Zach Diamond  0:03  
Steve, 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 episode 204, of the modern classrooms project podcast. My name is Tony rose Deanna, and they them pronouns, a designated hype person here at MCP, and I am joined by Sam, an elementary teacher, going into her 15th school year, she's taught first grade, served, served as an ESOL teacher, and is currently teaching fourth grade, all subjects. Welcome, Sam, hi. I'm so curious. Four years I know that Zach, our other co host, has also been doing it for four years. I'm just so excited. Yeah, tell us all the things.

Sam Ortiz Whitelaw  1:07  
Well, I mean, it's changed a lot. It has gone from it's gone through two different schools with me, the model. And this is gonna sound a little Woo, woo, I feel like but honestly, it's what's kept me in the classroom, and it's, I mean, I feel like it's just, there's teacher shortage, there's this, there's burnout, there's all these things happening, and especially as an elementary school teacher, where you're teaching all of the subjects, and you're trying to plan for all of the things and differentiate and meet all your kids needs, but you Know, do it by this day, and all of these strict guidelines, and it's, it's hard, and, you know, I've seen so many really good teachers leave the profession, and I feel like MCP came right at the perfect time for me, and it kind of re engaged me into the career, and it re ignited, I guess, the passion for what I'm doing and not saying that there's not hard days and I don't have my moments, because we're human. But it's, it's, it's been a game changer completely for my classroom, and it definitely has changed. So the physical aspects of it has changed, because, like physical room. Spaces have changed, and as simple as it sounds, where you put your mastery check table matters, and where you organize, where kids can get resources matters. And this year I'm going into a brand new classroom, so I'll be plugging all of my things into a new space, but it's a much larger space, and that'll take some refiguring, but I don't know. There's so many small pieces that have changed along the way, like my public tracker and my the tracker that the kids use, but it it changes with each group of kids. Um, my instructional videos have stayed the same. I've tweaked here and there when I have to, but it's really just kind of the the small, like housekeeping pieces that have changed throughout the years, which is what we do anyway. As teachers, we're always, you know, tweaking and changing. I'm a big fan of not recreating the wheel. So, you know, inviting them in. And as scary as that can be for a first or second year teacher, like, oh gosh, I don't want my principal coming in, invite them in, be proactive about it. And I kind of just did it. I just sort of took my kids along, especially the first year, and I said, we're going to do this, and it's going to be messy, and we're going to we're going to learn together. And there's a really cool video that you guys have, that's, it's some animated and it, it asked the kids, you know, have you ever sat in class and felt like you were bored because you knew it already, or you felt like you were lost because you were absent or, and you could see the kids going, Yep, that's me. That's me, and hands are up, and I'm like, yeah, that it kind of sucks, right guys and, and they are all in agreement, and you can see them. And that was, I think, the buy in I get every year. I always show that video at the beginning, and I said, Okay, so this is the solution to that, and it's not going to be perfect, and we're going to have stuff that goes wrong. But when a kid is going home and telling their parents, I like math now, like you're not going to get you can't, nay, say what I'm doing. If your kid now likes math, and I've, I've had teachers, you know, they they'll warn you about a kid that you're getting and a lot of times it comes from place, a good place, and they want you to know what's going on. But they'll come in to my modern classroom, and they're the kids that are ahead of pace in my room. They're the kids that are helping the other kids, and it doesn't mean I don't have behavior issues. They're nine and 10 year olds. There's always drama going on with somebody, but it's so much less than it was my first 10 years of teaching like I don't worry about having a classroom management system as much as I used to. Now it's. Just let me get my units done. Let me figure out what my aspire to do is going to be. Let's make it something fun that they're going to look forward to. And I had a AP come in, and she was like, Oh, I just, you know, want to see what's going on. I've heard about your room. And I kind of tried to tout my own what is it? Toot my own horn and say, you know, I got, I became a distinguished morning classroom educator, you should come see my class, blah blah blah. And they came in and she was like, there were kids that were like, whispering to each other, like, are we gonna get to Lesson three today? That's gonna be so cool. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. And she was like, wait, what? What are you excited? She was so thrown that they were excited to get to the next lesson. I said, What? Nine and 10 year old is excited to get to the next lesson in fractions, because I wasn't when I was in school. I was excited to get to the end of all of the math lessons. So I doesn't really answer, I guess. How I handle the naysayers? I try to be proactive about it before I even think they're gonna say something negative about it. And then if I ever have, I've only had one or two parents ever kind of ask, so what is exactly that they're doing? And I'll say, hey, go on to there. For us, we use Schoology. And I'll say, go on to Schoology. Let them show you. And if you have any questions after you talk to your child, let me know. So I really try to push it onto the kids and say, they know what to do. They can tell you, and if they can't, then, then I got to talk to them, because they should know what to do. So it's a lot of, I don't know what's the thing, the proof is in the pudding. Like, the proof is there, like it's it's right, it's right there. You can't, I don't know. You can't argue with it.

Toni Rose Deanon  6:42  
I How did that work for you on your first year versus your fourth year of

Speaker 1  6:48  
implementing so in the very beginning, I probably got a little ahead of myself, and I didn't, well, I didn't do a unit zero. I just kind of jumped right in with them. And I said, Hey, this is where the instructional video is going to be, and this is everything else. And like, go do it. That didn't work at the very beginning. I had to kind of reel them back in, but it was a lesson learned for me, just like with anything in teaching that we do the first time. Fast forward to now, where I don't necessarily have a unit zero with them, but we'll go through for math, for instance, unit one, lesson one, we will do together, painstakingly slow, and we'll do the video together. We'll talk about, how should we take notes? We'll talk about what, you know, what supplies should we have? Because they'll say, oh, yeah, I did it. Okay. Well, but where were your notes, and where was your headphones? And had you did it magically in your brain? I don't know. So it My advice would be to go go slow, especially if you've got younger kids, and probably with older kids as well. Go slow through the first if you're not going to do a unit zero, go very slow. And I feel like it's with anything in teaching, like those first two weeks of school, you're not really doing a lot of content, you're doing a lot of procedural things, a lot of routines. So you can build that in and okay, this is where I get my laptop. This is how I sit down. This is where I can sit. This is the tools that I need. This is where I can get the tools I need. So I definitely learned my lesson from just saying, Go, go, go, do it. This is gonna work great, because that didn't happen. There was maybe one or two kids who could, but I had to say, Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, come back, come back. You guys don't know how to watch a video, take notes and all the things, but I had really good intentions. I was like, they're gonna do it. And they did. They eventually did, but definitely learn to slow down a little bit, take it step by step with them. And then they end up helping each other, and they end up they don't even need me. They're like, No, no, I'm good so and so's gonna help me. Oh, okay, cool. I'll just, I'll go back over here. So we had some really cool videos that they worked on, and I told them, I said, Your videos are going to be the instructional videos. I'm going to take your video and I'm going to put it on EdPuzzle, and we're going to add questions, and I'm going to take your slides and make them into fill in the blank notes, and then kids are going to have to do mastery checks from your video. So I just took all of that work off of me. And now my previous fourth graders are going to teach my new fourth graders this year how to do reading workshop and like, teacher when so get your kids involved.

Toni Rose Deanon  9:30  
Yes, I really love this. Oh my gosh, you're brilliant, like you said, you know, not having to recreate the wheel like you're right. You're going to have the same procedure for library, for your books, for like, how you transition, right? And I love that part. And this makes me think too. Like, when I was in the classroom, my students created a website for my future students, of like, how to navigate. Like, hey, what irks Miss D, like, don't do these things. And it was just like a fun overall reflection that my students, my future students, could look at. It,

Speaker 1  10:04  
you know, in terms of screen time, it's really, I mean, I feel like it's really up to the teacher. Your instructional videos are going to be on the computer, yes, but they don't. Then have to get back on the computer if you don't want them to. You could have all the other activities. Could be group activities. They could be solo activities. I try to give them a lot of choice. So obviously, the instructional video, they have to do it, the paper part is the notes that goes with it. But then for them to practice, there's a paper option, there's like a quizzes, gamified practice option, there's another Ed puzzle option. They get tons of options. They get review pages they can work on their aspire to do, which is the last thing, if they get through all their lessons and they master them, the aspire to do is usually something paper based, and I try to bring in more of like an art or creative aspect. So when we were doing measurement, the aspire to do was the local animal shelter had an influx of dogs, and they had to build a new dog park. And so they had to create, like the area and the perimeter and but it was all on paper. They had to do it in their notebook, and then they had to make copies and drafts and their blueprints. So I try to build in as much of paper and technology, because there's also going to be days where the Wi Fi is going to be down and or the copier machine is going to be down. So already, kind of proactively having those things ready for them is helpful. And a lot of these ed tech tools to like a quizzes, or, I don't know, there's so many you can you can print out versions of what you've created on the site too, so you can say, hey, if your laptop's not working, or if you left it at home, or if it's dead, there's the paper option. So I was getting really overwhelmed and really frustrated, so I asked the kids their last question was, you know, we've been doing really great in math with modern classroom. What do you guys think about maybe about maybe doing some of these things in science? And no joke, 90% of the kids were basically like, yes please. Like, five minutes ago, and it was because of them, like they are the ones who told me, we need to do this in science. So then I was bringing work home, but it was now work that I was choosing to bring home to be able to help me later. So I was able to, you know, do my instructional videos and and do the practices. And it was just like a switch went off, and I did this in the middle of a solar system unit, and which I don't necessarily suggest anybody doing in the middle of a unit waiting for a new unit, but I was just so when I get to that point where I'm just like, I'm gonna throw all the science stuff out the window, I needed to do something different. And I mean, the kids it was, they weren't begrudgingly coming in for science at the end of the day, because they were like, this is going to be awful. Who wants to listen to anybody lecture about science in fourth grade? None of them do. And the engagement was up. I mean, kids that were getting we score on, like, on a one to four scale, and it was ones and ones and ones all the time, because it's just really hard. The vocabulary is hard. The processes are hard. And it was like, just a total like, switch went off, and I was like, Okay, this is worth it. This is worth taking a few hours on a Wednesday night and doing this. This is worth working a little bit while the baby's sleeping to get ahead of the game so that next year I don't have to worry about the solar system unit. I'll work on the ecosystems unit instead. You know, four years in, and the biggest thing I feel like with teachers is there's not enough time, and I got to do lesson one on Monday, and I got to do Lesson Two on Tuesday, and Lesson three on Wednesday, and oh gosh, I was absent on Monday because I got sick from my germ infested classroom of 26 kids. And you know, now we're behind and oh, and the world. And, you know, it's just it becomes this huge thing, whereas now it's, yeah, I went, I went away for my birthday, and I took off on a Thursday and Friday, and I came back and the kids were still working through their math unit.

Toni Rose Deanon  14:22  
Thank you all for listening. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday. Thank you so much, Sam, bye. Thank you.

Zach Diamond  14:33  
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@www.modernclassrooms.org and you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course@learn.modernclassrooms.org you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modern class proj, that's P, R, O, J, we are so a. 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. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai