Meet Every Learner’s Needs: Redesigning Instruction So All Students Can Succeed

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Robert Barnett. Robert is the co-founder of the Modern Classrooms Project. He's taught math, English, and social studies at the secondary and post-secondary levels in the United States and abroad. And he hopes his own children will learn in modern classrooms someday. And he's the author of the new book, Meet Every Learner's Needs, Redesigning Instruction So All Students Can Succeed.

[00:39] Announcer:

And now our feature presentation.

[00:41] SPEAKER_00:

Robert, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thank you, Justin. It is an honor to be here.

[00:46] SPEAKER_01:

Tell us a little bit about the modern classroom project that this book comes out of. What does it mean to have a modern classroom?

[00:54] SPEAKER_00:

That's a great question. I think of a modern classroom as a classroom where every student is appropriately challenged and appropriately supported every day. And so when I say that I want my children to learn in a modern classroom, that's really what I want for them. I want them to be appropriately challenged every day. And I want their teacher to be empowered to provide the support that my children need. You know, they're four and two at the moment.

[01:22]

So I don't really know what they're going to need, but I want to make sure that they're in classes where teachers can meet their needs. I was a teacher myself, high school math teacher. And so I know how hard it often is to meet learners' diverse needs. I know that in a typical classroom, you have some students who are advanced who really need to be challenged. You have some students who may have gaps in what they know. They need extra support.

[01:48]

You have some students who often aren't there at all. They need help catching up. I think it can be really difficult for a teacher faced with students with such varying needs to figure out how to meet them all at the same time. I develop strategies in my own classroom that help me do this. I've now shared these strategies with thousands of teachers all over the world. And I wrote the book to share them with anyone who's interested in supporting their teachers and their students.

[02:16] SPEAKER_01:

So the idea of making sure that we're meeting each student's needs and making sure that we're challenging each student is kind of a perennial challenge of curriculum and instruction and assessment. what are some of the key pillars of the approach that you've developed in the modern classroom for doing that? Because certainly, all of our traditional methods aspire to doing that, to meeting students where they are, to moving them forward as quickly as possible. But what are some of the key pillars and key differences?

[02:47] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely, yeah. And I call this the fundamental challenge of teaching. Different learners have different needs. Everyone who's ever taught has encountered this challenge. So the question is, What do you do about it? I think when I was teaching, I found that I'll call it the traditional approach to teaching in which a teacher delivers a single lesson every day to all of the students in the room.

[03:10]

It just didn't work for me. It didn't work for my students. And there were things that I tried to do to differentiate, to push those advanced students farther and to give those struggling students a little bit more support. But I was never able to do enough within that single lesson everyday model, I realized I needed a different approach. And so I did a couple things. The first thing that I did was digitize my direct instruction.

[03:38]

So I realized if I'm at the board speaking, well, some students will probably be bored. They get it. Some won't understand what I'm saying. They'll be lost. Others won't be there at all. It's not going to work.

[03:51]

I took my lessons and I just made short videos. that had my material so students could watch at their own pace. They could pause, they could rewatch, they could watch at home. And now my time in class was free to work one-on-one and in small groups with my students. I found that to work really well in terms of just keeping my students engaged. But then I realized, you know, some students are moving much faster than others.

[04:17]

Some students are ready for that next lesson, you know, halfway through class. Some students need two or three days just to master the first lesson. So then I had to think about how do I have my class operate in more of a student-led, self-paced way where students really are advancing at their own paces, where one day in class I might have students working on three different lessons or four different lessons. I hadn't been taught to teach in that way, but I realized that if I could make that work, it would be best for my students and best for me. And then the final element that I put into place was really making sure my students achieved mastery. I taught math and understanding is so important in math.

[04:58]

If you don't understand lesson one, you're going to struggle on lesson two. And so I told my students, now that you have my videos, now that you can learn at your own pace, I'm going to make sure you understand lesson one before you move to lesson two. I'm going to help give you that foundation of mastery. And so those three elements, I think, the digitized direct instruction, the self-paced learning and that requirement of mastery, those really helped me meet the diverse needs of my learners in a way that the traditional method just didn't work.

[05:32] SPEAKER_01:

So our listeners may recognize some elements of this approach as sounding a lot like the flipped classroom. And I don't know exactly where that idea comes from, but it's been around for a few years now, this idea that we can as you said, digitize explanations, examples, direct instruction, kind of the Khan Academy idea of providing a really good recording of an explanation that students can access whenever they need to and revisit whenever they need to and on an individual basis. That idea has been with us for a while. Have you found that that idea works in its kind of popularly known form or have you made some modifications to it as you incorporate that idea in your work?

[06:13] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I loved the flipped classroom. And I think when I first had this realization that my one lesson at a time sort of approach wasn't working, the first thing I tried to do really was a flipped classroom. I told my students, here's my video, go watch it at home, then come back and in class, we'll work on it together. That's my understanding of kind of the basic flipped classroom model. But I ran into a couple challenges. One is that not all of my students had good internet access at home.

[06:43]

So they couldn't watch at home. It wasn't really fair. Some students could, others couldn't. The second challenge is that when we came back to class, some students were ready to move on really quickly because they understood it. Some students needed more time because they had gaps in their prerequisite understanding. Some students weren't there at all.

[07:06]

So it was a flipped lesson, yes, but it was still the same lesson for every learner every day. And I just didn't feel that that was good enough for my students. So when I think of this modern classroom model, I think it's like a flipped classroom, but it doesn't require students to have access outside of class. And it also lets students move at their own pace. And I think the standard sort of flipped classroom model doesn't have that student-driven, self-paced aspect. I think that's what sets modern classrooms apart.

[07:39] SPEAKER_01:

Let's talk if we could about that self-paced aspect because certainly pacing is one of the primary challenges of teaching. Do I reteach? Do I move on? How much time do we spend on this? How do we get through everything that we need to get through and do so in a quality way? That balancing act of pacing is a challenge.

[07:58]

And then when it comes to looking at the learning that different students are doing and how much they're doing, whether they're meeting the standards, one of the big challenges that we face is what I've heard described as the Matthew effect, that the students who are already doing the best tend to learn new information the fastest. They tend to move the quickest. And that creates this dynamic where advanced students advance farther and farther and farther, pull away from the pack. And students who are behind fall further and further behind. And we have to figure out what to do with that as teachers. So talk to us a little bit about your thinking about pacing and that Matthew effect of those gaps forming and growing over time as they tend to.

[08:40] SPEAKER_00:

I think that's an accurate description of what happens in most classrooms. If you look at the AEP scores, you see that most of our fourth graders are not doing math at grade level or reading at grade level. And so how do we expect them without fourth grade skills to succeed in fifth grade or sixth grade? If the sixth grade curriculum assumes that they have fourth and fifth grade skills and they don't, it's going to be really difficult for them to learn at the teacher's pace, right? At the sort of prescribed pace. I think what those students need is more time to learn.

[09:19]

They're perfectly capable of learning a sixth grade skill, but they just need more time. Of course, you raise an interesting challenge. How do you give students more time when you have just one year and a certain amount of content that you need to get through? And that is another fundamental challenge of teaching. That's really difficult. I think the way that I dealt with this challenge and the way that I've seen educators all over the world deal with this challenge is really trying to prioritize and figure out within a given unit, I'm still going to give my students two weeks to learn this unit.

[09:53]

But within that unit, what are the real essentials that every student must do? And then what are the sort of extension things or the nice to learn things that I can give to my advanced learners? I used a framework in my class. I called it must do, should do, and aspire to do. So I took what was in a unit. I said, these are the must do skills.

[10:14]

Everybody's got to get through these. Here are some should do things that are nice to do. And then for those Advanced students, here are some extensions that you should really aspire to do because they're interesting and they're challenging. And maybe my advanced kids would get through the must-do stuff in three days, whereas some of the students who struggled with attendance would take two weeks. That was okay with me. I'd like everyone to learn everything, right?

[10:41]

But it just didn't feel realistic. I needed a way of prioritizing so that everyone could get the essentials and have the time to master the essentials. while there was still challenge for the advanced students. I think if we push students through content too fast, we don't give them the chance to master it. It's not only bad for their learning, it's bad for their growth, their self-esteem. They start to feel like they're not capable of learning.

[11:06]

So we need to slow down sometimes, give students the time and support they need and show them that in that environment that meets their needs, they really can succeed.

[11:17] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that experience of mastery, I'm glad you pointed that out because I agree completely that that is such an important experience for students to have, especially if there are areas of life that are challenging for them, right? If they maybe have a life that is difficult outside of school and maybe they've had some learning difficulties, the experience that our top students have of mastering things is is an experience that all of our students need to have and need to develop that self-efficacy as a learner. That yes, I can learn hard things. I can do hard things. I can learn new skills. I can master difficult ideas.

[11:56]

And I think that's one of the chief things that kids take with them from school if we give them the chance to develop it Now, one thing that probably a lot of people would wonder at this point in the trajectory of this idea of kind of the flipped classroom or digitizing direct instruction, is this something that I should just hand off to an app? Because probably we all get lots of advertisements for different apps that will do this for different subject areas, you know, let your students move at their own pace, challenge every student, use a lot of assessment. There is software for this, but your work focuses on building teacher capacity and helping teachers redesign their courses. Is that right?

[12:30] SPEAKER_00:

That's absolutely right. You know, first, I just want to return to what you said about mastery. It's so important and so valuable. And every young person really is capable of mastery if we give them the time and support. And that's just, that's an experience we need to give every learner. So if you take one thing from this, you know, this podcast, I hope that's what you'll take.

[12:50]

The Modern Classroom can give every student that experience of reaching mastery, achieving success. Now I'll get to your actual question, which was about sort of where the digital instruction should come from. So in my class, I found that I could give my students videos from YouTube or Khan Academy, and they worked okay, but they didn't really connect with my students. For one, they assumed my students had prerequisite skills and knowledge that my students often didn't have. And also my students sort of wondered, who is this guy and why am I learning from them? Once I started making the videos, I could sort of see the my students' faces, they sort of lit up like, wow, Mr. Barnett, this is you?

[13:34]

This is cool. And they could share the videos at home. Their families could watch the videos. So I liked having that connection personally through my own videos. And I just felt more effective. And I felt like this was a cool thing for me to be doing.

[13:48]

So at Modern Classrooms, we do encourage teachers to build capacity in that way. We also say, if you don't like recording videos or you don't have the time, It's totally fine to use other videos that are good. What we really want is for you, the teacher, to be freed up in class to work closely with your students. So if you can do your own videos, great. If it requires someone else's videos, that works too. One thing that we do emphasize, though, is that the screen time in the modern classroom should be as limited as possible.

[14:24]

We don't want to see students on computers or on phones or on apps all class. really the video in a modern classroom replaces a very small and very narrow component of instruction, which is the direct instruction. After you explain something with the video, get your students off the screen, give them a task to do face-to-face on paper, get them working together, get them learning together. That's really what a modern classroom is about is sort of that collaboration and face-to-face learning with teacher to student, student to student. It's just that using video, to digitize the direct instruction piece makes that possible. So I would not recommend you put your students on an app and have them go.

[15:07]

If that's how students really could learn, we wouldn't need schools. I'd recommend you find a way to make direct instruction accessible, a tool that lets you facilitate sort of self-paced mastery-based learning, then sit down with your students and work with them face-to-face.

[15:25] SPEAKER_01:

I'm really glad to hear you say that because I've had some honestly rather fierce arguments with people in the Silicon Valley world who really seem to think that the best case scenario is for every kid to be sitting on a device all day learning at their own pace and just kind of maximizing that computer-driven, algorithm-driven, individual experience. you know have ai teach you or whatever and like honestly what feels wrong about that to me is just the lack of human interaction right like yes i agree you can probably teach yourself a lot of stuff with a computer very efficiently, but I don't necessarily want kids to have that experience in school. Like that doesn't feel like what school is for. And, you know, and certainly you and I learn things through devices on our own, but school should be a social place. It should be a place where kids are interacting with a teacher who cares about them.

[16:16]

And that's really interesting. Your point about, you know, students noticing who's in the video, who is this guy. And I'm reminded that Sal Khan in his first videos that got him started, he was making those videos for his cousin. It wasn't just a random guy on the internet. It was for a particular person. And I think that's obviously a time challenge to make your own content.

[16:39]

But I think there's really something there that kids do care who they are learning from. And I think when it comes to things like AI and apps, that's something that we need to not forget because the technology can do some of what the person can do, but it can't be the person for the student that the student needs. So like the teacher, human teacher seems like something that a lot of people are trying to innovate out of education. And I love that you're not doing that. I love that you're making the teacher really, really shine at what teachers can do.

[17:13] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, a couple thoughts on that. I agree with you completely. You know, in terms of making videos, sometimes teachers feel like this is so hard. I'm not Sal Khan. I can't do a video. What I tell teachers is if you can join a video call, you can record a video, right?

[17:31]

Start a Zoom call with yourself. Explain something. Hit the record button. Stop recording. You have a video, right? Now your students can learn from you.

[17:40]

You never need to repeat yourself again. They can learn from you anytime, anywhere and at their own paces. So it's not that hard. Yeah, sure. It takes some figuring out, but if you can do a video call, you can record a video. The second thing I'd say here is I think the teacher's goal in class should be to spend as much time as possible interacting closely with their students.

[18:04]

And when I was at the front of the room, giving my one lesson per day, that wasn't close interaction. That was me managing behavior and getting my students to listen to me. And it took me a long time to explain things because I would see some students were bored. And that's not how I wanted to be as a teacher, right? I wanted to form relationships with young people. So the whole purpose of the videos is so I don't need to stand at the front of the room and control behavior.

[18:33]

I spent my time in class sitting down with my students, getting to know them. building relationships with them, having a lot of high quality interaction. And they could have that with each other too, because it wasn't like, you know, we got to be quiet. Mr. Barnett is speaking. It was more like Mr. Barnett gave us this short video, five minutes, 10 minute video.

[18:55]

Now let's work together to apply what we learned. And so I think technology is a tool, a very powerful tool that can enhance human interaction. That's what it should be for. I don't want my kids going to school to sit on screens all day. I want my kids going to school to interact with their teacher and with their classmates. And that's why I want them to learn in modern classrooms.

[19:19] SPEAKER_01:

I want to circle back to something that I think you gave me a little bit of perspective on earlier, but the question of the unit level and kind of the pacing of the class overall. Because if I think of traditional year in a traditional classroom, I know what I'm teaching unit by unit. I need to get through all of those units for the year. And if I think about the other scenario that I just described, that I am not as big a fan of every kid individually on a device all the time, I can think of...

[19:46]

the possibility that my most advanced students might be able to go a lot farther if they're completely, truly self-paced. But again, that comes at the expense of just about everything else that I like about a classroom. So help us understand, in the modern classroom, what does the unit pacing look like? Are students actually finishing the entire year's curriculum faster if they're moving faster? Are they moving on to other topics? Or is it more about what you said, the should dos and the aspire to dos and the kind of extensions within the unit that students are getting to if they're moving faster?

[20:20] SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm sorry to say I don't have a perfect answer here. I think there's a tension between a true self-paced mastery-based system and our system, which has year-long courses and a certain amount of content per year. So as a teacher, you have to make compromises to balance those things. And I can explain the compromise I made as a teacher and that modern classroom educators are making today. That's to say, first, we're going to self-pace for a certain interval at a time. So we might all start on Monday and then here's your map to get through.

[20:55]

And we're all going to go to Friday and next Monday we'll reset. And so from Monday to Friday, you are moving at your own pace. And then next Monday, we'll start that Again, you might do self-pacing for a few weeks at a time if your students can handle it. You might do it for a day at a time in a short interval. But that's nice because it keeps students generally working on the same things, and it prevents these gaps from getting huge, right? Everyone is at least working on the same unit.

[21:22]

They can collaborate with one another. The students who are ahead can support those who are behind. So it is self-pacing, but it's not like a full year self-pacing. It's within limits. And then I think within those limits, it is really important to prioritize the content, to define if I start on Monday and go to Friday, what are the things that every student really must do that I'm going to focus on? What are some of the should do things that are like helpful review but can be skipped?

[21:53]

And then for those advanced students, what can I give them that's really meaningful, really exciting, really challenging that they can aspire to do within that week? You know, it's not a perfect compromise. But I think in a classroom where students are all within the same few lessons of one another, there is that possibility for collaboration, interaction, and also for differentiation. And I think the last thing I'll say is there's still a real role for whole class instruction here. I started class every day with a whole class warmup. That was a great way to build community and have discussion.

[22:29]

Some days I would say we've got a simulation to do. It's just going to be better if we're a whole class. let's come together as a whole class and do it, right? There are some things that work best in a whole class way. And if you're a teacher, you have those whole class lessons you love, keep doing them exactly that way. What modern classrooms is a set of strategies for the times when whole class instruction doesn't feel like it's really meeting every learner's needs.

[22:54] SPEAKER_01:

it and i think that perfectly answers my earlier question about the matthew effect right that if i let students move at their own pace some of them are going to of course move much much slower and then that means depending on how i run that they could be falling further behind than if we just kind of did a traditional everybody moves at their own pace so i am thinking kind of a zamboni moving across the ice you know that some kids can skate out ahead and have that freedom to move at their own pace but we're also you know moving deliberately toward a target we have a limited amount of time for this topic. And I'm going to maybe spend some additional time, provide some additional support for the students who are moving slower, but I'm not going to let them fall behind and stay on unit one when everybody else is supposed to be on unit five, because that is going to make those gaps worse. It's going to give me the flexibility to meet their needs as we're moving everybody forward, if I'm describing it. Does that sound right to you?

[23:46] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And one thing to remember also is, say you have a student who doesn't quite make it through all the must-dos in one week, remember that when you've digitized your direct instruction, your student can always go back to pick that up, right? They can watch it at home with their family. They can watch it after school. You know, like I say, this is not perfect. There's no magic solution to the challenges of diverse learner needs in a traditional school system, but you are giving every student really the chance to achieve mastery.

[24:18]

And you're also giving those high-flying students The chance to go further with meaningful extension activities. They don't have to sit there bored while you explain something from the front of the room, which they already know.

[24:31] SPEAKER_01:

So Rob, you've been engaged in this work for a while, working with teachers, training, as you said, thousands of teachers, how to implement these approaches in their classroom. What are some of the takeaways that you've had from working with teachers that made their way into the book? Some of your lessons about just hearing feedback from different people and hearing the learning curve that teachers go through as they implement this approach.

[24:54] SPEAKER_00:

One thing I could say is I feel so fortunate that I've worked with so many teachers because I've learned a ton. I think I was using this model and I'm often the person that introduces people to the model, but then I might go visit their classroom a few months later and I'm blown away. I say, wow, sometimes I feel like I want to get back to the classroom to use the strategy that I saw someone else put into place. I just learned so much by seeing different teachers use this. And that's especially true in grade levels, content areas that are different from my own. When my co-founder and I started Modern Classrooms, We were both high school math teachers.

[25:33]

We had no idea if this could work in an elementary school classroom, in an English classroom. And the way that we learned that it did is just by watching teachers do it. We gave them the strategies, they took them, they ran with them. And that's been not only interesting, but a privilege for me to see those ideas applied elsewhere. One thing I tried to include in the book So it's not just my voice and my story is I include tips from teachers. I think there are 45 different teachers featured in the book who teach every grade level, every subject area.

[26:06]

I think we have teachers from Australia, Brazil, Sweden, Zambia, all featured in the book, just giving their own sort of take on how this works for them. I think every student is different and also every teacher is different. And when I meet teachers, I say, don't try to teach like me. you know, teach like yourself. Take this approach, adapt it to the way you are, to your personality, to the way you want to run your classroom to meet your learner's needs. And so I think that is, sometimes teachers find that a little frustrating.

[26:38]

Give me a little more guidance here. But I think ultimately that is empowering because teachers take this and make it their own. The other thing I would say here is that I think when you hear about a model like this, you might think, wow, this is a lot of work This is a total redesign of my classroom. This is overwhelming. I don't know how to start. And the reason I wrote the book is to break it down into really small steps that any teacher can take at any time to get started.

[27:08]

You don't need to become Sal Khan overnight. Sal Khan's an amazing video creator with thousands of videos. All you need to do is start a Zoom call with yourself, hit the record button, create one video, and then give it to your students the next day. You can really build up lesson by lesson to the point where you're running this full modern classroom, but it doesn't happen overnight. There are simple steps to take. I think seeing so many teachers take those steps has really crystallized to me what the steps are and what the promise is of taking those steps, which is a classroom where teachers are happy and students feel empowered.

[27:47] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Meet Every Learner's Needs, Redesigning Instruction So All Students Can Succeed. And Rob, if people would like to learn more about the Modern Classrooms Project, where's the best place for them to go online and maybe get in touch?

[28:00] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. So Modern Classrooms Project is at modernclassrooms.org. And my publisher might not like to hear me say this, but you can learn plenty about the approach without buying the book. There's a free online course at learn.modernclassrooms.org.

[28:16]

And so if you're not sure whether you want to try this or even buy the book, go there first, see what the approach is about. Then you can decide whether this book and this approach is for you. If you want to learn more about the book itself and get in touch with me, the book's website is meeteverylearnersneeds.org. And on that website, there are resources from the book. There's a way to contact me.

[28:38]

There are ways to get involved with this larger movement. And I hope anyone listening to this podcast will. I hope you'll find something that helps you succeed and that you'll put it into place in your own classroom or community. Rob Barnett, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, it's been fun.

[28:57]

Thanks, Justin.

[29:00] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.