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


Zach: Hello, and welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project podcast. This is episode 81, and my name is Zach Diamond. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a middle school music teacher in Washington, DC. And of course, I'm also a Modern Classrooms implementer and a Modern Classrooms mentor as well. Today's podcast is going to be a really interesting one. This is going to be about self pacing with adult learners. I do have some experience working with adults. I am an MCP mentor, and I also worked in adult education a really long time ago at the very beginning of my teaching career. But this is not my area of expertise. So I'm excited to learn. And I am joined by two guests tonight, both of whom are instructional design and technology TOSAs in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District in Mission Viejo, California. Up first, we've got Elizabeth Armstrong. Elizabeth, welcome to the podcast. 


Elizabeth: Hi. Thanks for having me today. 


Zach: Of course. Thanks for joining us. And we're also joined by Kathleen Shaffer, who is also a distinguished Modern Classrooms educator. Welcome, Kathleen. 


Kathleen: Thank you. Excited to be here today. Thank you. 


Zach: I'm excited to welcome both of you. So before we start talking about self pacing with adults, I would like for the two of you to tell us a little bit about yourself, tell the listeners a little bit about yourselves. Tell us more about who you are, how you started your teaching journey, and also how you started your Modern Classrooms journey. Elizabeth, why don't you go first? 


Elizabeth: All right. Well, thank you. I guess. First and foremost, I'm a mom and I used to be a high school English teacher. I taught 9th and 12th grade for about ten years. And then I took this position where I am currently an IDT, for short TOSA. And I'm in my fourth year in this current position. And long story short, I became a teacher because, and I kind of feel like this is a little cliche, but I wanted to make a difference. So I actually was in the business world for ten years before I decided to change tracks. And I was an English Lit major in College. And never in a million years thought I would be a teacher. And here I am 15 years later as a teacher and loving it. So that's kind of how I started my teaching. And a little bit more about me. And then really how I started the Modern Classrooms journey is really due to Kathleen. Kathleen found Modern Classrooms and brought it to our team in 2020. 


Kathleen: So. Hi. My name is Kathleen. I've been teaching in our California Public Schools for the last 34 years. I started out as a secondary science teacher and then onto an elementary science specialist. And then later I got my multiple subjects for elementary and did grades one, two, three, and six. So I have hit almost every grade level. I've been an instructional design and technology TOSA up in Saddleback for the past six years and instructional coach at our virtual academy now for the last two years. How I was introduced to Modern Classrooms Project was, I first came across Kareem's name. It must have been 2019 when I was researching some blended learning articles to include in one of our actually at the time elementary PDs in person called our BUILD PD, blended universal intentional lesson design. So I continued to follow Karim through his Cult of Pedagogy podcasts. And then, of course, I've been listening to your podcast in 2020 when you recorded the first one, Zach. So I actually took that free course twice. Well, the first time just completing the Must Dos, and then I got busy. So a few months later I retook the course and I was ready to dig in a little deeper. And I started using some of the MCP framework in some of our teacher PDs. Then last summer, Elizabeth and I, along with several teachers from one of our middle schools and their academic coach, we all participated in the virtual mentorship program. And that is when I really started to embrace all things MCP.


Zach: Very cool. Very cool. And now you're a Distinguished Modern Classrooms Educator. I am well deserved for taking the free course twice. I guess that's some dedication. Very cool. So I guess I want to start off by asking you both the types of settings in which you work with adult learners. I mentioned that I also worked in adult education a very long time ago when I was living in Peru. I actually was teaching English as a Second language to classes of adults at a University. And so things have changed a lot since then. That was like 2012, I think. And blended learning is a whole nother thing now in Modern Classrooms puts a whole nother spin on it as well. But it sounds like the way that you both work with adults is specifically with teachers. So I'm curious to hear sort of the way that you work with adults. Like, do you work in classes with them? Do you do training? Do you do coaching? Tell me about the settings and the context in which you work with adult learners. 


Elizabeth: Sure. So kind of all the above, really. We have our instructional design team, and so our main focus is really just to support our teachers and staff in any way that we can. And as with most of the world, our jobs have changed since COVID. We used to be able to do workshop style training, more in person, pullout day - teachers came in from eight to three. And we worked with them kind of in groups of 20, which was really great. And we've also been able to work with teachers in their classrooms and with their students modeling lessons or helping them implement strategies or whatever was needed, actually. And we also used to be able to run these really great Summit-style conferences. We ran three of those a year, which was eight to one-ish and teachers got paid to come on a Saturday and it was just really cool. And then COVID hit and we haven't been able to do any of that. We're starting to get back into classrooms and work with students again here and there. But we realized as a team that we had to find a different way to get professional development to our teachers and to support our teachers. So for the past year and a half, we have been running asynchronous self paced courses online, which teachers have the option to opt into. So it's something they choose to do, not something they have to do. And we are also able to offer them a little bit of academic hourly pay for each course that they take. So that has helped with teachers opting in a little bit. 


Kathleen: Yeah. So this year we're actually running four online courses for secondary and I think four for elementary, each one about 6 hours and six weeks long. Some of the course titles that we have been teaching are a Lesson Design for Engagement, BUILD, as I mentioned before, Blended Universal Intentional Lesson Design. Right now we are in Beginning UDL for Secondary, and we even had an MCP companion course where we kind of helped some teachers along in the free course and were their support online. 


Zach: Oh, how cool. 


Kathleen: So, yes, it was very cool. And I think a lot of those teachers wouldn't have just taken upon themselves to do it. And they did it. They did it. And they got paid a little something for it, which is well deserved. Yes. As Elizabeth said, our teachers do opt into our courses and they usually sign up because the course sounded interesting to them, or maybe their academic or instructional coach recommended it. So our job has changed a lot in the last two years. We still are in person, too. We still go out to schools, not as often, to model lessons, go to staff meetings, participate in PLCs, and we meet with the academic coaches each week in our Friday meetings and gosh, we even got to substitute in January when our district had a sub shortage. So we have been doing it all. So, yes. So we usually go out to the schools. It's usually a teacher that requested or a coach that requested or the admin invites us.


Zach: And are these trainings are you training them in Modern Classrooms or is it just sort of general teacher trainings that may include modern classrooms? 


Kathleen: So our Department comes up with the content for our online courses. But if we're going out to schools for certain things that is requested by the teacher or coach or the admin, and they already have something in mind that they want us to maybe just share our expertise. I see. So that's the content of the training. But the way that the training is delivered is very Modern Classrooms. It sort of models Modern Classrooms in a way by being a self paced asynchronous activity. Right. Or set of activities. All of our online courses are fully modeled through MCP. 


Zach: Yeah. Got it. Very cool. So I guess I'm curious, as I was thinking about what questions to ask you, I guess I want to sort of tease out what's unique about working with adults. And obviously there's a lot of things, maybe even more so than thinking about the differences between high school and middle and elementary school. I don't actually know. But I guess my first question in that sort of vein is to what extent you would say that you can rely on adults to have the executive functioning skills, the organizational skills that are required to manage self pacing, to stay on top of the deadlines, to self paced effectively as teachers in schools, in classes with children, we really have to work to support students as they develop their skills, especially younger students. And I can imagine as an adult who's been to professional development throughout my teaching career, some of those supports could be very useful and some could just feel like extra work for me or even feel kind of patronizing to me. And so I'm curious to hear how you balance supporting adults and relying on their sort of executive functioning and organization that is probably more developed than I would imagine my students. 


Kathleen: So that is a great question. So I think we all need a little help with executive functioning and organizational skills occasionally. Yes. So we have been providing self pacing trackers for our teachers and our courses since January 2021. In secondary, we primarily use Google Sheets to create our trackers, and our trackers include all the lesson classifications. So the must do, the should do, and the aspire to do, all in one doc. In elementary, we create simple trackers that K-6 would use with their own students, like game boards using Google drawings or Slides. And we still provide more linear checklists like Google Docs and Google Sheets. Teachers usually choose what they feel most comfortable using and what they might like to try with their kids. 


Zach: Right. It occurred to me that you could give them the sort of kids-facing materials as a model to show what it would look like without it feeling patronizing because it's like this is what you'll actually be using. That's actually very cool. I had not thought of that. 


Kathleen: We really do try to model best practices. So if you're using a game board or a checklist tracker, we explain to the teachers why we're doing so in any strategy we use, we always go back to the why. So we make the self pacing trackers totally optional. But our teachers really appreciate them. It also serves as a visual that we send out, like in a weekly email. So we'll have the game board and we'll have the pieces on the things that should be done. And so then the teachers can look at it and say, oh, I guess I'm on pace or Oops, I need to start getting a little bit of work done. So I think they appreciate the reminder because we're also busy. And we try to stay away from that language of who's ahead of pace with adult learners because we know that one of the reasons they take our courses is because of the flexibility that we offer. 


Zach: Sure. 


Elizabeth: Absolutely. And kind of going along with that modeling technique that we sort of use. We are, as Kathleen said, we kind of pointed out, we're very explicit about what we're trying to model and really using the “you could use it. Here's how you could use this with your students.” And I do really think that helps get the buy-in. And we, of course, offer things like guided notes. And we also kind of incorporate into our courses a lot of SEL - social emotional learning transitions. We do like a mix of breaks and reflections. And again, it's really to model how they could do that with their own students as well. And then we also require our teachers during any of our online courses. We ask that our teachers meet with us at least one time during their course for about a 15 minutes conference. And that way we can kind of get to know them a little bit better, get to know their goals a little bit better, and that gives us an ability to find out if there's other areas that we may need to support them. 


Zach: Okay. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. You're changing the way that I think about this question, actually in a good way. I mean, that in a good way. Those were great answers. I really feel like you've kind of opened my eyes to what this actually looks like. So as a sort of a follow up to that, I'm curious if you think any of the supports that you use are beneficial for all learners. I really want to tease this out. What do you think that you do that would be beneficial for all learners? Adults, children, kindergarten, 12th grade, College, everyone. And then any supports that you use that really would only work with adults and maybe any that would never work with adults that we do use with our students in classrooms. What do you think? Like, help me to tease this out. Help me to understand this. Like the different kinds of supports that different developmentally or differently developed brains approach, self pacing. 


Kathleen: That's a really interesting question. And it's definitely multilayered for sure. Providing feedback and especially timely feedback and additional questions for our adult learners to ponder or suggestions for them to resubmit no matter when they submit their assignment, if they're on pace or not on pace. I think that's really important for all learners, adults and kids. And then as facilitators for all learners, we really reflect on how our teachers are completing their assignments so that we as facilitators can continue to revise our course and content based on how they're submitting their assignments and things like that. 


Elizabeth:Right. Another support that would benefit all would be having the on pace States on the self pacing tracker, but also embedded in our canvas course. So, like, if teachers are not on pace, they see the assignment in a different color so they know that they aren't on pace. In other words, they can see that they are behind pace. And if they don't see any colors appear, it means that they are on pace or ahead of pace. So those are some supports that we would also use with anybody. 


Zach: Yeah, definitely. 


Kathleen: Also, we set requirements and prerequisites in our canvas course, and that would be something that we would do with everybody so they have to either view or submit or contribute to a page as they move through the content. And since we have totally intentionally designed our course, this helps with making sure teachers are going through it in the correct sequential order and we would do that with kids as well. 


Zach: Yeah. All of that makes perfect sense. And again, I was saying how you sort of changed my thinking on the previous question. Like, I guess the supports that you are giving the adults that you are training are very similar to the ones that you are expecting them to then roll out in their classrooms. And so it's sort of like I said, I can imagine being given something that felt like it was designed for a child and feeling like it was too easy for me or that it was patronizing to me. But framing it as the materials that the students would use or the supports that they should give to their students is actually like a teaching strategy. 


Kathleen: Yes. And we provide templates so they're ready made so teachers take advantage of it. It's a lot of time saved and they can put their own content in. Yeah. 


Elizabeth: I didn't know if we wanted to move on to things that might not work with adults, but that's a really tough question because just like you said, we're really explicit about modeling our strategies and kind of using the you could use this with kids to get the buy in from the adults. I like that idea. 


Zach: Yeah. As a teacher myself, I can imagine being given that and feeling like, oh, I will do this in my classroom. That's something that we're often told to do in PD. And sometimes it's very clear what we're being asked to do. And then sometimes it's like I don't quite understand because I don't feel like it's resonating with me thinking about this. I'm starting to see more connections between the adult education that you all do and the school education that teachers are providing, which is very interesting. I guess the way that I was thinking about this question and this sort of thought of mine is kind of breaking down a little bit when I think about it this way is that oftentimes we hold students to standards that we would never hold adults to. But thinking about the structure of the supports that you're giving and the learning that your adult learners are actually doing, I'm starting to think that it's not so bad to give them student facing or student designed supports just so that they can learn those supports and use them themselves. 


Kathleen: Yes, that's our goal. That is our goal. If we're looking at supports that are adults only, I feel like what we do in our course where we push out everything at one time and we wouldn't do with kids. But the adults know that they have six weeks and they see everything in order and it is sequential. So they have to do one thing at a time. They can't move ahead without doing the previous things that are required. So we would not do that with younger learners. 


Zach: That makes sense. We hear that from a lot of teachers that do something very similar is to sort of like roll out an entire unit in smaller chunks that are self paced but not the whole unit at once. 


Kathleen: Right. And then using Universal Design for Learning, we're very explicit with our modeling. We include the five E strategies, Modern Classroom Project Framework, SEL strategies, and all those things. And all these frameworks and strategies very much complement each other and teachers are able to see how they fit together. We wouldn't necessarily do that with the younger learners. So it's just so teachers can see how all of these things fit together. For example, right now we're currently doing Introduction to Secondary UDL. And so all adult learners are given options. They can watch a video or they can read the transcript, they can take guided notes with our template, or they can use another method like sketchnoting or three, two, one. We hope that they embrace their preferences and then they also try these options with their students. 


Zach: That makes sense. Personally, I think my students would struggle if I gave them different modalities to do the thing. I try and incorporate them all into one type of instructional video, but that's interesting too, because then that's my style of teaching. And so it would definitely be the kind of training that I would if I were taking this training, like I would go with the instructional videos, but then that sort of shows through in my teaching. And it's like you're teaching the teachers different modalities that they can use in their classrooms, the ones that they're comfortable with. 


Kathleen: Yeah, exactly. And what they're comfortable with one day might not be what they're comfortable with the next day. So that's the whole basis of universal design for learning, which fits very well with MCP. 


Zach: Yes. Okay. Well, listeners, we are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I would like to sort of get into the weeds a little bit more with the actual implementation of self pacing. So let's get ready for that. But we'll be back in just a couple of minutes. 


Kareem: Hi, everyone. It's Kareem here from the Modern Classrooms Project. I just wanted to share some exciting news about our big Virtual Summer Institute this summer. The summer of 2022. Now, as many of you all know, the summer is one of the most popular times for folks to learn our model. It's a time where folks can take a step back from their normal classroom experience and really rethink and redesign their approach to teaching and learning. And this summer, we plan to train 3000 educators this summer. Our educators come through a variety of ways. You can enroll individually, you can enroll through a school and district partnership. And this year we have some pretty awesome regional scholarship opportunities. These are scholarship opportunities for educators. If you're located in DC, New York City, Connecticut, Chicago, Seattle, the Twin Cities, or Tulsa, these are folks who can just apply. If you're an educator in these communities and if you get accepted, you get a full scholarship to our Summer Institute and some really great perks, including a $500 stipend. So check them out. You can just go to modernclassrooms. Org/scholarships to see the regional scholarships. And you can just go to our website and you'll see at the top announcement bar. You can learn more about our virtual summer Institute, see the variety of ways you can roll individually or collaborate with us on a school or district partnership. I hope everyone's doing all right. Good luck with the rest of the year. Thank you for all that you do. 


Zach: All right, folks, we are back with Elizabeth and Kathleen. And like I said before the break, I would now like to get into some of the weeds and talk in a more detailed way about your actual implementation of self pacing with your adult learners, with the teachers that you train, I guess the best place to start. And you've already sort of touched on this quite a lot. Actually, I would like to ask you about your pacing trackers. You did mention that they are not public and that they are individual teacher-facing trackers, but I'm curious what they look like. And it sounds also like they might be different in different contexts. So tell me more about your pacing trackers. 


Kathleen: Okay. So our seven through twelve pacing trackers look a lot different than our K-6 trackers do. Seven through twelve is usually we use a spreadsheet. We have our lesson classification on the self pacing trackers so they can see right there what the must do, should do and aspire to do tasks are and we have on pace dates on those trackers as well. So secondary, we stick with Google Sheets, mainly. For elementary, we give lots of choices for drawings and drawings and slides. We make game boards. And again, elementary teachers, that's what they go toward most of the time. Most of them are using the game boards, but we do provide those linear types of trackers in Google Docs and Sheets for them, too. We don't include the lesson classification on elementary. We're a little ahead of the game in secondary than we are in elementary, right now with MCP. We have a lot of optional activities, but they're much simpler than the trackers are in elementary. 


Zach: Right. And that makes sense because elementary teachers, especially elementary, like very young grades, are still students are still learning how to read. Right. It makes sense that we see a lot more game boards and sort of pathways and things like that in the younger grades that make sense to break them up that way, too. 


Kathleen: A lot of the times we add a video of how to use the trackers for the teachers and hopefully how to use the trackers for the kids. And we literally pull a game piece out and put it on the activity that's finished and then pull the next one out and put it and show them how to use it. 


Zach: Yeah, that's awesome. And just to be clear here, we're talking about like, an adult working through the activities of your training module.


Kathleen: Right. 


Zach: Like you're showing them how to use that tracker for themselves. 


Kathleen: Yes. Yeah. Very cool. 


Zach: That's very cool. But again, it's a perfect model for how a tracker is supposed to work, and they can then use it in their classroom. How about deadlines? How do you employ deadlines? You did mention that you put out the entire unit all at once. So do they just self pace over the whole thing, or do you have soft deadlines? And do you have your units broken up into smaller pieces? Tell me about that. 


Kathleen: Yes. And yes. Also, our course is completely self paced, but we do have soft due dates for each module. So on soft on pace dates, there's one exception. So we employ a hard due date for the first let's get acquainted discussion that we include in every one of our courses. And it's because it's a great opportunity to meet everyone in the course up front and connect. So we want everyone we give them 48 hours after the course starts to get that first discussion in so they can meet each other at the beginning, and then they can go at their own pace, literally until that last hard due date when the course ends. And as we mentioned before, there are suggested on pace dates in our trackers and also embedded in Canvas to help them stay on track. 


Elizabeth: And just a side note, on the hard end date for the course, we don't have this happen very often, but every now and then we do have a teacher where something came up and we kind of don't publicize this. But now I am on a podcast, but if there's something that happened and the teacher needs some extra time, we have that conversation with that individual teacher. But we want to show empathy and again, we’re modeling what we would want teachers to do with their own students. Right. So I have a teacher who was going through and a very close family member passed away. And so we're going to give him a little extra time, of course. Right. So we do have a hard due date, but we do try to try to model that. 


Zach: Yeah. And again, this is one of those things that I think it's not a different standard that we should hold children to than we do adults. And so I think it's good to model that. Right. Particularly with the hard deadline, because like you said, all the other ones are soft deadlines have just suggested on pace dates. But even those like sending the message and just showing a teacher how good it feels to say, like, it's okay that you didn't do this right now. It could be a minor thing or it could be a big thing. You didn't get to it, and that's fine. You still can. There'll be no consequence. Like, it's fine. Your life happens. 


Elizabeth: Life happens. 


Zach: Exactly. Yeah. And I think that giving teachers that kind of grace in the training shows them how nice it feels and maybe encourages them to show that same grace to their students. Again, I feel like it's really all coming down to modeling, and that's really interesting to me because that is not the approach that I had thought of at all in this conversation. But that's the way it's going. And I'm really interested to hear that. How about differentiating for adults? This is something that I have no idea about. And so I'm very curious to hear. So particularly, how do you engage adults who are falling behind? I guess that's sort of a sensitive question. Right. With people who are at their jobs. But also, what about adults who pull ahead or finish very quickly? Do you provide extra materials or opportunities for them to get deeper into the content? I'm curious to hear about differentiating with adult learners.


Kathleen: So we do, actually. So we try to get to know our teachers and their background stories through that individual meeting. We actually make it a must do assignment to book an appointment with one of us. And it's a should do to book two through the course. And it's an aspire to do to book more than that. But that's usually the time. This is usually the time when they share some anticipated challenges or why they may be going at a slower pace. So we know personally why they're doing that. 


Elizabeth: And if we find that they are falling too far behind, we actually will personally reach out if needed or we may have. So in our district, we have coaches at every school site, one coach at every school site, and we work really closely with our coaches. So we might have their academic coach reach out to them and then they could let us know what might be going on. And then if possible, we do try to do that in person and just kind of do a drop in and say “Hi” and just check in on them. And we might even have that discussion. And usually this happens more closer to the beginning of the course. But we might have that discussion that maybe this isn't the right time to take on this course, maybe they have too much going on and that they weren't anticipating, too much on their plate. And we don't want this to be cumbersome for them. We want this to be their choice to do, not something that they feel like they have to do. So we have had those conversations. We're always going to offer this course later. You have access to the materials, but maybe this isn't the right time to continue. Yeah. And so it's a hard conversation, but again, it's that empathetic conversation we want to have. 


Zach: Yeah. I love the way that you frame it sort of as their choice. You're not failing by dropping out or anything. Exactly. There's always the opportunity to try again later. I've had this conversation with some of my mentees. A couple of my mentees have dropped out of the mentorship program. And that's a conversation that winds up happening. And I always tell them, even the ones that don't drop out, I always tell them like this should never feel inauthentic for you. If you feel like you're just doing this to check the boxes because it's an assignment that you have on your Moodle, let's talk because I don't want it to feel that way. I feel self conscious as your mentor, holding you to that standard of just doing it. I want it to be meaningful for you and meaningful for your class. So I love that. I love that way of framing that discussion. Yes. And what about the adults who finish very quickly or get way ahead? How about them? What do you do for them? 


Kathleen: So we have those too actually, in our current course, it's been two and a half weeks and it's a six week course and we have four that have already finished. And all of our courses have our secondary courses have our must do, should do and aspire to do classifications right on the tracker. So if a teacher is a fast finisher, they have the option and they have more materials to look through to take their learning deeper. So those four that finished all the must dos for their 6 hours of academic pay. They have all of our materials still, and now they can kind of sit back and take a look at some of those should dos and aspire to do while they're in their classroom with no pressure. And so it's not like we never hear from them. And again, they still are contacting us during this course and we're still sharing things with them, but they have finished all the must do. 


Zach: Can you give me an example of what an aspire to do might look like for one of those adults? I know you mentioned the sort of extra meetings, but what else, like in terms of content, what might an aspire to do might be? 


Kathleen: Sure. We have several assignments. So I'm looking at our tracker right now, and it's to read an article called how to Give Your Next Summative a Makeover. And they must do is to read that article and highlight text that resonates with them and add a comment or question. But then it should do would be to respond to someone else's comments or questions. And then an aspire to do would be use this tool with your class. 


Zach: Cool. Okay. That makes sense. 


Elizabeth: Yeah. And often our aspire to do or something applicable to their own classroom because that's really where they want. We want them to go eventually. 


Zach: Right? Yeah, of course. In this context. Right. Like, that makes total sense taking one of your own lessons and applying it in that lesson. Totally. 


Kathleen: Exactly. 


Zach: I love that. That's an aspire to do, though, because sometimes that feels like a lot of work. I know I've had that assignment given to me as a teacher, and it's like I've planned my lessons already. Like, I don't want to do more work on that because they're done and I like them. So I like that it's presented as an aspire to do. Well, we're getting kind of close to wrapping up here. And before we close out, is there anything else that you'd like to share, anything we haven't touched on yet that you'd like to tell us about? 


Kathleen: Oh, my goodness. Sure. First thing. Our very first course that we created for teachers look so different than our current course that we're in right now. We've gotten better at creating should do and aspire to do tasks. We've added multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression throughout all our courses. From teacher feedback, I know they really appreciate the intention that we put into our lesson design, and we've also tried some new tools that challenge us personally as facilitators, like the tool Perusal and Canvas Studio quizzes.


Elizabeth: And just a few logistical things we have learned a lot over the last two years in creating these courses. And some of the things we kind of touched upon earlier, like setting the hard due date for enrolling in the course and completing that first “let's get acquainted” assignment, something that's a very low risk that gets them started. We have found that once they get started, they kind of keep going. But those that really don't get started are the ones that maybe don't finish or never even really start. And so we found that that's really helpful. One thing we did, and I believe this is the first time we have actually sat down and counted up, added up all the minutes it would take if a teacher actually did all the must dos. And it was interesting, and we're really trying to keep it as close to the 6 hours as we could because we say that the course takes 6 hours. They get academic hourly pay for 6 hours. So we want to be really conscientious of that. And so that was really interesting to sit down and really look at how long it was going to take a teacher to go through our course. I kind of mentioned our coaches earlier, and that's something that has been really helpful for us as well. So if that's a resource, your district has definitely they have been very supportive and very helpful, and we're very careful to keep them kind of in the loop about who on their campus might be going through our course that they could kind of reach out to and provide any additional support they might be needing and maybe help them implement some of the strategies. So using that resource has been really great, too. And in our last course, this is the first time we did not have a cap for a number of teachers that were able to sign up for a course. And that was interesting for us because in the past, especially with our pullout days, we were capped at 20 teachers. We could only have 20 teachers in the room, 20 subs. And so even with our online courses, we were still capping at 20. And I don't think this is the same in elementary. And, Kathleen, you can kind of talk to that. But at the secondary level, when we lifted the cap, a lot more people signed up and more people are going to finish than have participated in our past courses. So that's something. Yes, it's something for us to really think about. 


Zach: Did you find that you had a hard time keeping up with the submissions? Did it become more work for you? 


Elizabeth: Yes, it did become a little more work, but we weren't getting even if we had found that even if 22 signed up, maybe 13 of that group would actually finish. So now we're just sort of changing that percentage. So now we're really hoping for at least 20 to finish, and we're going to have, I think, more than 20 on this course finished. So that's going to be great. Cool. Very cool. It's worth it. 


Zach: Yes, it is. There's obviously demand that makes it worth it, right? 


Elizabeth: Right. 


Kathleeen: I think we have 49 in our upcoming elementary course coming out of our BUILD. One other last piece of advice. If I was helping a teacher start off, I would just say to remember to give yourself grace, because there's so much and you can't do it all, and you don't have to do it all at once. I mean, we didn't. And no two classrooms are alike because we all have different strengths for sure and just take on what you think you can handle and then add to it slowly. 


Zach: Yeah. And I guess I would add to that, although it's your tip, not mine. But I would add, like, if something goes wrong, it's okay. Yes. A lot of things have gone wrong for me. This is my third year in Modern Classrooms, and I've tweaked things, so here I am. I'm still alive. It's fine. 


Elizabeth: We had one very fast finisher. I think Kathleen didn't he finish in like a weekend or something a week. And fortunately, he found all of our mistakes. So the rest of the teachers going through, they're good. 


Zach: Oh, that's great. I have some students like that, so I know the type. That's very cool, though. And. Yeah, that's great. That's all great. Well, I want to thank you both so much for joining me tonight. This is obviously, for me, been very illuminating. How can our listeners connect with you if they would like to? 


Kathleen:n Sure. They can reach out on Twitter. I am ShaferkShaeferk, S-H-A-F-E-R-K twice, and my email is Shaferk@susd.org 


Elizabeth: And my Twitter is Elizanntechtosa, and my email is Elizabeth.Armstrong@svusd.org. 


Zach: Awesome. Thank you both so much for that. I'm sure that people would be interested to reach out. 


Kathleen: Zach, would you like me to link some of the trackers in the Show Notes? 


Zach: Yes, that would be fantastic. We talked about them, and I'm curious to see them. And if you send me those links, I will definitely put them in the Show notes so that listeners can check them out. Absolutely. That will be awesome. But I guess with that, it is time for us to sign off. So I want to again, thank you both so much for joining me. I really enjoyed this, and I learned a lot. And I think about this in a different way now. So really, truly. Thank you both so much. Thank you so much for joining me. 


Kathleen: Thanks for having us. 


Zach: Absolutely. 


Elizabeth: This is fun. It was fun. 


Zach: I had fun, too. Listeners remember, you can always email us at podcast@modernclassrooms.org, and you can also find the show notes for this episode at Podcast Modernclassrooms.org/81. You can also read a recap of this episode, as I mentioned last week, that's coming up in a couple of days on the Modern Classrooms blog. And we'll also have this episode's transcript uploaded for you in a few days as well. Thank you all so much for listening. Have a great week, and we will be back next Sunday.


Voiceover: Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode. And remember, you can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org, and you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at Learn.Modernclassrooms.org. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modernclassproj, that's P-R-O-J. We are so appreciative of all you do for students and schools. Have a great week and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode of the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast.