Flipping the Model for the Modern Classroom with Kareem Farah

Kareem Farah is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Modern Classrooms Project. He joins host Mike Palmer in a conversation about innovative approaches to teaching and learning. You can learn more about their approach here. Kareem explains how he started out in finance but pivoted to become a math teacher. After teaching traditionally for several years, he realized it was not meeting his students' needs. This led him and a co-founder to design a new blended, mastery-based, and self-paced instructional model that became The Modern Classrooms Project. They started testing it in their own classrooms in Washington D.C. and founded a nonprofit in 2018 to spread the approach more widely. Farah shares how the model gives students more ownership over the learning process while freeing up teachers to focus on individual and small-group support. We discuss trends like tutoring, teacher burnout, and the role of AI. Farah offers advice on listening to users, focusing on discrete problems, and trying new solutions. He emphasizes creating conditions for teacher success through new methodologies. The conversation covers motivation, technology impacts, and the importance of being patient, curious, and innovative. Don't miss it! Subscribe to Trending in Education wherever you get your podcasts. Visit us at TrendinginEd.com for more.