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KAREEM FARAH: We’ve consistently found that the reason Modern Classrooms makes a real impact on teacher sustainability, that educators will say, “I am now happier than I’ve ever been”, is very simple, they actually feel like they can do the job effectively in that 45, 60, 90 minute block with those students, and then everything else that is frustrating is less frustrating because you’re seeing the joy of actually seeing students, learn, move the needle for them and building strong relationships.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Hello everybody, and welcome back to Inspiring Teachers: The Honored Podcast, where we shine a spotlight on life-changing teachers across the country. I’m Hannah, your podcast host, and our podcast is brought to you by Honored, which is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring and elevating great teachers nationwide.

Our mission is to inspire and retain great teachers, keeping them in the classroom as long as possible. Every month at the school year at Honored, we select an exceptional educator in the United States to be the recipient of the Honored National Teaching Award. Each Honoree, as we call them, receives a $5,000 cash reward, and we then tell the story on our website and our social media platforms of how that teacher has impacted their students’ lives. To learn more about our organization, you can go to our website at honored.org. While you’re there, if you have a teacher you would like to recognize, you can nominate them at honored.org/nominate.

We are so excited to have you listening in on another organizational spotlight podcast episode. Today, we are joined by Kareem Farah, the CEO and Co-Founder of the Modern Classrooms Project. Kareem began his career as a high school Math teacher in Hawaii and Washington, DC. Instead of using a traditional lecture model, Kareem taught mathematics through a blended model where students accessed content through his self-made videos.

In 2018, he received the DC Public Schools Award for Classroom Innovation and was featured in Edutopia and CBS News for his work. In an effort to scale his classroom model, Kareem co-founded the Modern Classrooms Project. As CEO, he has led the organization to become a nationally recognized leader in instructional innovation, training, and supporting over 20,000 educators across diverse schools and districts. Kareem is also a member of Honored’s Board of Directors. 

To start our episode off, you’ll hear from Kareem, who shares the story behind the Modern Classrooms Project. Driven by the barriers he faced during his own teaching experiences, the Modern Classrooms Project equips teachers to redesign their classrooms with blended, self-paced, mastery-based practices that personalize learning and strengthen student engagement, all while preserving the human connection at the heart of great teaching.  

KAREEM FARAH: I was a teacher for years. I was teaching in a community that was serving a really high needs student population, which I define as a really high variability of learning levels. You know, walking into a classroom where you’re teaching Algebra I, but you have students testing anywhere from a third-grade math level to, sort of, being college-ready. Spent the early days of my teaching career teaching in a traditional capacity. 

That meant I stood at the front of the room, delivered live lessons, whole group, and then gave kids something to do, and they would struggle on the thing to do, and then I’d assess them on the thing, and they didn’t exactly do well on the thing, and then would just go to the next thing the next day, because that’s how teaching is organized or most people. I felt very frustrated by that reality. 

I felt like the vast majority of my kids’ needs weren’t being met, that my time wasn’t being used effectively, both doing data-driven interventions based on student need and building really close relationships with kids that allowed them to feel motivated and connected, and thriving. So I started to redesign the way that my classroom worked. It was built off these three core instructional ideas, which is first, blended instruction. 

That technology used correctly can actually free the teacher from being at the front of the room, because that kind of whole group delivery of content could actually probably live in a bite-sized video. The second piece was that once you do that, there isn’t this bottleneck of a live lecture, that kids can actually be working in a flexible pace environment, where some students are on lesson three and some students are on lesson four, and they’re moving forward not based on day of the week, but based on demonstrated mastery. 

And that’s that actually last component of the model, which is mastery-based grading. So students don’t go from one skill to the next unless they’ve demonstrated mastery of the previous skill. So this three-part model, blended self-paced, mastery-based, or blended flexible pace mastery-based, turned into an instructional approach, which then led to the founding of the nonprofit, the Modern Classrooms Project. And then today, we train teachers across the country on that approach.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Behind us all is a story of a teacher who inspired us. To share who inspired him, Kareem tells a story about his high school Probability and Statistics teacher, who left an unforgettable impact on him. 

KAREEM FARAH: There are a lot of teachers during my elementary, middle, and high school career that I think had a pretty big impact on me. But I would say in high school, my Probability and Statistics teacher, Mr. Seechin, who is one of my favorite teachers of all time. I think there were a couple of reasons that his classroom was so impactful upon me as an advisor and teacher. One, I think he saw his role as a teacher to be equal parts content and relationship building, and that was clear in the way that he communicated, and that was clear in the way that he allocated his time. 

And the consequence of that is that I felt like when I was walking into his classroom, there was a person there to guide me through a content journey, but there was also a person there who was trying to guide me to be a better person that was going to realize my full potential beyond the content. I think, especially as you look at K-12 education today, where there’s a lot of questions about whether the content is particularly relevant to most students, the ability for educators to build relationships and serve as guides for kids, particularly at those secondary levels, is super impactful. 

I spent almost every lunch period with Mr. Seechin. I made some of my biggest life decisions with his input in mind, and for that reason, I think he changed the trajectory of my life, but also is the teacher that stood out as someone who embodied what I think is required of great teachers, honestly, unfairly so, because the job is so hard, but what is required, particularly at secondary. 

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Expanding on the Modern Classrooms Project, Kareem breaks down how this approach combats everyday challenges in K-12 education. By designing instruction around each student’s individual needs and creating an environment for one-on-one and small group time, this method combats teacher burnout, chronic absenteeism, and inspires teachers to stay in the classroom.  

KAREEM FARAH: I think the biggest and clearest is the fact that in a traditional model of instruction, you are not designing learning for the individual needs of students. You have a predetermined path for where the students are going to go, and it’s sort of sink or swim. 

So the number one thing we’re solving for, the technical term in K-12 education is differentiation, but it’s a simple idea that you are actually catering to the needs of each individual student, honoring what prerequisite skills they don’t have, honoring their ability to move through certain content faster, but also need more time on other things. 

The second thing we’re trying to combat is that we believe the single most impactful use of time in a classroom is one on one and small group time, that that’s where you both can address students’ academic needs, but it’s also where you build a relationship, and when you go into most classrooms, that is a very small percentage of class time. So, how do you actually create a world where a huge percentage of class time is actually spent in one-on-one and small group interactions? 

The third thing we address is chronic absenteeism is a major issue in K-12 education, and this is not a sort of problem you can sweep under the rug. And in a traditional setting, when you are absent until you miss one to two class periods, you just miss that lesson. You get a packet left at home, and then you come in and suddenly just have to be on lesson three, even though you miss lessons one and two. And that exercise doesn’t work for students. It leads to them not wanting to come to class. It makes it very difficult for them to catch up; that’s a real problem. 

And this all kind of culminates in this idea that teachers’ jobs don’t make any sense, and they’re too hard. And that when you give them a traditional model of instruction, it is incoherent, incredibly difficult, and therefore leads to an incredible amount of burnout. What we have seen when educators feel like they can get off the ground and running with our classroom model is that they like teaching more. 

They feel like it makes logical sense. They feel like they’re using their time effectively. They feel like they’re getting to do the things they love to do the most, build relationships, and address student needs. So that’s kind of one of the biggest goals of ours, which is to reduce educator burnout. All that comes with the goal of improving student outcomes. We do believe, and we have seen, that our model, when done well, improves outcomes for students. That’s obviously the gold standard of success here. But to get there, you have to address pretty clear problems in classrooms that we think lead to the outcomes not being particularly effective.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: The Modern Classrooms Project’s self-paced learning model lends itself to greater student success, as students are given the opportunity to move at their own pace. Students are held to the expectation that they must master each skill instead of just getting through each lesson. This not only helps students take responsibility for their progress, but it keeps them engaged and excited about their learning journey. 

KAREEM FARAH: At the end of the day, I think an alarming percentage of students are wildly disengaged in classrooms. And I think that we frequently mistake compliance for engagement. We frequently mistake compliance for actual learning. When you create a structure where students are actually held to the expectation that they must master the skill, and then say, as a result of that, we will give you the time you need to. 

Kids who would normally get a cursory understanding of content, “Oh, I tried lesson two, and did some practice problems, and struggled on the exit ticket, but never, ever mastered it. Then I did lesson three, and I tried, and I think I maybe understood some of it, and then did the exit ticket, and I got partial credit,” and you keep going through that cycle. 

It’s no different than kind of learning a skill in sports, but never actually getting good at that, and then getting thrown in a game, which is a test, and then being like, “I don’t actually understand any of this particularly well. And when I have to put it together, I really don’t understand it.” So our belief, generally speaking, is we’d much rather have a student master seven out of ten skills in a unit, but actually understand those skills, than have them have a cursory understanding of all ten. 

So the way you do that is you create a flexible, paced learning environment. You self-pace in chunks, usually three to five lessons at a time. You organize teacher time to be really focused on those one-on-one and small group interactions, and you use the data to determine who you should be working with and what you need to address. 

And in that structure, you would expect that students learn more, that time in class is not actually wasted. Kids listening to lessons they already know, or kids listening to lessons that they have no idea how to access, because their prerequisite skills are limiting that. And when you construct a learning environment like that, you ultimately get better outcomes.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: During our conversation, Kareem shares that for many educators, the traditional classroom model can feel unsustainable. But through the Modern Classrooms Project, teachers are rekindling their joy and love of teaching. From their research, teachers utilizing this method report feeling more inspired, confident, and capable of doing their job successfully. 

KAREEM FARAH: The data we have on when we get educators, and what they say is their perception of the profession. Whether or not they agree that their job is sustainable is alarming. Less than 50%, or in some cases, a quarter of the teachers we survey, will say, “I find the job sustainable.” And then once we’ve trained them, and once they’ve actually gotten into classrooms, and once they’ve actually successfully rolled out the model, those data points skyrocket in ways that I think are super impressive and disruptive, where three-fourths of the teachers that we support suddenly say the job is more sustainable. 

I think it’s unsurprising, actually, because a lot of folks will try to diagnose teacher retention, teacher sustainability, and teacher burnout issues with surface-level issues. Yes, the pay is not high enough. Yes, there are too many things to do that are administrative. Yes, there are too many preps for them to do. Yes, there’s not enough time for grading. All that is 100% true. 

It’s hard to convince me that aspects of the teaching profession are not wildly unfair and therefore make the job harder. But the number one driver of teacher burnout is they don’t feel successful in their teaching. They walk into a classroom. This is not a profession you chose for money. It’s a profession you chose because you’re passionate about moving the needle for students. Then you go in there and you can’t feel like you can do that successfully. Well, that will really kill your perception of the profession. 

That’ll really ensure that you wake up and go, “I don’t know if I want to do this anymore,” because you don’t have a pathway to success. So we’ve consistently found that the reason Modern Classrooms makes a real impact on teacher sustainability, that educators will say, “I am now happier than I’ve ever been”, is very simple, they actually feel like they can do the job effectively in that 45, 60, 90-minute block with those students, and then everything else that is frustrating is less frustrating because you’re seeing the joy of actually seeing students, learn, move the needle for them and building strong relationships.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: The Modern Classrooms Project not only supports students while they are in the classroom, but it also sets them up for future success. By taking ownership over their learning and navigating lesson to lesson mastery, they gain confidence and problem-solving skills that carry with them long after they graduate. 

KAREEM FARAH: I was a high school teacher. For many of my years, I was a 12th-grade teacher, and I would watch kids graduate, sometimes go to college, and then be back after six months and drop out. And when I would see this play out, and then I’d go and look up college graduation rates, and you would see alarming data about universities that have really high acceptance rates, really low graduation rates. 

And you have to ask the question, “What’s going on here?” Why are kids going to these schools at an unbelievably high level of acceptance, and can’t make it through, and frequently are leaving quite early, and are now strapped with loans. And part of the issue there is that students leave K-12 education with too much hand-holding. They haven’t been given ownership of the learning environment. 

They haven’t been responsible for navigating lesson to lesson, skill to skill, figuring out which pieces to work on, and figuring out when to advocate for themselves to the teacher. Then they go to college, where they spend 12 to 15 hours a week in class, and then the rest of it, they’re supposed to figure it out on their own. 

They’re like, “Whoa, wait a second. Where’s the hand holding? Where is the person who gets to watch over me? Where’s the 15 tries to get a grade that is considered passing?” That type of stuff is really, really problematic. We nurture a certain set of behaviors in students by kind of over-controlling the classroom that don’t really translate to any level of success in the 21st-century skill front when they leave. 

And it was not surprising that many of them would come back to my classroom. They would come back and visit, and they’d be like, “Why didn’t you tell me?” That was a frequent beginning of their sentence. “Why didn’t you tell me I couldn’t just ask the teacher for help whenever I wanted to. Why didn’t you tell me we didn’t do the homework in class with everybody? Why didn’t you tell me if I didn’t get something right or I did poor on a test, I couldn’t retry it?”

Those were the types of things they would say, and the answer was it was a mistake not to tell you. It was the harder thing to tell you and a harder thing to reinforce for the years that you were in the schools, but it was the right thing to do if we wanted you to actually thrive post-K-12.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Through his work with the Modern Classrooms Project, Kareem has seen firsthand how this model has changed teachers’ and students’ lives. He’s talked with veteran teachers who credit the Modern Classrooms method as the reason they’ve stayed in the classroom. He’s also had students share their gratitude for being held to high expectations and having someone who takes the time to build meaningful relationships. 

KAREEM FARAH: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve went and visited classrooms, and a veteran teacher of 20 years will come up to me afterwards and say, “This has changed my life.” Quotes I’ll read from teachers, where they’ll say things like, “I hit a low point in teaching, and I was thinking about leaving, and now I feel energized.” So, really feeling the impact of educators, particularly veteran educators, who we really need to not leave the classroom early, expressing that this was the reason they stayed, could not be more impactful to me. 

That is the type of change that I will forever feel honored that we could create. I also think there are a few students that I taught with this model that I still talk to today, and will say, “Thank you. Thank you for running a model like that. Thank you for holding us to expectations.”

As one student said back in I think it was 2017, “Mr. Farah, I cannot finesse your class.” And what he was saying there was that I cannot get around the system you’ve created to cultivate mastery. And I thought it was such a powerful line, because I was proud to hear that he couldn’t finesse my class, but it was also powerful to hear that he thought he could finesse all his other classes. 

And what that meant about holding students to high expectations, and what that could then mean for them when they left the classroom, and the students who I still talk to, who say, “It was really transformative to be a part of a learning environment that taught me those things.” It’s certainly hard to replace. That certainly makes me miss being a teacher.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: At Honored, we know that teacher recognition is a critical part of keeping teachers engaged in their work. In our conversation, Kareem reflects on the power of teacher appreciation and the impact this has on improving teacher retention and burnout. By sharing and celebrating teachers’ stories, we help educators feel seen and supported as they shape our future generations.  

KAREEM FARAH: I don’t think there is anywhere near enough organizations to wake up every day and go, this is an incredibly difficult profession that needs to be recognized, that needs to be elevated. People need to hear the stories of teachers. People need to recognize that when they do great things, they deserve more credit than they currently have. 

We have a teacher burnout crisis in America. One of the core missions of what we try to solve for is the burnout issue. But in addition to a teacher burnout crisis, we also have a pipeline crisis where there is a shrinking number of future educators entering into the pipeline, and it is the most alarming data you could look at. 

If you care about the future, I have my own baby girl, and I am terrified that in five years, let alone 15 years, we are going to see a decline in qualified teachers entering the buildings, and what does that mean for the future of learning in America? And it takes a multi-pronged approach, and one of them is reasonably simple: honor them more, respect them more, elevate what they do. And there’s some simplicity about what Honored does that I deeply appreciate and can’t think of any reason why someone wouldn’t want to get behind it.

HANNAH BOWYER-RIVETTE: Thank you so much for listening and joining us today to learn more about Kareem Farah and the Modern Classrooms Project. To learn more about the Modern Classrooms Project, you can visit their website at modernclassrooms.org or click the link in the episode description. If you enjoyed today’s episode, you can follow us and leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you’re listening in from. Thanks again for listening, and make sure to tune in again next month, where we will hear the incredible story of the recipient of our December Honored National Teaching Award.