And so I kind of dipped my toe in there. I shared it with everyone. And then actually, we have a local educator. Here in northern Michigan, like shout out to Hillary, who said, Hey, I think you should look back at this some more. And I said, Oh, that sounds great. How'd you hear about it? And she was like, you, you shared it with us in the PD that you did this summer. And I got connected with Emily dia on the MCP team, and just had more and more conversations. She connected me with other folks who were designing professional learning while using the modern classroom project framework, and so it's just kind of continued to grow from there

Kim Weaver  10:29  
awesome. So I think that's kind of funny, because you've come full circle. Now you found out about it from a podcast, and now here we are making a podcast. I almost broke into song there for a moment, but so I have a non traditional career path. I have two degrees in engineering, and I worked as an environmental restoration engineer for nine years before becoming an educator. And my first experiences as an educator were in the Peace Corps. So I served in the Peace Corps in Ghana for two years. And it's very ironic that I'm now an Ed Tech coordinator, because back then, in my first classroom years, I was teaching computers with just a chalkboard and chalk and no computers, and most of the time no electricity, so I was drawing icons on the board, and it was a little bit let's just Say you have to be very resourceful anytime you are in a new environment that is not familiar to you, and that was really trying to pull out all the stops, is, how can I equip these students to be successful on a computer when they've never actually been on a computer? So that was my introduction to teaching. By the time I left my school, we did have a small computer lab with 19 functioning computers, so that was a real win. And my students did then have some practical experience. So that is kind of getting us to me in the classroom. I spent six years teaching math, engineering and computers, and to get to modern classrooms. I heard about it from a colleague during the pandemic, and ended up taking the summer virtual mentorship as a learner in the summer of 2022 and I'm a little bit picky about the professional development that I enjoy, and I thought it was fantastic. I became a believer in the modern classroom approach and promoted it in our region. And so I also worked with three of my other job alikes across Washington State, Stefan, Debbie and Vanessa, and we sent teachers through the summer virtual mentorship Institute in 2023 2024 and this summer to create a Washington State cohort of over 100 teachers that have gone through the program, and then we support them throughout the school year with zooms in classroom coaching and classroom visits and one on one support. And so that's kind of my MCP journey till now, and very excited to have a cohort going through virtual mentorship this summer that includes two principals and seven teachers from the same school district. So very excited about that going forward.

Toni Rose Deanon  13:11  
Oh, y'all are, y'all are amazing. First of all, so thank you for all the work that you have done. And it's it is really exciting. It's a full circle, right? Like heard on the podcast. Now we're on the podcast having conversations, and I really love getting to know our guests, too, because again, like, I've heard great things about you know, how you implement MCP in your schools and your districts, and being in a podcast allows me to then get to know you as human beings, of like, your journey. So that's really, really cool. And I know Kim, like your team is such a powerhouse, like y'all are so aligned in so many different ways, and you all just have y'all are all on the same page, which I really love, right? That's something that when you have, you just hold on to, because I know how powerful it is when you have a team that just gets it and then continues to push you, as well as as leaders and educators. So, you know, when you're talking about computer skills, that's a whole set of skills that students need to learn. So you're teaching them, you know, the content skills and then the computer skills as well. It could be overwhelming. So I'm really interested in hearing more, because I know that we have teachers who also are not, not, not, I want to say, not great, but like, they just don't toy with the the devices, right as much, or technology as much. So okay, well, thank you for sharing your stories. Now, many educators feel professional development can sometimes be a one size fits all approach. It was something that we were talking about, right? So from your experience, what are the most common pain points with traditional PD? And then how do the blended self paced and mastery based model begin to address those challenges?

Erin Luckhardt  14:49  
I think you you kind of mentioned it earlier, like sometimes teachers walk into a situation and content maybe isn't feeling super relevant. It. Not connected to their day to day, and yet that's the expectation that they sit and be good listeners. Think about application, and I think even with the best of intent, sometimes it just misses the mark. And we think about again, kind of that like, what do we want our classrooms to look like? How do we support all the learners in our classroom? And we've got this tension, because when we're coming to a professional learning opportunity, that doesn't seem to be the experience for the most part, I think there are spaces where that's happening, and that's super exciting, but for the most part, it seems to be kind of that one size fits all. So I think certainly, you know, when you think about professional goals, that teachers have things that they're working toward in their classroom, they're not always met with learning opportunities that help them build that skill set or reflect on what's going well or what they could improve as as well.

Kim Weaver  15:57  
Definitely, I think that relevance issue when you have 1000 other fires that you're trying to put out, I think it can be really difficult to, you know, elevate professional development with that. This is relevant and important to me right now. You know, time is our most precious non renewable resource, whether it's in the classroom when we're teaching our learners, or whether it's in professional development. And I think a lot of times in both scenarios, whether we're teaching students or whether we're working with teachers in professional development, we get into this box checking mode. I covered that. I covered this year's schedule. I covered how to access your learning management system. I covered this. I covered that. We get into this box checking mentality, not out of any malice, just because time is so short. So I think that's the biggest pitfall, is trying to cram so many things into such a limited time and and failing to surface that relevance and say, hey, you know, I know you have all these other things that you really need to be doing, but for the next hour or two hours, the reason why we are focusing on this and just allowing teachers to build their own relevance, and if they if they can't see a reason why that is the most important thing they need to be doing in that minute. Of course, they're going to be grading and checking email and responding to parents and doing all of those things that they do immediately see the relevance of

Toni Rose Deanon  17:25  
Yeah, and bringing it back to classroom practices, right, starting with your why, starting with a purpose. I always ask my students, Hey, why do you think we're doing this just so that they can understand the importance and so a lot of the times, even when I shifted from middle school teacher to instructional coach, my biggest thing was like, Oh my gosh, how am I going to teach adults? And then quickly realizing I need to bring in all of these classroom practices that I did with my middle schoolers, and I need to do that with adults to make it that much more engaging and fun. Like, let's play, right? Like, learning doesn't have to be awful. And I don't know when that shift happened that were like, you know, as we turn into adults, we just have to sit and get like you were saying, Erin, right? Like, there's good intention behind it, but the impact is just not it's not great. And so, you know, I'm thinking about this checklist too, because I think in my brain, when I do a checklist and I feel like I'm accomplished, right? I feel like I did something, I feel productive. And I also think that it's kind of the survival trait as well, right? Like I have, like you said, 1000 fires that I need to put out, and so the checklist is going to make me kind of tone it down a little bit more, or feel a little bit like I have done some stuff, right? So thank you for sharing that now. Well, we're going to talk about Universal Design for Learning, because we've talked about, we've heard about UDL a lot in a lot of education spaces, right? So how does professional development for teachers tie into UDL? And then why is it important for educators to experience UDL themselves? I know you both have talked about already, the importance of engagement, the importance of relevance. Can you add on anything else that you haven't mentioned already?

Kim Weaver  19:03  
Well, I think for me, the UDL guidelines, and particularly the 3.0 guidelines that came out most recently, they really do apply equally, no matter what the age of the learner is and relevance is right in there. Choice is there joy is mentioned in the latest version of the UDL guidelines. Where are we finding joy in our learning and in our collective experience of what it means to learn, and that is how I think about professional development. I always have the UDL guidelines up, and I think, if it takes longer, and we and we cover or do less content, but the teachers have that relevance and joy and choice that is okay with me. I just the thing that you have to, I think, say goodbye to is the idea that you are. To cover it all in the time allowed, and to instead prioritize those UDL guidelines, and teachers will feel what it is like to sit in a classroom where that is a priority, and I think it's really difficult as an educator to experience that really good learning environment, and then turn your back on it and say, Oh no, I'm going to go back to fully lecturing, just talking at my students, doing education to them, not for them or with them. I think it's it's very difficult to go back once you've seen a universally designed educational experience from a learner's standpoint,

Erin Luckhardt  20:42  
I would just add that I think that modeling is such an important aspect in our professional learning. And sometimes I think about professional learning as kind of like this parallel path where we've got our content aim, like, what is it that we're we're working on and hoping that teachers get out of this at the end, but also, when we think about the design of it, it's like, how can we help expose them to something as a learner through that perspective? And so you know, with whether it's thinking about UDL, whether it's thinking about like the MCP framework, whatever kind of new learning strategies we're thinking about, how do we model those so that teachers not only think about the content, but also then can go like, I really appreciated it when Kim set it up this way, like she just said, How can I bring this back into my classroom, for my students? Because I know for me as a learner, I value that to me, that feels like it doesn't solve our issue of time, right? Time is always a barrier, but it helps us to kind of sneak in a couple of other elements into our professional learning. So it's not just content focused, but we can take other pieces away. And I think on the same note, like, if the content isn't geared toward me necessarily, maybe that does the learning design is, and I can pull from that.

Kim Weaver  22:05  
Yeah, I think one of the one of the things that I find really important in this area is to allow the teachers their metacognitive moments. For instance, if we've just gone through a learning experience, we pull up the UDL guidelines and say, What did you see or hear me doing? What did you see or hear your colleagues doing? Where were we operating on the UDL chart, pausing to give that metacognitive moment, they might understand that what they just did feels different than other learning experiences, but really allowing them to then step outside of the learner role be metacognitive, identify the UDL strategies that were just employed. I see a lot of aha moments when we when we do that,

Toni Rose Deanon  22:50  
it's the naming of it, right? I mean, this just goes with life in general, of the awareness of being able to name what we just saw, name what we experience. And then I was also thinking about too, you know, the positive process, and then the time to plan, right? So now we process it. Now here's 1015, minutes for you to plan on how you're going to implement the strategies that you just experienced in your own classrooms. Because I think a lot of the times, if we have 60 minutes of PD, it's a lot of here's all the information, and then there's no time to plan and implement and to collaborate with others, right? We have to make those opportunities, or provide those opportunities for teachers to collaborate with each other and talk with each other about their own best practices. And Erin, it was really interesting when you said modeling is really important. I actually wrote that down. I circled it and then I underlined it before you said it, because that was my point too. But I'm so glad that you said it. Said it, and it is important for our teachers to be exposed as a learner, to see how it feels, how it sounds, how it looks, right? And when we're talking about the pressure to cover so many things, because our teachers are feeling that. So then that means our principals are feeling it, our instructional coaches are feeling it. And to be able to be aware enough to say, You know what, we have to prioritize, what's the most important, what's the most relevant, and we have to provide choices so that our teachers feel like there's still autonomy in the way that they're moving when they're creating the stuff that they're creating. And so I was thinking about how perfect it is for the lesson classification at modern classroom, right? Must do, should do, aspire to do. I always, always revert back to that, because as a teacher, I have so many things that we could do. They're not all must do's so now I have to figure out which ones are the should do and the aspire to do so. Okay, now the concept, well, when we talk about blended professional development, right, what does that practically look like in terms of design and delivery? Can you share an example of successful blended PD module you've implemented, and then what made it effective?

Kim Weaver  24:59  
So. So I will have to start talking about the shift to student led, which is a great book by Catlin Tucker and Katie Novak. My colleagues and I designed a book study around this, and it is blended learning and mastery based and all of the all of the lovely things, and I think the critical part, again, it's all in the UDL chart, teachers had a choice. They could choose to engage anywhere from three hours to 22 hours of learning. Of those 22 hours, only six of the hours were on Zoom, and the rest was at your own pace. So there were checkpoints where, okay, you have to get to this chapter by this day to engage in the live session. And then there was follow up. And we did this book study during the school year, so they could always choose something to implement right away. We always had kind of a opportunity after the live session to say, Okay, you saw six strategies in the reading that you did on your own pace, and we discussed them in the live session, implement one and tell us about it. And that is additional, you know, hours. And so it was very successful because of the high amount of choice, how much they wanted to engage, which strategies they wanted to try. And I do think spreading it out during the school year, instead of doing it more intensely during the summer, allow the teachers to successfully implement just do one thing, and then they would see the success, and then the next chapter, or the next live session, they'd be ready to do more. And a lot of those metacognitive moments sprinkled throughout all of the sessions, ability to talk to Java likes. In our live sessions, we prioritize getting people in breakout rooms with people like them, similar roles, similar grade levels. And that, I think, is something that we get the most positive feedback on is, you know, I'm a second grade teacher, and if I'm paired with a, you know, AP, calculus teacher in a breakout room. We don't have as much to talk about. So I think behind the scenes, what my co facilitators and I really did was try to get to know our participants, so that when we came to those live sessions, we could help support their own relevance by putting them with people like them. So I really think that that was something. We've offered it twice, and we'll be doing it again this coming year. If you're a teacher in Washington State, look us up, find our find our blended learning resource study. And I think another reason why it was successful is just because it's such a great foundational text. And if, those of you hearing this podcast before for the first time, haven't heard of the shift to student led, check it out. I think it really bridges the gap between modern classroom projects and the three pillars, you know, and okay, what do I do to take one step towards it? I think sometimes a modern classroom shift can seem so big, but I think that the shift to student led book really helps educators say, okay, I can take this one step and then another and another and another.

Toni Rose Deanon  28:08  
That is incredible. Honestly, I have so many notes on there too. Sorry, Erin. But before, before we go on to your greatness. To Erin, I just had some follow up questions for Kim. So the three to 22 hours how? What's the time period that teachers can get that done in?

Kim Weaver  28:26  
So we had it over, I think, a period of five months, but the the live sessions were checkpoints that were spread throughout there. So for instance, if you the the introduction in chapter one were completely asynchronous. You had three or four weeks to do that, and then we had a live session. And so it was spread out over quite a few months, but people chose which chapters might be more relevant to them and which asynchronous, and then live sessions to participate in.

Toni Rose Deanon  28:59  
Okay? And this is also such a great reminder that getting to know your learners is important y'all that makes it that much more fun. It doesn't matter how old the learners are, like we said, Right? UDL, any age, it is so important to get to know your learners, you can make it that much more relevant for them and purposeful, right? So thank you for sharing that piece of like, I had to get to know the people who were signing up because I didn't want them to be talking to somebody that they can't like share ideas with, right? It makes it that much more relevant. And Dr Tucker, Catelyn Tucker is just amazing. So I now feel like I have to put this book and our list of books that we want to read, and I'll probably pick your brain too. Kim, of like, hey, what again, what was successful was not so that we can make sure that it is, it's it's all good. So thank you for that. Okay. Erin, yeah.

Erin Luckhardt  29:50  
I mean, first of all, I Yes, ditto. I have it too. Did it last summer? Love it shipped to student led. Is awesome. So. Yeah, I think similarly to Kim, a lot of times I use it with book studies, but I think the lesson classification piece that you kind of alluded to before Toni Rose is a piece that is really transformational with professional learning for a couple of reasons. First of all, we know that many educators wear many hats and have a lot on their plate. I think Kim correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we both kind of work in more like rural areas where we have teachers who are like, also the athletic director for two hours of their day. Or, you know, when people talk about instructional coaches, there's not a lot of districts that I support that have those or have curriculum directors. And so by having lesson classification, it honors professionals and their time. And it says, like, Hey, this is a busy season of life for you. If all you can do is the must do's, that's okay, that's great. You're still learning. You're still moving forward, oftentimes. So teachers are like, I only did the must do. So I'm like, That's okay. That's all you had to do, right? That's that's really the baseline. So I think that piece has been really powerful in establishing, like, learning can happen in different ways and at different seasons of your life, you'll have more capacity for it than others. So that's been a really cool thing. The other piece that it does is, like Kim said, if you're super excited about this chapter, if this is really intriguing to you, or this content, whether it's book study or something different, you can dive deeper into it and jump into the should do's and the Aspire to do's. And similarly, in Michigan, we call them sketch hours. There are continuing education hours. I just write sketch apps that are variable, so teachers can earn, you know, like, six hours, or they can earn 15 hours if they were super excited about something. And I think that frees you up too, like, when we think about relevance, and why do I need to know about this? When you look at like, Rob's book, meet every learner's needs. And we're thinking about a kindergartener, a first grade teacher. They're not maybe going to implement the model in its entirety, but they're thinking about instructional videos and how that could support families and school to family engagement. And they're really excited about those chapters. They can dive deeper and start to create things and work on slides that will be the baseline of their videos. So just honoring them as professionals, knowing that their lives are busy outside of of you know, just work, but also letting them dive into things that feel really, really meaningful and beneficial for their classroom too.

Toni Rose Deanon  32:39  
I bet your educators are so happy to have you both.

Erin Luckhardt  32:43  
I hope so, right.

Toni Rose Deanon  32:45  
I mean, you just said it, Erin, right, like honoring them as professionals, because I think a lot of the times, especially with with society and how society views educators, right, we don't often get the respect, first of all, and then we often don't get that, the autonomy to move how we want to move, and then so much pressure to perform the way that we want them to perform, right? And so the piece of honoring them as professionals and understanding that life is busy for everyone, our students, our stakeholders, our educators, and having the lesson classification of must do, should do, aspire to do, like you said, allows for that flexibility and capacity, checking in your capacity. And I know that educators are so much of a perfectionist, right? Of I need to do all of the things. I need to have an A on all the things. And because, again, that's the grind mindset, right? And so with the just saying, hey, you know what? It's okay. Must do. That's it. That's totally fine. You could still jump into the conversation even if you didn't do the should do and aspire to do's and it allows for the choice too. And again, elevating the excitement and the passion that educators have, it's so powerful, and it costs nothing. Cost Nothing at all. If anything is just hyping that educator up and being like, you know what? You're excited about this, we're excited about it. How can we support you? And I love that. And you know you both talked about the blended piece, where there's a lot of flexibility and it perfect like it ties perfectly with self pacing. So let's talk about self pacing, because a lot of the times, again, I hear from educators about students, well, they're just not going to do anything. How do I know that they're actually going to do the work? So same question for you all. How do you know that there's accountability? How do you ensure accountability and provide timely support when educators are working through PD at their own pace? And I know Kim you said that there are six hours zooms that that teachers engage with, right? Is there anything else? And then, what are some strategies for keeping educators engaged and on track when you're not meeting in real time?

Kim Weaver  34:54  
So we use the Canvas, learning management system for our professional development and. So I think this engagement strategies. Luckily, there's a handy chart called the UDL guidelines that has an entire column called engagement strategies. It's the same stuff that works for student so a lot of choice, relevance I mentioned before, but also interaction and feedback. You can do that more than just in a live session. For instance, one of the ways that we allow participants to introduce themselves in the book study is to introduce themselves on a Padlet map. So you can explore the map and see where are the participants. Oh, who's near me? And on that map they also can post what their role is. So you can search by, are there any other CTE teachers? Are there any other special ed experts in this class with me? So allowing them to introduce themselves, that's still something that can allow connections to be made asynchronously, and whether they are introducing themselves on a map or introducing we also allowed participants to introduce themselves on the UDL chart by saying, what is the most important aspect of UDL for me as a learner, and so they were able to see other folks who really needed that, varied methods for response, navigation and movement. So we learned about them, they learned about each other. They learned to make connections. I think that that is it's all right there on the UDL chart, but I think it's about thinking creatively about what does this look like for adults? What does this look like on a learning management system so that by the time we reach our first live session, we already kind of feel like we have a bit of a community, and I think that's something. Teaching can be a very isolating profession and fostering that sense of, oh, these educators are going through the same challenges I am. They teach a similar role as me, and so that's what I think keeps people coming back, is that sense of community and that we really are all traveling it together. But then also, I just want to talk about prior knowledge, which is another thing that's on the UDL chart, and honoring that expertise, we as a profession in the past have done really bad job of surfacing teachers prior knowledge and their own expertise and what they're bringing and giving people the opportunity to do that with their job like colleagues, I think is something that is rare and very valued by the participants.

Erin Luckhardt  37:30  
I'm writing down so many new ideas just listening to Kim talk. I've got a false sticky note. I think, you know, similarly, we try to really make our LMS kind of work for us, and also model what, what could it look like for them with their learners too? What strategies might they be able to take away? We use suggested pacing slides so when they happen, they'll see suggested pacing. We send out reminder emails that are like, hey at this point, here's the suggested pace where you should be at within the book study. If you're not there yet, that's okay. Maybe you've got other plans. Maybe you're traveling. You're, you know, don't have Wi Fi, whatever it is, but we just kind of provide those. I have a pacing tracker that I provide as an optional thing for participants to print at the beginning, just like I use with my students. So really, again, similar strategies that I use with my CTE high school students. We pull in here. I'm reaching out to folks. So if people haven't joined the book study after two and a half weeks, I'm reaching out, just checking in saying, Hey, want to make sure you're good. There's no issues. Jumping in. Anything I can do to support you, just like we do to students if they haven't engaged in learning yet. So I think a lot of those really similar tools can be helpful with adult learners too. And again, modeling is like my my word of the day today, but wherever we can model those strategies that they can pull into their own classrooms can be really powerful too.

Kim Weaver  39:01  
Just want to add one thing about pacing, because this is something that we experienced when we did the shift to student led book study. It can be really challenging to think, Well, how long is too long between live sessions? And how long is not long enough? Like, how much flexibility you want to give teachers the most flexibility. But if it's six weeks between live sessions, they often lose momentum. And so I think we tried to get feedback after every live session about not just the pacing of the live session, but the time in between. And we ended up making some tweaks. The first time we ran the book study, it was a month between live sessions, and the second time we ran it, we shrunk that down to three weeks, because we found folks were saying, I'm losing momentum. I'm forgetting where I was, and so kind of shortening that time between live sessions, always seeking feedback from participants, seeing what they're saying, and then making those adjustments. Momentum, I think, is the secret ingredient here, and it's so hard to. Know when you're meeting too frequently or not frequently enough, checking in too frequently or not frequently enough. I think that's where the refining has come in for the team I work with on these things. Is the momentum factor,

Toni Rose Deanon  40:15  
yeah, and it's hard too, because of time, we don't know all the things that our teachers are doing, because I know when I plan for learning experiences for our community, I often get stuck with what would be the perfect day and time what would be the time period? Because, again, it's different time zones for me, right? You all are in the same the same time zone for me. I'm like, oh, man, this is I don't know, when do teachers of the West Coast get out of school? Some get out of three. Some get out at four. Some are doing after school stuff, so they can't join until five. So there's a lot of things to think about. And so, you know, Kim, I I'm thinking about this prior knowledge that you stated, because you're absolutely right. We don't, I don't think I was ever asked as an educator. What all do you know often anyway, I know there's more times that I was not asked than there were times that I was asked. So I have a follow up question. You know, when it comes to prior knowledge, one thing that I did as an instructional coach was that I did, I facilitated a lot of the learning, yes, and I invited teachers to also lead the professional development because I was instructional coach during covid. Mind you, I had no idea what I was doing. I will say this till I die. I had no idea what I was doing, and the teachers were the one that were actually doing the thing I was just there again to hype them up, to honor them as professionals, to say, validate them, and say, yes, what you're doing works. So how do you both highlight educators who are doing some of the best practices that you've seen, or even you weren't aware of how do you highlight educators and how do you invite them so that we can continue honoring them as professionals, validating and also recognizing the effort that they're putting in their classroom.

Erin Luckhardt  42:10  
I think that's, I mean, it's a tough question, especially when we have districts who are spread out, and I love the term Java likes, I'm totally stealing that. Kim, I have a lot of small districts where you are the middle and high school social studies department, or you teach all middle school math. So for me, kind of creating like those spaces of community, or getting to know who are the other teachers in our region that are in those similar roles, and connecting them, whether that's like, through email, whether it's through a small in person meetups, to share, I think is really powerful. And again, that's sometimes the recognition. I think people need to like, keep going like, Hey, I see you. I see the effort that you're putting in. I know that this is hard work and it's worth sharing because it's so cool. One of my favorite things to do locally when we can make it happen is to get teachers into the classroom where that's happening. So we have an awesome third grade teacher locally. Shout out to Nikki. She's a mentor and an implementer, but when teachers are thinking about I'm like, I'm kind of curious about this modern classroom thing, but what does it look like? I always encourage them to go visit her classroom and see what it looks like and talk to her students. So wherever I think we can do that too is so helpful, which is tricky to do. It doesn't always work. Subs are always kind of a challenge. But when it does, even if, if teachers can get out for, you know, that first hour of the day and then have 20 minutes to chat with her or follow up via email or text conversations, those, I think are some of the things that I try to do, to just set them up, to connect with each other and and be that like connector and convener. I don't have to know all the things, but how do I bring these people together so they feel like they have a community?

Kim Weaver  44:08  
Yeah, and I think that the approaches can be quite subtle. For instance, if you started a professional development about Universal Design for Learning by showing the chart and saying, Where do you want to improve your practice, most teachers are going to find somewhere where they want to do better, but it's a subtle difference. To say, Where do you feel like you're doing well on this chart, and where do you feel like you want to do better? That is a small difference, but it allows people to find like, hey, yeah, I am doing you know some of these things very well, and this is the thing that I want to improve. Just one other strategy I'll highlight that we use with our modern classroom cohort, which, again, is over 100 teachers spread out all over Washington. We have monthly live sessions to support them. But the other thing we have, we call it the celebration and commiseration. Station. And so there's two categories of posts on this Padlet. And one is, I did an awesome thing, and I just want somebody to say, yay. And the other one is, I tried something, it failed miserably. I'm not looking for solutions. I just want somebody to say, you know, good job on you for trying something new. Keep at it. You know it. And the celebration and commiseration Station has been pretty popular among our participants, because, again, sometimes you don't want solutions. You just want to say, like this, this worked. This didn't work, whatever. And so I think that has been a place where maybe you see someone posting a celebration like I have finally fine tuned my pacing tracker. If that's something you're struggling with, you can see who posted it, and you can go to them for help. So that's been another way we've tried to connect our participants, because they're the ones implementing. They know what's working and what's not working. A lot of times, our role is to just connect them and get out of the way, and that is the best way to honor their expertise is to put them right out there in the celebration station cheering them on.

Toni Rose Deanon  46:08  
You both really highlighted community, the importance of community and the importance of being able to connect educators with each other. Because oftentimes we we meaning just school leaders or just ourselves. We expect to do it ourselves, when really we can create those opportunities for teachers to connect with each other so they can have those conversations. Kim, that is such a great idea. You know, it's a shared space to say, Hey, I did this thing, and you have a whole community backing you up understanding, and you don't have to over explain what it is that you're celebrating, right? So if you were like, oh, you know. So if you were saying, Oh, I did this pacing tracker, I finally figured it out, there are no questions like, what's a pacing tracker? Right? It's like, oh, man, that's so dope. You get it. That's, that's amazing. And then also, not just the celebration piece, but also the failures. We're also going to celebrate the failures, if anything right? I did this thing. It didn't work out. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm sharing it. I just want to release it so I'm not holding on to it and creating narratives in my head of how I'm not a great teacher because it failed. I love that there's a way to release and that it's really clear for the educators to say, I'm just releasing. I actually don't need your unsolicited advice.

Toni Rose Deanon  47:22  
We don't have to find a solution for everything. I just want to be heard. And I think that's a really important piece, too, because again, oftentimes teachers want to vent and then people want to fix it for them, when really they just want to vent and release it. So thank you for creating that space. Erin, you said, classroom visits, I know I can only imagine how tricky it is for teachers to visit each other, because, again, that is not a priority for a lot of school districts because of a lack of adults in the in the schools already, right? And this made me think too, educators know each other as human beings. For the most part, they know Oh, so and so is a math teacher, so and so is an English teacher, so and so is a PE teacher, and I think it levels up when they see their peer teaching and interacting with students. And so I'm curious, because I've heard of districts also who are implementing the model that they prioritize classroom visits, go see so and so teach, because then you'll everything will click when you see it right? And I think there's also that level of respect that increases too of, oh, wait a minute, you're in, you're an English teacher, and you're doing all of these things now, I can also talk about your skills and your strengths, and how powerful is that? That's really dope. And, you know, people often say, too well, we can just record. There's there's a difference between watching live and watching a recording. I think live is so much more powerful and impactful than watching it on a video. I don't think that we can truly capture modern classroom in a video. So being able to see each other is really important. So thank you for bringing that up too. Of like, hey, let's figure this out. How can we get teachers to look and see and watch each other and then provide that feedback? And you two have also talked about the importance of feedback, and that's what we want from students too, right? We want our students provide us feedback to see what's working what's not working, because what we think is working as educators is probably not working for our students. Our students, and that's kind of what y'all are doing for our teachers as well. And I mean, that's just, I don't even go into your professional development, but I'm excited. I'm excited. I want to feel all the things. And so we're going to switch to mastery based learning. How does that look with adults? You know, it shifts the focus from completion to true understanding. Because, Kim, you talked about checklist, right? Because that's what we do. So that's completion. But how do you how do you make sure that there's true understanding? How do you design assessments or activities within your PDS that generally measure mastery rather than just participation? And then, what benefits have you seen for. Educators who engage in mastery based PD, is there a grade? Is there a rubric? How does that look?

Erin Luckhardt  50:06  
I feel like this is the piece for me, where it's this part feels different than what it feels like with my students, right and and so I think there's certainly kind of like some gray area where, with my students in class, I'm expecting them to demonstrate mastery to move on to the next thing. And that's not exactly what it looks like with teachers. I think part of it is, when you go back to the choice piece, they don't necessarily have to demonstrate mastery on everything. So there's there's that aspect. For me, one of the things that I really lean into is what does this application look like in your classroom? Create something, build something. Tell me your plan. Let's work through this. And oftentimes it's kind of more in that application space and then a conversation, whether it's, you know, asynchronous like through Google Docs and comments or through our LMS comments. But that tends to be how I use kind of that mastery base within the professional learning setting.

Kim Weaver  51:09  
Yeah, I would agree. I think one of the ways that I think makes a shift in participants minds and professional development is asking for an artifact, whether that's a student work or a pacing tracker, or a mastery check, or something from their class. What is an artifact of this change in practice or change in thinking that we're trying to get and and so that implementation piece, and for the self pacing the pre work might be okay, understanding concepts, understanding strategies, live session, come together and talk about it, and then that follow up piece again, earn more clock hours. We all, we all need the clock hours to renew our search. So if you do come back and provide, okay, I tried this, and here's my artifact. Then that is additional clock hours that you're earning. And so this word artifact seems to trigger something in teachers minds that, okay, I actually have to do it. I have to actually make something. It's not just all happening in my brain. It's actually happening in my classroom. And that has been something. It's great to see what teachers are creating.

Toni Rose Deanon  52:20  
I really love the approach from both of you. Erin, you said, what's the application for your class? Because I think that's a really important piece too, making connections on what I just learned to what I now am going to do moving forward. And then, Kim, you are thinking about the artifact, right? So it's like it's both very important, equally important. And such great ideas. You both are so inspiring. Honestly, I you know, as someone who creates learning experiences to you for adults, I'm just reflecting on, oh, man, I could do this better. I could do that better. So don't be surprised if you get emails from me being like, hey, can we talk? And just, can I need thought partners? I need thought partners because I it's literally me who's creating the things. And that can be, that can be not fun.

Kim Weaver  53:05  
So you can see why I was so excited to meet Erin in that breakout room.

Toni Rose Deanon  53:09  
Yeah, yeah. Because I'm like, Okay, I think I'm doing things well. I think I could do it better. And I think with both of your brains, oh my gosh, I'm gonna just be like, hey, this the learning experiences by MCP is really led by Erin and Kim. So this is, this is really, really, really exciting. I have to agree with you, Erin, about mastery, how different it is for adults versus students, because when I create these learning experiences again, I do a lot of reflection questions for mastery, as opposed to actually you gotta, you know, check for understanding kind of questions. And now I'm thinking I need to be a lot more intentional with my reflection questions and asking, how are you going to apply what you're learning into your classroom and then pushing it to provide an artifact for the next time that we choose that we meet? So I really love those pieces now for districts or schools looking to transition towards more engaging PD models like these, right? What are some of the initial steps that they should consider? What are some common hurdles that you've encountered when implementing blended, self paced or mastery based professional development? And then how have you overcome them?

Kim Weaver  54:20  
I would say technical ed tech tool, learning management system, all of those barriers. You know, we made as a profession. We made such huge strides over the lockdown, and it seems like a lot of schools and districts have stepped away from a we are not using a learning management system anymore. We're not doing this. We're not doing that. And so I think for some teachers, these tech barriers still remain an issue. And so that's a lot of where I come in in my roles at Tech coordinator is to help remove those technical barriers, because if you can't get over that first hurdle to sign into your learning management system, the. Learning is not accessible to you, so I think that's where we see it the first and then obviously we talked a lot about time. I mean, that's the biggest thing. And so being creative about when teachers can engage in the professional development, being cognizant of their schedules, when are conferences, when are report card times really being tuned into that? And as Erin said, we both serve lots of different districts, so I'm not juggling one district calendar. I'm juggling 15 district calendars to try to suit everyone. And so I would say those are the two big things, are the tech barriers and the and the time barrier and being being mindful of those at all times so that the good learning experiences that you're designing aren't hidden from anyone.

Erin Luckhardt  55:43  
Yeah, love those I would add to if you're kind of designing in more of like a school based or a district based setting, it's important maybe to have some conversations amongst like staff and leadership about how this might look different, right? It might not be our hour and a half after school. PD, meeting that we all come in and we all sit down. That's probably an important conversation to have with everybody. And also, you know, sometimes there's like contractual pieces that have to be met. One of the districts that I support does a flex PD, where teachers get to dive in. It's part of their contract, and for 13, I think it's 13 hours, they're diving into something that is meaningful and relevant to them for their PD, so you know, thinking through what are some creative ways that you might be able to work within the system, but also provide that flexibility and choice so that learning feels more meaningful and relevant. That's probably one of those earlier conversations. If you can't do that, then how do you work within that? We have an hour and a half now. Let's think about some personalization. Maybe we can have a couple of different learning pathways. There's that lesson classification that can be brought in too, but understanding and like, what are those constraints, and what's flexible and what's not so flexible, I think is a great place to start,

Toni Rose Deanon  57:07  
and that conversation is so important too. I was just gonna say, right? Because I feel like a lot of the times, our leaders make decisions without letting teachers know, and then teachers get frustrated. But I think having that conversation piece of like, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna shake some things up and this, these are the things that you're gonna look forward to, as opposed to just like, Oh, we're not gonna actually have a conversation with you. This is just what we're gonna do. So I think again, welcoming and inviting the community to have to share their thoughts and their feedback and their ideas is really, really important. So thank you for that. But Kim, go ahead. 

Kim Weaver  57:37  
Yeah, I just, I think once you make the benefits of this model clear to educators, I do not find them reluctant to change practice at all, to shift to this. You know, mastery based self pace, once you say, hey, the great thing about this is you're going to get to say relevance, choice, all of the things that are important. I don't find educators being the ones that are difficult to convince of this and and I think if we just implement it without those conversations about, hey, here's what we're trying and here's why I think it can go poorly. But if you make it, if you make it apparent to the educators, this is why we're doing this, and these are the benefits of the model. I haven't found a lot of reluctance on the part of teachers to go to this way of learning.

Toni Rose Deanon  58:27  
Again, starting with the why, starting with the purpose, starting with like, clarity, transparency, all of those things. And again, just the joy I felt like for me when I implemented this model as an educator, there was just so much more joy for me, I was able, there's just so much freedom as well, right. Learning continued without me in the classroom. So I can go to all the conferences I wanted to go to, or I can be sick at home and not worry about the learning. So I think there's this joy piece to or just at least less stress, and also just the creativity behind like, what do I want to do and what I want to put in front of students? And I think that's really cool for instructional coaches too, to think about. You know, if I'm supporting teachers, what can I do to be creative? What can I do to make it more engaging? Oh my gosh, you too. How can listeners connect with you? Because I'm sure this is, again, such an inspiring conversation for me as I plan things out for the school year. How can our listeners connect with you.

Erin Luckhardt  59:21  
For me, probably just email. It's easiest my modern classroom. One work, it's it's just Erin dot luckhardt at modern classrooms.org, right? I'm second guessing that, but

Kim Weaver  59:36  
yeah, me as well. Emails the way to go, and you can find me at the Olympic education service district in Washington State. If you're a Washington teacher, be on the lookout for professional development offered by myself and my colleagues that are on this journey together. 

Toni Rose Deanon  59:50  
 Oh, I'm so excited. And listeners, we're going to put all of that in the show notes as well, so no need to figure out how to spell it or Google it or anything. We'll have all of that. Everything. That Erin and Kim talked about will be in the show notes. Oh, my goodness. Okay, well, thank you for expanding my brain today and pushing me out of my comfort zone of what I've been creating for teachers all across the world and sharing your experience and expertise with us. I am so grateful for you both again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Kim Weaver  1:00:20  
Yeah, it was a great time. Thanks for having me. 

Erin Luckhardt  1:00:22  
Yeah, likewise, I have so many new ideas too, so I'm excited. Thanks. Thanks for the conversation.

Toni Rose Deanon  1:00:28  
Listeners, remember, you can always email us at podcast at modern classrooms.org and you can find the show notes for this episode at podcast dot modern classrooms.org We'll have this episodes video uploaded on modern classrooms YouTube channel and transcript uploaded by Friday, so be sure to check back to access those. Also, we are asking our listeners to leave a review if this podcast has been helpful in supporting you to create a human, centered learning environment through a blended, self paced and mastery based model, it does help other folks find it. Thank you all for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday.

Zach Diamond  1:01:05  
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 @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, podcasts.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai