Ep 140 How I Transformed Teaching Stress into Success

Are you tired of the frustration that comes with delivering crucial lessons only to find students missing or failing to grasp the material? Join me as I explore a transformative solution that has revolutionized teaching for many educators, including myself.

What's that solution? The Modern Classroom Project model!

In this episode, I share insights into how eliminating traditional lectures has not only changed how my students learn but has also positively impacted my mental well-being. Discover effective classroom management strategies, innovative lesson planning techniques, and the remarkable results achieved through this paradigm shift.

If you're ready to move past the frustration of students missing key lessons and unlock a new path to student success, subscribe to this podcast for more educational content.

👉🏼 Missed my previous episodes about the Modern Classroom Project?

• Ep 128 How to realistically reach 99% of your students
• Ep 129 This one shift could make you a better teacher
• Ep 139 ONE Simple Shift in Teaching Saved Me!

👉🏼 Want to take a free course to learn more about the Modern Classroom Project? https://www.modernclassrooms.org/sign-up

👉🏼 Join their Facebook Group for community and support: https://www.facebook.com/groups/modernclassrooms


Still figuring out lesson planning? Grab my free Lesson Planning Guide here 👉🏼https://teachersneedteachers.com/lessonplan

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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro
02:22 Reframing teaching
04:15 Rethinking assessment
07:25 Streamlining lesson planning
10:07 Video creation
14:37 Classroom logistics
19:36 Classroom management
21:39 Results
27:29 Should you try this?
30:04 It's not too late

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Teachers Need Teachers Podcasts, the podcast for teachers who don't want
to just survive teaching, but actuallythrive. So, as promised, I
have this episode that's taken me awhile to put together because there's so much
that I need to say about mypast semester with the Modern Classroom Project.
And for those of you that arenew and have no idea what that is,

(00:22):
I'm going to link in the shownotes my previous episodes about the Modern
Classroom Project so that you can knowwhat it's all about, or you can
just listen right now to this andyou can learn about how I run this
model. Really wanted to give youguys an update on this because I have
a lot to say, and it'sbeen definitely a work in progress, and
the fact that I'm still doing itshould say a lot. Ever, face

(00:45):
the frustration of planning a crucial lessonand having to deliver it on a specific
day, only to find out thata significant number of students are absent or
worse, despite a seemingly successful class, a significant portion of your students fail
the assessment. Yeah, of coursethat's happened to me. As educators navigating

(01:07):
these challenges can be really daunting.Reteaching risks boring the rest of the class,
after school tutoring or lunch tutoring encroacheson our personal time, and relying
on students to just figure it outindependently really is a gamble. In this
episode, I delve into a solutionthat many teachers, including myself, have

(01:27):
found to be transformative. By eliminatingtraditional lectures. Not only have I revolutionized,
and I really mean that, howmy students learn, but more importantly,
I've positively impacted my own mental wellbeing. So today I'm going to
share the six phases that transform myteaching from stress to success, including insights

(01:49):
into my lesson planning strategies, howI manage the classroom, and more importantly,
the results stemming from this really remarkabletechnique. As I've mentioned in three
previous episodes, this year, Itransitioned to what is called the Modern Classroom
Project, and I'll go ahead andlink that so that you guys can catch
up on those episodes. So basically, it's like a flipped model where students

(02:10):
are getting the information the learning viavideo and they're also practicing in class with
extra help from me, And it'sjust very much self pace. When I
decided to adopt this model, itactually took me a long time, so
I had to reframe the way thatI saw teaching and how I saw the

(02:30):
curriculum in general. So after learningabout this model, I actually spent a
couple of weeks just thinking and staringat past classes in Google Classroom, looking
through all of my teaching materials thatI regularly use, and trying to get
an idea of how this was goingto work because my students wouldn't have me
carrying them along and teaching them inreal time the lessons, and that was

(02:53):
just a really huge paradigm shift forme because I'm just used to doing that
whole stage on the stage thing thata lot of have learned and probably a
lot of us still use. Andalso, as I was learning about this
model through actual free courses through theModern Classroom project, I had to let
go of my pessimism and skepticism andjust that nagging feeling in my mind that

(03:15):
was like, well, this isn'tgoing to work, well, how is
that going to work? And comingup with all these reasons why it would
be a bad idea to do thisbecause I've always wanted to do something like
this, and so I had tothink about pacing from a different way.
But I had to structure the unitsand the lessons so that it could still
be self paced for the students andensure that they were still learning. And

(03:37):
it doesn't seem obvious that that wouldwork, because maybe students are getting the
videos but they're not actually absorbing theinformation. But at the same time,
that could also be happening when you'regiving lecture. One of the nice aspects
of this model is that if studentsdidn't understand it the first time, or
maybe they spaced out in the middleof your lecture, they can actually rewind

(03:58):
and go back and listen to itagain. I had to let go of
that need for control by standing inthe front of the room and making sure
that we are all moving at thesame pace at the same time, and
really allowing myself to trust the studentsto progress as they see fit. So
that was just the first phase.The next phase was also thinking about assessment
and what that would look like ina self paced model. As I was

(04:20):
learning more through their amazing Facebook group, and of course as I mentioned the
free courses that they have, Ihad to think about how am I going
to find out if students are actuallylearning, because it's one thing to just
play a video, and it's anotherto actually see if they absorbed or learned
anything from that video. Traditionally,I would have them just do a worksheet

(04:41):
or work in groups or answer outloud in class, but they can't do
that if they're all moving at adifferent pace, So I had to rethink
formative and even summative assessments. Inthis model. I adopted what they call
mastery checks, which are basically afancy word for formative assessments, but it's
just a checkpoint along the way tomake sure or that not only did the
student watch the video and try toabsorb it, but they also did the

(05:04):
practice associated with it and they actuallysomewhat mastered it. Sometimes students wouldn't quite
completely master it, but I couldtell that they knew enough to at least
progress, and I knew that theywould have more practice later on, so
I let them move on. Butit really serves two purposes, not only
for me to know that they didthe lesson and did the practice, but

(05:25):
also it's some accountability on part ofthe students. So if they didn't actually
pay attention to the video, thenthey wouldn't pass the mastery check, and
then they wouldn't be able to moveon to the next part. In the
beginning, I was creating so manymastery checks because I just wanted to make
sure that they really were doing whatthey were supposed to do, but I
was creating more work for myself.So around the second or third unit,

(05:47):
I was a lot more thoughtful aboutthe mastery checks because I wanted to make
sure that they really showed whether ornot students mastered even like a portion of
the standard or skill that they neededto learn by the end of the unit.
So it's just kind of like whenyou do have a concept that you
want students to learn, you canbreak those up into parts, but they

(06:08):
really need to know all of theparts combined in order to show mastery.
So that's where I had to thinkabout what type of formative assessments were really
useful and also how I wanted tocheck these. I didn't necessarily want students
to hand in work or submit workonline. I wanted something that was maybe
a little bit easier and more manageablefor me. So a lot of times

(06:29):
that would be in the form ofshort multiple choice quizzes that they could redo
if they didn't pass, and itwasn't really that big of a deal if
they didn't pass it right away becausethey could just maybe rewatch a previous lesson
and then retake the mastery check.I also explored opportunities for meaningful practice and
definitely embedding group work, because Ifeel that my students work best and learn

(06:53):
the best when they can struggle througha concept or idea with their group members.
This would mean that I would haveto create stopping points in the lesson
where students had to wait until everybodyelse did catch up, and that was
frustrating at times for the students,but I wanted to make sure that they
all had the prerequisite information before theydid the group work. Or sometimes with

(07:15):
my units, I would start outwith some kind of group activity where they
would struggle together, and then theywould proceed with the rest of the unit
and all of the videos. Sothe third phase was actually putting all of
these ideas together and creating a streamlineplanning process. It did take a couple
of units for me to get overthe struggle of just like, what should

(07:38):
a unit look like? But itstarted to flow better because I did what
most of us do, which iswork backwards. We think about the skill
or the standard that we want themto learn. So let's say that I
want them to learn how to writea race paragraph, and then I think
about all of the little mini skillsthat they need to be able to do

(07:59):
in order to successfully write that.Independently, I would work backwards, and
that's how I would plan those units, which is pretty typical. But the
hard part is making sure that thereare enough practice opportunities and that the practice
that they do complete is meaningful.What they also advocate is to have different
types of learning opportunities based on whatthe students need. So we have three

(08:22):
categories, must does, should do, and aspire to do. The must
do is are self explanatory. Theseare activities that students have to do.
The should dos are additional learning opportunitiesor additional lectures or additional lessons for students
that didn't quite understand it. Forexample, with the first lesson on how

(08:43):
to write a race paragraph, Idemonstrated for the students how they are supposed
to write it, and then theyhad to follow along and complete that for
students who didn't quite understand it thefirst time around, I had an additional
practice where I wrote a different raceparagraph so that they could see the format
again without feeling like they were justsort of repeating the video because sometimes that

(09:05):
first time maybe they didn't quite graspit. Maybe the second time I explained
it a little better, or justthe extra practice really solidifies it for them.
And then the last category is aspireto dos, and these are extension
activities. I've only done a fewof these, so the students who did
forge ahead, I didn't necessarily wantto create more work for them. I

(09:26):
could have probably created something like otherlearning opportunities or just some interesting videos that
they could watch, But this beingmy first year using this model, I
decided to just stick with the mustusand the should dos. And a lot
of times most of the lessons aremustus if I'm being honest, and I'll
probably embed more should dos in thefuture, but this just really helps in

(09:48):
terms of personalizing content for the students. But if they get to a mastery
check and they realize that they didn'treally understand it, they can go back
to the should does. They canalso rewatch the must us. But you
eventually trained students to know what itis that they need and to progress as
they see fits in the next phase. After all this planning is creating the

(10:11):
videos, and I'll be honest,it's kind of a tie in terms of
which took up the most time,because planning does take a lot of time,
and creating videos it can't take alot of time. If you were
not technologically savvy. You can usevideos that you find online, and I
have used some of those, dependingon why I needed them. A lot

(10:31):
of times it was just a screenrecording of me teaching them the concept,
or I would just use something likean app on my iPad or a screen
share on my computer and teach themthat way. I didn't put my face
on any of these videos. Idon't think it's necessary if you're teaching a
concept and you want to try tokeep the videos fairly short. They recommend
no more than eight or nine minutes, and I did my best to stay

(10:54):
within that limit in terms of myworkflow. After creating a video, there's
a couple of different ways to dothis. Post it to YouTube publicly and
save it in the playlist that yousend to your students. I personally save
it as unlisted, and then Iupload it to an online software called ed
puzzle, and you may have heardof this, And what's great about ed

(11:15):
puzzle is that you can embed questionswithin your video just to make sure that
they are paying attention and not justpressing play and letting the video run.
It's really great and yes I hadto pay some of my own money.
It's about thirteen fourteen dollars a monthfor that, and it's not necessary to
use it. I just found itto be really useful in terms of making

(11:37):
sure and keeping track of who iswatching the videos. I know that a
lot of teachers like this option,so again it's not necessary. And from
there I sign it through Google Classroom. And one thing about Google Classroom that
I just found out about is thatthey are working on a function where you
can upload videos to Google Classroom fromYouTube and within that you can embed questions.

(11:58):
Now at the time of this video, if it's working, then that
could completely bypass the need for theED Puzzle, So that could be really
cool if you want to explore thatroute. So I use Google Classroom as
my learning management system and that's howI disseminate all of the units and all
of the lessons, and of courseI let them know about the videos and

(12:18):
an effort for me to not haveto recreate all of these units in Google
Classroom year after year. I didcreate a master course that just kind of
stays there, and I just copyand paste from that master course into the
different class periods that I have.So here's what this looks like in terms
of disseminating the units. I'll createthe units in Google Classroom, and what's

(12:41):
great is that you can categorize itby units, and then I will post
all of the lessons in there.Let's say that there's seven lessons less than
one point one, one point two, one point three, something like that.
I will schedule that to go outall at once so that students can
move along as necessary. If there'sa worksheet that's associated with that particular lesson,

(13:03):
I will upload it as well,so everything just comes out all at
once, so that students can accessthe materials that they need as they are
progressing through the unit. So GoogleClassroom is where students will get that information,
and then they'll have to go toed Puzzle to get the lessons.
And this is really important because forme, they're going to two different places,
so I do leave instructions for themin terms of where they're supposed to

(13:26):
get the lesson or what it isthat they're supposed to do next. So
let's say that they're absent, theycan go into Google classroom and see what
the next part of the unit is, and then they can just keep moving
along if they want to try tokeep up or catch up later on.
One of the ways that the modernclassroom project ensures that students stay organized and
on track is to have some kindof a personal tracker. So I create

(13:48):
this where all of the lessons arelaid out, and then also for me,
I also put instructions on what itis that they're supposed to do.
So it'll say, go to Googleclassroom and download one point three and open
it in Notability, which is theapp that they use to annotate on their
iPads. And then the next pointwill say, go to ed Puzzle and

(14:11):
open up the video one point threeand watch it while you're completing the worksheet
something like that. So it's verydetailed in terms of what it is that
they're supposed to do and where they'resupposed to go. And again this makes
it so that as they're moving throughthe lessons, they can just look on
that tracker and see what it isthat they're supposed to do next. And

(14:31):
this tracker goes out when I disseminateall of the other lessons within a unit.
So the next phase was figuring outhow my classroom was going to run
with this model, because that wasreally important. It was going to look
very different than before. It's notgoing to be me teaching the same lesson
for five periods in a row.It was going to be the students getting

(14:52):
the lessons on video. Then Ihad to think about what am I doing
during this time and how am Iensuring that they are progressing, especially for
the students who are highly unmotivated.I had no clue what this was going
to look like. So after sometrial and error, this is how it
does look like. At the beginningof class, I still do a warm
up with the students, and thisis when I do something like grammar.

(15:15):
I don't have just a unit forgrammar, because for me, grammar is
ongoing. It's something that you haveto kind of like chip away a little
bit at a time if you reallywant it to stick. So we do
some kind of grammar or sentence correctionor what are kind of warm up that
you like to do. We stilldo that at the beginning of the class,
and that still allows me to engagewith the students and they get to

(15:37):
know me and I get to buildthat rapport and those relationships with them.
When we start a new unit,I have them first download the unit tracker
and we go through the entire unitand discuss all the different parts of it.
The students definitely want to know whatare the lessons that are in there,
but they also want to know whatare the masteret checks, what are
they going to be responsible for needingto demonstrate to me in terms of they're

(16:00):
learning, because that's what goes inthe grade book. I also don't tell
them where they need to finish forthe day, but we do set some
goals in terms of how far wethink we should go, and I might
say, Okay, by the endof this class period, it would be
a really good goal would be toget to thirteen point two, or a
really good goal it would be toget to fourteen point five. It just

(16:22):
depends on where we left off.And I had them sort of make a
realistic goal in terms of where itis that they want to be by the
end of the class period and thenthey get to work. In the beginning
of the year, I had studentsbring earbuds so that they could watch the
videos, or they could bring headphones, and not all of them bring those
consistently, as you can imagine,but I do have a set of earbuds

(16:44):
that I got from the school,and I loan them out to students.
I'll give them a sanitizing white toclean before and after they use them.
The students are working on the lesson, they're watching the video, they're doing
the practice, and I'm circulating,and it's really a amazing to be able
to walk around and watch them work. It's something that when you are lecturing,

(17:06):
you don't have the privilege of beingable to do that. If you
were walking around while you're lecturing,that could also be a little bit confusing
for the students because they're trying tofigure out where they're supposed to look.
So here they're really focusing on thelesson, and I get to look over
their shoulder, and I get tocatch the students who are doing nothing,
or I get to catch the studentswho are stuck and just staring, or

(17:27):
the students who seem to have skippedtoo far ahead and they're not really doing
the practice correctly. I just reallyget to clear up a lot of misconceptions,
and I get to know my studentsand get to know their level of
preparedness, and it's just been reallyeye opening. So you walk around the
classroom and if you see a bunchof students making the same mistakes or they're

(17:49):
confused or stuck on the same spot, you can pull those students aside and
then you can have a group lessonwith them, or you can just sort
of reiterate or clarify things for them. It works out really well. The
modern classroom project model really advocates forhaving a public facing tracker where you display
it on the board, like who'son what lesson? And I'm not at

(18:12):
that point. I really just preferto walk around and just see who's doing
what and help them as I seefit. I don't really want to keep
track of them that way, althougha lot of teachers have had a lot
of success with that. One ofthe benefits of having that kind of a
tracker is that if students are onthe same lesson, then they can go

(18:32):
and sit by that person and workwith them if they want to. But
I'm just not quite there yet,Maybe we'll try that next school year.
One thing that doesn't work with thismodel is sitting at your desk of well
students work. I learned this thehard way because what happens is some of
the students will just do something elsebecause they think that you're not paying attention
to them, or they'll get distracted, or they'll become unmotivated. It's just

(18:56):
as if they were doing regular workand you were just sitting at your desk.
They just there's something about circulating aroundthe room and talking to them about
what they wrote down, saying goodjob, asking them questions about what they
did, and maybe not the entiretime that you're walking around. I will
just sit sometimes and just watch themand look for confused looks on their faces,

(19:18):
or look for someone who decides tosauch in their seat, and it's
obvious that they're not paying attention,and I'll go and work with them.
But I highly suggest that you don'tsee this as a replacement for engaging with
your students. It's more a wayof allowing them to move at a pace
that works best for them. Sothe sixth phase of this was thinking about
how all of these parts move together, especially when it comes to classroom management.

(19:42):
Because here's a thing. Just becausestudents are allowed to be self paced,
it doesn't mean that they're working.In fact, there are a lot
of times when students aren't working.If a student is already unmotivated in every
single class, it doesn't mean they'regoing to be more motivated in yours.
This does increase the chances of themat least learning some of the material,

(20:04):
because if they decide that they're goingto check out for ten minutes, it's
not ten minutes during your lecture,it's just ten minutes of class time,
and then you can redirect them andthen you can have them still get the
lessons. So it's beautiful that way. And are students going to talk when
they're not supposed to? Yes,it doesn't solve all classroom management problems.

(20:26):
However, it does mean that whenone student is being disruptive, you don't
have to stop the lesson to dealwith them. The other students who aren't
being disruptive get to keep learning andit's great. And as I mentioned with
the worm up, it doesn't meanthat you never get to have class discussions
or that you can't have things likesocratic seminars or group work. You can

(20:48):
absolutely still do that, but again, the learning part, the part where
you were teaching them the new conceptor reviewing the concept, it gets to
happen on their own time, andit gets to happen whether or not they're
in school or at home or outof town. So rethinking your role while
the learning is happening while you're notlecturing it really does have an effect on

(21:12):
classroom management because again, you canreally be present, you are walking around,
You are catching all the little thingsthat maybe you wouldn't be able to
catch, or that the students wouldmore likely get away with or try to
attempt because of proximity to them,because you're at the front of the room
and they're over to the side orthe back. You being able to circulate

(21:33):
around just really has a huge effecton the number of off task behaviors that
happen. So let's discuss the resultsfrom all of this happening, because yes,
it's a great model, but isit actually effective To determine this,
I decided to look at my studentswriting from last year as well as test
scores, and here's something that kindof surprised me. Nothing changed the scores

(21:57):
weren't better, The scoolors weren't worse. The writing wasn't better or worse either.
Now does that mean that it didn'twork. Absolutely not. That actually
shows me that it does work.I'm still delivering the same quality of lesson,
it's just via video. And ifanything, I had fewer missing assignments

(22:18):
with this model because the students wereable to go back and learn the material
and complete the assignment compared to beingabsent and me somehow figuring out how to
catch them up with a concept thatI spent all class teaching them. So
their scores didn't go up, butthey also didn't go down, which I
think is really significant considering that Iam not standing at the front of the

(22:38):
room lecturing them. And this wasreally huge. Now, as you can
imagine, this model is amazing forcatching up students. I've had students who
just miss all kinds of school forwhatever reason, and they can work on
this when they're gone, and someof them do. They know that they
just have to follow along the tracker. We'll ask me what are we doing

(23:00):
when we're gone, which is reallysilly to me, and I'll just tell
them we are progressing through the unitand they can just work on it if
they want to, and some ofthem do. And for those who don't
work on it when they're gone,that's fine too. They can catch up
when they're in class. But onething that has been great is that when
I have to teach them a majorconcept, something that we're going to use
all the time, like the raceparagraph, and they happen to be absent

(23:23):
that day, or just having abad day and not focusing, or they're
distracted or whatever, they can stillget that crucial lesson, and if they
didn't understand the first time, theycan watch it again. And in fact,
I had a student who was goneall last week while we were writing
a major essay. I was talkingto his group members and I was like,
wow, he's been gone all week, And one of his group members

(23:45):
said, yeah, But it's agood thing that all the lessons are on
video. So even my students recognizethe power and the value in having these
lessons be online so that they don'tfall behind. I would say that some
of the frustrations that I have withthis model is that some students will deviate
because they aren't following the lesson.They'll deviate because they're not following the tracker,

(24:11):
they won't know what to do next, even though by now we're on
thirteen units and they still ask mewhat should I do next? Just because
you have it all laid out,it doesn't mean that students are going to
be inherently organized. Also, somestudents just want to fast forward through the
lesson and skip it because they're like, oh, I already know how to
do this, And you can setthat functionality in ed puzzle so that they

(24:33):
can't skip ahead. But then itcan be frustrating if ED puzzle is glitching
and it sends them to the beginningand they were almost done with the lesson
and now they have to watch itagain. That's a technology issue, but
it has been frustrating for my studentsat times. Also, we don't do
as much group work as we havein the past, and I'm someone who
really believes on the power of collaborativework. It's been a little bit harder

(24:56):
to embed that. But I justhave to be a lot more intentional than
I have before, and it canget a little bit overwhelming at times.
When you have your students all overthe place in a unit, they tend
to move together at a similar pace. But you'll have a few outliers,
and sometimes it can get a littlebit overwhelming and frustrating to keep track of
all of those students. But Istill find that it's valuable and worth it

(25:19):
because the students that need to catchup or the students that are falling behind,
it benefits them so much I can'treiterate it enough. Now, let's
also talk about how this has beenon me. So it's a mixed bag.
Number one, it's a lot ofwork to have to create those videos.
Not going to sugarcoat it, butI only have to create the videos

(25:41):
this year and reuse them from nowon. Yes, I will tweak a
couple of videos that didn't quite workout. I had a video where I
did a screen recording and apparently itstopped recording all of my movements and just
kept recording the audio. And Idon't rewatch. Every single one of my
video is not going to lie,And so the students caught it, which

(26:03):
is pretty comical because all of asudden, thirty hands shot up in the
air saying you say that you're highlighting, but there's not actually any highlighting on
the screen. So there are someglitches and some videos that I'm going to
have to record, but for themost part these lessons are done. It's
pretty awesome, but there's more workin that aspect, and then also the
planning part and the disseminating everything,creating the tracker. All of that a

(26:27):
lot of work, but I'm onlydoing that work this year. However,
in terms of my mental well being, I can tell you that during actual
class time, I have so muchmore relaxed. I am really loving getting
to know my students, working withthem one on one, walking around the

(26:48):
room, helping those students that struggle, and giving them so much more individualized
time. It's just been so amazingfor the students, and I've had discussions
with them and they love it.There are a couple of students who do
prefer the old school lecture style,and that's fine, and we do have
some moments like that, like whenwe're doing grammar, but for the most

(27:10):
part, the vast majority of mystudents really wish that there are other teachers
were doing this model. It's justbeen great for me. I don't have
the Sunday scaries anymore because everything isplanned out. I don't have to worry
about what we're doing on Monday.What are we doing Monday? We're picking
up where we left off on Friday. And that's just how it goes.
So do I recommend that you dothis sure with one caveat if you are

(27:33):
someone who is a newer teacher,maybe not, only because you don't know
yet what it is that you wantto do or that you need to do
and you're still learning. And Ido see value in actually lecturing in front
of the class when you're just startingout, so that you can really learn
about pacing and what works. I'mworried that if you aren't used to teaching

(27:56):
yet, then your lessons might goby a little too fast or a little
too slow, and until you kindof get used to how to pace your
lessons for students to truly grasp it, I feel like you might want to
hold off on this. I alsowould take it slowly if you are not
someone who has a curriculum. SoI know that a lot of you have

(28:17):
a curriculum that you have to use, that you're forced to use, and
you have to say certain things anddo certain things on certain days. And
this model will actually work really wellwith that because it's already planned out for
you and you just have to goalong and create the videos and the lessons
for it. But if you're someonewho's still creating your own curriculum because you
were just told to teach, maybeyou were given a textbook and you just
have to kind of wing it,then you might want to take some time

(28:41):
first to figure out your curriculum andthen the following year create the lessons.
That's just my recommendation. I knowthat with the Modern Classroom Project, they
think that anyone can do this atany time, and just from my experience
and the struggles that I went through, I would definitely hold off if you
fall into those two categories. However, you can also go in the Facebook
group for the Modern Classroom Project,and so many people are just willing to

(29:06):
just give you their materials, togive you their pacing guides and their trackers,
and it's just so supportive of acommunity that if you just want to
kind of poke around and lurk andsee what other people are doing and maybe
try it for like one or twoclasses or two subjects. If you teach
elementary, then you can do that. And I can tell you there are

(29:26):
elementary teachers that are doing this.So if you're skeptical as an elementary teacher.
You just need to go to theModern Classroom Project website and they have
a course for how those teachers dothat, and also go into the Facebook
group to get additional help. SoI hope that all made sense. If
it didn't, then you might wantto actually head over to the YouTube video

(29:48):
of this because I do have screenshotsof things like my personal tracker and what
my Google classroom looks like in termsof how this is uploaded, and that
way you can get more of avisual in terms of how this works.
That might help you if you justwant to try it out and just you
know, even though at the timeof the recording it's March, it doesn't
mean that it's too late to tryit out. You could try it out

(30:11):
for just one upcoming unit and justsee how it goes. You can just
play around with it, and thatway you know how to tweak it.
And if you want to play withit more this summer and develop it,
then you have the time to dothat because you've had a chance to experience
it. So let me know ifyou're going to try this and if you
have any questions or if you justwant to brainstorm with me. You can
email me at kimat teachersnewteachers dot comand if you have any episode suggestions,

(30:37):
I would love to hear those becauseI am starting to get a little bit
of writer's block and I don't necessarilyknow what it is that would be valuable
to you, so please let meknow, and so be sure to email
me and let me know any topicsthat you'd like me to cover. Thanks
for hanging out with me today,you guys, and I will see you
next time.