Making Teaching Sustainable in a Blended, Self-Paced Learning Environment: The Modern Classrooms Project

Robert Barnett, co-founder of the Modern Classrooms Project, explains how their innovative teaching model helps teachers effectively reach students with diverse learning needs through blended, self-paced, mastery-based learning. Traditional teaching methods struggling with different learning paces, gaps in knowledge, and absent students can be transformed with this approach that empowers both teachers and students.

• Traditional teaching models fail when teaching to the middle leaves advanced students bored and struggling students lost
• Modern Classrooms Project combines blended instruction, self-pacing, and mastery-based learning
• Teachers create short instructional videos that students can pause, rewind, and access anytime
• Students work at their own pace, ensuring they master concepts before moving on
• Teacher role shifts from lecturer to providing targeted one-on-one and small group support
• Research shows students feel more capable and develop stronger relationships with teachers
• Schools implementing the model have seen significant increases in test scores
• Teachers report greater job satisfaction and connection to why they entered teaching
• Free resources available through ModernClassrooms.org and InstaLesson.com
• Robert's book "Meet Every Learner's Needs" offers a step-by-step guide to implementation

Visit Insta-lesson.com to create your first blended, self-paced, mastery-based lesson and begin transforming your teaching approach today.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Modern Classrooms Project
• 2:16 Robert's Teaching Journey and Challenges
• 5:26 Three Pillars: Blended, Self-Paced, Mastery-Based
• 11:15 Implementation and Student Adaptation
• 13:52 Teacher Wellbeing and Sustainability
• 17:01 Research Results and Student Outcomes
• 18:40 Meet Every Learner's Needs Book
• 22:20 Resources and Getting Started Today

Transcript

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 0:01

Imagine a classroom where every student moves at their own pace, masters concepts completely before moving on, and where teachers actually feel less stressed, not more. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it's already happening through something called the Modern Classrooms Project. Today we're talking with Robert Barnett, the co-founder, who's helping make this approach a reality. Welcome to the brighter side of education, research, innovation and resources.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 0:35

I'm your host, dr Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes In classrooms across the country? Teachers are facing an increasingly complex challenge how to effectively teach students who learn at different paces, in different ways and need different levels of support. The John Hopkins Study the Modern Classrooms Project, a review of research-based best practices determined overwhelming positive support for the Modern Classrooms Project from the perspective of both the students and the teachers. Benefits are reported for middle and high school teachers as well as student participants.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 1:26

At the heart of this transformation are three innovative strategies. First, blended instruction seamlessly weaving digital technology into face-to-face teaching, creating dynamic learning experiences. Second, self-pacing instruction, which empowers students to progress at their optimal speed, ensuring that they truly grasp concepts before moving forward. And third, mastery-based learning, and that guarantees that students develop real competency in each skill before moving on until they're truly ready. Now I'm thrilled to welcome someone who's been instrumental in developing and implementing these approaches Robert Barnett. He is the co-founder of the Modern Classrooms Project and author of Meet Every Learner's Needs. He's here today to share how these research-backed strategies are revitalizing education and creating sustainable solutions for teachers that really do support every student to success. Welcome to the show, robert. Thank you Glad to be here. Before we dive in, can you take us back to the moment when you realized that traditional teaching methods were not working for you, and what kind of sparked that creation of the Modern Classrooms Project?

Robert Barnett: 2:36

Sure, yeah, I'm happy to share that. You know I started my career as a teacher in independent schools in Washington DC and there I taught traditionally and I had small classrooms and students were really motivated, did a lot of work outside of school to make sure that they could keep up. And you know, I felt like I could kind of get by teaching one lesson per day from the board and I knew I was teaching to the middle. Teaching one lesson per day from the board and I knew I was teaching to the middle. I knew that some students were ahead and maybe a little bit bored, or some students were a little bit behind and lost, but it was okay.

Robert Barnett: 3:13

I then went to a public school where I taught big, big public school classes and I realized pretty soon that I would not be able to do this anymore and the gaps between my learners were just so much bigger. There I had larger classes, students struggled with attendance, Some students were on grade level, some students were six years behind and they didn't have the same level of support outside of school and so on an average day I might walk into my class and I'd have several students absent, so they're missing out completely. I had several students who were like eager, really eager to move on, and I had a lot of students who had gaps in their learning and they just weren't prepared for grade level content through no fault of their own. School hadn't prepared them, and I realized, one lesson per day, it's not going to meet any of these learners' needs. I'm going to teach to the middle and I'm going to be missing students on the high end, the low end and who aren't there at all. So I realized then that I needed to do something different.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 4:13

I would agree with you. I think that that's one of the hardest things with teaching is there's one of you and there's like 30 of them, and everyone is coming to the table with different needs and those gaps, and it's really hard to be everything for everybody. So what you're doing right now is pretty amazing. Your model revolves around three key pillars, that's, the blended learning, the self-pacing and the mastery-based learning. So can you tell us what a typical day would look like for the student and the teacher using those three pillars?

Robert Barnett: 4:48

Of course, yeah, and I will say that it's true that you really need to teach like this when you have 30 students, but even when you have a few students, you know different young people always have different needs, and so one lesson is rarely going to meet those needs all at once. You know, I have two kids and they're two years apart and you know they need different things, right, if we're reading, like they need to be reading different books or doing different math problems, and so anytime you're trying to teach multiple learners at once, I think there's a better approach than giving them both or all of them, the same lesson at the same time. So let me explain what that better approach is. In my classroom, and now in thousands of other classrooms around the world through my organization, the Modern Classrooms Project, teachers deliver instruction basically as follows Rather than standing at the board delivering one lesson to whoever happens to be in class that day, the teacher digitizes direct instruction, usually through a short, focused instructional video, so I could explain something at the board. My students would be bored or lost or not there. I could create a five-minute video where I just record my screen and explain that concept. Now students can watch the video in class. They can pause, they can rewind, they can watch at home and I'm free during that time to go answer their questions, to check in on them. It's much more comfortable than me standing and trying to keep them quiet. They're all watching the video just to get that new content five or 10-minute videos.

Robert Barnett: 6:21

After those videos, students will work through some kind of practice together. So they close the screens, they get face-to-face, they're on paper. I was a math teacher so maybe they're doing math practice problems together. If you're a Spanish teacher, maybe you use a video for students to learn new vocabulary. They close the computer, they practice using that vocabulary in conversation. If you're an English teacher, maybe you use a video to explain how to write a topic sentence and then students practice writing topic sentences together. So after the short video, students are working together and they're doing this at their own pace. That means your advanced students might be speeding through the practice. Your students with learning gaps might take a little while longer. When a student comes in late, they pick up at the beginning rather than being thrown into wherever you are in the class.

Robert Barnett: 7:15

And then the final pillar you mentioned is mastery-based learning. That's the idea that school is really valuable when students actually understand what they're learning. So before a student goes from lesson one to lesson two, they should prove they understand lesson one. You should give that student a brief assessment. You should say show me you understand it. If you understand lesson one, great, go to lesson two. If not, hang on, go back to the video. Go back and ask your classmates Try again. Let's make sure you understand lesson one before you go to lesson two. And because your instruction is digital, because there's this self-paced learning, it's possible really to have a mastery-based classroom where your advanced students are racing ahead, working fast, super challenged, all the time. Your students who need more support get that support and your students who are chronically absent pick up where they left off every day.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 8:08

The system works in elementary and high school levels.

Robert Barnett: 8:12

Absolutely. I developed this myself as a high school teacher, but I've seen it in kindergarten classrooms and actually, in some ways, elementary teachers take to this approach better than secondary teachers, because they're used to more small group, self-paced, one-on-one learning, as opposed to secondary classrooms where it's sometimes a real mindset shift to go from one lesson at a time to this more flexible learning environment.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 8:37

Yeah, we're used to centers and the movement. You know being able to meet those students in grouping abilities Absence students has always been a problem, so I love that this addresses that issue where you know you have that gap, and it's not just one student missing one day. It could be one student missing five days and another one missing three, and then another one is only the afternoon, and so it's just the variety, the barrage of the amounts. That really is what becomes overwhelming for a teacher. And then how long, would you say for the younger ones, would it take for students, teachers, to get used to being able to perfect this method in their own classroom, like if they started this in August? I know, depending on age, it has to do with you know a lot with age, but is this something that would normally take teachers and students a couple of weeks to get used to, or is this something where you really have to spend a lot of time training your students?

Robert Barnett: 9:32

Yeah well, every learner is different, every teacher is different, every classroom is different. Sometimes it's harder, I think, to get an 11th or 12th grader used to this because even though they can understand directions better, they're so used to learning as being sit and get, and this kind of learning obviously is more active. It gives students more agency. So that can be a bigger mindset shift for an older student versus a younger student who's just sort of I'm going to come in and do what the teacher says. I do think in general we recommend that teachers take the time when they start doing this to orient your students to this approach, to explain how it will be different.

Robert Barnett: 10:13

The teacher's role shifts. I mean, you've heard this a million times from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side, but so often it's become a cliche. But here it actually happens right, the teacher is not delivering content from the board anymore. The teacher is one-on-one, small group support. The student role shifts from sit and listen to go out and find knowledge and find classmates to learn from and demonstrate mastery. So you need to explain that. You need to give learners time and in my experience some of my students got this right away and they said Mr Barnett, this is great, I love learning like this. I did it last year with a teacher or this really just works for me. I love watching videos in my spare time to learn, and some students. It might be November or December and it finally says, okay, I finally get that I'm responsible for my own learning. It took a while, but that's the thing. Our learners are different people and that's why we should be teaching like this in the first place.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 11:09

Yeah, you were talking about how teachers would record their own lessons. So you have something called InstaLesson. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that could help teachers with their preparation of these lessons, which I could see may be a little bit overwhelming for teachers to have to take the lessons that have been written on paper and they are used to being able to pull those resources and use the chalkboard or the whiteboard and now they have to create a digital lesson. So how is that working with InstaLesson?

Robert Barnett: 11:42

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're listening to this, one thing you might reasonably be thinking is this seems like a lot of work. I know how to show up to my class and give a lesson, but now, if students are going to be all over the place on all different things, I've got to create videos like. That's a lot, and it's true that if you're going to go all the way to doing this, it is going to take work. In my opinion, it's an investment of time that pays off over time, because you're going to be much happier once you're teaching like this and once you have your videos for everything. You don't need to keep repeating yourself. Right, you can use those videos as long as you teach, but it can sometimes be a big lift to record that first video. That can be hard.

Robert Barnett: 12:26

So I'm working on a tool called InstaLesson, which helps a teacher put in a topic any topic you want to teach and then uses AI to generate a blended, self-paced, mastery-based lesson that the teacher can edit, print and share, and I've designed it to be really easy. I think a lot of AI tools on the market can be kind of complicated. They have so many features it's hard to know where to start. But, more importantly, it's a tool that's aligned to pedagogy, to an instructional model. It's not just more of the same content creation for content creation sake. It's a tool that really is meant to support blended, self-paced, mastery-based learning. So you know, this is an experimental thing, like I created a couple months ago. I'm testing it out, but the hope is that InstaLesson does help teachers get started with this model of instruction.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 13:25

Yeah, and I saw that you were able to import videos and I like how there's a little rectangle that's on the box, so the teacher's face is on the screen and that the children hear the teacher's voice. So it becomes more meaningful. I like that personalized touch with it and then the ease of being able to use it, because I might be at a loss to create every video. I think that that then goes to the sustainability of this. How does this model address teacher burnout? By making it more sustainable and then actually increasing their wellbeing. How are the teachers responding to this?

Robert Barnett: 13:54

Yeah, I mean, teaching is so hard. I was a teacher myself and I know how difficult it is all the planning, all the work, all the commitment and I think for me the hardest part was feeling like I was doing all this work and I just wasn't seeing the results in my classroom, like my students came in so far behind and they left so far behind and I couldn't meet their needs. It was just really difficult and I felt like I had people telling me teach this way, use this curriculum, et cetera, et cetera, but they didn't really understand the challenge that I faced. The fundamental challenge was my students needed different things and I was unable to meet all of those needs when I was teaching in this traditional way, I found that when I started teaching in the modern classroom model, a couple of things changed. One, even though I was working hard to create my own videos, I just felt like I was more affected.

Robert Barnett: 14:43

Every day I felt like my students were more engaged. I was not at the board controlling behavior. I was sitting down with my students. I was building relationships with young people. I was doing the things that I wanted to do when I decided to become a teacher. So on a daily basis. I felt more satisfied and that made the job feel more sustainable Over time.

Robert Barnett: 15:03

It also became really nice because once I had my video lesson on a certain topic whether that was my video or a video that I found online that I like I didn't have to go in and perform and repeat that lesson three times a day. I went in, my students watched the video. If they had questions, I answered them. I really felt like I'm going to show up today and just help my students learn, and it was an investment of time to get there, but it really paid off. I think as you start to get comfortable with this method of instruction that is more student-centered and less teacher driven, you're going to see that teaching becomes more enjoyable and more sustainable too teacher-driven, you're going to see that teaching becomes more enjoyable and more sustainable too.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 15:46

John Hopkins did a study on your best practices and the information they were getting back, survey-wise, from the teachers and the students' responses to this type of learning environment. Can you share some specific examples of how this classroom and these methods end up shaping and impacting the student learning experience, and what kind of outcomes do they have?

Robert Barnett: 16:04

Of course, we have done a lot of surveys of students, and students say things like they feel more capable of learning everything. They enjoy learning more, and this is comparing students in modern classrooms to students in traditional classrooms. They're more likely to agree that they have close personal relationships with their teacher, and that's not a surprise, because the classroom is designed in such a way that students spend more time with their teacher one-on-one or in small groups and they feel capable of learning everything, because it's not like you got to be here for these first 15 minutes of class when I explain it and, if not, good luck. You can really learn anything when your instruction is digitized and you can access it anywhere and get your teacher's help. So those are survey results.

Robert Barnett: 16:46

We have also seen in schools and districts where we've worked, after we train them and they implement our model, test scores have increased a lot. We've seen that at many schools. We've also seen schools where we try our best to compare. Okay, here are the middle school math students who are in modern classrooms. Here are the ones who are in traditionally taught classrooms. In the districts where we've been able to get this data, we've seen increases in student performance as well, and you can easily go to our website. It's modernclassroomsorg slash impacts and see the specifics there. You know the schools we've worked with the districts, the tests that were used, all of that that's what it's all about is the student impacts, and so we spend a lot of time and effort making sure that the benefits show up there.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 17:30

It's nice to see such wonderful support, saying things like I'll never go back to this other method. This method makes me feel like why I came to the table of teaching, and I think that so many teachers come to this profession because they want to feel that connection and they want to feel that impact. And you've written it all down which is amazing in your book, and it is called Meet Every Learner's Needs. I have your digital, so I've already begun reading it. What is the one thing that you hope that readers will take away from it, and where can readers find it?

Robert Barnett: 18:01

Thank you for mentioning the book. Yeah, it's available everywhere books are sold. You can find it on Amazon. You can find it on the Modern Classroom website. There's actually a website for the book which is just meeteverylearnersneedsorg website. There's actually a website for the book which is just meeteverylearnersneedsorg.

Robert Barnett: 18:20

As I was writing the book, I really thought what I want to do is break down this model that can seem complex into the simplest possible steps, and I thought the best way to do that was explain how I started using this model myself. Because nowadays, modern Classroom Project has trained thousands of teachers all over the world, but the training didn't exist when I was a teacher, so I just had to kind of figure it out and I didn't arrive at a transformed classroom overnight. It took me many months to do that. I just took simple steps. First I made a video, and the video was not fancy. I started a video call with myself. I hit record, I explained something. I hit stop recording. That was my video, but it was fine. It worked for my students. It was personal, they liked it. And then, once I had the video, I thought, okay, well, what should students do after the video? Well, they should work together, they should collaborate. That's so important for learning.

Robert Barnett: 19:15

So then I had to figure out how to support collaboration and then, once students were watching videos and working together, I sort of said, rob, what are you going to do in class all the time? So I had to figure out how to use my time. And then I had to figure out how to assess student mastery and track progress and organize my classroom, organize my learning management system, motivate students. All these pieces sort of came piece by piece, and so I call the book 10% Memoir, that's me telling my story.

Robert Barnett: 19:39

10% Manifesto, which is me explaining what I believe, which is that every student should be appropriately challenged and appropriately supported every day. And 80% Educator Manual. If you want to meet every learner's needs tomorrow in your classroom, here's where you should start. Here's the next thing you should do. Here's the next thing you should do. Here's how, in New York and North Carolina and California and Australia and Sweden have done it. Go for it. And so the book is really meant to take this model, make it as simple as possible, as accessible as possible and help any teacher anywhere better respond to their learner's diverse needs.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 20:17

And you have an online class as well and a community to support teachers going through this type of training with mentors across the world. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Robert Barnett: 20:29

Yeah, of course. So the book is one way to learn this, but the organization that I co-founded and helped lead Modern Classrooms Project. It's a nonprofit organization with a mission of supporting educators, and so we make all of our model and resources available for free to anyone who's interested. We have a free course that explains how you can do everything I've described and more, and then we also have a mentorship program where, if you are a middle school English teacher somewhere in the world you want to learn this model, we will pair you with one of our educators who's a middle school English teacher who uses this model effectively in their classroom. You'll work together, you'll get support adopting this in your own classroom, and so that's a program that we partner with schools and districts and foundations to provide.

Robert Barnett: 21:14

So the book and the organization all have the same mission, which is giving teachers classroom tested kind of practices that work, and I know they work because they worked in my classroom, they worked in my colleagues' classrooms. You know we've heard from teachers all over the world. I tried this approach. It works for me, it works for my students, and this is how I want to teach.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 21:35

So is there any tips or suggestions you can give a teacher what they could do today?

Robert Barnett: 21:40

Of course, and actually this is part of the reason that I'm building InstaLesson, because people always ask what's the easiest possible, simplest way. I'm a busy teacher, teach this approach in my own classroom and my answer to that is InstaLesson and it, like the course I just described, is a completely free tool for teachers. So what I would recommend you do is go to InstaLessoncom with a dash Insta-Lessoncom, type in something you want to teach your students about and then generate a lesson for your students. That lesson is going to have three parts. It's going to have a video that your students will watch we figured out a way to go online and find really high quality videos for students to watch. It's going to have practice questions for students to work on together and then it's going to have a mastery check. We're going to send you that lesson in a Google Doc that is fully editable. So create your lesson, edit it, make it better, give it to your students, see how they respond.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 22:39

I think that's really a great way to begin jumping into the Modern Classrooms Project. So thank you for sharing all of this wonderful information and for what you're doing in education to make it not only sustainable but transforming the way that we teach and giving us back that joy in the classroom. So thank you so much for what you're doing.

Robert Barnett: 23:00

Thank you for having me here and hope that teachers can transform their classrooms, but that begins with really simple steps. So thank you for giving me the chance to share those steps.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 23:12

Positive change in education starts with one classroom, one teacher and one student at a time. Education works best when we learn from each other to create the schools our children deserve. If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa at drlisahasslercom, or visit my website at wwwdrlisahasslercom. Thank you. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.