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 0:25 Hello and welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast. My name is Toni Rose Deanon, they them pronouns, a designated hype person here at MCP. And I am joined by a dean of online learning for Belhaven University, Cindy Wilkins, welcome Cindy. Cindy Wilkins 0:28 Thank you very much. Toni Rose Deanon 0:28 Yeah, it's so exciting to be in this space with you, and thank you so much for saying yes to the podcast. I feel like this is a long overdue of a conversation that needed to be recorded and so that our listeners can hear and learn from you as well. So before we begin, what brings you joy currently Cindy Wilkins 1:02 life, I love my job. I love my my family. I love everything about life and working with working with adults who teach children is now my job, rather than working directly with the children. Took a little while for me to get used to that. I kept thinking, but I'm not meeting the kids. How can I help the kids? And it took a while to make that mind shift of I'm now helping people who can help kids. So that's even more kids, and that's what brings me joy, Toni Rose Deanon 1:34 yeah, and that's such a it's such an interesting shift too, because that was definitely how I had been thinking about it as well. You know, I'm not in the classroom, so what's my impact? And my mom used to always say, when you work with teachers, when you work with with adults, who work with children, your impact is even larger. So it's really great that you started that off. And I really love this question too, because it it starts off with what humanizes us, right? Like, what are the things that bring us joy? So thank you for sharing yours. So Cindy, tell us a little bit more about who you are and how you started your education or your MCP journey. Cindy Wilkins 2:07 Well, I was one of those who was never going to be a teacher. My mother is a teacher. Every time I had a break from school, I had to go to her classroom and help her be a teacher. And I said, I will never do this. Fast forward several years. I have two ADHD children and lots of issues with schooling. I knew before they went in school I was going to have lots of issues with them, so I became a Montessori certified instructor and got hired as a Montessori teacher at their school, that kind of made me realize maybe my mom wasn't so dumb after all, maybe I could be a teacher and enjoy it. It's amazing how your mom's always right. It just takes a while to figure it out. But while I was doing that, it because the only certification I had was Montessori. I started on the road for a master's degree in elementary education, and finished that up a few years later, got my teaching certificate and was hired to teach middle school mathematics, and loved it. Found the Montessori training when you put it into a public school setting, raises a lot of eyebrows, but it's such good teaching. It focuses on the individual student. It focuses on finding the obstacle to learning and removing the obstacle, rather than finding what's wrong with the kid. You don't look for what's wrong with the kid. You look for what's what needs to be adjusted in the environment. That made me realize I wanted more, so I went and got my PhD in gifted education and curriculum and instruction. I was a public school teacher for the next 20 years. My students kept asking me, you've got a doctorate. Why aren't you teaching at college? I said, because I like what I'm doing. And that was that was a true answer. When I hit my magic 25 years though, I'd been working with Belhaven since 1998 as an adjunct, and they asked if I would come on board full time Once I retired from public school, so I jumped at that chance. I came on into the school of education. I was the chair of the graduate education program, and after about 10 years, I got promoted to my current position, which is the dean of online studies for the entire university. I still have my hands in the education department, because I'm the whole university now, but I love working with these teachers. They are so smart, and they are so full of information that I never would have on my own, and they bring so much to our conversations. That leading, leading the professor, so that they can teach the candidates, the teaching students that we have. I love it. I hold lots of professional development sessions every month. I have Zoom meeting, Zoom meetings with my faculty, constantly trying to answer their questions. Stay Ahead of the stay ahead of a very fast moving ball and provide the best education possible for our college students, who will then go out and provide the best education possible for their K 12 students. Toni Rose Deanon 5:35 This is really fascinating. Cindy, I love your journey of starting out as never going to be a teacher ever. And then 25 years later, here we are Cindy Wilkins 5:47 a teacher with 39 years experience, Toni Rose Deanon 5:49 39 years of experience. So Congratulations on your promotion, well deserved. And again, your impact continues to get bigger, right? So thank you for sharing that. How did you come across MCP? Because I know that you'd started out with Montessori, which I also had some questions, because I'm not well versed in Montessori teaching practices, and I know that whenever folks mention it, is always high praise about the Montessori strategies and the teaching philosophies there. So thank you for kind of, you know, giving us a little bit of a preview of, you know what? It's individualized students. It's learning those obstacles and then removing them, and it's never on the students fault, right? This is something that I always say to like, the system is there that kind of messes everything up as well. So it's not, it's easier to blame people than it is blaming the obstacles that you had mentioned, right? And so it's really great that you you gave me that preview. And so I am curious. You know you are? You were elementary education, then middle school math, then you were an adjunct professor, and now you're a dean of online learning. So I'm curious how, how did you come across MCP, and what intrigued you about our model, that you're like, No, you know what? I could actually do this in my own in the higher education setting. Cindy Wilkins 7:08 I had to revise and completely rewrite a course called advanced instructional strategies. And this is pre covid, very close to covid, but pre covid A few years before that, our entire department had moved online. We started noticing huge absenteeism in our night classes. For one semester, we did a hybrid where they came to class for half of the sessions and did the other half online and out of a class of, say, 3035 students, we would end up with one showing up on ground. They just wouldn't come. So within one semester, we had completely rolled over to full online. And in looking at that, in working with the students, and I'm trying to redo this course, I'm noticing that people are very good at sending text messages with their phone, they're very good at taking selfies, they're very good at playing games online. They're lousy when it comes to technology and competency. So I said, Okay, advanced strategies really needs to start embracing. And at the time I was looking at flipped classrooms, I really need to teach my teacher at college level. We call them candidates, my teacher candidates, how to use the tools that are online, because it was so new and the flipped classroom was not really taking off, but it to me, it solved so many, so many problems. I worked for the last eight years in public school. I worked at an alternative school, and it was a fast track program. My students were two to three to four years behind grade level, and our task was to get them through all of the middle school years and into high school in the one year that we had them. So some of them, we wanted to grow three years, some two years. All of them needed help with reading, with writing, with math. You couldn't have a one size fits all with them. And I just thought, there's so many kids out there like that. So in my research, I saw modern classrooms, and to be honest, the free course was what brought me in. I said, Okay, if I don't like it, I am, you know, I'm not out anything. You're not going to hit my credit card every month, whether I remember or not. So I did the free classroom and said, this is this is the solution. This is what I'm looking for. This the biggest complaint that my teachers had when I was in the public school, because before I was at the alternative school, I was a curriculum resource person, and so I worked with teachers rather than the students. I. How do I give my tier three remediation to these two students? What do I do with the other 28 in the class? And I never really had a good answer for that, and I saw that modern classroom had an answer, a very workable answer. So I finished the course. I built my class, my college class, around the free course. My students are required to complete the entire free course. I give them three weeks. I want them to do it in two weeks, but I give them the extra week. During those first two weeks, that's when I front load them with other instructional strategies. We emphasize marzano's strategies. Starting with week three, they start building a modern classroom course online. If they don't have their own, I tell them to use Google Classroom the first week three is pull your hair out by the roots for the professor, because weeks one and two, they're supposed to set up a Google Classroom and give the professor access. The biggest issue is they use their school's server to set up their classroom. There's a firewall there. I cannot penetrate that firewall. And so to convince them you need your own private account outside of school, it takes, it's amazing how long it takes to get everybody to have their own account that I can get into. Then week three, I demonstrate how to use Google Classroom, how to upload the things we really hit the different parts of the modern classroom, free training. And so weeks four, five and six are identical to week three. I want them to have four separate units in modern classroom. The first unit is usually lousy, lots of hair pulling, lots of angst, lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth. And by the time they get to week six, they're going, Man, this is easy. Boom, boom, boom, I'm done, and that's why I put it in four different times. They aren't going to get it the first two, most of them get it by three, and then by four, I usually have a couple of stragglers where I'm meeting with them via zoom to to just finish the job, but that's how I started doing it. When I took my current position as dean, I had to turn over the teaching of the course I had been we'd had so many students take the course that I had worked with other professors, and so they were already trained in how to do it. So it was easy to just say, Okay, Dr, so and so you're now in charge. Find other people, and it's still going. We have, I would say, between 20 and 50 students a semester taking the course. And it's become even more important, because what was nice this the modern classroom hit the year after covid, and the comment after comment was, I wish I had it when we had covid. This would have solved my covid problem. This now I know I'm in the Deep South, so we don't have a whole lot of weather days. We have hurricane days or tornado days. We don't have snow days, but they've stopped getting that if you can't go to school, you move online. Well, if you've got modern classroom setup, who cares if you're in the classroom or at home, the kids just keep going. They The only thing you have to watch are the mastery checks. But everything else you've given you've given control and power to the kids. You've maintained control over your classroom, but the kids now have choice, and that is so important. Even down at the first grade level, they've got to have choice. I did a little bit of this with my granddaughter. She was kindergarten, first grade during covid, and it really hurt her, but she loved me. She was Why can't my teachers do this? I said, I don't know. They tell them about it, but just just the autonomy is so wonderful. Toni Rose Deanon 14:05 Yeah, Cindy, you said a lot of great things here, and I really appreciate you sharing a little bit about the responses of college students, right? The pre service teachers, the teacher candidates who are trying to be the best teachers and and listeners, when we say Deep South. Cindy is in Mississippi. Okay, and so one of the things that I've learned about Mississippi is when I'm looking at numbers, like, we have hundreds of people in Mississippi who have gone through our free course, and I highly believe it's because of your work, Cindy, because, yes, because we were like, wait a minute, why are there, what, 800 plus teachers who've done the free course in Mississippi. And I was like, Oh, I bet I know who that is. Cindy Wilkins 14:45 What's really neat is, I'll give you two examples. Both of these are practicing teachers, and on their own, it's not part of my course requirement, but on their own, they ran a two week modern. Classroom trial with their students. And one, one of the teachers reported to me that her principal was didn't know what was going on in her classroom, and went in for a drop in visit, and she's looking around, and there's a group of students at the whiteboard. There's a group of students with headphones listening to the computer. They're a group of students sitting at a table talking to each other. There's a group of students up at the front of the room with the teacher, and she's just looking around. And this is not a teacher who has an aide, so there's not someone walking around the room. She's going, what are you doing? So they had to have a meeting afterwards, and she explained it, and she talked to the students afterwards. The students begged that teacher, let's do it again. Let's do it again. Because they knew they were mastering stuff. They got their mastery checks. The second one, almost identical situation, that teacher, or that principal, came in the room, and then in the post observation conference, she signed up her entire school for your paid class. Her entire school became modern classroom certified because she said, this works. This is what if you can do this with your class with only two weeks, and it's a seven week college course, it's doable. I emphasize, please take it small. Don't try to do your whole school year. You know, in one take it small. And what that principal did was she divided her grades up, and each one took a different unit, so they had the first semester done by the time school started in the fall, because each teacher took a different unit, only had to create one, and I haven't followed through with them. I probably should, but they were, you always have a few. I don't want to do it, but they've been hit so hard with covid that they knew they needed something, Toni Rose Deanon 16:54 yeah, something different, right? Because, again, what we've been doing has just not been working. And I think this the model. I love the part where students are the one pushing for it, right? They're the ones that are advocating and saying, Hey, I really love this type of learning, because now I get to understand how I learn and then continue to do so, so that I can, I can be successful in the skills and the standards that I'm learning in class. And so I really appreciate that whenever I go into classrooms, Cindy, I always talk to students because, you know, that's where all the tea is. That's where they're going to be so honest with you and tell you the truth. And hearing students say, I love to learn this way, let me show you the instructional video that I made because my teacher made instructional videos. And so I'm sharing this with my friends on their spare time and these when I'm talking about this comment was from a fourth grader. I was like, Yo, this is so cool to hear kids be more excited about learning to say, this is how I like to learn. Let's please keep doing. This is so so, so impactful and magical, honestly, because again, with everything that's happening now, right, learning itself can be really, really overwhelming, especially for our students with five oh fours and IEPs and so to have an environment where they can make mistakes, where they can take their time, where they can get the support that they need, everyone actually wins. And so it's really cool. Again, this impact that you have is kind of, it's like a ripple effect, right? Cynthia Cindy is like, Oh, here's the thing I'm going to teach you. And then your pre service teachers, your teacher candidates, are saying, I really like this. I'm going to go try it out and see if it actually works. Because there's a difference between learning about it and applying it, right? And so they were inspired enough to do that, and then the admin walks in, and all of a sudden, like, everyone is doing this thing, like, it's really cool how that ripple effect goes. Another thing that I wanted to point out to Cindy, that you said, is that there's you as educators, we are. We love being in control, right? Love being in control. One of the biggest, one of the hardest things that teachers can do is to relinquish control. And I think that's one of the hesitations or hiccups of self pacing or misconception anyway, that you just relinquish all control when actually, like you said, you maintain really that control, because you still have to plan out and and make sure everything is provided for your students, right? So it's not just you're not relinquishing all of the control, but now you're sharing this space with students, and you also provide more options for students to shine. And so I always love walking into a classroom and seeing an organized chaos. I love it when students are excited. I love it when students are talking about what they're learning about, and I love it when they're doing different tasks all at the same time knowing that they have an end goal for that skill or standard or whatever mastery check that they're going to do. And so I really appreciate. Appreciate you sharing these stories. You said that it was a seven week course, and you, you kind of, you actually divided it up for us, and you said the first two weeks is really front loading them, but instructional strategies, right? Saying like, hey, here are the Marzano strategies that work really well for students. Here are the most quote, unquote, effective ways to teach our students, right? And then you said the third week is when you introduce the MCP course? Cindy Wilkins 20:27 Well, no, the first two weeks they are required to take the MCP free course. So that week three, they've got, they've been front loaded, and now that's a tremendous Okay, thank you for clarifying. I start walking them through it because you can read, but that doesn't mean you know what's going on. So then I start walking them through. Here's how you turn what you just read about into your classroom and that, that is the the hairiest week that is. I'm on, I'm on Zoom every day of that week, helping different students I had before I knew anything about modern classroom, the philosophy behind it, I had been trying to do on my own. The one piece that modern classroom has that I missed was and it goes to where the teacher is in control. You have a start date and you have an end date. I'd never had an end date. I gave them the entire nine weeks. Here's what needs to be done. In nine weeks, I'm dealing with students who have not had success in school, so therefore, they're not your top students, they don't have learning skills, they don't know what they're doing. And I give them an open ended and it didn't work. This worked because I said, Okay, now in these and I did it with two weeks. In two weeks, you'll have these five lessons, you'll have these activities, etc. The one thing that we've been talking about are all of the five oh fours and the the tier intervention. What hasn't been mentioned is that gifted kid, the gifted kid who in he refuses to do work, he won't do homework, he won't do any of your assignments. And then you give a test, and he makes an A and then you're sitting there arguing with the student. You're arguing with the parent. Why does he need to do it? Well, with modern classroom, they've got the concept. You can watch the video. You think you know it. Do the mastery, check, move on. I put restrictions in my classes with the students. You have to have that should do and aspire to do that. Gifted child will get full credit for his must do, but he won't get any credit until he aspires to do something extra. So he's not getting that a and it was very easy to talk to the parents and say, Hey, he got full credit for all of this, and he got no credit because he didn't even try. Well, he doesn't need to. Well, this is application. This is evaluation. This is beyond the basic this is for gifted kids. I've even used that phrase that parents love hearing this is for the gifted kids, so that they can really learn how to study, learn how to apply. And it really takes that, that tension out of give him his a he doesn't need to do anything, and then you're caught with, I've got nothing but zeros, but you can pass the test that that's just out of the dynamic. And then the modern classroom soft zero policy I've always done that zeros are not final until the State Department tells me they are. And in my district, that was at Christmas and in the spring, I could change. They gave me permission to change any grade I wanted, but as soon as they had to submit those grades to the State Department, you're stuck with it, which I thought was a very nice compromise. I can I can fudge first and second nine weeks, but once Christmas comes, you're stuck with your grade. And I played that up with my students big time. I can go back and fix anything you want from the first nine weeks, go back and fix anything you want from the second nine weeks. But once we hit Christmas, you've got to live with that grade. That was very motivating, especially for my struggling students, to be able to have a soft zero Toni Rose Deanon 24:13 yes to all of that. I think Cindy, it's really interesting. I had a conversation this morning, actually, with another educator, and I was talking about the the model, right? And I was saying, it's really good way for students to work on their executive functioning skills, right? The prioritization, the time management. And then I realized, I was like, You know what, we're we're actually also discreetly helping our teachers do the same. Because you said there are hard deadlines, right? There are hard deadlines for self pacing when it comes, when we when we do a self pacing environment for students, we need to have those hard deadlines because, if not, everything's going to be chaotic, right? Everyone's going to be all over the place all the time. Cindy Wilkins 24:56 My college students can't do it without a hard deadline, right? Right? Toni Rose Deanon 25:00 And so like, and just what you said, just like, what you said, you tied it back beautifully. Actually, as teachers, we also have that hard deadline, Christmas and spring, right? Like that, the those days, like, oh, we have to have our grades in that's the hard deadline. And so it's really interesting that I'm like, Huh? I'm always, constantly talking about students and their executive functioning skills. But really, it's not, but really, and it's also for the teachers, because if we think about the must do, should do, aspire to do, right, we're also pushing our teachers to prioritize what's the most important thing for our students to learn, rather than giving everything to the students and then being overwhelmed with all of the things that we have to do. I really love that you also brought up gifted education. Because, again, oftentimes we don't talk about our gifted students enough, right? I know that as teachers, we always want to bring the students who are already struggling up and so therefore we forget about the students who are already up there. And so they're not challenged, they're forgotten. They get frustrated. They don't do the work because they already know how to play the game, right? Compliance. I don't have to do any of this. As long as I ace my test, I'm good to go. One of the things that I like that you said that, hey, you know, there's like this. Aspire to do that our gifted students can do. One of the things that I also did in my classroom, and I've said this multiple times, is opening up the opportunity for students to tell me what they would what they want to aspire to do, right? And so I'm not creating quote, unquote more work for them, but essentially it's them telling me how they want to show their mastery in different ways, right? So like the must do is, like, we have to do these things, but then you get to your aspire to do's, and it's like, now you're going to put in all of the things that are relevant to you, all the things that are interesting to you, and then creating a piece that shows your mastery on whatever it is that we're learning. And so it's that real world connection. It's also that relevance. And so it worked really well, and it also motivated my students, who needed a lot more help, to be like, oh, I want to do that thing right. Like I am going to aspire to do that, because that looks like so much fun. I get to write like, I get to now apply really what I'm learning into something that I'm excited about. And so I really love that piece, too. And so I, again, I appreciate the work that you, that you've done with MCP, and just pointing out, like, have the hard deadlines, the suggested deadlines, and the hard deadlines, and then also implementing the soft zeros, right? Because a lot of the times teachers we there's this, power dynamic, right? Like, as a teacher, I'm the one who's going to give you zeros because you don't do it, because you don't do what I say. I'm going to give you a zero, and that's just going to be it. And with modern classroom, we're shifting away from that mindset of, like, you know what? It's a sub zero. We can always go back and change it, revise it, as long as you also, as a student, revise it yourself. Cindy Wilkins 28:02 We change from the you don't get it to the, not yet, right? You don't get it. You don't get it by this hard deadline, not yet, but in two weeks when you do, oh, it clicks, come back and fix it. The other thing I had now this I have to give to one of my teacher candidates. She put down as an option on the aspire to do was to teach somebody else a skill, and that ended up blowing up in a beautiful way, because normally, in a regular situation, you take your top student who's bored and assign them to be a tutor so they're not learning anything new. They're just teaching what she found in her classroom. She put a very long, linear progress chart where the students put little stickers to show what they had met. This the skills where they were, so any student who had mastered a skill could be a tutor for any student who did not have a sticker in that column that let your slower students, your lower students, the ones who never get taught to called on to be a teacher. Hey, I've mastered that. I can help you. It takes somebody who knows what a struggle is to explain to a struggling student how to do it. You've got these gifted kids who just automatically know it. They can't break it down. They don't they can't help those struggling students. So she said that she had better tutors out of her middle and upper lower students than she did out of her top students. So I thought that was great, because now one of the and she limited it, you couldn't otherwise, she said that she would have somebody just say, I'm going to just be a tutor and not do anything for myself. But she would let them pick and aspire to do, to be a tutor and get credit for an aspire to do assignment Toni Rose Deanon 29:57 that that that is also such a great idea. Yeah, because then you're cultivating this community piece, right? Of hey, you know what? I struggled with this. So I get it, I relate so hard, and this is how I made it work in my brain, Cindy Wilkins 30:10 right? Everybody's a learner, everybody's a teacher, Toni Rose Deanon 30:13 yeah, and it's such a good point too, because we do often depend, we, meaning educators, often depend on our students who are gifted more advanced to do the teaching for us all the time, because we are doing all the other things. And so it's nice Cindy Wilkins 30:29 we've got to do the tier two, tier three. Toni Rose Deanon 30:31 Yes, yeah. So it's such a nice reminder to step back and really provide an opportunity for all students to become a tutor. Because again, I always tell my students if you can talk about it, then that you can be about it right, like, if you can get someone else to understand, that means you have truly mastered that concept. But if you're over here just reading and just like clicking on your multiple choice, whatever, but then you can't talk about it, that's really not showing anything. It just shows that you pick, you know how to pick the right answer. Yeah, exactly. So I love, I love that this teacher that you're talking about, this teacher candidate, provided guidelines and opportunities for students to shine, and then sharing that piece of impact, right, of being like, Yo, my students, who were really struggling with the content, were so excited to be a part of this tutoring responsibility, right? Because now you're providing you know, you're creating trust, you're creating confidence, you're creating a community that students want to be a part of, because it's okay to be bad at one thing. It doesn't mean you're going to be bad at all the things. And so it provides that balance too. Of like, Oh man, I really struggled with 6.1 but then I got 6.2 so then that builds up, and maybe I could go back and relearn six one, right. Like, I could really be like, relearn three, three, right, right, right. And I get it. I get it. And so I Yes, yes, yes. This is, I mean, you're sharing so many wins with your pre service teachers, and I know with your teacher candidates, because I know in my head I'm like pre service teachers, so I'm going to switch that to teacher candidates. Cindy Wilkins 32:10 These are masters level students that I teach, but half of them are alternate route and haven't taught before. The other half are practicing teachers with who are going for a master's. So I've got both ends of the spectrum. The only thing that's common is they're not teenagers. They're in their 30s or 40s. They're going for they're either going for an degree or they are going for a second career. So it's definitely adult learners. Toni Rose Deanon 32:43 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that, because that is a huge difference, right? Like, these are adults, adults who have some kind of professional background and so that that is really great. Thank you for providing that piece as well. So the teacher candidates, you know now I'm just so I'm even more intrigued, honestly, Cindy, because I've been with, I've worked with educators who are going through program to get them certified to become teachers, right? Like you said, career changers and so and you said, like, the similarities, that they're all adults and but they're all learning this, the strategy and so have you what's the diff like, did they have different reactions? Like, would you say that the career changes were like, Oh, this is dope. And then the teachers were a little bit more hesitant, or the other way around? Like, how did, how did that differ? Having two different types of groups. Cindy Wilkins 33:37 My alternate route candidates are the ones that are scared because they don't have the classroom experience, so they can't say, Well, I know I tried this strategy. I didn't know it was Marzano, but they don't have that background, so they're everything they're doing is blind, and they have to blindly trust when we say it will work. They haven't. They haven't worked out their own classroom management plans, or they have a beautiful plan on paper that, of course, goes in the trash as soon as the kids show up, because that's what happens to plans. So my masters, who already have a either a traditional route to education, or they've, they've been teaching for a while, those are the ones who are, I won't say, scared, but challenged by going into Google Classroom, the the brand new to the business, they don't know enough to know that they should be scared, so they just jump in. The ones that have been teaching a while. I do have to kind of combat the but we've always done it this way, attitude or that. That won't work in my school in Mississippi with covid, almost every school district now has a one to one technology in place. So it really opened up. It just opened up everything. When you know the kids have technology, they have access. The problem is we have such very rural areas that just because you have a computer doesn't mean you can get online because you don't have the bandwidth. So we still have to worry about inequities in technology. But at least, at least we were getting there. It used to be, we're worried about having enough toilet paper for everybody in school. Now we just were working up that bandwidth. That's a big difference. That's a big shift to go from no supplies to you have supplies. So now let's look at the infrastructure. Toni Rose Deanon 35:40 Yeah, and one of the things too, I got to work with teachers in Alaska, and they're also very rural, and so they were working in like villages, like we had a teacher who was going, like a helicopter going from one like village to another, right? And the bandwidth was always a question. And so we had to get really creative with, like, how do we get the instructional videos where you don't need bandwidth? And it was the USB, like, they had devices, but they would just have to upload all the stuff in the USB so that students can access it. And they had, like, a particular person who was in charge of uploading the videos and the kids devices, but it was just like a whole community coming together to make sure that students have access, which I think is so beautiful, and you're so right. I mean, even working with some some teachers in rural South Georgia as well, like, we would be on a call, like this, Cindy, and it would just, like, disconnect, unstable, like, we can't have conversations, and so they'd have to call me on the phone and be like, hey, like, can we just get on the get on a call, a phone call, so we can have this conversation. So, and that's something that sometimes people don't seem, don't think about because they're not in that environment. So thank you for bringing that up as well, because there are a lot of rural schools, especially in the south, right? Cindy Wilkins 36:50 And I can tell where my students live, because when we have our weekly zoom meetings, they're the ones that keep blipping in and out. They're the ones where it says unstable. I say, Okay, what part of the Delta? The, you know, where are you? And it's always, you know, it's, it's the Delta, Mississippi Delta, low bandwidth. But you make do, you find out what your your challenges are, and you address them, yeah. Toni Rose Deanon 37:16 And that was something, so I went to a conference recently, and we were talking about, like, the future of competency based learning. And there were four, like, challenges, or four things to keep in mind, right? AI is one of them, the relevance gap between, like, the ages, right? Like Gen Z, Gen alpha, like, what is the relevance of what they're learning in class? And then one is everyday disruptions. And there was another one that I forget, but the everyday disruptions really piqued my interest, because it just so happened that, you know, everyday destruction, distractions or interruptions could literally be like, weather related, right? A snow day, like you said, a hurricane. It could also be games, right? Like students having to be pulled out because they're going to go run a track meet or something, right? It could also be doctor appointments. Like, there's so many disruptions and interruptions that are happening every single day, and so it's like, one of those things where I'm like, wow, self pacing could really work for this, because students can really, you know, once they have access to that information. And of course, like, if it's a hurricane, like, Cindy Wilkins 38:19 power, there's nothing going on, right, right? Toni Rose Deanon 38:22 There's, yeah, nothing. You can't do nothing. You can't do anything, right? Like that is totally understandable. That is life. And also it's really nice to know that if, if that weren't the case, if they did have power, if it was just, like, you know, a snow day or whatever, right? Or they just had to leave early for whatever reason, then, then students still have access to all of their learning. So, you know, because oftentimes teachers are like, well, we don't have enough time, because we have all of these, like, whole school meetings, or now we have a dance, or, like, we have this, you know, whatever, concert celebration that's always interrupting learning. The learning actually continues because of self pacing. So there's not really that many distractions. And I was presenting at a conference Cindy, about self pacing. And so the participants were were working on their own self pace, and they were exploring and feeling, you know, and seeing how it feels to self pace, and then the fire alarm goes off. And so it was just like, so chaotic. Everyone's like, oh my gosh, we have to go. And of course, they didn't come back to session, because, again, it was just all chaos. But in my head, I was like, You know what? They have access to, all the things that they need to have access to. So a lot of them are so intrigued, and I know that they're going to go home and, like, work on that, or even, like, probably, you know, going back into their hotel rooms after the conference day, being like, wow, this was really cool. I'm glad to have all of these resources to look back to and review whenever I have the chance. And I just, I just think that's so great. It's so great. I love that. Toni Rose Deanon 39:51 You know, the the question about your the students who are doing this alternative route, right, like, the hesitancy of, like, of also not being able to compare it with anything because. Is they're just coming in brand new, right? They're just like, okay, cool. I don't have the classroom experience to be able to say whether or not this is going to work. And then, versus like this, the teachers who've been there for a while, who are like, Oh no, but like, What do you mean? I have to change so much of what I'm doing. And that's something that we also experience in our own like mentorship, through our virtual mentorship program too, of teachers who are often like but I've been teaching 20 plus years this way, and now you're telling me that I have to shift it. And it's like, no, no, we're not telling you to shift it. I think we're just asking you to reflect and see like, which parts of your teaching practices do you want to make better, right? And I think having that conversation is really important too. Of like, you're not going to have to start from ground zero. You already have so much, like, so many strategies and tools that work for you. So let's utilize those strengths that you already have and enhance what you're already and enhance what you're doing so that it is more student centered. And it's not just all about teachers doing the work for the kids, because that's oftentimes what happens Cindy Wilkins 41:05 that that brings up a big paradigm shift that my teacher candidates have to do. Most of them are in a school where they have to have bell ringers and they have to have exit tickets, and that is all oriented around everybody's done the same thing for the whole hour. So how do you do an exit ticket when everybody is literally doing something different? How do you do a bell ringer when everybody is at a different spot? So the issue that I have with a lot of them is they use the exit ticket as their mastery check every day. That doesn't work. You may not be ready for a mastery check. So it's a huge paradigm shift, and most of the issues are with my teachers with experience, because they've got their exit tickets lined up for the whole year already done. They've got their bell ringers lined up. Some of the schools give them bell ringers to use every day. So it is a huge mind shift into the self pacing that you've got a hard start, you've got a hard stop, but in between, and I give out some suggestions is what they can do, because they may be in a school where they have to have an exit ticket. One of my go tos is the exit ticket is what did you finish today? And so I did a collaboration today. I got a mastery check today, I watched a video today that that's an exit ticket, and then the teacher can use that for her pacing guide, to say, Okay, well, Tony Rose is ready for a mastery check tomorrow. I don't tell them what to do, because every class is different, but they need ideas. They're so they're so stuck on that one thing, and their principals say, I want an exit ticket. So how can you have an exit ticket but still honor self pacing the the bell ringers? This is my own bias, and I will go ahead and say I'm biased. It's a great waste of time. They're designed so the teacher can get all of the administrative stuff. You know, collect homework, take role. They're working on something. So what can you do for a bell ringer to get started? I don't have any great answers. I've had some great suggestions. Where one teacher had on her whiteboard a list of lecture, collaborative, etc, and the student would just put initials in whatever box where they're going to start that day. And so they would just go initial, I'm going to do an independent activity today, sit down and get started. Hey, you also have an attendance role, but lots and lots of different ways of meeting your school's requirements and still honoring what the modern classroom gives you as a strength as a teacher. Toni Rose Deanon 44:09 Yeah, when there's a will, there's a way right, like our teachers are so creative with making the curriculum work, with making the structures work, with making admin expectations work as well. And I really love that. And I and, you know, another thing about the model too. I mean, you know this, Cindy, like, there's no one right way to do it, right? There's multiple right ways to do this model, which is like self pacing, blended and mastery based learning, right? I am, you know that that was definitely a hot take about Bill bell ringers there, Cindy. Toni Rose Deanon 44:42 But I understand what you're saying. I do understand what you're saying. And it really was for me before I implemented the model, a way to get attendance, to get the students settled, right, settled, and making sure that they're, you know, seated and ready to. Learn when I'm ready to teach them. And so I appreciate that hot take that I never even considered. I know that we have like, a do now for for modern classroom, but the do now is really like, Hey, what's your plan for today? Right? And then one teacher was doing, yeah, yeah. Because you know, like you said, they're putting their initials in, like, what they're doing today. But I know that when I first started planning the motto Cindy, I was still doing the bell ringer, and then my bell ringer continued to be longer, because I was like, Oh my gosh, I have stories. And now we get to do this and we get to do that. I mean, it was really teacher centered. And when Kareem came into my room, he was like, Yo, let them go. Cindy Wilkins 45:40 You're ready to go. Let them go, Toni Rose Deanon 45:42 right? Like you're causing a distraction, like what you're doing is actually not helpful, like, just let them go. They've got this and so on. Cindy Wilkins 45:54 The story, look in the mirror. There's nothing wrong with the kids. So what are you doing that needs to be changed? Yeah. Toni Rose Deanon 46:00 And that's hard though. Cindy, right? It's really, really hard to reflect internally and and think about, what are those barriers that we are unintentionally creating, and then we get frustrated because our students are not meeting these expectations. When there are barriers to where they cannot really meet expectations. Cindy Wilkins 46:20 It's not working, but not because of anything I'm Doing Right, right. Toni Rose Deanon 46:30 And like you said, it also kind of trickles down from admin to Right. Like, if the principals have these expectations, then the teachers, especially the veteran teachers, are like, no, but this is what the school says they want. This is what the principal wants. And so I'm curious, have you had to have conversations with teachers on how to navigate conversations with their principals about self pacing, mastery and blended learning? Cindy Wilkins 46:53 No, I've left that part alone. The ones that get super excited about it. I let them deal with their administrators. I don't need to be an outside person coming in. You know, ivory tower. Here's what you need to do. It's your school. It's your but here's an idea. Maybe it just bounces around in the head for a year or two. But no, I stay out of those conversations. I did have one conversation with the District Superintendent just last year where he recognized me because one of his teachers was watching a lecture, and our lectures have the picture in a picture so you see me as I'm lecturing. And he said, Aren't you the one that did that modern classroom thing? And I said, Yes, and you go, All right, let's sit and talk so but that was initiated by him, not initiated by me. I don't, I don't feel it's my place to initiate that. Toni Rose Deanon 47:49 Yeah, and that's probably best too, right? Because I often, I often get questions from teachers of saying, like, Hey, I'm the only person who's implementing this model. There's pushback that's happening from Admin, and I don't really know how to have those conversations with admin, and so that's something that I'm also still figuring out, like, how can I support educators or implementing the model and want to have conversations with their principal so that there's a better understanding, and I think Cindy Wilkins 48:13 one on one with my my teacher candidates, and give them some suggestions, I normally Say, ask them to come watch you implement it, reassure them that you're just doing it for a two week trial. You know you're you're not just jumping off the ship and hoping you can swim. That has worked the best. Toni Rose Deanon 48:35 Yeah, I, that's what I that's what I tend to say to like, just invite them in and then answer any questions that they have, because, honestly, like, it's out of curiosity. Resistance is out of curiosity. They have no idea what's happening, and so there's going to be resistance there. But when you open up your space and invite them in, so they can see how it works, and then you can answer any questions that they have, then that works really well too, right? It kind of, again, brings down that tension and alleviates that stress. Of, like, I don't know what you're doing, and I don't know if this is gonna make me if this is gonna make me look bad. And I also really love that my that we all we offer a modern school leader cohort now, and so for for school leaders, who are, you know, asking questions, who want to know more about this model, we have this cohort for leaders specifically so that you know it could be for principals, instructional coaches, superintendents, anybody in the district, join in, and so they can have thought partners with other school leaders to figure out, like, how can we roll this out? How can we better support our educators who are trying to do this thing, and then how can we also tie it in with our strategic goals, right, or like whatever else that they're having to do as school leaders. And so it's just such a beautiful space, too, where, again, they're just teaching and learning from and with each other. So you know, you in in the beginning of this recording to Cindy, you had already said, Hey, start out small. Don't. All do like, all of it, all, all of it, all year long, like move pebbles and I can't iterate like, I cannot say that enough y'all start small. Build up your confidence. Build up your students confidence, and then add on, I would say, try the entire model. If you have a whole team behind you, right? I had three other sixth grade English teachers with me, so it was all four of us working together to create all of the resources to create all of the conversations that needed to happen with stakeholders. So we had a whole team who implemented all three pillars of our model. But if you are the only one and you want to try something differently, like you really want to do small things, small pebbles move, like moving small pebbles. So would you do? You have any other like, tips for college professors? For, you know, people who are like, yeah, professors in higher ed, higher education, right? If it's a graduate study, undergraduate, like, what are some of your tips when, again, shifting this paradigm right, when introducing this quote, unquote, new concept of teaching and learning, what are, what are some advice that you have? Cindy Wilkins 51:12 I vet the professors who teach this course. I want to pick somebody who's comfortable with technology in the first place. I pick the professors who already go the extra mile by holding more zoom meetings than they need, who reach out to students, because you really need a different level of engagement with your class with this because it becomes very highly stressful to those, those teacher candidates, because it is so new, and they want their A. I mean, it comes down to they want their A. So for for the faculty, I made them finish the modern classroom training, and I had a couple of them tell me, I don't want to do this, which is what the whole point was. I want only people who want to do this. I just learned the actually, just two days ago, that my current crop of instructors don't know all of the tools available to their students. For example, Belhaven provides a recording platform where they can make all of their presentation. It's already paid for, so they don't have to go to Screencastify. They don't have to go anywhere else and pay money. They can use our free product. That's there. They paid for it. Use it. My professors don't know about it, so my PD next month is, I'm going to teach them how to use YouTube, and this is, this is what you will teach your students, and I'm going to record it so they can take the recording and just show it to their students that, hey, here's, here's, as far as students are concerned, it's free because they've already paid their tuition. Use it. So the biggest thing is use the tools. I am an AI supporter with hesitations. I came along in education back in the 80s when calculators and algebra was the big hot button topic my dissertation was on using graphing calculators. When you teach algebra one, you had about 1012, years for everybody to get used to the fact that calculators are here to stay and your teaching needs to change. Well, now we have AI, and we only had two years at most. If you're being generous to say, it's here, we're still struggling with assignments that are AI easy. You just put an AI, you copy, you paste, you're done. So use the tools appropriately. I use AI to help me create PowerPoints. I still do the voiceover, but why do I have to spend two hours making a PowerPoint look real pretty? When I can go to this website, it gives me my PowerPoint because I gave it my bullet points, it made it look pretty. Now I can go in and add my animations, do my lecture. It's still mine, but AI made it look pretty. I use, I use AI to help me get worksheets. I'll say, AI, here's what I've got. I will say, Here's my transcript for a lecture. Give me a sheet of guided notes that my students can use. And I'll tell them, this is the beginning of the year, the middle of the year, the end of the year, it needs a lot of support for students, or not much support. Why do I need to spend hours doing that? I would spend over two hours writing a rubric to try to get everything let me, let ai do it in two minutes. Then I'll go and tweak it. I don't consider that. To be cheating that is using the tools that are available be transparent. Ai, help me use this. That's fine. I'm still the one responsible for implementing it. I'm still the one responsible for whatever outcomes come from you using it. So that has been a I'll go ahead and say it's been a struggle to get different parties to embrace the fact they still don't want to use AI. I said, Okay, now that you've got your students doing it, no matter what you say, what are you going to do about it? It's there. It's it's not only is it the elephant in the room, but the elephant sitting in your lap. It's there. You've got to deal with it. So use the tools. Khan Academy. I wasn't going to promote anything, but Khan Academy is a fantastic fallback. So you've made a lecture. Your kids are doing it. They didn't get it. Go find something in Khan Academy. You support it. Have your students do like you had said earlier. Have them make a video, because the teacher didn't get it right. Here's what the teacher should have said, Let there's an aspire to do right there. Use the tools that are out there and let them help do the heavy lifting for you. Toni Rose Deanon 56:19 Yeah, thank you for that reminder about AI too. I always say that AI is a thought partner. It's not your end all be all. It is a thought partner. Yep, when you use it correctly, appropriately, efficiently, it is a thought partner. And it's so good for also my brain having ADHD, I can't start enough on a blank page, right? Like I need some guidance so then I can tweak it. And I think this also brings up the the fact that, yes, we're using AI, and AI still needs human eyes to make sure that the information is accurate, to make sure that the information is accessible and that it makes sense, and that it all relates to what we're teaching and talking about. So I really appreciated that. And you know, we had a conversation. We're hosting a book club, and it's the shift to student led, and AI came up and how we have these chat bots for students to be like, Hey, I actually don't know this thing that my teacher is talking about, but I'm too shy to ask or too scared to ask or too embarrassed to ask, and so I'm going to ask the chat box chat bot instead. But that's not where the learning ends right, because then the students can work on their prior knowledge, and then we have, as educators, create this space where students now have to talk about what they just learned. Because, again, talking is really, really important. Having those discussions with peers are really, really important, because then students can continue to internalize and process all of that. But like, yes, being transparent with AI helping me, but also knowing that AI is not doing all of the work. I'm actually doing all a lot of the work. It's just that AI is helping me. Cindy Wilkins 57:48 Let ai do the breath work. Yes, you do the thinking evaluating, Toni Rose Deanon 57:53 yes, exactly. Cindy Wilkins 57:55 Let it do the grunt. Toni Rose Deanon 57:57 Yeah. And there was another conversation that I had with somebody about AI where, you know, we're in this we're in this era now where knowledge is not is not hard to access anymore, right? Because prior it was, we have aI now to provide us with all the knowledge. Now there's a shift to application of the knowledge like This is now where we're talking about Blue's taxonomy. The highest level is the application piece, and that's where the push is. And so it's really challenging our educators to not create mastery checks or summative assessments or whatever. That's just knowledge base, but also like really focusing in on that, creating and applying of the knowledge that students have gained. So I really like that, and I do want to just repeat what you said, too, like vetting professors and making sure this is something that they want to do. Because, again, that energy trickles down, right? If you don't want to do that, your students aren't going to want to do it. And so it's really good. I love that you were like, You know what? Take the course. Let's see where this takes. You. Take the course to see how you feel about it, and then that's what we can make that decision. Because, again, I think sometimes too I, I mean, I have mad respect for school leaders who do the thing that they want their teachers to do, right? And so that's exactly what you're also expecting for professors, is like, go through this because you want your students to go through this, so make sure that you have that, that that that experience. I also really love the reminder of we don't know what we don't know. So when you realize, oh my goodness, they don't know the resources and the tools that are actually provided for them for free, you're like, I'm going to create a PD here. Because, again, we don't know what we don't know, right? So having those conversations, again, that's why it's really important to have conversations with people to see what's lacking and what is not not being utilized because they don't know that it's there is really important. So I love, I love that you were like, Oh, they had no idea. So now I'm going to teach them how to do it, and then you're going to create a video that they can just continue to use, so that they don't even have to create that video. So I really love the support that you are providing for a. The professors that you're working with to continue teaching this, this class that you created. So I I'm just so appreciative of you, Cindy, like, again, when I tell you, we look at our numbers from Mississippi a lot, maybe, like, not a lot, like once a year, and we're like, oh my gosh, it's quadrupled. Like, your impact is so huge in the state of Mississippi. So I just want to say like, formally and informally. Just like, thank you so much for the work that you do. Thank you so much for believing in the model and being so passionate about it that you're helping our educators in Mississippi continue to make that that learning experience more student centered. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that. Welcome and so Cindy, is it okay? If I ask you how our listeners connect with you, you could totally say no as well. Cindy Wilkins 1:00:48 cwilkins@belhaven.edu Toni Rose Deanon 1:00:51 perfect, and listeners will have that in the show notes as well. In case you have any questions for Cindy. Because again, this is great, right? Like we if you're a K 12 teacher, we're really creating the student to be better prepared in higher education, right? And then also, if you're like, hey, I don't know how this works in higher education, I'm curious. Definitely hit up Cindy as well. So again, Cindy, thank you so much for all the work that you've done. Thank you for sharing your experiences. This is long overdue, like I said before, I'm so glad I got to capture it, because you and I have had lots of conversations, because you also present at conferences and tell more people about the work that you're doing. It's just it's so great, like we couldn't do this work without you. And so I am just really appreciative of the things that you've done for your for your teacher candidates. And so, yeah, I appreciate it. Cindy Wilkins 1:01:43 Well, I'll be at Mecca here in Mississippi in February and give a brief overview of the model, but focusing on tracking, teaching tracking and student tracking, because you got to have both parts, Toni Rose Deanon 1:01:58 yes, yes and yes. So looking forward to that, and we'll definitely drop the information, the details about Mecca as well, if you're going to be around the area. So with that being said, Cindy, thank you so much. Cindy Wilkins 1:02:08 You're welcome. Zach Diamond 1:02:14 Thank you so much for listening. Listeners, remember you can always email us at podcast, at modern classrooms.org and you can find the links to topics and tools we discussed, as well as more info on this week's announcements and events in the show notes for this episode at podcast dot modern classrooms.org We'll have this episode's recap and transcript uploaded to the modern classrooms blog on Friday, so be sure to check there or check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. And if you enjoy our podcast and it's been helpful in supporting you to create a blended, self paced, mastery based learning environment, we would love if you could leave a review that does help other folks find our podcast. And of course, you can always learn the essentials of our model if you want to go beyond the podcast through our free course at Learn dot modern classrooms.org and you can follow us on social media at modern class proj, that's P, R, O, J, we are so appreciative of all the hard work you do for students and schools. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the modern classrooms project podcast. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai