Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. Each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self-paced, and mastery-based learning to better serve their students. In this episode, Zach is joined by Modern Classrooms Project co-founder and CEO Kareem Farah to discuss the upcoming Virtual Summer Institute and the opportunities for educators to invest in their own professional learning this summer.

Summer is such a special time. Students go home for the summer and return transformed in so many ways. And as educators, it can be a similarly transformative time. It is, perhaps, the one time of year where you can truly transform your approach and invest in yourself. Whether you are already implementing a Modern Classroom, or just starting out, the summer can be a powerful time.

Invest in You

Summer is a great time to dedicate to investing in you. Modern Classrooms Project hosts Virtual Summer Institute each summer, a five week intensive that matches educators with expert mentors and provides a host of synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities to help educators transform their classrooms into Modern Classrooms. This means educators will learn about implementing self-pacing, blended instruction, and mastery-based grading in their learning design plan, with feedback and support from someone who has been in their shoes before.

“I think what makes Virtual Summer Institute different from the school year experience is there's just more collaboration opportunities,” Kareem says. “There's weekly discussion groups, there's workshops. It just creates a space where folks can opt in and out of really cool opportunities to collaborate with other educators learning the model and mentors who have been experts in this approach.”

There are only three Virtual Summer Institute sessions, starting May 16, June 13, and July 11, and spots are available on a first-come, first-served basis. The deadline for the first session is April 11 (session now full!), so don’t delay! Apply today!

Visualize Your Classroom

Many times, educators want to know what a Modern Classroom looks like. There are a few different tools you can use to visualize your own Modern Classroom.

• Watch these Edutopia videos highlighting real educators implementing Modern Classrooms

• Dive deeper into Modern Classrooms Project exemplars - these are real units implemented by real educators

• Discover Modern Classrooms at-a-Glance, which features content and voices from K-12 educators across the country

Revising Your Teaching

“I don't think anyone's ever done innovating,” Kareem says. If you’ve already implemented elements of a Modern Classroom, we encourage you to think through how you can push your implementation further. Whether that means enrolling in Virtual Summer Institute to perfect your implementation, submitting your application to become a Distinguished Modern Classroom Educator, or simply exploring what you can do differently in the next year, any of these actions can help you become a better teacher, implementer, and facilitator of learning. 

As someone who has been implementing a Modern Classroom for three years, Zach uses the time to reflect on his class notes from the year. “And I actually think it's a whole lot easier to tweak a Modern Classroom than it is to tweak a more traditional classroom, largely because you've created an unbelievable learning management system that is filled with your resources and content,” Zach says.

He identifies sessions where students struggled and revisits the content from his Google Classroom. Because of the way he sets up his learning management system, he can revisit the revision notes he gave his students and identify learning gaps his teaching might have created. “It's just like it's much clearer to me what I need to revise and what I can leave alone,” he says.

Regardless of whether you’re just starting your Modern Classroom, or have been implementing a Modern Classroom for years, invest time in yourself this summer. Be sure to relax and recharge, but also be sure to invest energy into transforming your educational approach. And Modern Classrooms will be there to support you along the way!

For more professional learning opportunities, now or this summer, we recommend checking out our free online course.

Our Guest

Kareem Farah is the co-founder and CEO of the Modern Classrooms Project. He earned a B.A. in Finance from Washington University in St. Louis and M.A. in Secondary Education from Johns Hopkins University. After joining Teach for America in 2013, he spent six years teaching in schools that support students with a high diversity of academic and social emotional needs in Hawaii and DC.

Our Host

Zach Diamond studied Music History and Theory at Oberlin College and received a Masters of Music in Music Education from Boston University. He taught music for five years in Lima, Peru, and is currently a Middle School music teacher at DC International School, a language-immersion school where he teaches in Spanish. He began implementing the Modern Classrooms Model in the 19-20 School Year and enthusiastically continues his work with the organization as a mentor and podcast producer.

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