Start Small, Think Big: 5 Minutes with Modern Classrooms Project- Transcript

The Educating All Learners Alliance Podcast

Aurora: Hi, this is Aurora from the Educating All Learners Alliance. And today we're speaking to Avery Balasbas for five minutes with modern classrooms project. The Modern Classrooms project is an educational nonprofit organization that revolutionizes education by empowering teachers to personalize learning experience for their students. MC P seeks to support teachers in transforming their classrooms into a blended self-paced and mastery-based learning environment. Joining us today is Avery Blas Bas, they're the partnerships manager at the modern Classrooms project supporting the West coast and is located in California. Avery was a former high school English Department head and Public Health Academy director at Abraham Lincoln High School in the San Francisco Unified School District prior to joining us today. Thanks so much for joining us, Avery. It's great to have you here. Well, let's dive right in. Modern classrooms project is an EALA partner and I've done some great work with them in the past. But let's get our listeners caught up, tell us about your organization and the work that you do.

Avery: Yeah, just like you said, Aurora. Hi, everyone again. I'm Avery and modern classrooms project. It's a movement by teachers for teachers, we want to help make teaching a more sustainable practice while also empowering our educators to like you mentioned meet the needs of all of our students. And also for students to experience a personalized way of learning that prepares them for education in the classroom. And then also beyond the classroom as well, like whether they choose something post-secondary or post-college, from my experience, implementing the hard skills that they get learning, how to, you know, self-manage, time, manage. Everything is definitely what the model instills in our students that go through that in the classroom.

Aurora: You know, you mentioned all students, how does this work impact our students with disabilities and our students with learning differences?

Avery: I found that this instructional model has like credible impact with students with disabilities. IEPs 504s because the model is a blended self-paced mastery-based learning experience. Teachers are able to provide that one on one support to meet like the needs or the asks of the IEP throughout any time of learning day, whether it's the entire block period or however, like with the little sessions that you'll have for math science English in like a multi-subject classroom at the elementary level.

Avery: And you know, when you're working with different students, different pacing, different needs. Like you said, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of challenges that can come with that. So, you know, what are some challenges that you face in this work? And how is modern classrooms project, you know, addressing that?

Avery: I think some of the challenges with at least from my experience implementing. So one of my classes, it was half enrolled with, it should have had a teacher or a cote. So half the class had IEPs or 504 and there's one particular student I had who had autism, but at the age he was at, it was 1/10 grade class, but he was already like a senior level COVID and other things, Miss school and everything. But it was very much like, I think he was already in a mild to moderate space versus maybe he might have been severe as like a freshman or something. And his family moved across the country trying to find a school district that actually kind of supported him. And when he was in my English class, which was his most difficult subject back to school, his parents were like, this is the first time where I was able to learn at home with my son because all the videos were accessible towards the end of the class. Like you actually got my son to read. He's big on art. So like, I kind of used art to have draw something, a summary of the book and then I'd have him describe the art piece and that it's like you actually got him to write something I like, well, I also was just trying to channel what he was passionate about and then kind of, you know, use the model to help facilitate that thinking process. And in order to kind of address those needs, there's definitely a lot of front loading that happens with this model because you're kind of transitioning your curriculum from what you've created over the years of your career into the blended self-based mastery-based kind of structure. And it allows you as a teacher to highly differentiate within the learning process. But it does take a lot of trial and error because there are teachers even like myself as I was doing this, like you do get a little bogged down because you're like, oh, it's not really working. How do I like get all this going? But it does take some time. And I think the one of the big things that I learned from that is asking the students, how does this work for you? Because that was like the biggest lesson that I learned from a lot of this was as I was implementing. OK, let's try this, let's try this. And I was like, there needs to be student voice in here because the model allows for them to be autonomous and they should be stakeholders in this process. And so students were actually giving me feedback on how the self-pacing should be or how Google classroom should look. And it ultimately, it was really designed by them. And I kind of threw out the things that I put in because they're like, no, I need the student example. I need sentence starters. I need to put this here. And the next year I was implementing, there were yes, you could say less complaints from the next generation of students because the LMS and everything was built by my previous students.

Aurora: Well, we're almost out of time. So to wrap us up, how can folks get involved? What should they do if they want to learn more about the modern classrooms project?

Avery: Yeah. Modern classrooms project has a free course where you can go to learn dot modern classrooms.org right now and learn about the model. We also have a virtual mentorship program which takes a deeper dive in the free course. You get paired with the mentor to do that. There's a session coming in the summer, we have a fall and spring session that are throughout the school year. Other ways if it's like, you don't have time for that, which is what I did before I joined the virtual manager program was check out MC PS podcast, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, I think is the most highly active group because the thousands of teachers that are there will say I have a question about how to support my student with IP. And then like 20 teachers will respond across the country, which is great. It's a very big network and the podcast MC P podcast for me was I would listen to it on the way to school and be like, I'm going to try that today. And yeah, that's what I would do.

Aurora: Thanks so much for joining us today, Avery, it was really great to speak with you.  

Avery: Thank you so much

Aurora: Well, that's it for us today, folks. Thank you to Avery Balasbas and to learn more, Check out their website at Modern classrooms.org. I'm Aurora from EALA and this was five minutes with modern classrooms project.