Usually when I mention overload, I mean me personally, trying to teach 4 preps, trying to create content for 2 of them, juggling my own 3 little hellions, much like all of us.
For me this year though I have a lot of overload from the amount of things I want to implement to make my kids better learners. I read some awesome stuff over the summer about ways to get kids thinking in visible ways, about making them become better questioners and I was seriously fired up with full intent to jump right in and make it a focus of the classroom day to day.
I haven't....maybe 5% implementation.
Inspired as always by @crystalkirch, I started to implement a WSQ system in my class, hoping we would spend good time each day examining their questions is a collegial, collaborative atmosphere.
We do WSQs, but the real meat of it in the classroom, maybe 10% implementation.
The plan was to have a great mastery gradebook and system set up for each student so that they could monitor their own progress and we could work together on their progress.
So far, I still give my standards based assessments and with a few exceptions, keep trucking along.
I wanted to do amazing labs and activities each and every day with the kids, then really examine the ins and outs of each in detail, with reflection and analysis by the students.
About half there, we do a lot of activities, but I've found myself becoming the worst parody of the "hands-on" teaching style, that we do a lot, but don't spend enough time tying it in, making it concrete.
I promised myself that I would personally be a lot more reflective this year, blogging, talking to others, etc.
It's Friday on my "fall break" and I just finished a video, and am blogging about my failures this year.
The weird thing is that despite what it sounds like, I'm not really down on myself. We as "21st century" teachers talk a lot about being the chief learners in our classrooms, but that's not really what we expect. We assume, like the kids do, that we will have it all figured out, that we know what's up every single day and are masters at the art and science of teaching.
Bull...
Last year was a super productive one for me as far as learning new stuff as a teacher. But you know what, it was really tiring....there was a point last fall that I would not have been shocked had I passed out from exhaustion.
This year has been that, but more...I'm doing what I did last year, but twice as much, with 8 times the parent load and expectation, with 10% of the equipment (outside of tech) that I had last year.
My wife is a super-teacher and I'm trying to be one here lately, but it is pretty rough. Today on our off day we were both feeling guilty about not doing school work. I tried to do this video tonight at school on Wednesday, but that is almost impossible because of interruptions, so I did it tonight, on break...
The point of all of this navel gazing is that it is ok to not accomplish everything right away. We are 25% of the way through the year, and yet I seem to expect 100% mastery of all of my teaching goals. I don't expect the kids to master that way, but I kill myself trying to achieve it.
My goal for the rest of the is to not overload myself, to better the classroom for the kids, to be a better teacher with cool new strategies, but more to the point, to be a better teacher by being sane and happy.
Word to the rookie teachers out there, or to the rookie flippers, don't beat yourself up when you fail. Despite the well intentioned but wrong idea that failure is not an option, nothing gives better lessons than failure sometimes, both for students and yourself. I've failed at a ton of things this past couple of years as I try to go from a teacher centered to a student centered model, from a hard line,"if you don't get it you aren't trying hard enough" teacher to a hunt my students down and pursue them with knowledge until they learn to seek and find it on their own.
I still want to do all of these cool things, all of these things that I genuinely believe are best for my kids, and I will....but not today, maybe not next week, maybe not til next term. And that's ok...
My wife was having a mommy guilt day where she was upset because on our off day she wasn't giving painting lessons to our boys or crafting with them or whatever. I told her, look at our boys...are they healthy, happy, smart, and full of life? She said yes, and I said then we are doing OK today as parents.
I don't want to be just OK as a parent or a teacher, but you know what, on an average day, my students learn, they have fun while doing it, and most of them don't hate my class or subject, even though I teach Chemistry, the class that makes people recoil visibly when I tell them what I teach. So you know what, I will keep it up and strive to get better, but also try to sleep knowing that I'm doing ok, and that trying to do it all at once is just my ego writing checks that my body can't cash!
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Teams
I had an article written up about my flipped classroom in the local paper last week. Since then I've had a few emails from folks in the county interested in the method and will have a few visitors checking it out the next couple of weeks. I felt pretty awkward about it in some ways since I don't have any delusions about being the best teacher or that my classroom is the model for others.
Aaron Sams said in one of the Flipped Learning network podcasts that he views flipped classrooms as a bridge and I totally took that to heart. At the last inservice day I presented to other science teachers in my county and we were a good 25 or so minutes in before I mentioned anything about videos at all. I focused almost entirely on pedagogy, on the idea of diving deeper, of having students focus more on inquiry each day in class, of setting them up to seek out their own answers. I expressly stated my belief that the flipped classroom is a good bridge to get from a traditional classroom to the totally student centered and driven class that does PBL and inquiry most of the time (if not all).
So on my twitter feed I see a lot of folks who either don't get that or perhaps just hate the idea of flipclass, maybe because they perceive it as the flavor du jour in education because of Khan Academy. Now I ask for some of this as I purposely follow some critics of the system. I don't want my PD experience on twitter to be an unquestioning echo chamber by any stretch. What gets me is the idea that teachers seem to think we have to sign up on teams for or against everything.
Are you for Team Flip or Team Modeling? Team Inquiry or Team Lecture? To me it seems almost as ridiculous as the Twilight thing a couple of years ago (and maybe still...) Team Edward or Team Jacob, let's fight about it...
Two things really brought it up for me, this blog post by Shelley Wright was the first of them. I read through this article saying yes over and over again, except for the idea that she would never go back to flip. As I read through the whole thing my conclusion, I was like, wait, I thought this was a flipped classroom, student centered, self paced, students seeking out knowledge with assistance when needed. This part in particular hit me
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Ms. Wright's article is wrong, it was very edifying to me, I love seeing stories of teachers who actually did it, who are there where I think I'm headed too, offering the best for their students. But I think I'll always consider myself a flipper, because the real flip is not the homework/lecture flip, but the teacher first to student first. That's the essential thing. It's the first thing I talk about whenever I discuss flip. My mechanic for doing that is some videos at the moment, but that is the praxis, not the pedagogy. And I can easily anticipate a day when they won't need the videos, in fact, a lot don't right now, and that's great!
The point of my whole post is that I don't get why we have to divide ourselves up into teams. Didn't we learn anything from the whole language/phonics thing? The only winners of that fight were companies selling stuff to schools. We need to spend a lot more time listening to each other and learning, sitting down and getting what is best for our particular classrooms, schools, and most importantly, the students.
As an example, this past Saturday I was a little upset at some tweets by @irasocol about homework. To me it was as though he was saying HW was always evil. So we engaged in a dialogue and while I can't say that I fully agree with his view, I did learn a lot and he pointed me to a lot of really thought provoking stuff. I came out of the conversation smarter and with some new ideas. I also got reinforced that when you actually engage with a person they become well, a person, not just some random things in your feed that get you going.
We need to quit choosing teams, or at least demonizing the other side. I root for the Steelers, but if the Ravens beat us it isn't that they are demonic or evil (well...).
Get exposed to a lot of views of education and make informed decisions about your pedagogy for your students. Don't join a team, team up with your students.
Aaron Sams said in one of the Flipped Learning network podcasts that he views flipped classrooms as a bridge and I totally took that to heart. At the last inservice day I presented to other science teachers in my county and we were a good 25 or so minutes in before I mentioned anything about videos at all. I focused almost entirely on pedagogy, on the idea of diving deeper, of having students focus more on inquiry each day in class, of setting them up to seek out their own answers. I expressly stated my belief that the flipped classroom is a good bridge to get from a traditional classroom to the totally student centered and driven class that does PBL and inquiry most of the time (if not all).
So on my twitter feed I see a lot of folks who either don't get that or perhaps just hate the idea of flipclass, maybe because they perceive it as the flavor du jour in education because of Khan Academy. Now I ask for some of this as I purposely follow some critics of the system. I don't want my PD experience on twitter to be an unquestioning echo chamber by any stretch. What gets me is the idea that teachers seem to think we have to sign up on teams for or against everything.
Are you for Team Flip or Team Modeling? Team Inquiry or Team Lecture? To me it seems almost as ridiculous as the Twilight thing a couple of years ago (and maybe still...) Team Edward or Team Jacob, let's fight about it...
Two things really brought it up for me, this blog post by Shelley Wright was the first of them. I read through this article saying yes over and over again, except for the idea that she would never go back to flip. As I read through the whole thing my conclusion, I was like, wait, I thought this was a flipped classroom, student centered, self paced, students seeking out knowledge with assistance when needed. This part in particular hit me
I talked to every student every day. I could look at their work, have them articulate their thinking process, and see where they were struggling. I could spend time helping those who really needed it.I thought to myself, wait, that is what I do every day too, and I thought I was doing a flipped classroom. From the sound of the article it was that starting out with the videos and that concept led to other pieces of student driven education. Which I think is what most flippers out there, at least the ones I converse with are after. Are there folks out there that just do videos as lecture and then "homework" in class and have that as their whole idea of what it is? I guess so, but that definitely isn't the center of it. Join #flipclass chat any Monday night at 8est and that is one of our taglines "it's not about the videos".
Don't get me wrong, I don't think Ms. Wright's article is wrong, it was very edifying to me, I love seeing stories of teachers who actually did it, who are there where I think I'm headed too, offering the best for their students. But I think I'll always consider myself a flipper, because the real flip is not the homework/lecture flip, but the teacher first to student first. That's the essential thing. It's the first thing I talk about whenever I discuss flip. My mechanic for doing that is some videos at the moment, but that is the praxis, not the pedagogy. And I can easily anticipate a day when they won't need the videos, in fact, a lot don't right now, and that's great!
The point of my whole post is that I don't get why we have to divide ourselves up into teams. Didn't we learn anything from the whole language/phonics thing? The only winners of that fight were companies selling stuff to schools. We need to spend a lot more time listening to each other and learning, sitting down and getting what is best for our particular classrooms, schools, and most importantly, the students.
As an example, this past Saturday I was a little upset at some tweets by @irasocol about homework. To me it was as though he was saying HW was always evil. So we engaged in a dialogue and while I can't say that I fully agree with his view, I did learn a lot and he pointed me to a lot of really thought provoking stuff. I came out of the conversation smarter and with some new ideas. I also got reinforced that when you actually engage with a person they become well, a person, not just some random things in your feed that get you going.
We need to quit choosing teams, or at least demonizing the other side. I root for the Steelers, but if the Ravens beat us it isn't that they are demonic or evil (well...).
Get exposed to a lot of views of education and make informed decisions about your pedagogy for your students. Don't join a team, team up with your students.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Other Mistakes
If you haven't read Brian Bennett's excellent post on "How NOT to Start a Flipped Class", then go there now and read it first. It hit me pretty hard as I was a big failure in point number one of his post, and if you want to get more of that, jump to the last paragraph. I wanted to hit another couple of mistakes that I've made doing Flipclass this and last year so that others might not make the same error.
Mistake #4 (I'll keep Brian's numbering, it was great!) Don't think you have to flip everything, every day, for every class. I believe strongly in the pedagogy behind flipclass, I've presented on it a few times since class started and think I'm pretty passionate about it. But as a high school teacher with 4 different preps, two of them brand new to me, my unyielding adherence to the model is hurting me, and likely then my students. It's hard enough to keep up with coming up with new activities for one class that you've taught for 12 years. To do it for 2 brand new preps that I haven't taught in almost a decade is leaving me at a loss (mostly for sleep). Those November blues that are common for a lot of teachers are already hitting me. I didn't even mention the videos, but trying to make 2-3 videos a week for 2 separate classes is just about impossible.
You'd think I would have learned my lesson from doing it for Chemistry last year, but I'm pretty hard headed apparently.
Mistake #5 This one is pretty obvious and I'm a little embarrassed to even put it here. You have to ask questions and do formative assessments after every single video. I have found myself in a cycle this year of hopping right into an activity that had to do with the lesson, a lab, some practice, etc, all without answering the questions that I make them write in their WSQs. This is me slipping into old ways of assuming if it was covered, it was learned. That isn't good teaching, flipped or not.
Mistake #6 Not reflecting on a daily basis. In his post, Brian chastised himself for not doing long term reflecting, but doing an awesome job of daily reflection with his journal. I, as usual, am in awe of him and others like Crystal Kirch who blog consistently about what is working and not working. I love to write and really to blog, but I just can't seem to squeeze out the time to do this daily. I really need to though, because that daily reflection is what makes my practice in teaching so much better. I don't want to wait for the end of the year or the semester to change things for the better, I need to do it now.
I would add one caveat to all of this. Don't beat yourself up for the mistakes, just recognize them and fix it....that is good teaching flipping or not.
Back to my mistake in SBG.I have been a wishy-washy supporter of SBG since mid way through last year. I ran my 2nd semester classes that way and while I had some reservations, I continued it this year. Some of my reservations come with my particular way of implementing it, but it some ways I just felt like I was locked into it and couldn't give the flexibility I needed. For instance, this year, I've been doing WSQs for all of my classes, but a lot of students weren't watching the videos and doing what needed there. I can enforce the in class work in class, but the outside videos weren't getting watched. The SBG part of me says, oh well, that will be reflected in their grade on that standard. But the fact of the matter is that I'm new to this school, its students, and their need for a little underpinning. So I changed it up and am doing a biweekly progress grade (biweekly as we are on alternate day block). To be honest, first results there aren't good either so far, and I may adjust that as well.
Mistake #4 (I'll keep Brian's numbering, it was great!) Don't think you have to flip everything, every day, for every class. I believe strongly in the pedagogy behind flipclass, I've presented on it a few times since class started and think I'm pretty passionate about it. But as a high school teacher with 4 different preps, two of them brand new to me, my unyielding adherence to the model is hurting me, and likely then my students. It's hard enough to keep up with coming up with new activities for one class that you've taught for 12 years. To do it for 2 brand new preps that I haven't taught in almost a decade is leaving me at a loss (mostly for sleep). Those November blues that are common for a lot of teachers are already hitting me. I didn't even mention the videos, but trying to make 2-3 videos a week for 2 separate classes is just about impossible.
You'd think I would have learned my lesson from doing it for Chemistry last year, but I'm pretty hard headed apparently.
Mistake #5 This one is pretty obvious and I'm a little embarrassed to even put it here. You have to ask questions and do formative assessments after every single video. I have found myself in a cycle this year of hopping right into an activity that had to do with the lesson, a lab, some practice, etc, all without answering the questions that I make them write in their WSQs. This is me slipping into old ways of assuming if it was covered, it was learned. That isn't good teaching, flipped or not.
Mistake #6 Not reflecting on a daily basis. In his post, Brian chastised himself for not doing long term reflecting, but doing an awesome job of daily reflection with his journal. I, as usual, am in awe of him and others like Crystal Kirch who blog consistently about what is working and not working. I love to write and really to blog, but I just can't seem to squeeze out the time to do this daily. I really need to though, because that daily reflection is what makes my practice in teaching so much better. I don't want to wait for the end of the year or the semester to change things for the better, I need to do it now.
I would add one caveat to all of this. Don't beat yourself up for the mistakes, just recognize them and fix it....that is good teaching flipping or not.
Back to my mistake in SBG.I have been a wishy-washy supporter of SBG since mid way through last year. I ran my 2nd semester classes that way and while I had some reservations, I continued it this year. Some of my reservations come with my particular way of implementing it, but it some ways I just felt like I was locked into it and couldn't give the flexibility I needed. For instance, this year, I've been doing WSQs for all of my classes, but a lot of students weren't watching the videos and doing what needed there. I can enforce the in class work in class, but the outside videos weren't getting watched. The SBG part of me says, oh well, that will be reflected in their grade on that standard. But the fact of the matter is that I'm new to this school, its students, and their need for a little underpinning. So I changed it up and am doing a biweekly progress grade (biweekly as we are on alternate day block). To be honest, first results there aren't good either so far, and I may adjust that as well.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Space
I see a lot of folks on Twitter talking a lot about learning spaces and how much they affect the environment. Part of me wants to disagree with that, mostly because I'm one of those relational sort of guys, who believes that it is the relationships that matter, that the physical context isn't as important.
And then the 16 year old in me that planned on being an architect pops up to disagree, remind me of how I always hate the fact that schools, churches and other buildings have become these bland boxes. We spend millions to make sure a stadium looks impressive to lure recruits and fans, but a school?!? From the stucco boxes of Florida where I grew up to the brick boxes of Tennessee where I teach now, there is a lot of blandness. One thing I loathed at my last school (which I loved in many ways!) was how dark it seemed in the hallways, that sort of institutional hallway that has never seen a spot of sunlight, brightened only by the lifeless glare of fluorescence.
I teach in a beautiful school right now, one with such a ridiculous amount of natural light that it is almost hard to see the smartboards in the afternoon because of the sunlight, even with the blinds. That's a good problem to have of course. The view 20 feet from my classroom is below, so I have no room to complain now of course. And yes, that is the Sunsphere, but it looks a lot nicer than in the Simpsons episode where they chant "Knoxville, Knoxville..."
Our school looks amazing from the outside too, but what was one of the selling factors for me is the inside. And I'm not even going to talk about our main building, which has ridiculous amounts of historic character in every nook and cranny, and I mean that in the good way, not as a euphemism for destroyed and decrepit.
But in the depot, as my building is called, we have this simply amazing upstairs space that I wish I had the foresight to have taken photos of, a long 3 open connected classrooms, all with a smart board, and all of the technological goodies. That's awesome enough since it gets used all the time, as regular classrooms as well as for some unique classes like our 76 student STEM class (3 teachers).
What worked so well for me this week though was our "App rooms". You know how in colleges and libraries you have these small rooms that you could fit a table and 4-6 people easily, sort of private study rooms. That's what our app rooms are for, all 7 of them. I had my APES kids making videos of cycles of matter, split them up into 7 teams and upstairs to the app rooms we went. Each group had their own private space that was still academic in nature, but they could plan, brainstorm and record with just their group (and their teacher skulking around).
In my own room I'm locked in since my "classroom" is the Chemistry lab, with tables that ain't moving no matter what and chairs that move no matter what. I'd love to have some beanbags, comfy chairs, different sized tables etc. But the fact that there is still flexibility to be found and that is actually accessible and not taken up by whatever normal craziness goes on in a school on a day to day basis is great.
It really made my week and made me again think of the context, the environment, as well as the relationships.
And then the 16 year old in me that planned on being an architect pops up to disagree, remind me of how I always hate the fact that schools, churches and other buildings have become these bland boxes. We spend millions to make sure a stadium looks impressive to lure recruits and fans, but a school?!? From the stucco boxes of Florida where I grew up to the brick boxes of Tennessee where I teach now, there is a lot of blandness. One thing I loathed at my last school (which I loved in many ways!) was how dark it seemed in the hallways, that sort of institutional hallway that has never seen a spot of sunlight, brightened only by the lifeless glare of fluorescence.
I teach in a beautiful school right now, one with such a ridiculous amount of natural light that it is almost hard to see the smartboards in the afternoon because of the sunlight, even with the blinds. That's a good problem to have of course. The view 20 feet from my classroom is below, so I have no room to complain now of course. And yes, that is the Sunsphere, but it looks a lot nicer than in the Simpsons episode where they chant "Knoxville, Knoxville..."
But in the depot, as my building is called, we have this simply amazing upstairs space that I wish I had the foresight to have taken photos of, a long 3 open connected classrooms, all with a smart board, and all of the technological goodies. That's awesome enough since it gets used all the time, as regular classrooms as well as for some unique classes like our 76 student STEM class (3 teachers).
What worked so well for me this week though was our "App rooms". You know how in colleges and libraries you have these small rooms that you could fit a table and 4-6 people easily, sort of private study rooms. That's what our app rooms are for, all 7 of them. I had my APES kids making videos of cycles of matter, split them up into 7 teams and upstairs to the app rooms we went. Each group had their own private space that was still academic in nature, but they could plan, brainstorm and record with just their group (and their teacher skulking around).
In my own room I'm locked in since my "classroom" is the Chemistry lab, with tables that ain't moving no matter what and chairs that move no matter what. I'd love to have some beanbags, comfy chairs, different sized tables etc. But the fact that there is still flexibility to be found and that is actually accessible and not taken up by whatever normal craziness goes on in a school on a day to day basis is great.
It really made my week and made me again think of the context, the environment, as well as the relationships.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Confessions for the newbies
Hopefully no one takes offense at the title, if so, I apologize, I am only slightly past the newbie stage in this process of flipping myself and am happy to journey with a lot of more experienced people.
I'm going to summarize a few thoughts that were brought up by the panelists at tonight's 25th #flipclass chat, particularly with reference to advice for first time flippers. None of these thoughts are mine alone, but are from the panel and the twitter community, I just can't remember enough specifics to attribute properly right now. Almost every single week on #flipclass chat, someone asks for help on how to get started, or is interested but not sure where to go or is just plum afraid to give it a go.
Karl brought up the point that there needs to be a lot of research that goes into the idea behind flipping your classroom. I'll be perfectly honest, I did some of this, but not nearly enough. The summer before last I had been toying around with ideas of Whole Class Inquiry, POGIL, PBL, etc, just knowing that I wasn't very satisfied with being a straight up lecture teacher. I think I was fairly effective at that, but I knew I wasn't reaching enough of the kids and definitely not all of them!
I poked around online and saw the videos from Sams and Bergmann that I had run across a year or so before and it really intrigued me. After watching their explanations at learning4mastery and their other sites, I mentally jumped right in. I started asking my tech buddies and the tech coordinator at our school about screencapture, tested many out and bought the bullet for Camtasia. I bought a bamboo pen and tablet, a webcam, etc, and started recording.
Note that I didn't say much about my intense research into the pedagogy of flipped classrooms. I knew two basic things. My old way wasn't working and that Sams and Bergmann had more time in their rooms each day to help students.
Yeah, as Danny Glover and Mel Gibson would say, "pretty thin"...
You know what though, that was enough at the beginning. A month or two later as I was up to my ears in producing videos, I looked at my class every day and was like, wow, I'm sitting down with each student, and whoa, we have a lot of time for activities that I always wanted to do. It was awesome.
As my principal and a couple of others asked me about it and I explained it, I felt more and more passionate about the every kid every day part of it. I knew for a fact that I had a lot more time each day. And I knew that my kids were not nearly as frustrated working chemistry problems because when they stumbled, I picked them up...right then.
So I'm going to sound like a hypocrite because I said in the panel tonight to be sure you know why you are doing the flip before you do it. I still believe that, I think that as we enumerated tonight, if you just think it is about videos, it will fail, if you just link to Khan and then keep giving out your old worksheets, it will fail.
But I will say that if you know you need a change, that as Aaron Sams said in the flipped classroom podcast a couple of months ago, the flip is a great bridge. Flipping is something I'm passionate about, but it didn't stop there for me, it was a gateway drug into a variety of new and I think better teaching strategies: standards based grading, mastery, self paced, more inquiry, incorporating a whole range of cool technologies.
And I think that is also part of good teaching, being willing to change not because you were terrible before, but because you could be better, because the kids deserve better.
Don't let good enough be the enemy of the great, especially not in your classroom!
I'm going to summarize a few thoughts that were brought up by the panelists at tonight's 25th #flipclass chat, particularly with reference to advice for first time flippers. None of these thoughts are mine alone, but are from the panel and the twitter community, I just can't remember enough specifics to attribute properly right now. Almost every single week on #flipclass chat, someone asks for help on how to get started, or is interested but not sure where to go or is just plum afraid to give it a go.
Karl brought up the point that there needs to be a lot of research that goes into the idea behind flipping your classroom. I'll be perfectly honest, I did some of this, but not nearly enough. The summer before last I had been toying around with ideas of Whole Class Inquiry, POGIL, PBL, etc, just knowing that I wasn't very satisfied with being a straight up lecture teacher. I think I was fairly effective at that, but I knew I wasn't reaching enough of the kids and definitely not all of them!
I poked around online and saw the videos from Sams and Bergmann that I had run across a year or so before and it really intrigued me. After watching their explanations at learning4mastery and their other sites, I mentally jumped right in. I started asking my tech buddies and the tech coordinator at our school about screencapture, tested many out and bought the bullet for Camtasia. I bought a bamboo pen and tablet, a webcam, etc, and started recording.
Note that I didn't say much about my intense research into the pedagogy of flipped classrooms. I knew two basic things. My old way wasn't working and that Sams and Bergmann had more time in their rooms each day to help students.
Yeah, as Danny Glover and Mel Gibson would say, "pretty thin"...
You know what though, that was enough at the beginning. A month or two later as I was up to my ears in producing videos, I looked at my class every day and was like, wow, I'm sitting down with each student, and whoa, we have a lot of time for activities that I always wanted to do. It was awesome.
As my principal and a couple of others asked me about it and I explained it, I felt more and more passionate about the every kid every day part of it. I knew for a fact that I had a lot more time each day. And I knew that my kids were not nearly as frustrated working chemistry problems because when they stumbled, I picked them up...right then.
So I'm going to sound like a hypocrite because I said in the panel tonight to be sure you know why you are doing the flip before you do it. I still believe that, I think that as we enumerated tonight, if you just think it is about videos, it will fail, if you just link to Khan and then keep giving out your old worksheets, it will fail.
But I will say that if you know you need a change, that as Aaron Sams said in the flipped classroom podcast a couple of months ago, the flip is a great bridge. Flipping is something I'm passionate about, but it didn't stop there for me, it was a gateway drug into a variety of new and I think better teaching strategies: standards based grading, mastery, self paced, more inquiry, incorporating a whole range of cool technologies.
And I think that is also part of good teaching, being willing to change not because you were terrible before, but because you could be better, because the kids deserve better.
Don't let good enough be the enemy of the great, especially not in your classroom!
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Out of the chute
So this year is a big step for me. I left a school with people I loved, students I loved, and where my reputation preceded me with students that didn't even know me. Even though I was a little burnt out when I left, my time there was the most formative of my 12 years of teaching as far as becoming a better teacher.
At my new school, I'm a newbie. I went in the cafeteria today and had to figure things out. I'm occasionally not sure where the stairs are and I have yet to get a key to get in my room, as opposed to having a janitor's set worth at my old school. Almost everything is different here for me, I'm the new guy, I have no reputation to fall back on and it's no longer a guarantee that I'm the one trying really weird stuff. I have 4 preps, 1 of which I've never taught before and is an AP class, and another that I taught so long ago I think it was 3 iterations of curriculum ago.
All of that said, I love it. Cutting myself loose from the sure thing and instant respect at my old school has made me really know that I have to get after it each and every day. On every other day I don't start teaching until 11am because of plan, but I'm there at 7am in any case, and I work frenetically that whole time.
I'm at a school that has 1:1 technology and we use it every single day. The only paper I've taken up has been signed syllabi and even half of those were sent in digitally. I'm working with students every day to fully utilize the tech we've been gifted with. For the past two days our network has struggled under the load of doubling the student population from last year. So in one of my classes today we had no access at all. No big deal, I made a few copies, but rather than them writing on them, they took pics, converted to pdf and wrote on that the same way we've been doing for the past week. We've done new stuff that I borrowed, stuff that we made up and some things that were decided on the fly. It's exhilarating!
I have some issues, some just with trying to generate my video content for two new classes while trying to wrap the curriculum into my head at the same time. But wow, it is nice to get out of the chute and start to limber up the creativity. I can't wait to get around the first bend and really hit my stride!
At my new school, I'm a newbie. I went in the cafeteria today and had to figure things out. I'm occasionally not sure where the stairs are and I have yet to get a key to get in my room, as opposed to having a janitor's set worth at my old school. Almost everything is different here for me, I'm the new guy, I have no reputation to fall back on and it's no longer a guarantee that I'm the one trying really weird stuff. I have 4 preps, 1 of which I've never taught before and is an AP class, and another that I taught so long ago I think it was 3 iterations of curriculum ago.
All of that said, I love it. Cutting myself loose from the sure thing and instant respect at my old school has made me really know that I have to get after it each and every day. On every other day I don't start teaching until 11am because of plan, but I'm there at 7am in any case, and I work frenetically that whole time.
I'm at a school that has 1:1 technology and we use it every single day. The only paper I've taken up has been signed syllabi and even half of those were sent in digitally. I'm working with students every day to fully utilize the tech we've been gifted with. For the past two days our network has struggled under the load of doubling the student population from last year. So in one of my classes today we had no access at all. No big deal, I made a few copies, but rather than them writing on them, they took pics, converted to pdf and wrote on that the same way we've been doing for the past week. We've done new stuff that I borrowed, stuff that we made up and some things that were decided on the fly. It's exhilarating!
I have some issues, some just with trying to generate my video content for two new classes while trying to wrap the curriculum into my head at the same time. But wow, it is nice to get out of the chute and start to limber up the creativity. I can't wait to get around the first bend and really hit my stride!
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Questioning (by students)
After the success and transformation that researching flipping and associated things last summer, I decided I was going to spend part of this summer trying to shore up a few other deficiencies in my teaching style. I've dabbled a bit with inquiry the past few years and wanted to head a lot more down that road. As I was looking for some books to enlighten me (I know, books...we all learn in different ways, books are it for me!) I came upon a couple of good ones that I really feel will further transform my classroom the next couple of years.
The first was a book called Making Thinking Visible that I'll post about later in the week, it was great and my wife agrees, so it must be true.
The second really amazing book is Make Just One Change , with a subtitle of Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions. It really hit me on the head with a gaping hole in my teaching.
I'm no teaching rookie, this will be my 13th year, and my 12th year of teaching Chemistry which is the bulk of my day. A year or two ago, it came into my head that despite what my students and others may have thought, that I was not that amazing a teacher. My kids love me, but we've all know a teacher at the school that the students love who isn't a good teacher. One of my great fears is being that guy, hence the trying to improve a lot the past couple of years.
The subtitle pretty much explains the idea behind the book. It revolves around the QFT or Question Formulation Technique, which as presented is a pretty straighforward and some might say restrictive way to teach students to ask questions. The essential path way is:
The first was a book called Making Thinking Visible that I'll post about later in the week, it was great and my wife agrees, so it must be true.
The second really amazing book is Make Just One Change , with a subtitle of Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions. It really hit me on the head with a gaping hole in my teaching.I'm no teaching rookie, this will be my 13th year, and my 12th year of teaching Chemistry which is the bulk of my day. A year or two ago, it came into my head that despite what my students and others may have thought, that I was not that amazing a teacher. My kids love me, but we've all know a teacher at the school that the students love who isn't a good teacher. One of my great fears is being that guy, hence the trying to improve a lot the past couple of years.
The subtitle pretty much explains the idea behind the book. It revolves around the QFT or Question Formulation Technique, which as presented is a pretty straighforward and some might say restrictive way to teach students to ask questions. The essential path way is:
- Produce your own questions
- Improve your questions
- Prioritize your questions
Behind each of these is a fairly strict method, for instance, for producing, there are four rules:
- Ask as many questions as you can
- Do no stop to discuss, judge, or answer the questions
- Write down every question exactly as it is stated
- Change any statement into a question.
Let me say right now that I abhor restrictiveness and anything that smacks of a program in general. To me a great flaw in education is that we find what works in one school and try to adopt it wholesale in another school, to mediocre at best and horrific at worst results. So as I'm reading through the book and thinking about my classroom I'm chafing a little because the authors keep emphasizing how at least at the beginning you need to hew to the rules.
As I got further in though and thought more I remembered that students tend to excel best when they have a ton of freedom within a structure (one could make that argument about people in general I suppose). I began to see how doing this for 45 minutes once at the beginning of the year to get them used to the structure and guidelines could have an amazing effect.
Fits in really well with a lot of philosophical constructs we use in education today like inquiry and flipped classrooms, but the focus is really on fostering independence and evaluation skills in students. It doesn't just say, hey, have students ask their own questions, that would be good. In fact, that is the smallest part of this. Instead, the bulk of the book is on developing evaluation skills and discernment to sharpen their questions to the best possible questions.
I realize that I talk a lot about wanting students to learn process as much as the right answers, but I have remarkably few things in place to support, encourage, and even demand that. I think this method will make a big difference. I'm sure my anti-programmatic self will rebel against a few parts of it, and am sure my kids will too. But for anyone interested in making a small but significant change that doesn't upset all of their apple carts, this is a great resource that teachers should check out!
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