Episode 24: Journey to the Center of the Modern Classroom
Melissa Loble (00:01.582)
Hey there, welcome to EduCast 3000. I am your co-host Melissa Loble.
Ryan Lufkin (00:06.351)
And I'm your cohost, Ryan Lufkin. Melissa and I are super excited to chat with our guests today about education innovation. Robert Barnett is the co-founder and chief product officer of the Modern Classrooms Project and the author of Meet Every Learner's Needs. He specializes in blended and self-paced learning models designed to empower both educators and students. His work centers on creating inclusive, personalized learning environments that harness technology and research-driven technology strategies to meet the needs of every
So Rob, welcome to the show.
Rob (00:39.228)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Melissa Loble (00:41.806)
It's so good to have you and just your background is really interesting to us and I know it's going to be very interesting to our readers, listeners I should say, readers, yes, and readers as well because we will include links in our, that's where we'll post the transcripts. But I want to start with like tell us a little bit about yourself because not all of our listeners are going to know about you or the work that you're doing.
Ryan Lufkin (00:50.799)
Hahaha
We do, we will post the transcripts, yes.
Rob (01:06.268)
Of course, yeah. I'm Rob. I was a high school teacher. I taught math in the United States and then I taught in Switzerland as well. And I'm not a teacher anymore, but all of my work now is informed by my experiences as a teacher. When I was teaching, I would walk into my class and I knew that some of my students were, they had grade level skills or ahead of grade level, they were ready to excel, they needed a challenge.
I had a lot of students who had gaps in their learning or just needed a little more time to learn. They needed support. And then I had students who were chronically absent or late and they needed to be caught up. I, as the teacher, needed to figure out a way to meet all of those learners' needs at once. How could I keep each of these diverse, unique young people challenged and supported?
Ryan Lufkin (01:45.904)
Yeah.
Rob (02:00.664)
every day. And so the strategies I developed as a teacher, which I'm sure we'll discuss, they worked well for me. They worked for my colleagues. A colleague and I founded a nonprofit called the Modern Classrooms Project through which we've now shared our approach with thousands of teachers all over the world. And they teach elementary school, middle school, high school. They teach every subject area. They're amazing educators. They use our approach much better in many ways than I ever did.
And I'm here because I want to share that approach with your listeners because I believe it's what's right for teachers, what's right for young people, and I think any teacher who's motivated can use our techniques to meet every learner's needs tomorrow.
Ryan Lufkin (02:47.343)
Yeah, that's awesome. Before we dive into the hard hitting questions, one of the things that Melissa and I always like to ask our guests is, do you have a favorite learning moment? And that can be anything from whether you were on the teaching side or the learning side, but a lot of us have those moments that kind of stand out. Could you share one with us?
Melissa Loble (02:52.322)
Yeah.
Rob (03:06.522)
I do have a moment that stands out and I, when I was, as I was writing the book, I was reflecting on sort of my journey as an educator and how I, how I landed on this instructional model that's now part of the modern classrooms project. And the, the event that started it all was an afternoon professional development session. You know, we had a PD day for the district. I was in DC public schools and there was a big presentation in the morning. And in the afternoon, there were some
teacher choice sessions and I went into one and the teacher was explaining how he would create videos of himself teaching and it was super simple. Like he basically mounted his phone, you know, on top of his desk and then he would solve math problems and record it on his phone and he would give it to his students and I was sitting there like, my God, this is such an amazing way to teach. Imagine if I could do this.
Ryan Lufkin (03:58.779)
Yeah.
Rob (04:01.05)
My students could watch this anytime, anywhere. They could rewind, they could rewatch, and I wouldn't have to repeat myself. I could spend class time working closely with the students. And, you know, I know this idea of the flipped classroom had been around for a while, but I had never actually seen how easy it was to do that myself. And when this teacher said, here's what I do, here's how I do it, I felt like, man, this is possible for me. And that was the beginning of everything that followed.
That was the light bulb moment for me.
Ryan Lufkin (04:32.273)
As a parent, I imagine there's just as many parents watching those videos going, now I can actually help my child with math because that's not the way we did it when I learned math, right?
Rob (04:41.296)
Totally, that's a huge benefit, The parents feel like, this is all different. Well, what if the teacher is in your pocket on the phone, right? And if your student was sick that day, you can watch it together. If your student's struggling, you can watch it. If your student is advanced, like they can watch it and move on to the next one. It's a beautiful thing, yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (04:43.259)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (04:49.296)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (04:59.643)
That's awesome. Yeah.
Melissa Loble (04:59.98)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, gosh, I love that story. I also started in the classroom. I was in New York City public schools and I taught high school. And I just remember this was before technology really kind of infused itself in how we taught. And I remember period after period, the same lecture I would deliver. taught ninth grade history. And it was like, and I was so tired by the time I did the lecture that I needed to do.
that I didn't have that kind of time. Not only did I not have the classroom time, but I didn't actually have the emotional bandwidth or the energy to then spend the kind of time I would have liked to with students in that one-on-one really personalizing that learning experience. So that story rings very true to me. I wish I had those kinds of tools back when I taught because I think that could have just completely transformed the way I delivered my craft.
Ryan Lufkin (05:47.889)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Loble (05:55.776)
in so many ways and the way I connected with students, which actually this leads me to my first question. Tell us a little bit more about the modern classroom project. You've alluded to it and shared sort of its origin, a bit of its origin story in describing yourself. what inspired you really? You've talked a little bit about that, but what inspired you to co-found it? where is it today? Give us the background on this project.
Rob (06:20.156)
Of course, yeah. Before I talk about the project, maybe I'll just give a brief overview of the model that we help teachers use. And so what we say, the big words we use are blended, self-paced, mastery-based instruction. What it means is that the teacher digitizes direct instruction so that instead of me standing at the board repeating myself over and over when some students are ahead, some are behind, some aren't even there,
Melissa Loble (06:26.104)
Please. That'd be great.
Ryan Lufkin (06:26.511)
Yeah, yeah.
Melissa Loble (06:35.064)
Great.
Rob (06:48.836)
I'm using very short, of focused, concise videos to explain content. I like to make my own or I could find good videos online. You know, we have some teachers that love recording videos and some teachers who say, my students love someone from YouTube, so I'm going to use them. Anyways, that's what delivers the direct instruction. Once students see that direct instruction, they'll spend most of class working together, ideally off screen, applying what they've learned.
So in my class, a math class, I'd make a five minute video on a concept. Students would spend, you know, as long as they needed really, but it could have been 15, 20, 45 minutes working together to solve problems with me there for one-on-one and small group support. And then the final element is that when any student is ready, they get what I call a mastery check, which is one problem to see, do you understand this content or not?
If the student understands it, they advance to the next lesson. If the student doesn't understand it, then maybe they'll sit with me, maybe they'll go back to the video, maybe they'll find a classmate. They will address their misconceptions, they'll do some more practice, and they'll have the chance to try again. That way, students build confidence, there's not learning gaps, they build self-esteem from achieving real mastery. And so that is how a modern classroom lesson works. Of course, it gets complicated because some students move quickly.
some students need more time. And so a lot of what we do at the Modern Classrooms Project is we tell teachers how to design lessons like this, and then how do you manage a classroom in which 20 students may be working on four or five different lessons at once? How do you deal with seating? How do you track progress? How do you figure out where to spend your time? And so at Modern Classrooms Project, that's what we do is we help teachers use this model in their own classroom.
Melissa Loble (08:19.726)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (08:32.369)
Yeah.
Melissa Loble (08:36.056)
Yeah.
Rob (08:45.358)
It started very small. was me and my co-founder, Kareem, taught downstairs from me at Eastern High School in Washington, DC. We started it in 2018 to train eight of our colleagues and we were a nonprofit because our colleagues needed computers and we raised money to buy them computers. You know, it was small DC based. During COVID, there was interest from all over the country, all over the world in this model. People saw, okay.
The lecture model wasn't working great before COVID, but during COVID, it's really not working well. need some re-lifters. Yeah, yeah. So we grew a lot during COVID. And even now that students are back in schools, teachers have realized, look, the one size fits all model doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for my students. And so we continue to train teachers. have a...
Ryan Lufkin (09:19.441)
The hour long recorded lecture just wasn't as engaging yet.
Melissa Loble (09:25.374)
Hehehehehe
Rob (09:41.094)
free online course that's reached about 80,000 teachers all over the world. And then we have what we call a mentorship program where we pair a middle school English teacher in Utah with one of our experts who's a middle school English teacher in Maryland. They work together to apply the model to plan lessons. And we've trained about 20,000 teachers through that program. So yeah, we're training teachers.
any grade level, any subject area, anywhere in the world in an instructional approach that we think really meets every learner's needs.
Ryan Lufkin (10:17.457)
awesome.
Melissa Loble (10:18.006)
And is that a grassroots, so it's teacher to teacher, or are you also working with districts to bring in some of this development, maybe across a grade level or across a discipline or even across a school site?
Rob (10:33.016)
It's a mix of both. mean, our growth is largely teacher driven. Teachers find this and they share it with their colleagues. Oftentimes that makes its way up to a principal or a superintendent who's interested in working with us. And we do partner with schools and districts to train their teachers. When we do that, however, we have an opt-in approach for teachers. So if we partner with a school or district, we don't want to say every teacher has to teach this way. We don't believe that
Melissa Loble (10:35.203)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Loble (10:44.771)
Yeah.
Rob (11:02.972)
That's best for teachers or young people. We want teachers to teach this way because they believe in it. So when we partner with the district, you know, they might say, OK, we'd like to train up to 100 or 1000 teachers and we'd say, OK, we're going to go find the teachers that are interested. We'll recruit them, we'll train them, we'll support them. So yeah, it's it's it's it's. Bottom up, we also work with with leaders, but when we do work with leaders, we make sure teachers are bought in first.
Ryan Lufkin (11:32.303)
Yeah, yeah. Well, and for our listeners, we'll actually link out to the Modern Classrooms Project website, actually the free course that Rob mentioned, we'll link to that as well. And then we'll also link out to your book, Me Every Learner's Needs. And in that book, you kind of talk about personalization being so key to engaging learners. What are some of the insights or takeaways from the book that maybe educators could start with?
Rob (12:00.174)
Yeah, of course. Personalization in education is kind of an interesting word because I feel like it's almost been co-opted by tech companies that when you think of personalized learning, what I see is a bunch of kids on screens getting personalized learning. And the book is really about making this personalized learning feel really personal. So it's about how do you use technology in a way that enhances human connection and
Ryan Lufkin (12:07.995)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Loble (12:15.746)
Mm-hmm.
Rob (12:29.968)
The way that I do that, the way our teachers do that is use technology in very limited purposeful ways so that students actually spend most of their time interacting. In my classroom, I used videos and those videos were short. They were five to 10 minutes long. I used the learning management system. I used Canvas, which I loved because everything was there and there was a clear path for my students to know, okay,
Melissa Loble (12:30.392)
great.
Melissa Loble (12:39.032)
Hmm.
Rob (12:56.828)
Well, I mastered lesson three yesterday, so today's lesson four. Here's how I find it in Canvas. And aside from that, students were working with me or with each other face to face on paper. I spent class time sitting down with students. If I had four students on lesson six one day, they would all be sitting together, working together. It was really a classroom that was all about connection and interaction. Why do we send?
Melissa Loble (13:09.166)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (13:25.082)
Yeah.
Rob (13:26.716)
kids to school so they can interact. And that's why teachers become teachers too, because they want to build relationships with young people. I think the book is, a key takeaway from the book is how do you use technology in purposeful ways that actually get you to the core of what learning about, which is interaction, connection, relationships.
Ryan Lufkin (13:31.537)
Yeah.
Melissa Loble (13:32.482)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (13:46.373)
Yeah, that is so aligned with our mission and our perspective at Instructure. I love that.
Melissa Loble (13:50.574)
Yeah, I'm going to ask, so I love how you created that distinction between how personalization has been broadly used and what personalization means to you in this methodology. I'm going to ask the same thing about blended learning. I blended learning is also a phrase in this space that's used to mean a lot of different things and your approach as you've already described it is a very specific way to be thinking about blended learning. How do you think about it?
in context of sort of this bigger blended learning movement that's happened or even how do you think of it alongside a flipped classroom as well?
Rob (14:30.97)
Yeah, I was very proud actually when I wrote the book because at the end I did a search for the word blended and it only appeared in my appendix on research. Like part of the book is to make these strategies simple and accessible without getting into the buzzwords. But of course we do use the buzzwords because they stand for something that people understand which is using technology. And I think that blended learning, really does.
Melissa Loble (14:36.546)
Mm-hmm.
love that. Ugh, I love that.
Rob (14:59.856)
need to be a blend, right? Using technology for the things technology does well. A computer is incredible at repeating the same explanation over and over, right? The internet is incredible at being accessible anytime, anywhere. So a student, if they're riding the bus home, can watch the video to understand the content or they can watch it at home with their family. The computer, in my opinion,
is not that good at motivating a student who feels like math is not for me and I'm having kind of a tough week. Like, I don't think a computer is going to deal with that. That student needs a teacher to sit down and say, hey, how you doing? I know you've been a little quiet. Like, is there anything I can do to help you? And I'm here for you because I believe in you. I don't think that's going to work from a computer. So I think
Ryan Lufkin (15:37.391)
Yeah.
Rob (15:56.93)
Our take on blended learning is let's figure out what technology does really well. Let's use that to make the teacher's job easier and let the teacher focus on their areas of strength.
Melissa Loble (16:10.05)
That's just music to my ears. I always say we shouldn't use technology for technology sake, but we should use technology to enable the things we can't do without technology. And so I just, I love that so much.
Ryan Lufkin (16:15.525)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (16:22.777)
Yeah, well, and to that point too, you know, the conversations are all around the AI right now, right? And there's everything from the fear of AI and really shunning it because of that fear that it would replace some of those interactions that you're talking about, to maybe looking at AI as a catch-all silver bullet to solve all the problems, right? Like, where does AI, have you started thinking about where does AI fit in the model that you've developed?
Melissa Loble (16:28.93)
Yes.
Rob (16:50.362)
Yeah, mean, probably as no surprise given what I've just said, I'm pretty skeptical of student facing AI. I'm pretty skeptical of students, you know, chatting with a computer. I just don't think that's why students come to school or what students want. I think students want to talk with each other and they want to talk with their teacher. So I think the question is how can AI facilitate that?
Ryan Lufkin (16:57.201)
Yeah.
Rob (17:17.902)
I think AI can be really helpful in helping teachers plan lessons, generate content that is aligned to this sort of modern classroom instructional approach. because it does take work to transform the way you teach. So if we can reduce that work and let teachers focus on what they do well, I think there is lot of potential there.
Ryan Lufkin (17:32.998)
absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
Melissa Loble (17:42.094)
Yeah, yeah, I'm curious too, if I can add on to that question, you talk a lot about that human connection you talked about in the beginning of the conversation. Where do you think about that in relation to AI? Because there's a lot of debate in the education space around how do we protect human connection as we continue to adopt tools that are leveraging AI?
Rob (18:08.452)
Yeah, think we need to really understand and agree on what human teachers do really well better than any computer. And that is the connection. so technology should serve that. I think sometimes I've seen when schools invest in technology first, the teacher basically becomes tech support to the program. And I don't think that's what teachers should be.
Ryan Lufkin (18:35.355)
Yeah.
Rob (18:37.98)
It's not that the pedagogy should serve the technology, but the pedagogy should drive what's happening in the classroom and technology should support that. So I think that, you know, if you as a listener agree that the pedagogy I've described is what's right for you and your students, then we should look for tools that make that pedagogy more accessible for you, easier for you, less work. And, you know, at Modern Classrooms we are.
We don't have anything groundbreaking yet, but we're trying to work on tools that will lighten the planning load on teachers so that their energy can be spent in the human interaction.
Ryan Lufkin (19:13.638)
Yeah.
Melissa Loble (19:14.318)
Great.
Ryan Lufkin (19:17.957)
Yeah, and I think that's a great point, because I think we need to make sure that we've got educators in the decisions around these tools and what tools are being purchased, what tools are being applied. And I think right now we're seeing more on the technology, the technology leaders making those decisions and rolling it out and saying, hey, teachers, use these. And I think it needs to be a joint decision so we don't lose sight of that human connection. I think you're making a great point there.
Melissa Loble (19:41.516)
Yeah, yeah. Or the artist and the teacher. Well, this leads to, I think this leads really nicely to my next question for you is like, share a success or like where the modern classrooms project, you know, either impacted students or teachers or both. give us a brag story because I think that will also help our listeners ground. this is the kind of impact if I go in and think about doing the work in this way. Wow. I can really connect to this kind of impact.
Ryan Lufkin (19:43.536)
Yeah.
Rob (20:12.014)
Yeah, think modern classrooms has a lot of benefits for a lot of people. think the first benefits that teachers and students see are that class becomes much calmer and more enjoyable. And I know that's not quantitative data point. I'll talk about quantitative data in a moment, but that's really important. Like when a teacher can walk into the classroom with their head held high and feel like today I get to help young people.
Melissa Loble (20:26.421)
Mmm.
Rob (20:41.86)
learn and when young people walk into the classroom and feel like today I can learn at my own pace and I can really get it, that is so much different than at least how I felt when I started my teaching career which is like I've got to go in and perform and keep my students in their seats compliant like and I'm going to be exhausted. And so just changing the way the classroom functions and you know I feel it if I visit a
Ryan Lufkin (20:55.654)
Yeah.
Rob (21:09.894)
classroom, it's modern classroom, and I walk in, I just can see the teachers relaxed, the students are engaged. You know, that's not quantifiable, but that is a huge, huge impact. terms of, you know, the in terms of the research that we've done, we've done a lot of surveys of teachers and students and survey responses bear this out that that teachers feel more capable of reaching all of their students that
Melissa Loble (21:23.09)
yeah.
Rob (21:37.692)
that students feel like they have closer relationships with their teachers. And so you just get the sense of the classroom that is really working for teachers and students. In terms of our impacts on student achievement, we're in the middle of a federally funded randomized control trial where we're really a gold standard research. Like, what are our impacts? So we are doing that sort of.
Ryan Lufkin (22:02.342)
Wow.
Rob (22:05.656)
anecdotally and in partnership with schools and districts, we've often looked at the test scores and said, okay, let's compare students in modern classrooms to students in traditional classrooms, or let's look at your test scores from one year to the next before and after the modern classrooms approach. And we've pretty consistently seen benefits for student learning in terms of increased test scores or increased proficiency rates. you know, there is, and on our website,
modernclassrooms.org slash impacts, you you can see all of the research and reporting that we've been done. So there is that sort of evidence. To me though, I think the biggest, the biggest thing I see, it's hard to describe on a podcast, but we walk into the class, just feels different. You don't have a frustrated, stressed out teacher yelling at kids. And that was me, by the way, I'm not criticizing other teachers. I was a frustrated, stressed out teacher yelling at my students because
Ryan Lufkin (22:47.834)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (22:56.655)
Yeah.
Melissa Loble (22:57.795)
Yeah.
Rob (23:02.544)
Because they weren't engaged and they weren't engaged because one lesson from the board cannot possibly engage 30 diverse young people. But when I walked into the modern classroom, I felt like, man, what a privilege. Today I just get to help these young people learn. It's huge difference.
Ryan Lufkin (23:05.189)
Yeah.
Melissa Loble (23:19.042)
Yeah. That classroom vibe is so invaluable. I remember that from my teaching. And I remember going from certain classes to other classes. the ones that I really felt like it's interesting. I sort of had more of a kind of an approach that you've described in some of my elective classes versus some of my meditory classes that were required, particularly in the state for state exams and things. And I remember just even my own personal energy shifting from one
to another and I know that was felt by students and so thinking about it like I think we we don't talk about that enough in this space around just that what does the classroom culture feel like and and and how important influential is that on the outcomes that are produced through those interactions.
Ryan Lufkin (23:48.805)
Yeah, yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (24:09.433)
It's hard to quantify, it is one of those kind of X factors, but it's important. Yeah. So in your book, you talk a little bit about how this approach can help bridge gaps in education equity, especially with underserved student populations, right? How, dive into that a little bit more for us and how does that, what kind of impact can that have?
Melissa Loble (24:13.098)
It's so important. Yeah.
Rob (24:29.276)
Yeah, so I've used this approach in different contexts. I taught at Eastern Senior High School in Washington, DC. That's a Title I high school where like 1 % of students are proficient in math. I taught at an elite boarding school in Switzerland, which is one of the world's most expensive schools. those are such different environments in some ways. The fundamental challenges of teaching and learning math are the same.
Ryan Lufkin (24:55.707)
Yeah.
Rob (24:56.092)
Some students are ahead and need a challenge. Some students are behind and need support. Some students are absent or distracted or late and they need help catching up.
Ryan Lufkin (25:04.131)
or out skiing and you know doing the...
Rob (25:07.572)
Well, you know, when in Switzerland. So, but those students, every young person deserves an excellent education. when I think about this approach, it's not just for one type of kids, it's for all types of kids. And as a parent, this is the kind of education that I want for my sons. So, you know, I'm always skeptical when people say, this is a great approach for those kids, but
Melissa Loble (25:12.366)
you
Rob (25:34.47)
I want something different for my kids. This is what I think is really best for every young person. I do think that in underserved communities, the data bears this out. The gaps are often the greatest. so because your student in an underserved community might not have access to tutoring after school, or maybe their parent is working long hours and can't help them with homework in the evening.
Ryan Lufkin (25:57.201)
Hmm.
Rob (26:04.092)
or the class has 30 kids instead of 15. All of these things just make it harder for that young person to learn and all of those things increase the need for an approach that can respond to every learner's needs. And so this is an approach for everyone, but I think where gaps are the greatest, so too is the possibility for him.
Melissa Loble (26:28.834)
Yeah, gosh, that in and of itself, framing it that way, I think is so valuable and our listeners will really appreciate reflecting on how not only the work that you can do has that impact, but where can you have the largest impact? I I love that. And it leads to, have maybe a zooming out question for you.
And I'm really curious, how do you predict the future of education? I know this is a big question, so it's like, where should I take this? But what do you see in the trends in K-12 education over the next maybe two to five years? How do you see things changing, especially as we start to see some of those equity divides get bigger or some of those gaps get bigger? There's a lot of conversation about learning loss through the pandemic.
There's just a lot of different kinds of challenges coming at us, maybe some of them are the same that we've always been facing. Where do you see the future of K-12 teaching going?
Rob (27:37.498)
Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting because when I think back to COVID, COVID was obviously terrible for the world and for so many people. But in education, there was almost a little bit of optimism, at least in the communities where I was, to say, this is what we need to kickstart a change to how education is happening. The one size fits all model hasn't been working for the past hundred years.
Ryan Lufkin (27:56.901)
Yeah. Yep.
Rob (28:05.926)
COVID is going to come and we're going to, this is the moment we need to change things. And unfortunately it feels like because virtual learning was so difficult and so stressful for students and teachers, when we've come back to the classroom now, it's like a lot of, a lot of people want more of the same, more of what we had before COVID. But in my opinion, it's even less effective now because the gaps have grown wider and
Ryan Lufkin (28:11.312)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (28:28.667)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (28:35.311)
And the students are more tech native and yeah, like there's, there's meeting them where they are with video and things like that is more important than ever.
Melissa Loble (28:37.74)
Yeah, yeah.
Rob (28:44.13)
Yeah, I think that's right. I think the need is greater. mean, we just saw the latest national test scores come out. Those bear out the needs from a data perspective. But even just speaking to teachers, you hear it. I over the next few years, we're going to be buffeted with more and more more technology. And I think we need to be very purposeful to say not
Ryan Lufkin (28:53.295)
Yeah.
Melissa Loble (28:54.226)
yeah.
Rob (29:13.468)
my God, this technology is amazing. How can we use it? But what's the pedagogy we want? What's the actual human lived experience of the student and teacher that we want? And how does technology support that? When I drop my kids off at the school door every day, I don't want them to go in and be on the computer all day. I want them to spend most of class working with their teacher. I want them to be
challenged, I want them to interact with their peers. How can technology serve that? And so I think, you know, there's going to be more and more AI, there's going to be more and more technology, there's going to be more and more people saying, you know, look, kids are, kids are so far behind, we need technology. Technology is not the solution. It can help teachers who are thoughtful about instruction, deliver more effective instruction. And that's what we need to do.
Ryan Lufkin (30:00.805)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (30:07.878)
Yeah.
Melissa Loble (30:08.365)
Something I particularly resonate with in what you just shared is I think teachers need help understanding how to make good technology decisions because so many vendors are inundating teachers directly with, look at this and look what it can do, look at this and look what this can do. And I was recently at a conference and I had a teacher ask me in a presentation I was doing about AI in particular, and the teacher said, look, what do I ask?
Ryan Lufkin (30:18.139)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (30:27.674)
Yeah.
Melissa Loble (30:37.79)
I don't even know what to ask about so that I can make the best decisions. I really like what you're sharing because it really feels like a framework to help teachers not only implement how they teach in their classroom and use pedagogy as a guide, but how to make good decisions about the technologies that they're choosing to employ in that whole environment.
Ryan Lufkin (30:39.6)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (30:58.555)
Yeah.
Rob (30:59.482)
Yeah, used to, at modern classrooms, we used to share a Venn diagram. And one circle was teacher training, which is pedagogy and how to teach. The other circle was technology training, which is how do you use Canvas? How do you use this platform? How do you use that? But there needs to be more in the middle. how do you use, not just how do you use X feature of Canvas, how does X feature of Canvas support instruction that challenges advanced students?
Ryan Lufkin (31:14.779)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (31:27.641)
love that. Yes.
Melissa Loble (31:27.82)
Yes, yes.
Rob (31:28.772)
And so we're in the middle. I would like to see more people join that middle space with us where they're not saying, let me sell you Canvas and here are the great features, but let me tell you how Canvas or any tool, let me tell you how this tool is going to help a student who missed class Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and is showing up for the first time on Thursday. Like here's how technology can help that student.
Ryan Lufkin (31:36.529)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (31:55.569)
Yeah. Well, and one of the things that we've talked about, you know, coming back to the COVID aspect, one of the lingering elements of COVID really has been kind of change fatigue, right? And, and change just, just hard. You know, there's a, I mentioned everyone's while the book who moved my cheese and it's all about like how
how humans don't naturally accept change very well. So what kind of recommendations would you give educators that are looking to evolve their instructional models? Where do they start? How do they go from just a daunting concept to putting it into play?
Rob (32:27.578)
Yeah, great question. And that's exactly actually why I wrote the book, because I feel like modern classrooms, what we present, it's a comprehensive framework to transform your classroom. And that's true. But that's very intimidating also to think, my God, how do I get from what I was trained to do, which is stand at the board and give one lesson per day, to this full blended self-paced mastery-based thing? And so what I tried to do in the book is break it down.
Ryan Lufkin (32:41.872)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (32:50.842)
Yeah.
Rob (32:56.336)
to the simplest steps, which is to say, just start with one, just start by digitizing direct instruction. You you're gonna teach something on Monday, instead of teaching it at the board, start a Zoom call with yourself, hit record, explain it, and stop recording. Okay, now you have a video. Now go put that in your learning management system and spend class working with your students. That's an achievable step that you can do.
Ryan Lufkin (33:23.621)
Yeah.
Rob (33:23.992)
Once you have that, or find a video on YouTube, that's fine too. Once you have a good video, now on Tuesday, think about how are you gonna get your students working together after the video? What are they gonna do? Okay, and then on Wednesday, think about how are you gonna write a mastery check that assesses what they understand? And just build one video at a time, one lesson at a time. These are simple steps, and in three months, you're gonna look at your classroom and say,
Ryan Lufkin (33:42.063)
Yeah.
Rob (33:53.382)
my God, this is incredible. Like students, the students are teaching themselves and I'm having so much fun because all I do is, you know, all I do is hang out with my students and have them learn. But yeah, it's about, it's about what's the simplest thing I can do tomorrow that's going to benefit me once I've done step. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Once I've done step one, what's step two? And then what's step three? And then, you know, and this is, I can share these steps because it's exactly what I did in my classroom.
Ryan Lufkin (33:54.511)
That's amazing, yeah, I love that.
Melissa Loble (33:55.32)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (34:08.965)
Yeah, baby steps, one foot in front of the other kind of approach.
Rob (34:23.098)
I didn't set out to write a book or create an instructional model or any of this. My goal was make it through the day, but I did one lesson, one video, one lesson, one unit. Now I share it with my colleague. so I think the goal of the book is to say, this big change is possible, but don't try to change things overnight. Build up to it with small steps.
Melissa Loble (34:31.373)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (34:45.947)
Yeah.
That's amazing, I love that approach.
Melissa Loble (34:50.006)
Yeah, I do too. And I think we underestimate how many teachers out there are just trying to make it through the day. I remember I was. There are many days. It's just like, do I? I just, I want to do so much and I can't. I'm almost, I'm just so overwhelmed. How do I get through all of this? Which I think is so important as we are trying to address the changing needs of education and most importantly, students today.
So as a last question, we'd like to ask this, and this is another big broad question. What aren't we talking about in K-12 education that we think we should be talking about? You know, like you said, Ryan, you mentioned the air is full of AI, right? Or big change, or all these, yeah, or a lot of jargon, right? What aren't we talking about?
Ryan Lufkin (35:33.231)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (35:37.009)
or or the metaverse or augmented reality, virtual reality, like, yeah.
Melissa Loble (35:45.762)
that we should be talking about in K-12.
Rob (35:48.666)
Yeah, I mean, I in the book, I think my first my first sort of tip is like record a zoom call with yourself, you know, something very simple. The last things is the last little tip is reconsider age based promotion, you know, so I think like, I think there are big, I think we should be thinking about the things we can do to our own it within our current system. And that's what modern classrooms are all about is
Melissa Loble (35:56.588)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (36:11.238)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (36:16.656)
Yeah.
Rob (36:17.306)
helping teachers take those steps tomorrow because if you're going to walk into a classroom tomorrow and you have students tomorrow who need to learn, like you need strategies that work. But I also think when you change the way a lesson works and a course works, you can't help but think, you know, why do I have all of these, all these students are at the same age, but they're all over the place in terms of their interests and their backgrounds. You know, I was speaking to someone recently,
Ryan Lufkin (36:26.789)
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Lufkin (36:39.109)
Yeah.
Rob (36:46.252)
And she said, well, I teach eighth grade and I have a new student, but he hasn't been in formal school for the past five years, but he's in eighth grade because he happens to be X years old. You know, like that's, I don't think if we were building a new education system from the ground up based on what we know about learning, we would put that young person in the same class as students who have been.
Ryan Lufkin (36:55.451)
He does his age.
Melissa Loble (36:57.175)
Yes.
Rob (37:11.428)
informal school every day of their lives from the age of four until he's great. think we think about, you know, how can we set that young person, every one of these young people up for the for the most possible success. And I think age is age based sorting is not the right way to do it. so yeah, so I'm always I'm always pushing for practical strategies. But I think we should keep in the back of our minds like what is really
Melissa Loble (37:15.139)
Yeah.
Ryan Lufkin (37:30.737)
Yeah.
Rob (37:41.456)
the experience we want for students who love math and are super advanced and want to fly ahead without holding them back. What do we give the student who missed four years of formal schooling? I think that young person is as capable as any other student, but if we stick them right into eighth grade, they're going to struggle. I wouldn't want my child to have that experience.
Ryan Lufkin (38:03.984)
Yeah.
Rob (38:09.756)
So I hope people that learn about Modern Classroom Project, even though the focus needs to be on your students tomorrow, are also thinking about how can we use what we're learning about the daily lesson to think about the larger system as well.
Ryan Lufkin (38:25.797)
Yeah. Rob, this has been incredibly insightful. I love this conversation. There's so many, could keep having this conversation, but like I mentioned, we're gonna include a bunch of links in the show notes here and hopefully share kind of your mission and your message with a lot of our audience.
Melissa Loble (38:42.798)
Yeah.
Rob (38:43.814)
Great, well thanks for taking the time to chat with me. I'm always eager to share all my crazy ideas. So thank you both.
Ryan Lufkin (38:51.089)
Thanks, Rob.
Melissa Loble (38:52.822)
I love it. This was super inspiring. Thank you so much, Rob.
Rob (38:56.092)
Thank you.
