You know, as I watch the Olympics and see athletes getting in trouble for saying dumb stuff on Twitter, I'm like, seriously, don't go on Twitter, or at least maybe not during the pinnacle moment of your career.
Then as I'm waiting for #flipclass chat to start up, I see a lot of folks that I follow and respect on Twitter commenting on homework. Really, I started to get a little heated and really wanted to comment, but since it was specifically in #sschat and I don't teach ss (though I do have a degree in History, maybe that counts) I hesitated.
After a few minutes the benefits of age and experience kicked in for me and I recognized what I always do, which is that if I feel that sort of visceral reaction, I should back up and examine my own thought processes and convictions.
You see, one of my great beliefs in life is that we diminish things when we make everything a solely two sided issue, a false dichotomy. I will grant you that there are a few things where you are on one side or the other, and that one can make the argument that one side is plainly evil. But let's be honest, most things are a bit more nuanced than that.
I think that is especially true in education. I don't think I'm ever a worse teacher than when I get some philosophical idea lodged somewhere and believe that I must act it out in every class every day. I'm a fan of PBL, of flipped classrooms, of inquiry based learning and am beginning to do some tentative explorations of modeling for my classroom. But the second you tell me that I have to pick one of those teams and stick with them no matter what, every day or I'm a heretic, then I tune it out. In fact, it generally makes me want to go the other way (it did with PBL for a while).
There was a comment about the hubris of a teacher assuming that they control a kid's time outside of school. I think there is no small amount of hubris in one teacher telling another what is best for his kids in his classroom.
Example: I've taught AP for the past 4 years, and will teach a different AP class this year. If I assign my students no homework, I am actively doing them a disservice, their chance to do well on the test is pretty minimal then.
This obviously is an extreme example, but the idea that all homework is evil is rather extreme also. Let me lay my cards on the table. I essentially agree that I want my kids to have lives outside of school. The assignments that I give to be done outside of my classroom are pretty minimal. In fact, for the past 5 years, most of my students did very little work outside of class, maybe on the order of an hour a week (excepting my AP students).
So at heart, I agree that we shouldn't have students up til 1am every night doing work for me.
What I don't agree with though is that by assigning 10 pages of reading or a 15 minute video that I am draining the souls of my students. I don't say this blithely or without thinking. I have 3 young boys myself, and I want them to enjoy themselves when we are home at night together, so I hope they don't get overloaded with homework.
Another comment said that teachers doing work at home isn't the same thing, that we do it because we want to excel and improve.
Yes...complete the analogy...
True, one could argue that the work teachers do isn't required, but I've been at schools where your plan period was called a duty period, and so the only time you ever had to grade anything was outside of school, essentially required.
To sum it up since I'm taking my wife to work in her room in the middle of the summer two weeks before school starts, I can get behind the idea that we shouldn't burden students with boring, meaningless homework assignments just to get grades or whatever. I agree that assignments should be relevant and that in many cases can be made optional.
But I don't believe that assigning homework makes you a bad teacher or a dementor of student spirits. My best teachers were ones that gave tough, challenging assignments, to be completed at home usually. Under the new regime I guess they'd be behind the times and maybe even evil...I refuse to buy into that.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
The Bridge
So it was probably around this time last summer that I decided I was going to flip my class for last school year. To any prospective flippers that read this, it wasn't easy, partially due to my own quirks.
When I decided to follow the Sams/Bergmann model of flip and prerecord my lectures (the pre-vodcasting model) I spent two-3 days researching the proper program to record with, eventually landing on Camtasia. I bought a flip cam and lots of stuff specifically for the videos. I spent probably 200 hours or so making videos last fall, all for my Chem I classes. To be honest, they aren't very great videos, though I think they helped a lot of kids, especially as I was at a school with some attendance issues last year.
Still, my jumping into the flipped classroom and the movement has been probably the most beneficial thing I've done in my career as an educator, far more so than any class I took, any PD I've ever been to, or any meeting I've endured.
I was listening to the podcasts for the Flipped Learning Network last week and heard Aaron Sams very accurately depict just why that is. He described the flipped classroom as a bridge between standard teacher centered models of the classroom and the student centered model. That might seem like a bad thing for the "movement" that one of the progenitors of the idea says that it is not really the end goal. But it was such a revelation for me, really hit me.
A couple of years ago at my old school we implemented a program where every single teacher in the school had to do a PBL project, preferably a week or more in length. There was panic, frustration and I can pretty safely say as one of the people who checked up on them, that the projects and the idea didn't work as well as it could have. Wasn't really the administration's fault, we had several days of PD on it, so it wasn't like they just threw it at us and said do it.
Here's the thing though, PBL is a very student centered model (or can be) and it is a giant leap for teachers to go from teacher centered to student centered. I'm getting pretty interested in the modeling movement for teaching science, but it is a big leap too, as were my ill fated attempts at inquiry stuff in the past few years.
This then is what flipclass has done for me, it has allowed me to try out something that was at once radical and very different, but at the same time still had enough of the old elements to keep me comfortable while I make the transition to a student centered classroom. I felt like I still had "covered" all of the material while having much more time to do a lot more things in class, to sit down with students and help them through everything, to experiment with standards based grading and google forms submission of work, things that I probably wouldn't have tried without flipclass.
I'm not done with flipclass by any means, I'm pretty sure it will be the main paradigm of my class for a long time. But that is because it is the foundation for so many other things that are about the kids, about finding ways to help them learn, not just record, to prepare them, not for a test, but to be thinkers and doers. Ultimately that is the point, not to have videos or do homework in class or whatever the critics think flip is about, but it is about getting to the point where I can spend time with every kid every day, where I can make sure they are truly learning, not through some stock assessment or some fist to five 2 second thing, but through conversing and relationships.
Happy to be on the bridge!
When I decided to follow the Sams/Bergmann model of flip and prerecord my lectures (the pre-vodcasting model) I spent two-3 days researching the proper program to record with, eventually landing on Camtasia. I bought a flip cam and lots of stuff specifically for the videos. I spent probably 200 hours or so making videos last fall, all for my Chem I classes. To be honest, they aren't very great videos, though I think they helped a lot of kids, especially as I was at a school with some attendance issues last year.
Still, my jumping into the flipped classroom and the movement has been probably the most beneficial thing I've done in my career as an educator, far more so than any class I took, any PD I've ever been to, or any meeting I've endured.
I was listening to the podcasts for the Flipped Learning Network last week and heard Aaron Sams very accurately depict just why that is. He described the flipped classroom as a bridge between standard teacher centered models of the classroom and the student centered model. That might seem like a bad thing for the "movement" that one of the progenitors of the idea says that it is not really the end goal. But it was such a revelation for me, really hit me.
A couple of years ago at my old school we implemented a program where every single teacher in the school had to do a PBL project, preferably a week or more in length. There was panic, frustration and I can pretty safely say as one of the people who checked up on them, that the projects and the idea didn't work as well as it could have. Wasn't really the administration's fault, we had several days of PD on it, so it wasn't like they just threw it at us and said do it.
Here's the thing though, PBL is a very student centered model (or can be) and it is a giant leap for teachers to go from teacher centered to student centered. I'm getting pretty interested in the modeling movement for teaching science, but it is a big leap too, as were my ill fated attempts at inquiry stuff in the past few years.
This then is what flipclass has done for me, it has allowed me to try out something that was at once radical and very different, but at the same time still had enough of the old elements to keep me comfortable while I make the transition to a student centered classroom. I felt like I still had "covered" all of the material while having much more time to do a lot more things in class, to sit down with students and help them through everything, to experiment with standards based grading and google forms submission of work, things that I probably wouldn't have tried without flipclass.
I'm not done with flipclass by any means, I'm pretty sure it will be the main paradigm of my class for a long time. But that is because it is the foundation for so many other things that are about the kids, about finding ways to help them learn, not just record, to prepare them, not for a test, but to be thinkers and doers. Ultimately that is the point, not to have videos or do homework in class or whatever the critics think flip is about, but it is about getting to the point where I can spend time with every kid every day, where I can make sure they are truly learning, not through some stock assessment or some fist to five 2 second thing, but through conversing and relationships.
Happy to be on the bridge!
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Why Making Videos is great!
So it's been over a month since I last posted, and about 3 weeks since I meaningfully participated in any stuff like twitter. The doldrums toward the end of the year have been hitting me pretty hard, perhaps moreso than a lot of years, for a lot of reasons, not all of which have to do with school.
I've spent most of this semester trying to concentrate on implementing SBG and flipclass without actually making new videos, since I made 60 or so last term. But as I was finishing up gases I realized that I didn't have a video at all for partial pressures. Then my AP class clearly did not remember anything about buffers from a month ago.
That made me decide to make two videos tonight even though the past few days have been pretty rough for me personally. I don't even normally make videos for my AP class and in doing so, I realized a couple of things.
When I'm generally teaching stuff in my AP class, I have to work a lot ahead of the kids. It's been a long time since I was in college and so when I started teaching AP 4 years ago, I had to relearn a lot of stuff. And what I've noticed is that even though I understand a lot of stuff, I haven't been doing a very good job of getting that across to my students.
Which of course is what teaching is all about.
Making the videos though does something other than all of the stuff that I've touted in previous posts though. It actually makes me a better teacher, because I really make sure that I know my stuff before I present it. I think about how I want to present it, in what order, about what things I know will trip them up. Then when I edit it, I think of more stuff, so I add in the callouts and things to help out there.
I'm not high on myself, I know my videos aren't the greatest, I hope in 4 or 5 years to have some truly amazing ones, with more student than me. But for now, I realized tonight that while I was burned out on the process last semester (did I mention 60 videos, of 10-20 mins each...yeah), that I actually enjoy the process, and feel a lot better about it when I have something that students can take home and go over again and again if need be other than the textbook (which they won't btw!).
In my honors class today, when I realized that I had no vodcast for partial pressures, even though we had done a phet and talked about it, I decided to lecture on it in class today for 15 or so minutes. The students were attentive for the most part, but afterwards, one told me that I had to make a post a video tonight because I had gotten her used to doing it that way, and she needed a video. Whether that is good or bad is another discussion, but at least it made me feel some validation for the travails of making them!
I did notice that I lost my time edge a little though...the AP one was 20 minutes long...ah well, more refining to do!
I've spent most of this semester trying to concentrate on implementing SBG and flipclass without actually making new videos, since I made 60 or so last term. But as I was finishing up gases I realized that I didn't have a video at all for partial pressures. Then my AP class clearly did not remember anything about buffers from a month ago.
That made me decide to make two videos tonight even though the past few days have been pretty rough for me personally. I don't even normally make videos for my AP class and in doing so, I realized a couple of things.
When I'm generally teaching stuff in my AP class, I have to work a lot ahead of the kids. It's been a long time since I was in college and so when I started teaching AP 4 years ago, I had to relearn a lot of stuff. And what I've noticed is that even though I understand a lot of stuff, I haven't been doing a very good job of getting that across to my students.
Which of course is what teaching is all about.
Making the videos though does something other than all of the stuff that I've touted in previous posts though. It actually makes me a better teacher, because I really make sure that I know my stuff before I present it. I think about how I want to present it, in what order, about what things I know will trip them up. Then when I edit it, I think of more stuff, so I add in the callouts and things to help out there.
I'm not high on myself, I know my videos aren't the greatest, I hope in 4 or 5 years to have some truly amazing ones, with more student than me. But for now, I realized tonight that while I was burned out on the process last semester (did I mention 60 videos, of 10-20 mins each...yeah), that I actually enjoy the process, and feel a lot better about it when I have something that students can take home and go over again and again if need be other than the textbook (which they won't btw!).
In my honors class today, when I realized that I had no vodcast for partial pressures, even though we had done a phet and talked about it, I decided to lecture on it in class today for 15 or so minutes. The students were attentive for the most part, but afterwards, one told me that I had to make a post a video tonight because I had gotten her used to doing it that way, and she needed a video. Whether that is good or bad is another discussion, but at least it made me feel some validation for the travails of making them!
I did notice that I lost my time edge a little though...the AP one was 20 minutes long...ah well, more refining to do!
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Flexibility
As I set up my Apple TV at home over spring break and used it to integrate a ton of different things, like any good teacher, I thought about the ton of different ways I could use it in the classroom. There are a lot of good articles out there about "untethered teaching", using ipads wirelessly to replace smartboards, so I am definitely not original in my thinking.
When I started at my current school 5 years ago, we had a couple of computer labs, but they were mostly used for recovery credit and things like that, which were definitely needed as we had a grad rate around 43% that year. For my part, I had my notes on transparencies that I put on an overhead projector. I was okay with that since I'd worked at a small private school that wasn't on the cutting edge of technology. I had done the blogging, bulletin boards, help students through IM for a few years before that, but I was ok with leaving it behind, after all, most of my students at my new school didn't have the same tech at home that my private school kiddos did.
In my second year, we had a smart board for the science department and since no one else was really using it, I appropriated it and began to use mostly power point to replace my old notes. Yes, I could have done that with just a projector which I would have been fine with.
Year 3 rolled around and we got a massive technology grant at our school, and began to add what will eventually be something like 8-9 computer labs in our school. Every single classroom got a SmartBoard and projector and some cursory training. I kind of liked the Smart Notebook software so I spent that year of 4 preps turning all of my notes into Notebook presentations. I loved the ability to play videos, etc easily without a TV in my room. The system was spottily used though...most of us did not (and still don't) have the speakers hooked up. Most of the teacher computers are about 7-8 years old and thus are slow to be as generous as possible. I would guess that for most teachers, the actual "Smart" parts of smartboards don't get used a whole lot (recording, clickers, etc).
But here's the deal.... we spent who knows how much implementing this system, with very little teacher input, though we were excited to get the chance to do it. But we're locked in now to some degree. Now that it is apparent that you could replace the $3k or so for each smartboard with an ipad, an apple tv and a projector and be able to move it wherever you want for around $1k-$1.5k max, it seems like a bad investment. Soon at least a 5th of our school might be getting ipads for the students (hopefully for teachers too).
Of course we are totally not prepared for it either...we have an ipad lab this year, but most don't know what to do with it.
My point behind this long ramble is that school systems seriously lack any sort of flexibility, spend hundreds of thousands on teh new hawtness and then lock everyone into using it to justify their expense. I have a way to make it a little cheaper and more flexible:
Ask teachers what they individually want/need in their room. Provide funding for that instead of ridiculous amounts of money thrown into a school or system wide solution that will be passed by and outdated in 5 years (at best). Teachers would have to be reasonable and work within the confines of that system, but I bet it would save in a lot of ways. There could still be some school wide things, but if a teacher says that 6 ipads or chromebooks would make all the difference, that is probably a cheaper solution in the long run. If they need an airport to allow kids access to the wireless in their room on their own devices, let it roll.
And what matters more to me is that it is a more flexible and probably pedagogically sound solution in the long run. We want to teach students about the eduspeak term "21st century" skills and then stuff them into a computer lab that hasn't changed its basic setup since I learned basic in 1984 or so on TRS-80s.
I'll admit, I know that there are tech issues and perhaps more soul crushing, legal issues that interfere with all of this. I'm going to state something that is going to make me a jerk and unpopular...I don't really care. I want to educate my students, I want my urban students to be on an equal technological footing with their more affluent peers on the other side of the county. I can't do that if I have to submit a form in triplicate to install an app that would take me 20 seconds to download. I'm all for protecting the kids from things they shouldn't be doing. I'm about as conservative as a public school teacher gets, I don't want the kids viewing pron or any of the other dangerous stuff that's out there any more than anyone else.
The problem is that the legal part of all this is decades behind the technology, as 19th century copyright law in the 21st century illustrates. The kids I have now can't wait 10 years for us to figure it out.
Trust your teachers, make the system flexible, fear graduating uneducated and unprepared students more than lawsuits.
/rant
When I started at my current school 5 years ago, we had a couple of computer labs, but they were mostly used for recovery credit and things like that, which were definitely needed as we had a grad rate around 43% that year. For my part, I had my notes on transparencies that I put on an overhead projector. I was okay with that since I'd worked at a small private school that wasn't on the cutting edge of technology. I had done the blogging, bulletin boards, help students through IM for a few years before that, but I was ok with leaving it behind, after all, most of my students at my new school didn't have the same tech at home that my private school kiddos did.
In my second year, we had a smart board for the science department and since no one else was really using it, I appropriated it and began to use mostly power point to replace my old notes. Yes, I could have done that with just a projector which I would have been fine with.
Year 3 rolled around and we got a massive technology grant at our school, and began to add what will eventually be something like 8-9 computer labs in our school. Every single classroom got a SmartBoard and projector and some cursory training. I kind of liked the Smart Notebook software so I spent that year of 4 preps turning all of my notes into Notebook presentations. I loved the ability to play videos, etc easily without a TV in my room. The system was spottily used though...most of us did not (and still don't) have the speakers hooked up. Most of the teacher computers are about 7-8 years old and thus are slow to be as generous as possible. I would guess that for most teachers, the actual "Smart" parts of smartboards don't get used a whole lot (recording, clickers, etc).
But here's the deal.... we spent who knows how much implementing this system, with very little teacher input, though we were excited to get the chance to do it. But we're locked in now to some degree. Now that it is apparent that you could replace the $3k or so for each smartboard with an ipad, an apple tv and a projector and be able to move it wherever you want for around $1k-$1.5k max, it seems like a bad investment. Soon at least a 5th of our school might be getting ipads for the students (hopefully for teachers too).
Of course we are totally not prepared for it either...we have an ipad lab this year, but most don't know what to do with it.
My point behind this long ramble is that school systems seriously lack any sort of flexibility, spend hundreds of thousands on teh new hawtness and then lock everyone into using it to justify their expense. I have a way to make it a little cheaper and more flexible:
Ask teachers what they individually want/need in their room. Provide funding for that instead of ridiculous amounts of money thrown into a school or system wide solution that will be passed by and outdated in 5 years (at best). Teachers would have to be reasonable and work within the confines of that system, but I bet it would save in a lot of ways. There could still be some school wide things, but if a teacher says that 6 ipads or chromebooks would make all the difference, that is probably a cheaper solution in the long run. If they need an airport to allow kids access to the wireless in their room on their own devices, let it roll.
And what matters more to me is that it is a more flexible and probably pedagogically sound solution in the long run. We want to teach students about the eduspeak term "21st century" skills and then stuff them into a computer lab that hasn't changed its basic setup since I learned basic in 1984 or so on TRS-80s.
I'll admit, I know that there are tech issues and perhaps more soul crushing, legal issues that interfere with all of this. I'm going to state something that is going to make me a jerk and unpopular...I don't really care. I want to educate my students, I want my urban students to be on an equal technological footing with their more affluent peers on the other side of the county. I can't do that if I have to submit a form in triplicate to install an app that would take me 20 seconds to download. I'm all for protecting the kids from things they shouldn't be doing. I'm about as conservative as a public school teacher gets, I don't want the kids viewing pron or any of the other dangerous stuff that's out there any more than anyone else.
The problem is that the legal part of all this is decades behind the technology, as 19th century copyright law in the 21st century illustrates. The kids I have now can't wait 10 years for us to figure it out.
Trust your teachers, make the system flexible, fear graduating uneducated and unprepared students more than lawsuits.
/rant
Thursday, March 8, 2012
First time presenting
Been about a week and half since I last posted, due to a number of factors such as illness etc. I didn't get around to talking about it last week, but I got to do my first flipclass presentation last Thursday. I felt like it went pretty well considering that I was sick and that a lot of our folks don't show up for much PD at this time of the year because they already have their hours in.
When I knew I was sick the night before I debated what to do about the presentation and even considered "flipping" it by making a video and trying to skype in for questions. But since I knew skyping takes an act of congress at our school, I just came in anyway.
I did eventually decide to make a video because a lot of folks that wanted to come couldn't make it. I'm a little unsatisfied with the video, as I often am when they are done, but also just too tired to spend another hour or two working on it. Hopefully it will at least spark some thought for some of our teachers. We have a good bunch who are usually willing to step out and try some new things, at least on a limited basis, so I'm hopeful that this will assist some.
Oh, and I forgot to comment on this in the video I think, but it's not about the videos...=P
I also apologize for my still messed up voice.
When I knew I was sick the night before I debated what to do about the presentation and even considered "flipping" it by making a video and trying to skype in for questions. But since I knew skyping takes an act of congress at our school, I just came in anyway.
I did eventually decide to make a video because a lot of folks that wanted to come couldn't make it. I'm a little unsatisfied with the video, as I often am when they are done, but also just too tired to spend another hour or two working on it. Hopefully it will at least spark some thought for some of our teachers. We have a good bunch who are usually willing to step out and try some new things, at least on a limited basis, so I'm hopeful that this will assist some.
Oh, and I forgot to comment on this in the video I think, but it's not about the videos...=P
I also apologize for my still messed up voice.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Class Size
Today was a Monday, that's for sure.
Actually, my first block class went pretty well...took a SBG assessment, did pretty well, those that were ready and took it, the rest will take tomorrow, briefly reviewed the video stuff on orbital notation, that seemed to go well also, kids working at different paces, the way I want it to go.
My AP is not being flipped...so I won't mention them other than the, wow, if I was this unfocused in school in my AP classes, I am soooo sorry.
But my last class....oh...my last class. This class is Honors Chem I and they are a bunch of pretty good kids. One of the things that happens a lot in my school though is that a lot of our honors kids have some good brains but aren't very used to using them. Since they can coast by in most of their classes, they aren't used to having to really apply themselves, and just like when I start up running again after a 5 year hiatus, it takes time to stretch out those muscles. That is killer hard, both for them to learn and for me to be patient with.
What makes it a little more challenging for me is that I have a larger than normal class for our school. One way that we are blessed is that overall our class sizes are pretty small, especially in the lower two grades. I generally have around 25 or so students on my roster in a normal class. In this one though I have 30, and one constant that I've always noticed is that all of my honors kids have tended to be a bit more chatty than others. Couple that with the newness to them of flip and of SBG, they are struggling and I am struggling with their struggles....
S: "Mr. A, I didn't watch the video last night, can you come show me how to do this?"
Me: "Ok, did you read over the note packet?"
S: "No"
Me: "your partner seems to know what's up, did you ask them?"
S: "They don't want to help..."
S2 (the partner): "I tried...she doesn't want me to help"
And so on...I want to help, that's what I do, what I'm there for, what makes having a real teacher different than just watching videos and such. But wow...meet me a third of the way. When your honors kids don't want to plug into an equation with n trickeration, that's frustrating...for both of us.
I was tempted on the way home to just scrap flip for this class, stick with SBG and switch back to my normal DI lecturing, at least for a week. But then I thought, if I really believe in the flip, which I do, why would I switch to what I feel is an inferior pedagogical model? To prove a point? We already know that they hate lecture in general....
Part of the problem of course is that I feel I've been falling a little apart in my planning, so the ones that really want to zoom ahead, I'm not fully prepared for. So I spent extra time this weekend in between starcraft viewing to really flesh out more fully this weeks plans.
And then on the way home I get an email that says my team will be out of the building all day Friday for the hot new model of thinking we are doing next year.
Must...stay....optimistic...
Okay, I can do it...
Anyone out there with ideas on how to make flip flow smoother sometimes, send my way, I'm going to try out some new stuff, but always love to hear what others are doing!
Actually, my first block class went pretty well...took a SBG assessment, did pretty well, those that were ready and took it, the rest will take tomorrow, briefly reviewed the video stuff on orbital notation, that seemed to go well also, kids working at different paces, the way I want it to go.
My AP is not being flipped...so I won't mention them other than the, wow, if I was this unfocused in school in my AP classes, I am soooo sorry.
But my last class....oh...my last class. This class is Honors Chem I and they are a bunch of pretty good kids. One of the things that happens a lot in my school though is that a lot of our honors kids have some good brains but aren't very used to using them. Since they can coast by in most of their classes, they aren't used to having to really apply themselves, and just like when I start up running again after a 5 year hiatus, it takes time to stretch out those muscles. That is killer hard, both for them to learn and for me to be patient with.
What makes it a little more challenging for me is that I have a larger than normal class for our school. One way that we are blessed is that overall our class sizes are pretty small, especially in the lower two grades. I generally have around 25 or so students on my roster in a normal class. In this one though I have 30, and one constant that I've always noticed is that all of my honors kids have tended to be a bit more chatty than others. Couple that with the newness to them of flip and of SBG, they are struggling and I am struggling with their struggles....
S: "Mr. A, I didn't watch the video last night, can you come show me how to do this?"
Me: "Ok, did you read over the note packet?"
S: "No"
Me: "your partner seems to know what's up, did you ask them?"
S: "They don't want to help..."
S2 (the partner): "I tried...she doesn't want me to help"
And so on...I want to help, that's what I do, what I'm there for, what makes having a real teacher different than just watching videos and such. But wow...meet me a third of the way. When your honors kids don't want to plug into an equation with n trickeration, that's frustrating...for both of us.
I was tempted on the way home to just scrap flip for this class, stick with SBG and switch back to my normal DI lecturing, at least for a week. But then I thought, if I really believe in the flip, which I do, why would I switch to what I feel is an inferior pedagogical model? To prove a point? We already know that they hate lecture in general....
Part of the problem of course is that I feel I've been falling a little apart in my planning, so the ones that really want to zoom ahead, I'm not fully prepared for. So I spent extra time this weekend in between starcraft viewing to really flesh out more fully this weeks plans.
And then on the way home I get an email that says my team will be out of the building all day Friday for the hot new model of thinking we are doing next year.
Must...stay....optimistic...
Okay, I can do it...
Anyone out there with ideas on how to make flip flow smoother sometimes, send my way, I'm going to try out some new stuff, but always love to hear what others are doing!
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Affirmation and Questioning Oneself
So we're a third of the way through the semester. I had my last evaluation of the year last week and while I'm never one to worry a ton about them, this time was a little different. This was my first real, fully flipped classroom evaluation. I had two evals last semester, but I was in that weird in the middle part where I was making the videos and wasn't fully flipped yet.
I actually didn't think the evaluation went that well, and even after the post, I can think of a thousand things I should have done better. But you know what, it didn't matter that much because while I was discussing it all with my principal she brought up how the classroom was truly student centered, how they spontaneously helped each other, how they knew what to do and that I barely addressed the class as a whole, instead was working with individuals or small groups.
The response in my head was "Yes! It works...."
I'll be honest, I'm still questioning the flip model a bit in my head each day. I think that's because it is so much work on me and with sick kids and wife at home, it is hard to focus at night on putting the energy and time required into getting everything done for all of the demos and activities that I want to do. I'm still not there yet, that's for sure. I've had particular wonders about my honors class, which is a good class, but I can tell that they would much rather I just stood up there and lectured, gave them work and graded it. I've done that for a long time and am pretty good at that as far as it goes, it would work.
But "it will work" is not really the mantra of trying to improve my classroom. Lots of things "work" but don't really, or just serve to gloss over a lot of stuff. As I look back on my career so far, it's not that I think I've been a bad teacher, just that wow...I could have been so much better.
I think that's what I'm looking to pull out of the kids too. In my Honors class in particular, they can all do the work and get by...school "works" for them in that way. But I really don't just want them to get by, to just work...I want them to learn, to grow, all of that pollyanna crap that I can barely believe I'm even typing, but that's really what I want.
I was sitting in a room of teachers in a leadership meeting a couple of years ago and we were doing some activity where we were writing down why we were in teaching or something like that. My answer was that I didn't want to change the world, that I wanted to make a ripple, to have my kids make ripples too. I got pretty roundly ridiculed for that, probably because I'm a pretty prickly sarcastic dude and they thought I was full of feces.
But it's true....and I think I've been making ripples before, but I feel that the stones I'm throwing in the pond now with the new way of doing things have a lot more heft, and hopefully, create bigger ripples.
So I'll stick with it...I've been pretty adamant about not slipping into my old model from last semester of showing the vodcasts collectively to the class during class time...I'm still sticking to the SBG thing even though I'd really like to shell out some points for other things. But I think in this discomfort is growth for me and hopefully for the kids as they are uncomfortable at times too, not always knowing the correct answer, but hopefully starting to think a little more. I'd hate to get to the end of the term and wonder what if I had stuck it out.
And yes, that little boost from administration, just showing that they like what is going on and will be willing to back you when stuff gets nuts, that is needed as well!
I actually didn't think the evaluation went that well, and even after the post, I can think of a thousand things I should have done better. But you know what, it didn't matter that much because while I was discussing it all with my principal she brought up how the classroom was truly student centered, how they spontaneously helped each other, how they knew what to do and that I barely addressed the class as a whole, instead was working with individuals or small groups.
The response in my head was "Yes! It works...."
I'll be honest, I'm still questioning the flip model a bit in my head each day. I think that's because it is so much work on me and with sick kids and wife at home, it is hard to focus at night on putting the energy and time required into getting everything done for all of the demos and activities that I want to do. I'm still not there yet, that's for sure. I've had particular wonders about my honors class, which is a good class, but I can tell that they would much rather I just stood up there and lectured, gave them work and graded it. I've done that for a long time and am pretty good at that as far as it goes, it would work.
But "it will work" is not really the mantra of trying to improve my classroom. Lots of things "work" but don't really, or just serve to gloss over a lot of stuff. As I look back on my career so far, it's not that I think I've been a bad teacher, just that wow...I could have been so much better.
I think that's what I'm looking to pull out of the kids too. In my Honors class in particular, they can all do the work and get by...school "works" for them in that way. But I really don't just want them to get by, to just work...I want them to learn, to grow, all of that pollyanna crap that I can barely believe I'm even typing, but that's really what I want.
I was sitting in a room of teachers in a leadership meeting a couple of years ago and we were doing some activity where we were writing down why we were in teaching or something like that. My answer was that I didn't want to change the world, that I wanted to make a ripple, to have my kids make ripples too. I got pretty roundly ridiculed for that, probably because I'm a pretty prickly sarcastic dude and they thought I was full of feces.
But it's true....and I think I've been making ripples before, but I feel that the stones I'm throwing in the pond now with the new way of doing things have a lot more heft, and hopefully, create bigger ripples.
So I'll stick with it...I've been pretty adamant about not slipping into my old model from last semester of showing the vodcasts collectively to the class during class time...I'm still sticking to the SBG thing even though I'd really like to shell out some points for other things. But I think in this discomfort is growth for me and hopefully for the kids as they are uncomfortable at times too, not always knowing the correct answer, but hopefully starting to think a little more. I'd hate to get to the end of the term and wonder what if I had stuck it out.
And yes, that little boost from administration, just showing that they like what is going on and will be willing to back you when stuff gets nuts, that is needed as well!
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