Meeting Every Learner's Needs - A Conversation with Robert Barnett

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

Yeah, this is about relationships. Relationships are inefficient. That's fine. Like, there are opportunities to be more screen, more data, more tech, and we encourage teachers to pass those up because there is something valuable about working on paper, working face-to-face, learning through interaction.

Hi everyone.

Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. My name's Tim Logan and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. Systems change. It's a big phrase, which can mean a lot of different things to different people. And quite possibly the system doesn't actually change up there, in scare quotes, in the realms of national and transnational policymaking. Perhaps it changes in individual classrooms by committed teachers choosing to do something differently. I was so happy to sit down this week with Robert Barnett, the co-founder of the Modern Classrooms Project, to talk about this. And how he and his co-founder Karim Farah have had to make some very specific and not very easy choices about which leverage points they are going to work with. With Modern Classrooms Project, they focus on supporting a shift to an instructional model that helps teachers to respond to every student's needs, no matter what or where you teach. Rob and Karim founded Modern Classrooms Project in 2018 and have now reached over 80,000 teachers worldwide. And next week sees the release of Robert's book, Meet Every Learner's Needs: Redesigning Instruction So All Students Can Succeed. You can find more links to Modern Classrooms Project and Robert's work in the show notes.

All right, thanks Robert, lovely to see you. And I just want to give a bit of a shout out to Paul Magnussen because he's definitely a, um, a common ally and friend for both of us. And he, I think he made the original connection, so thanks to him. And yeah, no, great to see to see you and looking forward to this conversation.

Yeah, of course. Well, you know, I go way back with Paul. I know we've been running in Paul's extensive circles together for a while, and so I'm grateful to him too and eager for the conversation.

Awesome. So obviously it was— it's coming at an exciting time with the book coming out on February 5th, and, um, just, yeah, really excited to understand a little bit more about where this has come from. Obviously Modern Classrooms Project has been going for a while now and has all over the world doing super exciting and interesting, important stuff. But thinking specifically firstly about where this came from for you and for Karim, and what was it that you were seeing and working with young people? And, you know, there was obviously something that motivated you initially to take some kind of action because things weren't quite as you wanted them to be, or some pain that you could see or were experiencing as a classroom educator. So yeah, maybe we can start there. What was the thing that initiated this action for you?

I never intended to start a nonprofit like Modern Classrooms Project or write a book. I was a teacher. I was teaching high school math in public schools in Washington, D.C., and I was really struggling. On any given day, you know, I had students come to my classroom. Some of them were on grade level. They were ready to excel. They had the skills they needed. Others were well behind where they should have been according to my curriculum. You know, they had significant gaps in their learning. They needed more time, more support. A lot of students weren't there at all. And so here I am in front of the room trying to teach, you know, all these students at once, trying to meet these diverse learning needs with a single lesson every day. And it wasn't possible. I was not giving every student the level of challenge they needed or the level of support they needed. And so I had to find a different way. So I stopped, giving one lesson per day to my students. I started recording my direct instruction on video. Now my students can work at their own paces. I can spend my time in class working closely with them, which is why I wanted to become a teacher in the first place. And I could make sure that they actually mastered Lesson 1 before they moved to Lesson 2, so I could prevent those learning gaps from forming and help students really build understanding. I mean, this kind of teaching worked really well for me in DC public schools. I moved to Switzerland to teach in an international school there, which was a totally different context, but same challenges of teaching and learning. The approach worked really well there. A friend of mine, Kareem Farah, in DC, who I had met while teaching there, said, you know, "Hey, we really have something." You know, he was teaching the same way. "We really have something here. We should consider sharing it with others." we created a nonprofit to do that. And, you know, here we are about 7 years later with a nonprofit, a book. We've reached about 80,000 teachers all over the world. And I think the reason we've done that is because they all face the same fundamental challenge of teaching. Different learners have different needs. How do you meet them all? That one lesson per day is not likely to work.

It's so interesting, isn't it? Because I've— in a way, it's been a bit of a tension for me leading up to this conversation. And we've kind of shared discussions previously about this. For me, the podcast is really— right from the beginning, it's been about something pretty fundamental needs to change in these kind of formal education institutions. And it's interesting, everybody I've spoken to for the last 4 and a half years on the podcast has been working at a particular leverage point to make some change that they see needs to be made. And more and more, for me, it's, it's a function of the institutions themselves are really holding back these committed educators who want to be doing more, as you say, meeting the needs, meeting the diverse needs of young people. And so I guess my— the tension I've had coming into this conversation is like, is it, is it something that an educator can do differently themselves, or is it a function of the restrictions of that one class per day, this particular group of students, the way that the structures institutionally are set up? Because you, you clearly have— are working at the level of trying to support a classroom teacher to meet those diverse needs. But how do you feel about the actual institutional structures around them that are just, are making that a really challenging thing to do?

Yeah, great question. I mean, everything needs to change. The system needs to change. Classroom practice needs to change. You only need to look at proficiency rates, you know, worldwide or even in just in the US to understand that. In the US, I think our most recent sort of test scores show that about 2 in 3 fourth graders are not considered proficient in math. And like, we shouldn't be happy until every single fourth grader is proficient in math. So a lot needs to change for that kind of impact to happen. When I was a classroom teacher, I didn't have any choice or control over anything but my own classroom. And so I needed to figure out what was going to work for me today. I didn't control who was put in my class. I didn't control how they got there. I had students in front of me. I had to meet their needs, and I found solutions that work. I wasn't setting out to say, here's the Modern Classroom Model. It was like, let me try this. It worked. Let me try this. It didn't work. Eventually, I found an approach that worked. I shared it, and here we are. At Modern Classrooms Project, I think we struggle with that. Where should our attention be directed? Certainly we could spend time writing policy proposals for competency-based learning and doing that. I think our focus as teachers— my co-founder and I were both teachers, you know, a lot of our staff is teachers— is we know there's just so many teachers in classrooms who don't have control over the system, have control over the room, We want to help those teachers do better tomorrow. You know, we want to help them go home tomorrow evening and feel like, "I did the best I could for all of my students." And that was my only goal, really, when I was a teacher, not to go home and feel like a failure. You know, part of the reason I've written this book is perhaps to reach a wider audience. I would love for a policymaker to read this and say, "Huh, for this sort of instruction to work, I need to change this policy. I would love for a parent to read this and say, well, even though I went through a one-size-fits-all system and it worked for me, this book is making me realize a different approach is possible. So maybe I will advocate in my role for a, you know, for a more sort of inclusive, individualized system of education. I would love that. But day to day, we're trying to help those teachers in standard classrooms. Yeah.

And I mean, I shared with you prior to this conversation just a piece that I'd written about the different levels at which people choose to work. And I think one of the things for me is that, as you say, I mean, that it's so clear that change is needed at so many different levels of the system that we are all part of and is us. But at the same time, you have to choose where you put your finite energy, right? And so I really appreciate your reflections on that, because I think, you know, it needs interventions at every single level. We have kids in classrooms now, we have these interactions that are happening in these classrooms, in these difficult, potentially antiquated institutions, but it's happening now, today, all day. My kids have just been there, they've just got home. It's, you know, it's happening. How do we make that a bit better while at the same time advocating for the broader systemic shifts? But yeah, I'd love you to maybe reflect on where do you see yourself in relation to that? So just briefly, the way I laid it out was just that you've got the kind of realist reformers who are operating more in the day-to-day, but then the pragmatic transformer who's working with, with reality as it is. But then you've got more like the radical transformer who's advocating perhaps major systems change, the system transformer at a broader level, the paradigm transformer, and then Some people who just don't think that there is a need for change, more conservative. So where do you see yourself in relation to those? They could be written differently, right? But yeah, how do you see yourself and where you are or where you'd like to be, or how does the Modern Classroom Project intersect with that?

We have an advisor who says Modern Classroom Project is an action tank as opposed to a think tank. Yeah. So we want. Change, and we're demonstrating that a better way is possible in classrooms every day. It is lesson by lesson to get your kind of self-paced mastery-based classroom up and running, and then it's classroom by classroom, and if enough teachers are using this model, we hope that that bubbles up to the people who are making decisions and they can make systemic change. You know, I am very much in most of my work, I'm that pragmatic transformer. I'm thinking about You're a teacher, you're in a classroom, you know, your students are all over the place in terms of skills and attendance. What do you do today to do a little bit better, and how do you improve on that tomorrow? That's, that's most of my work. I mean, I would like to change the paradigm. I would like to get rid of age-based promotion and have everything based on mastery. And, you know, the book is like 12 chapters, and each chapter has 3 or 4 sections, and the last chapter, the last section it says reconsider age-based promotion. And if this were my, you know, if I were designing a system, students would have as long as they need in each sort of set of content and then they'd move to the next one and you would have kids of different ages in the same classrooms and they'd be working towards mastery. I think the age-based system sets so many of our students up for failure, but that is the last section of the last chapter. And everything else is, how do you get your students working together tomorrow? How do you free up your time by creating a good video tonight? So I want to see that. I've got young kids. I want to see a systemic transformation as much as anyone. But I think as a teacher, my experience is really like, let's build this from the ground up. Let's have a bunch of empowered teachers doing their classrooms differently. And hopefully, someone will pay attention and say, here's proof of concept in all these classrooms around the world. Let's build a system that, that works like this too.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And maybe you could just talk through that because, I mean, you've kind of given the high level, but I think the way that you've set it out in the book is really clear. But also, I'm just curious how you see it intersecting with obviously phrases that are around that people will be using or familiar with, like individualized learning or personalized learning or flipped classroom types of, you know, these are pretty tired phrases now. They've been around for a while. How do you see the Modern Classroom's approach? So maybe just lay some of that out, but also how, yeah, where do you see it fitting with some of those kinds of concepts?

Yeah, that's a great question. And we use this language too because we want it to fit into people's existing understanding of our model. I think one way to think about a modern classroom is like a flipped classroom, but better. And how I would explain that is direct instruction in a modern classroom is digital. So I don't spend my time at the board explaining content, you know, to all my class at once, to whichever students happen to be there, regardless of whether they understand or are prepared. I might record my own videos or find videos online that explain that content. That's like a flipped classroom. I think what is different than a flipped classroom is that I don't expect all of my students to watch that video, you know, on the same night or to be working on the same thing every day. Students should move through content with the amount of time they need and move on to the next lesson. So if a student masters something really quickly, maybe they can cover 3 lessons worth in a day. A student who has gaps and needs support or has been absent might need 3 days to master that first lesson. That's fine and they should have that time. It's better for the student to master content than to just be pushed through things they don't understand. So it is like a flipped classroom in that, you know, the teacher's time is spent working closely with students and direct instruction is accessible outside of the classroom. It's unlike a flipped classroom in that students can move at their own paces and progress only based on mastery. And I should say it's unlike my understanding of the sort of classic flipped classroom. If there are teachers out there that say, I do a flipped classroom and I do exactly what you say, then I would say that's amazing. I love to hear that other teachers are doing this. Keep up what you're doing. So that's how I think of it. You know, the other thing I would say is personalized learning is an interesting term because when I close my eyes and I think of personalized learning, I picture something that is totally impersonal, right? I picture students on screens, right, getting their quote-unquote personalized experience. A Modern Classroom, we really try to be a personal environment. So the student comes in and they watch the video, right, to get the instruction. Then they close their computer, they work with their classmates. The teacher spends class checking in with the students, bringing small groups together, having conversations about content, having conversations about life. That's the purpose of going to school, right? If kids could learn from computers, no purpose in going to school. So we're trying to use technology to replace that, you know, sort of lecture-style direct instruction and therefore create a class that feels really personal, that feels really human. So that's how I think of ourselves in, in my class, my own classroom, in relation to these terms you often hear.

Yeah, no, that's— I appreciate that. And it really came through strongly in the book and in just listening to you in, in other contexts, that your TEDx is, and the thing this creates space for is relationships, right? Like the relational development between the educator and the young people in the room and between the young people and each other. And I often, you know, in the, in the educational culture wars, I find myself a bit lost often because actually the thing that I think is almost core to A lot of the change that people seem to be advocating for is more of that relational time and space for young people to figure out who they are in relation to other people, to figure out what they care about, you know, the kinds of things they appreciate, don't appreciate, critical about ideas in dialogue with the teachers, with adults, with other, other peers, almost creating space for that, whether it's project-based learning or, you know, whatever kind of quote unquote initiative you're using, if it creates space for those interactions to create, as you say, that some kind of personal experience, then that's a pretty good win to my mind.

Yeah. I mean, why do people become teachers? I don't think it's because we want to stand at the board and explain things. Maybe that's how we were taught or how we see teachers. Like we become teachers because we like working with young people. Not speaking to young people, not policing young people's behavior, which you often have to do if you're trying to get 30 kids to follow along. We wanna work with young people. We wanna sit down with young people, get to know them, make a difference in their lives. And it's so much easier to do that when you're not responsible for delivering content, you know, that students can't understand anyways. What do we want for our kids when they go to school? Like, we want a teacher who knows our kids, who knows where they struggle, knows what they need, can provide that. And we want our kids to work with their classmates, not sit in a room where, you know, I already understand this, so I'm gonna just goof around with my friends, or I'm lost because I didn't learn this last year, so now I can't learn this this year. And I just, you know, I taught high school math. I had so many kids tell me I'm not a math person. Why is that? Well, they didn't understand in 4th grade and then 5th grade and then 6th grade, and they give up on themselves. That's You know, as a parent myself, like, that's the worst thing for my kids. I want them to go to school and be able to work with their classmates and be appropriately challenged and have appropriate support. And so when I look at it from that perspective, what's the kind of environment I want? Um, that's what I want. And I think we often hear people say, this is how education should be, but— and sometimes they say, this is how education should be, but the system doesn't allow it. And I agree, bad system. But like, I'm focused on the day-to-day. When we hear teachers say, this is how education should be, but I'm not sure how to provide it, that's when, you know, our ears perk up and we say, look, you can do this because I did this in my classroom. I know 1,000 teachers around the world who are doing this in their classrooms. Yeah, that's what we want— students to be appropriately challenged, appropriately supported, and have the time to build relationships. Otherwise, What's the point?

Exactly. Absolutely. And I was having this conversation earlier today with another colleague. There's all, you know, all in all this talk about systemic change, you know, systems change. It all sounds very grand in theory and in LinkedIn posts and, you know, wherever else you are, you know, publishing these grand ideas. But the system shows up in local interactions in place, right? The system is only those things. It's just an agglomeration of all of those things all over the, you know, in whatever, whatever context. So you can't really work. You almost can't work at the system's level. It's, it's too many levels of abstraction, too high, right? So it's like, so what do you do to shift practice at the very local relational level? And how do you create space for that to happen?

Yeah, that's exactly, that's the action tank, right? That's "Let me show you how this is done." I mean, there's someone, and I don't— I forget who it is, but they said there's nothing so practical as a good theory. So there is a theory behind Modern Classroom Approach, which is every student should be appropriately challenged and appropriately supported every day. That's the theory. That's what we want. How do you do that in a certain classroom? And that's the sort of set of practices that the book shares and that that our organization shares. And yeah, the system is ultimately a bunch of teachers in a bunch of classrooms giving a bunch of lessons every day. And if we can get 2% or 10% or 50% of those lessons to be the kind of lessons I've described, I think that would be amazing for young people. And if we can do that, then policymakers will have something concrete to point to and say, you know, in Rob's classroom, I saw this. This would work better if, you know, the whole school worked like this. There's sort of a proof of concept, there's a model there. So that's the approach that we're taking. I, I hope I don't sound critical of systems change because I want people at the systems level to be— us as teachers, we'll do so much better if we have, if we have policies that support this approach. That's so important, that's critical, we want that. We're just trying to help teachers leave the school building with their heads held high and in the system we have, that's, that's often difficult.

Yeah.

And one of the things I wanted to ask you about was in your first TEDx talk that you gave, you had the, the, these 4 aspects of, and you've spoken to 3 of them already with resources, not lectures, students setting the pace, and requiring mastery. So that's, those things are like core to the Modern Classrooms approach as you've set out. But the first one, and it's interesting that it was the first one, was make learning meaningful. Now, I've still got a kind of a question in my mind. Yeah, you're a pragmatic transformer, so clearly you're working with a structured curriculum that has a set of standards in your context, or, you know, largely, often content-based curriculum. Where does the meaning come in?

I was lucky when I was a teacher in that I, I, because I taught 11th and 12th grade math, in the US. That's not a tested subject. So I didn't have curriculum I needed to follow. I had a lot of freedom, and I loved doing project-based learning, or I called it challenge-based learning. You know, give the students a challenge, give them the tools just in time to do that. That makes learning meaningful. I loved that. And when we started Modern Classrooms, you know, my co-founder was similar. He taught similar grades with a similar approach, we said we want to share this with the world. And then as we were talking to teachers, I think they said, we don't have the freedom you had, like we're just trying to get through our curriculum in the most effective way possible. And so, so at Modern Classrooms, we don't talk about meaningful work anymore because that just seems like too big a challenge. That's another big chunk to bite off, and I'm Personally, I'm sad about that because I really believe in that sort of instruction, that content and curriculum needs to be relevant and interesting to students' lives. Again, if they don't do that, what's the point? But at Modern Classrooms, we have to choose our battle, and I think our battle is how do you deliver the content you have to deliver in the most engaging and effective way possible. When I have the chance, when I meet someone who has freedom in their curriculum, I'll always— I love thinking about that, you know, how are you going to teach this in that connects with your learners, but that's not the fight we've chosen to take on. And fortunately, there are a lot of, you know, there's so much out there that's really good about project-based and inquiry-based learning. And so where they don't think there's as much out there addressing the problem we're trying to address, which is sort of what's the right instructional delivery method. So, you know, you have kind of traditional teaching and this like personalize students on screen the whole time? What's the medium approach that uses technology in a human way? There's not enough of that out there. That's a niche that we're trying to fill, and that's what we've aimed at. But yeah, it's with sadness that I say we're not pushing for the systemic change, we're not pushing for the project-based learning, because I believe in that. It's just where do I think I have the most value to add? Where does my organization have the most value to add? And it's how the teacher delivers what they choose to deliver on any given someday.

I really appreciate that because, I mean, as we were saying, it needs all of the things happening in concert, right? You need people operating at all of those different levels to shift in important ways, but to be clear enough to say, while we really value that, that's not our battle that we're choosing. I know, I really respect that clarity of like, we're going to go with this leverage point that we can see is important and it's going to have significant impact to classroom teachers right now. And, and so maybe on that, yeah, could you share just some of what are you seeing? Obviously this started in DC Public Schools and then is across the US, but it's also global in terms of you've got— of those 80,000 teachers you've trained, many of them are outside of the US. So perhaps you could, yeah, just share a little bit about what have you seen in terms of the educators taking this approach on and how much, you know, what impact is it making?

Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a beautiful thing really to see educators take this, and I think we've tried hard to create a framework that is really flexible to educators to use in whatever way they see best. And so it's pretty open in terms of what tools do you use and how do you use them. You know, we want to respect teachers' professional judgment and not be too prescriptive. There's basically 3 elements of a Modern Classroom lesson. You know, there's direct instruction that's digital, there's collaborative practice after the video to apply what you've learned, and then there's an individual mastery check that determines do you move to the next lesson or do you come back. And then there's some organizing structure, you know, that might be a learning management system or a progress tracker so students understand, okay, where am I on the path to mastery and what do I do next. And That framework is consistent in a lot of classes around the world, but how it looks is totally different. You know, I was an 11th and 12th grade math teacher. Kareem was also. Now sometimes we'll go to a 2nd grade classroom and teachers are using— the kids can barely read, but you know, there's color coding and there's all different signs with amazing creativity, you know, incredible routines to get these young kids to follow them. And all the elements look different from how they looked in my classroom, but that sort of core framework is there. In my class, I would let students go a week or two at a time at their own paces before we would reset. Sometimes in a second grade class, it's like, do today at your own pace, and then tomorrow we'll all pick up, and then you do tomorrow at your own pace. So, you know, it's not like truly all year long self-paced learning. There are different sort of constraints that are necessary. But yeah, it's, you know, it's inspiring to, to see different teachers take it and make it their own. And I think educators are often told, do this in this way, and that's not why we became educators, by the way, that, you know, to follow other people's instructions. We want to use our judgment and do what we believe is best for ourselves, our own styles, our teachers. And I think our framework is like that. And, you know, in the book, I'm telling my story But I also have like 45 different teachers from all over the world, kindergarten teachers, university professors, giving their own sort of spin on how they do this. And I've just learned a tremendous amount by being in their classrooms and, you know, seeing, wow, this is how a 6th grade English teacher uses this. This is so cool. I never would've thought of doing this. That's been really inspiring to see, motivating to see too.

Yeah, I know, cool. And clearly equity is a part of your, you know, coming from DC public schools and then moving to, you know, pretty affluent context like Les Annes American School in Switzerland. There's a significant contrast there. I guess I had a question around digital equity in terms of, you know, clearly key tenet of this approach is access to digital resources in the classroom to be able to use the approach. So like, how are you seeing it play out in resource-poor contexts where that's a challenge?

Yeah, great, great question. I mean, technology is certainly a tool that facilitates this. Having your video online lets you replace that direct instruction and lets you spend your time with students. I don't know that it's strictly necessary. I mean, in some way, the original kind of self-paced mastery-based classroom was the one-room schoolhouse. You had students of different ages working at different paces towards mastery, and it was just kind of like a different assumption of how school would function. So students could learn from textbooks or worksheets or anything else. It's not required to have technology, but certainly in my experience it's really helpful. When I was teaching in DC Public Schools, I often had, you know, one device per student, but not always. And honestly, that was okay. I don't want students on screens the whole time anyway. So, yeah, you know, if you have 6 computers, if your videos are 5 to 10 minutes, your students can go to the video station, watch, you know, the next lesson that's on their sort of learning progression, close the computers, get on paper, work together. So there are ways to be creative as well. And sometimes people walk into a modern classroom and they say, "I thought this was supposed to be about tech." And we say, "No, it's not about tech, you know, the video is supposed to be 5-10 minutes, then close it and work, you know, work with your classmates, do your mastery check." So I won't lie, having computers makes this much easier. It's a great tool, videos, but I don't think it's necessary. There are creative ways around it and, you know, we are seeing people with one-to-one technology use it well, and we're seeing teachers in places with less technology use it well also.

And I think, I mean, that's one of the concerns that people have about one-to-one technology, myself included, that actually earlier we were talking about the spaces created for the relational interactions can be quite, quite isolating to your point earlier about personalized learning. If you just are interacting with the screen and that's your learning pathway and it's totally tailored to you and isn't that great. But actually what you're missing out is, is all of this space for the other learning as well as the, you know, the subject-based learning, but all the other learning that's going on when you're interacting in groups, in physical space, in a, in an embodied way. I mean, that's a huge part of why we bring young people together into physical spaces to learn together. And if we lose that because we're, you know, we think, isn't it great to personalize everything, you lose that dimension, I think. And that just, that feels to be a really important, and I appreciate, important part of modern classrooms.

Yeah, I mean, some— one essential part of any modern classroom lesson is the mastery check. This is one or two questions at the end of a lesson that assesses whether the student understands the learning objective. If they do, they move on. If not, they need to go back and revise, you know, rewatch the video, ask classmates for help, get help from the teacher, and try again. We recommend doing the mastery check on paper, and sometimes people who are really tech savvy say, "Why do you do that? Isn't that a hassle? So much paper to print and grade and manage. Like, a computer could do this." And they're right, a computer could do this and you'd get good data, but there's something about having the student work on paper, show their work on paper, give it to you, the teacher, that though inefficient, facilitates feedback, facilitates relationship building. You know, if you answer a problem and the computer gives you a little star sticker or, you know, gives you a little 62%, like, that doesn't— that's not the same as if your teacher who knows you and cares about you says, Hey Tim, you started this problem great, but you made a mistake here. Go back and figure it out. I believe in you. And now the teacher knows, okay, this adds to my knowledge of Tim. Whereas if the, if you do this on a computer, sure, it's faster, it's more efficient, but like the computer knows more about you. The teacher doesn't necessarily know unless they're pouring through the data after school, which I didn't wanna do as a teacher. Oh, certainly not. And like the student's not getting that personal feedback or encouragement and Yeah, this is about relationships. Relationships are inefficient. That's fine. Like, there are opportunities to be more screen, more data, more tech, and we encourage teachers to pass those up because there is something valuable about working on paper, working face-to-face, learning through interaction. When we talk to tech people, they say, why don't you use more tech? And when we talk to people in traditional education, they say, why do you use so much tech? And we're in the middle trying to say like, here's a way to use it the right way in a balanced way to make classrooms that are more human, but also sustainable for teachers. I don't know. I hope those people listening here are convinced, 'cause that's what we're always trying to do is change hearts and minds. Yeah.

No, I love that. And I mean, I really like the phrase, relationships are inefficient and it's like, yes they are. And that's what's so good about them. That's the work, right? I mean, it's like there is a modern obsession with efficiency as the value that's most important. Like, how can we get there faster? How can we move through this in this frictionless way, right? If it just get somewhere, I don't, not quite sure where, but get there faster and more efficiently. And actually the relationships are what bring the meaning to our point about meaning. And where is that? Often it comes from the relationships. I actually did look in, look at your book and I looked at where the word meaning comes up. And most of the time in the book, it comes up as a prefix to relationship. It's like meaningful relationships is what you talk about. And absolutely. It's like they are inefficient for a reason because that's what brings the implicit, you know, the important learning about who these humans are in our classrooms, right? Like you say, that's why teachers get into a job most often. So no, I really, I really like that. Thank you.

Yeah, well, thanks for, thanks for looking that up, and I'm glad that came through in the book because it's, you know, it's what I believe. Like, if I want my kids to learn some new algorithm for solving a problem in math, they can go on YouTube and look at that. You know, I want to send them to school so that there's an adult who cares about their development, who's helping them, you know, who's helping them grow. And certainly it's, it's almost a cliché, but Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And when we think about teachers who have shaped the course of our lives, it's probably not the teacher who gave the most coherent explanation of finding the zeros of the quadratic function. It's the teacher who, you know, knew about us and cared about us. And how do you get to become that teacher? Right. It's not by spending your day at the board asking your students to be quiet so you can factor a quadratic function. Yeah, it's by building a classroom where you can sit down with the student and say, hey, how's your math? And how you doing? And, you know, saw you in the concert last night, you were great. Or any of those other things that you can— those conversations you can have with students in a traditional classroom, you got to do those after class. Or, you know, yeah, that's all you do is you just I'm just hanging out with kids, helping them learn, because the work has been put in on the front end.

No, it's really interesting because, you know, as I said to you before, there was a tension to me in having this conversation because it is, you know, the podcast really is about the broader systems change. But actually, I do genuinely believe that it's going to take all of us. And some of that work is at, in the immediate local now of the institutions that are are a bit broken, I think, but really passionate, committed educators are still operating in those spaces. How do we help them do that a bit better? So no, I really appreciate, yeah, all the work you're doing. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you. And I think you've said the keyword there, which is some. It's not, you know, Modern Classrooms does all the work and that's— this is going to solve it. Modern Classrooms is an immediate band-aid solution for a system that's broken. So we're doing some of the work. And some of the work has to happen with people who are thinking about, like, if you have in one class students who are chronically absent, students who are 4 years behind grade level, and students who are 4 years ahead of grade level, Modern Classroom will help you. We also need someone thinking about how do we create classrooms that don't have, you know, students who are 4 years ahead, 4 years behind, and, you know, just because they're the same age, and how do we build a system that supports students who are absent and doesn't just forget about them. So, you know, yeah, some of the work is what can you do better tomorrow, and some of the work is how is this going to look different in 10 years. Both very important.

Amazing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

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