Welcome to the Teachers Need Teachers podcast, the podcast for teachers who don't want
teachers survive teaching but actually thrive. So it's been a while since my last
episode, and I actually have a really good reason why I've been gone so
long, And in this episode, I definitely am going to dive into all
of that and update you and what's going on and what I have planned for
a future episode. And for those of you that are new, I'm Kim.
Welcome. I've been teaching for twenty two years and I still love it.
That's right. I'm one of those rare specimens who still loves teaching and
actually looks forward to seeing their students. Now, one of many teachers' nightmares
is to be sick and not have anything planned for a substitute. You probably
left your classroom in complete disarrayed the previous day, and I bet you even
have to make some copies for the current day, and maybe you're even behind
on your pacing and you need to catch up. So missing a day would
really throw everything off. But what if you never had to worry about that?
What if you had everything planned out and prepared ahead of time for one
to even three weeks in advance. What if you could be sick or just
out for an extended period of time with minimal loss of instruction. Well,
my friends, this happened to me. In two of my previous episodes,
I interviewed Kareem Farah, one of the co founders of the Modern Classroom Project.
The Modern Classroom Project model is basically a way of personalizing instruction using digital
tools such as videos. It allows students to move at whatever spee that they
need to go, while also letting me meet with them one on one and
give them individualized instruction. So this is sort of like flipping learning if you've
ever heard of that, where students watch videos on their own time and then
they do the practice in front of you so that you can help them.
Very similar to that, you then either create or curate instructional video is to
replace the lecture that you normally would have in front of the class. That's
kind of it in like a really short and truncated nutshell. And I'll be
sure to link those episodes so that you can catch up on those if you
haven't heard them yet. I think it's really important that in order for you
to understand what it is that I'm doing and why that you watch those episodes
and I really believe that it's going to change a lot of things for you.
And in my next episode, I'm definitely going to dive into how I
am implementing the modern classroom project model, so be sure to subscribe to that
you don't miss out on that. Now, I know that the payoff will
come next year, when all I have to do is just reuse these units
with the already pre made videos and I can just focus on getting to know
my students and spending time with them one on one and trying to figure out
what it is that they each need. However, I actually had an immediate
payoff when I got sick recently. You see, right after Thanksgiving, I
ended up in the emergency room for what I thought was appendicitis. I mean,
based on my symptoms, that's what it sounded like according to doctor Google.
When I went to the emergency room, the er doctors initially thought that
I had these gallbladderstones that were pretty bad and that I had to have my
gallbladder removed. But after a series of tests, they determined that I actually
had some major kidney stones. We're talking two giant marble sized fifteen millimeter kidney
stones and if you know, you know, as you can imagine, it
took multiple procedures and the subsequent recovery time to get rid of these, and
so I had to miss quite a bit of work right before finals, which
obviously isn't ideal and really is there an ideal time to miss school. So
in this model, you do plant an entire unit of study at one time,
and maybe you already have a curriculum that has entire units already planted out,
which is beautiful, or maybe you're like me where you have a lot
of autonomy and leeway in terms of what and when you teach certain subjects.
I have to say, had I not had my units of study planned already
sent out to the students ahead of time in the learning management system, this
could have been a nightmare situation, not just for myself but also my students,
because a lot of them they may not necessarily say that they want to
learn, but at the same time they want to do well, and they
definitely wanted to do well on the finals, and you know the drill.
They could have had a substitute for two or three weeks and be given grammar
packets or just other busy work that would have just made them really hate coming
to class and basically they would have learned nothing during that time if I hadn't
followed this model. And you know, I didn't want any of that.
I mean, none of us want that for our students. In fact,
so many teachers will come to school sick or just won't ever take a mental
health day because it just takes so much work just to plan a lesson for
one day. And just imagine if you have to miss multiple weeks. But
when you literally have the week planned in advance and already disseminated to the students,
you can kind of just have about anything thrown at you and your classroom
will still function fairly normally. That and you'll also increase the chance of your
students actually accomplishing something and dare I say, learn something in your absence.
And I know for a lot of teachers, your students' test scores are heavily
monitored. It doesn't matter if you're literally on your deathbed, had a baby,
or or in mourning. There's seemingly no excuse that will save you if
your test scores are low. It sucks and it's a horrible reality. That
so many of us have to face. Luckily, my students did just as
well on the finals as they did in previous years, even though I missed
school right before finals. I mean, I'm sure that some of it can
be attributed to the instruction that I had given throughout the entire semester, but
I definitely think that some of it is due to the fact that they didn't
miss out on instruction in my absence leading up to the final. So after
learning about this model over the summer, I decided to go all in.
I decided that I was just going to see how it goes. I've been
teaching this long and what do I have to lose by trying it out?
And if it doesn't work after a semester, then I can just go back
to what I was doing before. I don't know how I can go back
to just doing normal lecture style. So basically the takeaway from this is that
by adopting this model, I was able to future prove my teaching and I'm
going to go more into that in my next episode, where I do talk
about how my classroom runs. And just like the pros and cons of this
model and actually the results of teaching this way. On a side note,
this is why I haven't posted since November, just their recovery time and just
having the energy to come up with material. And then over the break,
I was just tired and I really had to save my energy to recovering because
those stones they just would not go away, and so I had to have
three different procedures. And apparently I'm still not done just taking a lot out
of me, and what energy that I do have, I am putting it
into still creating more units of study and spending time with my family. So
that's why I'm gone, and I'm going to try to get back on track
with these episodes. For those of you that are listening to this episode after
all of that, I really appreciate you if you're not following me on YouTube
and you want that format of this podcast, and go ahead and find me
at Teachers Need Teachers on YouTube, and I'm also going to link that in
the show notes. I'd love to see you over there as well. I'm
actually entertaining the idea of going live occasionally doing something like a Plan with Me
format, So let me know if you're interested in something like that, because
that way, if you want to know how I plan an entire unit for
this modern classroom project model. Then we could plan together. Thanks for hanging
out with me today, you guys, and I will see you same