On My Radar: The Modern Classrooms Project

Like most teachers, I recently finished up a school year in which I spent the last two months learning to teach online. I'm also trying to prepare for an upcoming school year in which I will probably be teaching at least some students online, with the possibility of fully online instruction looming.  I would really like to find some teaching strategies that are effective and engaging for students in a face-to-face classroom that also work well for online learning.

With these goals in mind, the Modern Classrooms Project has caught my attention.  Check out this overview of their teaching model:

This teaching model really caught my attention for four reasons:

• In a face-to-face setting, I think student self-pacing is one of the most influential (and most difficult) practices that can be put into place.
• I think with some creativity, their model could work in an online class setting, particularly if there is time to establish it in person first.
• Student absences are likely to be a real obstacle in face-to-face teaching this year, and this model offers a solution for dealing with that.
• Many of us learned how to create instructional videos last year, and what a way to carry forward that new skill regardless of the teaching setting we face in 2020-2021. ​

If the ideas in the video caught your attention, The Modern Classrooms Project offers a free, short online course to help fill teachers in on the details of how to set up a classroom like theirs.  I was able to complete it in about an hour, and it made their process seem very manageable.
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Modern Classroom Essentials: Free Course
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Personally, I'm planning on trying to commit to setting up a practice like this for one content area this coming year.  I already use the Flipped Classroom Model (which is similar) for math, so this might be a good next step. Alternatively, I might try setting this up for the direct instruction portion of science units instead.  I haven't decided yet.

Next year is a year when many of us might be teaching in person, might be teaching online, or might be doing some of both.  We're also looking at a year when we are likely to have many more student absences to manage than usual.  I also think that next year just might be a year to dream big and try something new.  The Modern Classrooms Project has caught my attention, and I hope that it might be of interest for a few of you as well.

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Want to read more right now?  You're in luck - you can browse past posts by category:

• ​Building A Thinking Classroom
• Leaning Into The Science and Engineering Practices
• Classroom Practices
• Classroom Stories
• Ideas and Opinions
• Pandemic-Related Issues​​