ModernTeacher and the Drive for Modernizing Learning

As CEO and the founder of ModernTeacher, Ann Chavez helps school districts transition from the traditional classroom to modern learning environments. “Change readiness and setting conditions for change are pieces that sometimes we just don’t stop and breath and take the time to do,” she told me in this conversation that centered on ModernTeacher's theory of change and desire for impact in school districts. The conversation was illuminating to me—from how Chavez defines “modern pedagogy” and “modern learning” to get out of the various buzzwords that compete for airtime in education to the notion of a network of districts working together to transform. As always, you can listen to the conversation here or wherever you listen to your podcasts, watch it below, or read the transcript.

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Michael Horn:   Ann, welcome to The Future of Education. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Ann Chavez:      Hey, Michael. Great to be here. Super excited for this conversation.

Horn:                Yeah. Well, let's ground people in the conversation a little bit before we get to geek out in the places we're really passionate about how you're transforming teaching and learning in actual schools out in the world. But first, what is Modern Teacher itself?

Chavez:            Yeah. So Modern Teacher, we are a network of forward thinking districts who want to shift the student experience, think differently about how we deliver school. We are public school districts who say we can make a difference and they are providing and creating amazing programs and options for students across the country.

Horn:                That's awesome. So tell us the story of how you decided to create this with your co-founders. What was the problem that you saw or the opportunity with districts that you said we got to really go seize this and start to change that practice.

Chavez:            Absolutely. So two co-founders, we had been working in some systems together, a couple of different systems across the US, big and small. And at the time we were working in a very large, the third largest system in the nation in Chicago public schools, and we had a leader there that really empowered area superintendents to have some autonomy to go create an option. We had very high transparency, very high management to goals and long as you were moving in that direction and able to shift and adjust and be able to understand and tell that story, you were able to have the autonomy and the resources to go create what your area needed. Districts are diverse, communities all over our country are diverse and we had that experience and realize that some of the things that really hold us back in systems are the system itself. We can't get out of our own way to be able to go and really put into place and help teachers and leaders grow to be able to do their best work.

                        And we said how can we take and replicate this because it's pretty unique. The leader at the time didn't come from education and was running this large school system and we thought every district should be able to experience this and we can create things for every student. We can build these options but our system doesn't help itself. So what could we do to help that and how could we create some things to make school districts more systems thinking and sometimes think outside the box or run different than a traditional school district. And that's where Modern Teacher was born and we started to learn and listen and we got some really nice investors at the time that also wanted to understand this better.

                        And we traveled the country and we visited and talked with districts that were really making shift but shift at scale, not shift of a couple of classrooms or a pilot program or an initiative or we're going to try something. They led through a big vision and how was that coming to life. And we said, what are the leaders doing? Superintendents, assistant superintendents, leaders of professional development and curriculum and teaching and learning. What were teachers doing? What were principals doing? What was happening in communities where they were getting movement? And we started to codify those shifts that were happening. And over about a three year time period, we built what we call today our digital convergence framework. And it's the framework we use today that helps districts navigate the path forward to bring their vision of modern learning to life.

Horn:                So I actually want to dig in right there around that framework itself that you've created and that you help take districts through this sense of empowerment for teachers and school leaders on the ground and really fragmenting out the system if you will that you did in Chicago. What does this framework actually look like as you've constructed it and the journey if you will maybe of a district when they start to work with you and become part of the network?

Chavez:            Yeah, absolutely. So change readiness and setting conditions for change are some pieces that sometimes we just don't stop and breathe and take the time to do. And that's one of the pieces that's really built into our process. And so our framework is built around six drivers of our work, very familiar to every school system, and seven stages. And it's embedded with change management and just really good common sense leadership. Just things that we get really a skewing kind of fragmented in districts because we're working with people and we're managing a lot of change and we're managing constantly from day to day. And that common language and framework, kind of why we use frameworks, really helps guide folks. But what we've done is really interwoven across the drivers on what moves need to happen and where are you giving your energies and your resources to really move a system at scale.

                        And so just to give some context to that, our drivers in education and that we've defined our leadership, instructional models, modern curriculum, the digital ecosystem, professional learning and development, all levels and then community and how those work together in your system helps you move. But what's really different I think about the approach because I think there's a lot of frameworks and ways in which districts seek to move their system. We think of it in a really holistic transformational way and it's really comprehensive because I think you'll find a lot of options and solutions around very specific pieces because often it's where a district can hone in and try to get something done right?

Horn:                Yeah, there's quick wins.

Chavez:            There's amazing work happening, but how do we take that and actually approach it in a way that's going to move things for all classrooms and all kids? And so that's our approach. And districts start by identifying a vision for modern learning and they lead through a big vision of outcomes for kids. And it sounds crazy, we all do that. But how intentional you are about that and then how you align your moves to do that really varies. And so if we lead through that versus a program or a curriculum or a thing, we're all going to go one to one. We're all going to...

Horn:                80% passage rate on this test or whatever it is, something narrow.

Chavez:            We all got our board goals and we've got this nice little list. Modern Teacher takes that strategy to the next level because you can also come in and have a lot of folks support you to help assess what's going on. We see this, you need to do this, we'd like to see more of this. Then you get this nice strategic plan however you got there in different ways, but then you got to go do it and it's the doing it and what are all the structures and resources and pieces to start moving your system and how do you keep them connected. And so it's the strategy work around that that we got really interested in. And we really started Modern Teacher focused on how do we support principals to be instructional leaders and really know enough to move their buildings because we felt like it happens at the sites.

                        To us, nothing matters more than the teacher and the student, that relationship and what's happening at that level. So we started there and then we got into the strategy conversations and that's what led us down this path. And we also realized along the way, myself and my two colleagues, Garrett Seaman and Shawn Smith, we said, we can keep doing this work. It's great work. We're loving it. We feel like we have impact. It's a different way to support public education and society's ask of public ed, but what if we want to do our work at scale and how are we going to have an impact on the national conversation in public education? And so to scale that we knew we had to create a technology to help drive that.

Horn:                Interesting. So say more about what that technology is then.

Chavez:            So we built a technology, a platform or a system, that takes and brings to life the framework and it connects all the moving pieces and then it connects the resources and the people. And so inside of our platform, our network of districts and leaders and teachers can connect with each other, they can share resources. And if I'm building my theory of action to really kick off a transformation, I can go in and see theories of action from coast to coast of different districts who are also thinking deeply about shifting the student experience. And so the way in which we've brought that together in our technology really powers what's happening across our network in a little bit of a different way.

Horn:                It's interesting. It sounds like what you're doing is, A, you're not playing small ball if you will. You're playing in the big leagues to do this system transformation and think systematically about how you bring it about. It sounds like to me that the biggest complainer challenge that I'm hearing on the ground right now from a lot of districts is, "Oh my god, where's the capacity to do this reinvention work? We know it's important but we're just trying to reopen, get the doors going, get trains moving again in terms of NAEP," or whatever their immediate goal is, as well as all the food fights that are happening in school board meetings and so forth. It sounds like you're helping to create that capacity through a process with a software that organizes it and then a much larger network that helps them get outside of their immediate scope. Is there also personnel support that you are providing for these districts to... Because that force multiplier of where do the people come from to actually do this change management work, how does that work for these districts?

Chavez:            Yeah. And you hit on just such important pieces. When we talk with districts, we want to do that work, we know we need to be out here but we're so stuck here. The framework and the network of Modern Teacher allows them to step back for a second and it's connective tissue across everything they're doing helps really focus and then empowers across these drivers a way to organize their teams to really, really be more effective because it's one of our biggest challenges. We are complex systems and schools are complex, people are complex. What we're trying to build is some infrastructure for the change process for a district because we will have to continue to iterate... As our districts get to stages six and seven, they've got to keep that movement going and what we build is this runway and this way of working that allows that to continue to happen.

                        We have a lot of places where change and shift not only at the teacher level but at the leader level across districts right now is incredible. And over the last several years that shift when a Modern Teacher district gets a new superintendent or whatever shifts happen across their system, they can know exactly where the district's at the work that's been identified as important, what their next steps are, they can see at scale how many of my teachers, my workforce, I'm a superintendent, how many of my teachers have proficiency in whatever our professional learning goals are? How many of them have proficiency in personalized and blended learning? How many of them have proficiency in rigor and relevance? How many of them have proficiency in whatever systems they're trying to move?

                        And it really gives them a view that we don't typically have. And it really shifts from a compliance driven model of professional development across the system, leaders, teachers, communities, parents to a proficiency based for everybody that's really driven around just relevant movement and options. And we do have personnel type to the process. And so each system has a strategy officer, they have the platform and they have the community of the network. And those three things come together and bring to life their journey to convergence. And for us, convergence is when your systems are working together to get to those big outcomes for kids that you've identified. And we love the term modern learning. We've got personalized, we've got blended, we've got-

Horn:                All the phrases, all the terms.

Chavez:            All the words that can mean a lot of different things depending on where you are in the country. So we stick with modern.

Horn:                I want to come back to that in a moment. I just want to make an observation first, which is I love this focus on convergence or coherence also because it's my own observation we talk a lot about the importance say of teaching kids about growth mindset or grit and perseverance and so forth. But if your pedagogy and the way all of your classes work does not reinforce that and in fact it undermines it. I as a teacher can talk till I'm blue in the face about the importance of growth mindset. If at the end of the day, you still get a letter grade with no ability to improve that, what have we just done? We've just showed you actually, no, we're labeling you, you don't have growth mindset. We were just kidding. So I love that focus.

Chavez:            Those mixed messages are everywhere.

Horn:                They're everywhere in the system, right?

Chavez:            Our poor teachers across the country who are trying to do their best, we've created systems that just derail so much of that.

Horn:                I 100 percent agree. And so it gets to the question I guess I want to go toward, which is you said modern learning. I'm curious about the name Modern Teacher because your work is with the district's, you want to change the learning environments. What's the Modern Teacher part of it?

Chavez:            So we really felt the difference in the focus has to be at the classroom level. And I use the word classroom just to talk about the kids' teachers and the content, the instructional board's happening.

Horn:                It might be a very different learning environment, but the point is.

Chavez:            I'm talking about walls and school buildings and all of that. But that's where the magic happens and we wanted the focus to stay there. And our goal, even though we do a lot of support at the leadership level, we feel like teachers can't do their best work if they're in a system that's scattered in messaging, doesn't have a clear focus, doesn't have the infrastructure to support them, they're out there. To me, they hunker down and do their best and there's magic happening, literal magic happening in classrooms all over the country. But we've got to do that at scale because it's got to be for all kids and it can't be all people dependent and you know the culture of an organization, if it is a growth mindset, learning organization, forward thinking, the feeling of that. And some have never experienced it in their entire career as a leader or a teacher.

                        And so how they get there, it takes a lot of little intentional steps. It really does. And when you can help a leader connect those steps and know that it's not going to be overnight and help them down a journey, magic happens. I see it every day in our districts and others. And so how do we make that an option for everybody? And our focus has really been public ed and not that we wouldn't have others join our network, but we feel like it should really be for every student, every child in America deserves that opportunity. And so how do we take this system that's ingrained in some practices that really haven't shifted? With evolution here, how do we help that? And that's really been our mission and we are chipping away district by district. But the examples and the models that we now have 10 years into this journey. We started Modern teacher, it'll be 11 years coming up here in January.

Horn:                Congratulations.

Chavez:            This is our 10 years this year. We now have models across stages one through seven in our framework. And we didn't start that way because when we built this and said let's go do it, we didn't even have the whole end figured out because we had to get there with these innovative leaders. And so we now have folks in all places across that and it's pretty darn cool. And I think sometimes we get in our own way in education because we want to have it all figured out. We have to know-

Horn:                Rather than just take that next-

Chavez:            And I need all these things and I got to know exactly what's going to happen and I need all the lists and I need all the stuff and I need every teacher and I got to think about who's going to have this issue or that issue. Sometimes you have to just let it go a little. And leaders have to learn how to... We want teachers to let go a little in their classrooms, give more autonomy to students, facilitate-

Horn:                Same to the teachers.

Chavez:            Right. Leaders have to do the same and it's giving them a way to do that that feels structured and there's some natural amazing leaders doing this work right out there. But whether they're seasoned or whether they're brand new into leadership, the framework and quite honestly sometimes we just have to get out of the way because it's the connection in the community that our network has built, that's what's amazing and they've built relationships and can pick up the phone and call multiple folks in similar roles across the country to talk about their challenges and share their wins. We celebrate a lot too and that's really important in our network is celebrating this movement and transformation.

Horn:                So I want to get into those success stories in a couple minutes, but before we go there, I have two other burning questions. One, just give us a sense of the scope, like how many districts are interested in this reinvention work in the network, however you define the sense of scope, you just talked about how you got districts in level seven, you've got some in level one, all the levels. And so it's a much bigger journey in portfolio now. I bet a lot of people are wondering, okay, how many are really interested in this sort of comprehensive reinvention work toward modern learning?

Chavez:            Yeah. So our network ebbs and flows and it has grown over the years. We're currently just over a hundred districts across the US and we talk to districts weekly because I think everybody's interested in how do they get to this space and they're figuring out how do I free up both resources to have this type of support? Because they feel like, "Isn't that why I have this person and this person and this person on my staff?" They need to go bring that to life. But it's hard to do and our-

Horn:                It's hard work.

Chavez:            It's really hard work and sometimes we laugh a lot in Modern Teacher because we say we're really selling change management and how do you get people on board with that.

Horn:                Well, but I think it is the thing and that's why I wanted to... And it's not easy to your point. I see a lot of districts, they get caught up with the... To your point, they have to have the perfect plan. And so they have paralysis as opposed to Frozen two is in my head right now of just do the next right thing or the reverse is true where they just tackle too many things at once and they can't execute correctly on anything.

Chavez:            They have so many forces of what needs to be important and everything's important, right?

Horn:                Yeah. And it views everything's important, nothing's important.

Chavez:            You can't execute on anything really well. And one of the beauties of the framework is it helps bring all of that together. And the magic happens when you get a couple months into the work and we've the case studies across 10 years of this work as you move through the stages and where your thinking shifts, your momentum shifts, we can see it physically in the framework and the way in which the analytics bring it to life. It's fascinating, but what districts also get to a space that they... They don't know how to sort it all out to get that focus moving. Not sure if I'm-

Horn:                No, no, it makes sense. I mean I see it all the time with what do you prioritize? What is the next most important move? And something I talk a lot about is how do you make those choices so that you're intentionally moving forward toward your goal as opposed to getting diverted. Everyone has a strategic plan, but your strategic plan is actually what you're doing. It's not what the words are.

Chavez:            The movement when it starts to lead itself, you've hit this tipping point and we see that and we know right at what stage about that hits. And across our framework there's success indicators that everybody works through. And the beauty of it is that you set goal cycles, it's very customizable. I'm going to go out to districts here in the Philadelphia area today and spend time with leaders and teachers and what it takes for a district here to do SI 18 and develop their instructional model, the input that's going to get them to this output for kids, they might go about it a little differently. What best practices have they done to date? How does it live in their system currently? What's the context of their community? And context matters deeply. And so what it then might take for a district, I spent Monday with really passionate leaders up in Northern Nevada.

                        And what it takes for them to get there will be a little different. But that they all need to get there and need these key pieces to move their system that we found really, really strong across the framework. And so it also gives you permission and for some leaders a way to show their movement and say, "Hey, we need to stop doing this." Because one of the things we do in education is we don't know when to stop something on how to remove it because we've got so many pieces going. And if we simplify it and make it easier for teachers, please, please, please, if that isn't our message these days, make it easier.

Horn:                Amen.

Chavez:            I don't mean that word in relation to rigor and content and-

Horn:                No, no, but just a manageable job.

Chavez:            Hate to say that word. We have got to make this manageable. Exactly.

Horn:                Yeah. No, 100 percent. So last couple questions as we wrap up here. The first one I want to go to is just unpack a little bit more this notion of modern learning or modern pedagogy. You said there's all the buzz words out there, right? There's blended, there's personalized, there's competency, mastery, whatever it is. Help us understand what are the districts that are working with you and what's your north star? What are they driving toward?

Chavez:            My big point of view lately is that transparency of learning is really the path to freedom. And one of the things that both learners need in their journey, teachers need in their journey, and it really mirrors each other. And we would really define and our district is moving, our districts, to competency based systems. And that's another big word of what does that mean?

                        But really helping districts define and understand where students going, why are they learning something, and that students and teachers can identify where they are to where they want to go. And it sounds very simple, but how we move a system from traditional grading, we have a 92% and you get an A minus. I have no idea what that means as a parent or a student. I have no idea what it says I can do. It probably means I've learned how to do school and understand how to work the system, but I don't know if it's tied to how I learn best or my passions or interests or the path that we're creating for students as they come to us wherever they do in their journey and then exit us as graduates.

                        And the plethora of options at that point for students today. It's so different and changing rapidly. So for us it's about competency based, personalized, and blended. And those are words that have been around for a long, long, long time, but how you bring that to life and actually make it manageable for teachers to move there. Moving from grading to standard space grading to full proficiency scales as a system is big work. It's big work, but it's very doable work if you have a path to get there. And one of the things that our systems often do is we do pieces of it and if we're not successful, we shift or if it gets hard or if we just don't know how to move the entire system, we'll get great pockets of innovation and how do we grow that. So for us it's about proficiency students having individual pathways, understanding how students learn best and giving them opportunities, varied pathways about how I can experience school.

                        And the last two years really opened that up. And students experienced different opportunities and certainly not in the way we ever wanted to do it, but there are some learnings in there and as we move forward, let's not lose those. And what's interesting to me is there are lots of alternative programs and if you're a student or a parent that has that capacity to go find them, they're going to find them.

                        But our mission is that every school district to be a modern school district needs to have a variety of pathways and whether you call it hybrid or blended options for students. So in some days they're at school, in some days they're not at school. And then a full traditional program that might look very different when they come to campus. That's okay because society's need for public education and where students go every day, that will never go away probably. So let's figure out how to do that different. And then all virtual options or just varied models, every district can offer that. And if we have at least three different pathways for students, we would say that's a modern school district. And that's one of the things we help districts move towards when they're ready.

Horn:                Love it. As we wrap up here, leave us with some inspiration, some of the success stories that you get excited about and that you carry forward into the work with you.

Chavez:            Yeah. I think, and I was in classrooms, so I'll use this example, Northern Nevada walking classrooms. And when I bend down to ask a student, "What are you working on? Why are you doing this? What does this mean to you?" Yesterday in classrooms, I had students in chemistry labs all the way down to kindergarten able to tell me, "Well, I'm working on this and this is why. And oh, do you want to see where I am?" And they can walk me over to wherever and however they do it, whether it's digital or physical, and we need both. None of this is about all digital. And they show me, "I'm right here in my progression, I'm here in my learning." Those are the words kids use. "But I want to go here." And I'd say, "Well, what's next? What's next? How are you going to do that?"

                        Well, I don't know. I got some options, right?" And they're going to show me their choices. And when a first grader, second grader can tell you that, and then it comes out a little different and a little less animated from a high school student, "Yeah, I know what I'm doing. Yeah, I'm going here." But it all comes back to motivation. And it also comes back to why did we all go into education and this mission to produce graduates?

                        And to me it's about a fulfilling happy life. So our mission is to get students to a place that they can build a fulfilling life. And that path will be varied, as varied can be, but if we haven't given them that opportunity and to understand and experience tons of success in order to know what they do well and how to manage some of the things they don't do well, because we all have that, right? I know all of my strategies for the things I don't do well or like to do. If we haven't created that for students and we've created a system that checks off if you don't fit in the box right, that's what I want to see shift. I want every student to have that path, understand themselves and start to move towards... It really is about self-actualization and I know that's a big word we've built-

Horn:                No, but it's the purpose.

Chavez:            Growth targets in Modern Teacher. And we talk about in the taxonomy of thinking and rigor and relevance, self-actualization is a space. And obviously across time we all have those moments in different ways. But for students, I feel our system beats them up and I feel like it beats up our teachers a bit and everybody goes in with good intentions and is every sends their child to school and every teacher and leader walks in everyday wanting to do good things for kids. So how do we start breaking down the system that doesn't help us do our best work?

Horn:                And love that as a way to leave us in a note of optimism about what's possible as we change the system and unleash the potential of students and teachers in it. Thank you so much for the work you're doing at Modern Teacher. Thanks for joining us today in The Future of Education. And for all of you listening, you can check out more on the web for Modern Teacher, learn more about what they're doing, the districts that they're working with, the methodology and so forth. And thank you all again for joining us on this episode of The Future of Education.

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