Modern Classrooms Project Podcast
Aug 30, 2026 · 14 min · 6 segments
Listen to the full episode here Special Guest: Drea Aguirre.
Drea AguirreGuestToni Rose DeannaHost
The thing that I saw most during the pandemic within Denver public schools was actually this really... incredible like sense of community that emerged from it of just like us rallying around our kids and being like what do we need to do to make sure that our our kids find success and that That was why we had people work in 80-hour weeks and transforming their living rooms into classrooms.
And so within that, my role was to do whatever I possibly could to bridge some of those gaps.
And so for us at the time, it was a lot of... how can we reach as many people as humanly possible who are coming in with zero experience on the tools that we are using? They have very limited tech experience, period.
It was very, very much pencil, paper, unless you were like an innovative school.
We literally like applied for a program to give us this opportunity because it wasn't feasible for us to have before this.
You had not only the teacher aspect and like training them on the tools that they need to deliver instruction, but on top of that, teaching them how to teach their students how to receive that instruction.
And everybody is panicked because again, we want to, we always want to show up for our kids and we want to bring the best for our kids.
And so when we get thrown a curve ball like that, of course it is panic inducing.
And so then we had to start making really realistic public school choices about what we could afford to keep as an entire district, what schools could afford to purchase on their own, what is equitable and like, How can we make sure that with our limited resources, we are providing students with what is going to make the most sense to support the most of our tier one students, which leaves a huge gap of our students out.
And then you, like, factor in the additional, like, yes, cool, we had this period of time where everybody's in this active exploration of tools and apps and ed tech.
And it's 20 tools that can record in your classrooms and 30 ways that you can...
And there was such a lack of accountability in the system for us making sure that you were providing safe access to tools.
Teacher me does not care at all about like what is in the terms of service or the privacy policy.
The thing that I saw most during the pandemic within Denver public schools was actually this really... incredible like sense of community that emerged from it of just like us rallying around our kids and being like what do we need to do to make sure that our our kids find success and that That was why we had people work in 80-hour weeks and transforming their living rooms into classrooms.
And so within that, my role was to do whatever I possibly could to bridge some of those gaps.
And so for us at the time, it was a lot of... how can we reach as many people as humanly possible who are coming in with zero experience on the tools that we are using? They have very limited tech experience, period.
It was very, very much pencil, paper, unless you were like an innovative school.
We literally like applied for a program to give us this opportunity because it wasn't feasible for us to have before this.
You had not only the teacher aspect and like training them on the tools that they need to deliver instruction, but on top of that, teaching them how to teach their students how to receive that instruction.
And everybody is panicked because again, we want to, we always want to show up for our kids and we want to bring the best for our kids.
And so when we get thrown a curve ball like that, of course it is panic inducing.
And so then we had to start making really realistic public school choices about what we could afford to keep as an entire district, what schools could afford to purchase on their own, what is equitable and like, How can we make sure that with our limited resources, we are providing students with what is going to make the most sense to support the most of our tier one students, which leaves a huge gap of our students out.
And then you, like, factor in the additional, like, yes, cool, we had this period of time where everybody's in this active exploration of tools and apps and ed tech.
And it's 20 tools that can record in your classrooms and 30 ways that you can...
And there was such a lack of accountability in the system for us making sure that you were providing safe access to tools.
Teacher me does not care at all about like what is in the terms of service or the privacy policy.
Every episode on Radar is fully transcribed, speaker-labeled, and rich with metadata. Here is a taste of this one. Try Radar for free to see the rest.
3 of 8
Teachers Are Asked Too Much
Teachers carry far more responsibilities than teaching
Training That Models the Practice
The best training lets teachers experience requested practices
Professional Development Needs Implementation Time
Professional development often stops before classroom implementation
+5 more clips · 7 min 24 sec of audio in all
7 of 21
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
All 8 clips — the highlight moments, each cut as its own audio, with a title and a speaker
All 6 segments — the transcript broken into labeled sections, every ad read marked
All 21 topics — jump to every other episode discussing the same subject
Every related episode — other shows Radar links to this one
No account is needed to search Radar.
