Yesterday in #flipclass chat, we did our #teacherconfessions.  But I didn't really get to the heart of mine in the chat.  I could claim that's because the pace was frenetic (and it was) but that would be a lie.

In truth, I am scared.

I am scared that I'm not doing a good enough job. 

I am scared that I've worked for ten years to teach high school students and it ultimately will be meaningless.

I am scared that all of my best ideas were stolen from others or jettisoned at some point along the way.

I am scared that my colleagues judge my class and think that I'm wasting students' time.

That fear is a terrible master.  It continually robs me of joy, of excitement, of passion for my job.  It pushes me to work harder, do better. be better, because I'm always just one step ahead of failure.

That fear causes me to keep back parts of what I do in my class, worried that if anyone sees them, I'll be exposed as the fraud I am.

That fear mocks me when I get up and tell students that what matters most is working hard and not innate talent.  It says that my best isn't good enough, and I just must be stupid.

That fear shuts down my blogging, my tweeting, and even my conversations.  It isolates me.  Whispers things that my harshest critics have said and reminded me that they really did know better than me, and I am kidding myself to think any differently.

I have spent ten years of my professional career trying to figure out how to make it stop.  At several points, I thought that it would be better just to leave the profession, but the fear reminded me that this is the only thing I have really ever done in a professional sense, except for working at Blockbuster Video...and that's hardly a career path.  But the fear controlled me for a long time.

But.  There is a way to start to drown out that fear-voice: by replacing it with people who really do see you and your practice, with all the rough edges and failures and not-good-enoughs, and love and support you anyway.  When those voices start to rise in concert, the fear-voice has less power.

THAT is the power a good PLN has.  I have found people to drown out the fear-voice, and who remind me that who I am matters more than what I do.  That success isn't measured in innate intelligence, but rather in hard work and determination.  It's something I never could have done for myself.  And the primary beneficiary? My students.

And while it's true to say that I am a much better teacher today because of my PLN, what is more true is that I am a better teacher because of my friends.  The people who pushed into my life and refused to accept my fear narrative.  The people who keep reminding me that it's worth it, and that the only failure is to not try.

What does your PLN do for you?

One of our friends on Twitter, Gary Strickland (@SciAggie), recently asked me to share the workflow and logistics of my collaborative partnership with Andrew Thomasson.  

If you're new to this blog, I'll start with a little context.  I flipped my high school English class for two semesters before looking to Twitter to find people to help me.  I talked to a few English teachers (there weren't many around then) and had some great conversations.  But none of them seemed like a match - either personality-wise, or with the classes they teach, or what they were looking for from their flipped class.  I still work with many of them, and have learned a lot through their sharing on Twitter and on their blogs.  Here's the blog post I wrote after our first conversation.  

So here are Rules For Finding a Collaborative Partner.

1. The first rule of finding a collaborative partner is that they have to be the right person.  I had to meet and interact with lots of people before I felt like I found someone with whom I could work.  And with Andrew, from the very beginning, it just felt right.  That's almost impossible to quantify, I know.  But there was an ease to the conversation, and an obvious chemistry when we started recording videos (as cringe-y as I find watching them now, it's still there).  As we started working, it became clear that we also were a match in personality and classroom contexts that fit...and those things were just as important as the work we produced together.  We only completed a single video before we started talking about non-school stuff (first conversation: "What music do you like?".  Very important).

2. The second rule is to try to produce something and assess the way each of you work and approach the work.  At FlipCon, we observed that nearly all collaborative partnerships have the basic dynamic that Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams do.  Jon is more type-A and organised, Aaron is more care-free and improvisational.  I'm Jon, and Andrew is Aaron.  Without me, we might not finish anything.  Without him, I would get bored and/or never take risks on things that might not work.  Now we're actually pretty similar in most ways, but that one difference means that we get a lot done that neither of us would ever do on our own.  We want the same things: intellectual engagement, new and exciting ideas, projects that become bigger than we would have committed to alone, and to have fun.  I know that I would eventually get frustrated if I was working with someone who was more driven than me.  And Andrew would be frustrated if he was working with someone who wasn't open to being flexible and changing products every now and then.

3. The third rule is to have your students and PLN assess the work you've done and listen to what they say about the success of the product and partnership.  We had Crystal Kirch and Karl Lindgren-Streicher help us pretty early on, and it made a difference that they were solidly supportive and thought our work was interesting.  We also got attention quickly from some of the people we most respected - Jon, Aaron, Brian - and they loved what we were doing.  Now, I have done enough collaboration to know that if people are uninterested in what you're doing, it's not always because you're uninteresting.  But if the collaboration chemistry isn't right, and other people sense it too, then it's probably not going to last.

4. The next rule is that you have to have time for the collaboration, and when you don't, that you make time for the collaboration.  At the beginning, we probably spent about 15 hours a week together.  And during the school year, we spent about 3 hours on school days talking, reflecting, and planning.  That doesn't include emails and other textual communication.  We planned for nine classes together, and wrote all new curriculum, so it took a lot of time.  Plus, there were lots of classroom issues and school issues and...well...issues.  We needed that much time, and whenever we had an article to write or other professional obligations, we needed more than that.  Most other years where we were teaching classes we'd taught before, or in schools where we were more established (both of us were at new schools), or with less insane workloads (6 new preps and 310 students for me), we would have needed far less time.

5. The final rule (for now) is to be the collaborative partner you want, and be prepared to compromise and discuss when that doesn't happen.  Like in any relationship, we have to put aside the things we want sometimes to do what's right for the other person.  Each of us sacrifices for the other, and if we weren't willing to do that, there's no way we could still be friends or collaborative partners.  There were times that we wanted to kill each other, so we developed a set of rules so that we wouldn't actually commit murder from across the country.  Seriously though, do you know how easy it is to hang up the phone, turn it off, and shut the laptop cover?  It's much easier than walking out of a room to avoid an argument.  I won't share our rules in their entirety because they don't make sense out of the context of our relationship, but here are a few, with explanations:

• Friends first - we put the friendship and the other person's emotional health above the work.
• No shutting down to avoid an argument - shutting down can be emotional or technological.  Even when it's uncomfortable, we stay and fix it instead of running.
• No self-criticism - we're both convinced the other person is smarter, better at everything, and that we are getting the better end of the deal in this partnership.  And we don't allow self-deprecation, even as humour.
• Cheryl always spells things correctly - this is mostly because Andrew uses too many z's (like in realize, instead of the right spelling - realise) or like missing the u in colour or humour.
  

I'm going to write some more posts in this vein, as there is a lot to say about collaborative partnerships, and I've learned from someone that it's better to have short posts with one main idea than one post covering a million ideas.

A lot of people, much smarter than I am, have been writing what it means to be flipped, and some other people (also smarter than me) have questioned whether or not what we're doing can even be called flipped.

Naming something, defining it, is a way of understanding.  We give things names so we can catagorise, analyse, interpret.  It's natural, and it's helpful.  

But what happens when something changes, expands, grows, and the definition no longer is quite right?  Do we come up with a new term?  Do we become more strict with the definition so as to be more clear?  

Or do we expand that term so that, rather than constricting our understanding, it widens it and allows for more people to come inside and be included.

That, more than anything, defines flipped learning for me: inclusive.

When I happened upon flipped learning at this time last year, I didn't see how I could fit in.  My students were poor, they lacked internet at home, and I had no way of recording video.  Oh yeah, and all the models out there were for math and science, and I taught English.

But there was something about flipped learning that caught my attention.  In a school where direct instruction was mandated and commonplace - almost part of the DNA - it seemed like something that would both please my administrators AND help my students learn.  I could do direct instruction but I could also spend more time helping my students get better at reading, writing, listening and speaking.

It seemed like the perfect solution in many ways.  

So I went looking for a way to make it work.  My district Ed Tech director got me an iPad so I could make my own videos.  I polled my students, and only three of them didn't have a smartphone or a computer with internet access at home (this was in a 90% SED school).  I arranged for those three students to use my devices during break, lunch or before/after school.  So I made some videos with the week's etymology lesson, assigned them as homework, and used the time we would have spent copying the notes practicing with the content, doing real-life examples, and playing memory games.  Test scores on the weekly quizzes went up, and I was confident I was on to something.

Then that same Ed Tech director pitched Twitter to us.  And I was Not Interested.  At all.

For a few days.  Finally, I just asked my students to teach me Twitter and help me get started.  They were happy to oblige.

Very quickly, I was hooked.  And that's also when I discovered that there was so much more to flipped learning than I had ever expected.  

I joined the #flipclass Monday chats (which now I help moderate semi-regularly).

I started blogging and sharing my posts on Twitter (which may be where you found this post).

I had conversations with some of the people I had read about - Brian Bennett, Crystal Kirch, Troy Cockrum, Jon Bergmann, Aaron Sams - and they all helped to push my thinking on various issues.  Many have now become my close friends.

That's how, within six weeks of flipping, I transitioned from "Flip 101" (assigning videos as HW and former homework as classwork) to something that I still saw as flipped, but wasn't the same as how many of my colleagues flipped their class.

My classroom quickly became mastery-based, paperless, self-paced and homework free.  I still made videos, I still used many of the same tools as my Flip 101 colleagues...

...and I still tweeted to the same hashtag.

Flipping my class no longer was my goal.  I was flipped.  Instead, my goal was to make my flipped class the best possible place for MY students, in MY context.  I started to view flipped learning as a place where students had ownership (responsibility was flipped to them from me) and where I used technology to help them learn best.   Later, I moved to defining flipped learning by the Flipped Mindset - a definition developed by several collaborators on Twitter.

Now, a year into my flipped journey, my classroom looks different than it did last fall, last spring, or even at the beginning of this school year.  

I have what I like to call my CoLab partner, Andrew Thomasson.  He helps me plan all of my instruction, prepares for and films video lessons with me, and encourages me to be a reflective practitioner, a good flipped teacher, and a better friend.  I'm at a new school and operate with a BYOD policy and open wifi network.  My students are much higher skilled, and require far less direct instruction (almost none).  I don't assign homework, and don't always use video.  I've stepped away from self-pacing and paperless (without 1:1 netbooks, that's a lot harder) and embraced a far more student-centred pedagogy that focuses on higher-order thinking skills and real-life application of concepts.

There are many people who would say I'm not flipped.

And I would argue, just as vehemently, that I am.

**

When Romeo asked himself, "what's in a name?" I doubt he was thinking about its application to the flipped class community.  Nevertheless, it's a good question.

So, flipped class community, what's in a name?

For me, this is what's in a name:

• a method by which I started to listen more to my students, and work to meet their individual needs.  I learned most of those things from my community on Twitter and Edmodo.
• a move to a more reflective practice - one I never imagined.  I didn't know that to be reflective, you need someone who will help you process.  That is what happens in the flipclass community on a daily basis.
• a return to my writing - something I had always thought of, but never had inspiration to sustain.  This blog is the most meaningful writing I've done since I graduated from college.  And I am now writing more than just blog entries, which has helped me work through a lot, personally and professionally.
• a transformational experience - one that not only changed me, but changed how my students experience me as their teacher.  That was only possible by moving over the bridge that flipclass built.
• a group of people - my Cheesebuckets - who listen to me, protect me, question me, challenge me, and keep insisting that I should not stay where I am, but keep moving forward, getting better.  These people would not be in my life without flipclass.  And my life would be far less rich without them.
• and most importantly: a collaborative partner, a new BFF, someone to listen to me, help me channel my crazy ideas (and sometimes, add more craziness until they actually start to make sense), doesn't let me stay frustrated or resentful, but insists that we work things out, and most importantly, someone I can trust and who I know cares about me, both as a teacher and as a person, and about my work in the classroom.

So what's in a name?  A change that has given my students a better teacher and a better education.  A community where I am inspired, engaged in conversation, and often, challenged so that I don't grow stagnant.  

And most importantly, I now have friends.  Friends who share the family name - flipped class - and unites us around a common goal: making our classroom the best possible place for our individual and corporate student body, and for us as teachers.  

And even though some of us may start to grow into more distant cousins, if we give up the family name, it would mean denying where we came from.  This is the kind of family that doesn't disown a brother who shies away from family gatherings; it's the kind of family that expands, becomes more inclusive as more and more distant relations show up on our doorstep, needing our help, our acceptance, our love.  It's also the kind of family that still welcomes you, even when you don't need it anymore.

This family name is where our roots are.  

This family name is who our people are.  

This family name - flipped class - is who WE are.  Together.

That is what's in THIS name.  

And I'm proud to be in this family.  No Matter What.

This wasn't planned.

In fact, I'm still not convinced it's an amazing idea.

But this week, I handed gave the reins to my 6th period class....for content, instruction and assessment.

I realise that I may be completely insane.

It started with some collaborative brainstorming on topics, questions, methods, and texts they wanted to study.  Then each student chose a group and topic and started planning their own content to teach their peers.

I didn't even constrain it to humourous topics. But they are so invested in the course themes that the topics they chose were nearly all comedic; they ranged from writing original comedy, stand-comedy techniques, political satire, musical comedy, and improvisation workshops.  Half the class will be producing comedy films and then having the class analyse it closely.

Here were the requirements:
1. Choose a topic/question to cover and choose a group
2. Research and/or create the content/text to be shared
3. Prepare to lead a class discussion (in any format that we've used or practiced)
4. Give students a writing assignment of some kind (in any format)
5. Assess learning
6. Reflect on the effectiveness of their lesson

These units start next Friday.  I can't call them presentations.  A presentation means a bad powerpoint, nervous students, lack of engagement.  These already have a hell of a lot of passion behind them. 

Today I couldn't get the computer lab, so I just said:

This class period is yours.  If you need something from me, I'll be here.  But you guys are in charge.

I expected an argument, or at least a wasted period.  But here's what happened:
They all looked at each other, silently. Then,
Cipriana: Let's watch Workaholics!  It's an hour before Thanksgiving break.
Alexander: No, that's not the best use of our time right now. We need group time to work some stuff out.
Pierre: Wait guys, can we go around and say what we're going to be covering so there's no repeats?  Okay, Chelsea, what are you guys doing, and who is in your group?

They then went around - while the rest of the room was silent - and talked about their concept.  After every group gave their idea, other students expressed how excited they were for the ideas. There was not one group that didn't get a "wow, that sounds cool!" at some point.  The two groups that were a little similar had a quick negotiation to figure out how close their proposals were.  Then they checked in with me about it.

There was one undecided group - they came up and talked to me about their ideas, and with VERY little prompting from me, they came up with a great (slightly scary) question: When it comes to humour about race, where is the line, and why is that the line?  

We talked about how to frame it so it would make the best possible discussion.  And they left really excited.

**

I gave them the keys to the car, then I got in the backseat.  And instead of crashing into a pole, they immediately navigated hairpin turns with dexterity.

I do think they'll run into issues at some point, and will struggle to present their lesson effectively.  But they'll figure it out.  All of us need to make mistakes to learn how to be better.

**

And here's the meta part...or maybe just the uncomfortable part of all of this. 

This week has been overshadowed by a friend of mine being attacked for something she wrote on her blog.  In an entry devoted to asking for help to deal with a frustrating issue common to all of us who teach in a public school - unmotivated students - she was attacked with more logical fallacies than the cable news networks had during the election coverage.

The issue?  Her statement that her students don't know how to learn math.

They don't.  And I think the person most capable of making that judgement - their math teacher - is the one who should make that assessment.  Not some strangers on the internet.

Students DO, however, know how to learn in general, but learning academically and learning in general are different.  We are always learning.  But not everything we try to teach our students is something to which they will connect and in which they are interested.

There are lots of things that I didn't find interesting, but that I'm glad someone pushed me to learn at some point.  Here are a few of those things:

• How to solve for variables in Algebra
• Techniques for creating different effects in painting 
• French vocabulary
• Word derivations/roots/etymology
• Names and locations of every country (and its capital) in the world
• Hundreds of Bible verses 
• Medieval literature and how to analyse the sources that compose a text
• How to actively listen
• How to take notes and make note cards for an essay/presentation

And you know what?  I still know how to do those things.  Even though I wasn't passionate about any of them, because I had the academic ability to learn, I had the skills needed to transfer that knowledge into my memory.

I also have a freakish ability to find something interesting in ANYTHING I study.  My friends in college were absolutely shocked when I gave them the advice I used: Find an angle that is interesting and use that for your essay topics.  They looked at me like I was smoking crack.

That's when I realised that what I do naturally is not what everyone does naturally.

Learning is innate.  But academic learning?  That's acquired.  Some of us are lucky to have acquired it young.  I did.  And I am the exception, not the rule.

We don't go to school to learn how to love playing or eating or sleeping.  Those are things we all can find passion for or joy in.  We go to school to learn how to learn things we wouldn't normally choose to learn.

And we do that because there are some things that are valuable enough to ask everyone to learn them.  That's why the Common Core Standards movement is so important - it cannonises the knowledge we as a culture think is essential for all students to learn.

So what happens when the school system is broken?

You get students who are in 10th grade and have acquired the ability to learn in an academic context.  Students who may master video games, but struggle to write a coherent sentence.  And some people would say use the video game to teach sentence structure, or just don't teach the sentence structure and hope they'll just "get it" over time.

But is that really serving my students well to not teach sentence structure - at least holistically?  Is it a good use of my face-to-face time with my students to use video games to teach sentence structure?  Why would I spend time having them learn something with me that they could do on their own?  Why would I not give them individualised instruction that meets them where they are and them pushes them forward?  And I think that doing that kind of instruction well - where you infuse passion into subjects that aren't natural pairings - is time-consuming and rarely effective.  It just ends up being a little condescending to try and squeeze the names of Pokemon characters into paragraphs that have students practice sentence revision.

I also come from a pretty unique background.  I was homeschooled for 7 years, spanning the late 80's and early 90's, which was the Unit Study era in homeschooling.  We did one on the Pilgrims.  I remember planting a garden, making corn cakes, and creating a replica of the Mayflower.  

And that's it.  I didn't take out of that unit any more knowledge about gardening, cooking, or history than I brought into it.  And I fell years behind in math because math "never fit" with the unit studies, and I wasn't motivated to learn it on my own.  That is one of my biggest regrets.  

Am I saying that it's impossible to do that kind of curriculum well?

Obviously not.  The project my students have started would indicate otherwise.  I believe that student-driven content can be very powerful.

But there are reasons that my project will be successful.  And a lot of it has to do with what we've already learned (not all of which they found interesting), and a lot has to do with what they brought into the course from previous learning.  

This will be successful because my students:

• can research information and find reliable sources
• synthesise and analyse information with depth and clarity
• use technology to compile, organise and present information effectively
• have academic conversations that they run without my help
• can stay on task and focused on the end product

And most importantly, they:

• KNOW HOW TO LEARN

Now, because I have kids at the top of their educational game who are highly skilled and motivated, this wouldn't work with every class.  And it wouldn't even work in some of my other classes.  They don't have the skills they need.  And some of them don't want to build those skills.  They want the grade.  They want to just "get it over with" so they can move on.

So it makes me uncomfortable to, on one hand, turn over a class to a group of students capable of making it a success, and also to acknowledge that they are pretty unique.  For the past eight years, I've worked in schools where this never would have worked.  And yes, I tried.  And it's always been a massive failure.

This is what I think:

Passion + low skills = low effort and/or low quality

Passion + low skills + motivation = variable results (see: Freedom Writers Effect)

Passion + skill + motivation = high effort and high quality

The harsh reality of the state of public education is that not all students come to us prepared or motivated.  Can we help those students?  Absolutely.  That is what my friend wanted: help figuring out how.  And instead of help, she was bullied, harassed, and attacked.  So she is taking her passion and skill and hiding it so she can avoid being attacked further.

One of the meta-lessons of this issue is that passion doesn't make up for a total deficit of skill.  The people attacking her have no lack of passion.  But they also don't seem to understand how to have a respectful dialogue, nor engage in a discussion of the issues and avoid going after her personally.

I sincerely hope that, eventually, everyone will be taught the skills they need to be able to pursue their passion.  And I hope that eventually, every person could be like the students in my 6th period: skilled, motivated, self-directed, responsible, and extremely passionate.

If the world was filled with people like that, it would be a pretty amazing place to live.  It's certainly a pretty amazing place to learn.

Every year, I have the same anticipation leading up to the school year.  There are unlimited ideas and possibilities.

And then we hit week 4.

And I'm suddenly aware of how much less I can actually do than I wanted and planned to do.  And that silences me. 

So I stop blogging, just in case someone can read in between the lines at how much I'm failing.  

I stop going on Twitter, just in case someone asks me how things are going and I have to tell the truth.

Colleagues stop me in the hallway, and I tell them that "I'm fine" - which is a total lie.  Because I can't tell them the truth:  I'm afraid that what I'm doing isn't good enough.

I start hiding.

I ignore the evidence that learning is happening and that students are making connections between what we're doing and what I want them to learn.  I ignore the opinion of the person who knows my classroom and curriculum better than I do and believes in me far more than I believe in me.  I ignore the parents who left my room on Back to School Night telling me how "inspired" they felt and how "exciting" it was to hear about flipped class and blank white page and all the other amazing things we're doing.

I ignore all of that.  Because the voice in my head keeps telling me it's Not. Good. Enough.  And that voice turns into a chorus of every bad experience from my eight previous years in the classroom - from overbearing principals, to judgemental colleagues, to critical students.

That's The Narrative.  The voice in my head that repeats every negative thing anyone has said about me, my classroom, and my educational beliefs.  The voice of colleagues who never ran out of things to complain about.  The voice of administrators who just didn't get what I was doing.

The Narrative says that I'm failing.  And for eight years, I had no idea how to stop it.

But now I do.

****

Now, I don't think a reflective teacher can ever stop believing The Narrative entirely, because it comes with wanting to do a great job and knowing that it is impossible.  The classroom has too many variables, there is too little time, and there is always too much we want to do.  We want to change the lives of our students.  We want to make a difference.

And we do.

But life change doesn't happen overnight.  It's a series of small decisions, small actions, small words.  And when we show up every day and put our heart and effort and time into teaching our students everything we can, we change their lives...in small increments.  Trust and community are not built overnight, and no amount of wishing or planning can make them appear.  

The only thing that can build trust and community is love.  Love for our students, love for our curriculum, and love for our profession.  It is the only thing that can change anything.

Love is the only thing that can stop The Narrative.  

I know that sounds a little like I'm singing Kumbyah while holding hands with fairies and dancing around Stonehenge.  

And frankly, I don't care.  

Love is wanting your friends and colleagues to succeed so much that it's more important than your own success.  And paradoxically, having so many people to root for has made me more successful as a teacher than ever before.  And with that many people cheering for me, I can't hide.  

Having so many people on my team means that it's impossible to let The Narrative win.

I have colleagues at Redwood who check in on me to make sure I'm okay.  Before Back to School Night, I had over half the department come to see me to give me advice and see if I needed any help.

I have students who work hard and make me want to work even harder.  Who write about the tragedies that shaped them in a completely open and honest way.  Who can't quite believe that I really mean what I say about there being "no anxiety" in my classroom.

I have administrators who go out of their way to understand what I'm doing and support me so I can continue to do my job.

I have friends in the #flipclass community who give me advice, send me resources, and offer support when I need it.

And best of all, I'm team-teaching with Andrew Thomasson, and he won't let me fail.  He also knows me well enough to see when I'm letting The Narrative take over a little too much and he Won't Let The Narrative Win.  The impact Andrew has had on my classroom and my life is a little ridiculous.  It's been postulated in the #flipclass community that we may even be the same person.  

I can't help but be overwhelmed to have so much support, especially in a profession where isolation is just the accepted reality.  I have never had so many people cheering for me.  All of those things are small decisions that people make, and that adds up to a transformation in who I am as a teacher, as well as how much power The Narrative has over me.

When you have that many people who care about you, it's impossible to close your door and pray that no one notices how much you're failing.  

So it's time to Flip The Narrative:

You can't do this alone.  And when you're not alone, and you have people who love you and root for you, you can't fail.  And when it feels like you are ready to give up and shut up and admit defeat, you look at all the small decisions people have made to show how much they care.  And that's enough to keep going.

In the Flipped Narrative, we all win:
Our students get the best version of us we have.
Our colleagues get the passion and excitement we have for our classroom.
Our PLN gets more resources, more support, and more of us.
And we get people to help us recognise all the small decisions we make every day, and how those decisions are a far better measure of our success than The Narrative would like us to believe.

So flipping my classroom really has changed my life...in small increments.  

And it's Not Over Yet.

It seemed like a bad idea a few days ago.

I didn't want to come here.  I had too much work to do, I had cats to tend, I had Very Important Things, none of which could be done if I took a vacation.

But thankfully, I have people in my life who push me to do things that are good for me, even when I don't want to do them (you know who you are).

So I've been at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California for the last day and a half.  This summer has been at a relentless pace - blogging, video filming, video editing, tweeting, conferencing (virtual and one in-person), meeting with teachers from my new school...even the road trip I did a few weeks ago was relentless, covering 2,500 miles and nearly the entire length of the West Coast in a week.

And now, the start of school is staring me down.  I know many of you will have started already, either with students or with back-to-school PD.  I am lucky to have until Monday before I am expected to attend anything, and two weeks from tomorrow until the students are expected to attend anything.

And instead of continuing the relentless push for planning out the year, hammering out the details of team-teaching with someone 2,500 miles away, doing paperwork to make sure I get paid...

Instead of doing those things, I am at Asilomar, by the sea.  

And here is what I DID do:

I finished The Things They Carried.  I read parts of Price of Privilege, The Years (Virginia Woolf), Bird by Bird, and How to Think and Write about Literature.

I sat, staring at the ocean, getting sunburnt and catching the way the fog melted away above the trees.

I wrote.  What started as a one-page attempt to write a descriptive essay about a coffee shop turned into a larger creative non-fiction project.  The only reason it became that is because my collaborator read it, and saw the seed of something bigger than a coffee shop.  He cut it to pieces and made it make sense.  Then he told me to stop thinking and start writing.

Before I got to Asilomar, I had about 19 pages.  Now, after I've taken his advice (finally), there are more than 40.  Some parts are good, others are horrible, and some are great.  But what matters far more than quantity or quality is that I actually wrote.  


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In college, I wanted to be a writer - creative non-fiction or academic, I didn't care - but through time, circumstance and several discouraging realities, I stopped writing.  Even starting this blog was daunting, because publishing for a global audience of professionals was much different than writing lessons or sample essays for my students.

For me, what it took was the seed of an idea.  And someone to encourage me, even before it was any good.  To edit parts to make them more clear, or precise, or profound, but mostly, to hear the story I was telling and help me find the voice I needed to tell it better.

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Because of that experience, and many more like it, I start this year, completely obsessed by one question: 

How do I get my students to experience the joy of collaboration, the freedom of writing, and the beauty of learning?

Because this summer has taught me that all three are things of great value, to be sought after and treasured.  And all three have made me a better teacher, a better friend, and a better human being.  If I can get my students to have the kind of year I crammed into the last six weeks of summer, I will feel successful (and I bet they will too).

I want them to be able to try out ideas, knowing they might fail, but if they do, there's no one to mock you.  And sometimes, the other person can make the idea a success in a way you never thought possible, and suddenly, it's ion lucidity, and it's magical.

I want them to see learning as something intrinsic to human experience.  That we are all constantly learning, whether through making inferences about the environment or other people, or reading a book, or walking through a Safeway.  That learning is not bound by the classroom walls.

I want them to see knowledge not as a capacity for facts, but as the way you use facts to make deeper meaning of your world.  When they get in an argument about whether Eucalyptus trees are native to California, or what street Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland is on, or whether the exact linguistic phrasing they used was constructivist or behaviouralist, I want them to say, "Hang on, I'll Google it."  

And if and when they were wrong, I want them to laugh it off and apologise for insulting their friend's mother.  And most importantly, I want them to take what they've learned and make meaning out of it, rather than just being content with knowing facts.  
(and yes, those are real examples from this summer...all except the insulting of mothers.)

I want them to spend hours listening to their close friend talk about how their life feels like a series of roadblocks.  I want them to give advice, some bad, some good, but do it because they care so much about the person they want the best for them.

I want them to be rooting so hard for their friends that there isn't a hint of competition anywhere.  That any victory their friend finds is shared, and more valuable than a victory for themselves.  I want them to have people to trust and who trust them.  I want them to make mistakes, and learn how to ask for forgiveness and reconcile the relationship.

I want them to have the summer I had.


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That is the essence of the MetaFlip.  Taking all these experiences in which we as educators and human beings find value and meaning, and making them accessible to our students.  Breaking it down into processes and showing them how to navigate through challenges and failures.  Showing them what friendship and collaboration are, especially at times where the mess threatens to overwhelm the relationship.

Building assignments that are not just personalised, but are personal.  That take the things we value - friendship, collaboration, learning, writing, reading - and presents those things to our students in a way that gives them a foothold to do each for themselves.

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Do we know how to do this right now?  Not quite.  But we have some ideas:

1. The projects that Andrew, Karl, Crystal, Kate and I have been working on this summer will turn in to model projects for the Blank White Page project.  Students will see our authentic products and how we created them to help them understand how to make it something meaningful.

2. In every video series, Andrew and I are aware of our process as much as our content.  We want to make the students see the process and try it out, rather than just loading them up with content and asking them to apply it on their own.  We want the end of every unit to have some reflective time about how they are doing, how their collaboration with peers has been, what they need to work on/change to make the next project even better, how they can improve the way they're learning...etc.

3. The reading will always have a component of personal education.  We will talk about concepts like ubuntu, or ion lucidity, or love or friendship.  We will show students that we don't have all the answers, but we're learning.  That is the most powerful tool in our toolkit, I think.  We are willing to fail, and then demonstrate resilience.  We are willing to try something, reflect on it, and ditch it if it doesn't do what we want it to do.  We are willing to make our lives as transparant as possible so students can see through the glass and into our heads.  It's scary, but it's exciting.

4. We have to show the mess.  Andrew and I will be team-teaching this year.  Both our names will be on the board, and on the syllabus, even if our classrooms are 2,500 miles apart.  The introduction video we do will be both of us.  We will be teaching the same skills at the same times, albiet with slightly different content to fit our own school/curricular context.  

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We are embarking on this team-teaching endeavour because we love working together, yes.

But we are also doing it so our students can see a model of how to work with someone else.  How to make your ideas better by sharing them.  How to have fun, but still be productive.  We've never seen the other person teach (except on video), so I'm sure obstacles will arise, but I'm equally sure that we will come up with such amazing solutions to overcome those obstacles that we will remember them as blessings, rather than as trials.  

Teaching is hard in isolation, but teaching in a flipped class is impossible without collaboration.  There is no way you can go it alone.  The Great Myth of American individualism is that you can be wholly self-reliant, and that's the highest form of human existence.  The Great Myth of the American teacher is that they comes up with the perfect lesson on the way to school and then it changes lives in seconds...

But that's not the reality.  The reality is burnout, playing the political game, avoiding people with an axe to grind.  The reality is long, lonely hours, with too much to do and not enough time.  The reality is that half of those who enter the profession will have left it within five years.

For all those reasons, we have to fight back against these myths.  Working with someone who makes you better is far, far better than trying to struggle through on your own.  Collaboration sharpens your ideas, and magnetises them to the point that you are surrounded by so many ideas you just don't know where to start.  And then collaboration helps you find the best idea, polish it, and put it into action.

*****

But sitting here in Asilomar, I'm reminded that there will be time for all of sharpening, the collecting, the selecting, the polishing.  There will be time for lesson design, and video production, and blank white page...

...after I return.  

Right now, the only thing I need to do is model resting, relaxing, and reading.

School starts, for most of us, within four weeks.  What that means is that many teachers are starting to gear up, and have begun to plan their upcoming year.  That means lots and lots of people are discovering the flipped class model for the first time.

So there have been a lot of tweets sent to me and others in the #flipclass circles asking for information about how to flip their class.  Some of the most common questions:

1. What if I don't have the technology to use in class?
2. What if my students don't do homework?
3. What if the students haven't watched the video?
4. How can I flip if I can't make videos?
5. Am I already flipped? I do everything you describe except the video?
6. How can I make this work for me in x context or y situation?

I can't answer all of those. 

And these ideas are not mine.  They were developed in conjunction with several other teachers...the usual suspects really: Andrew Thomasson, Karl Lindgren-Streicher, Crystal Kirch, and Kate Baker.  Between the five of us, and based on conversations with and presentations from hundreds of other educators on Twitter, Edmodo, and in person or in Google+ hangout, we have developed a definition of what it means to flip your class.

So I can tell you what we've discussed, and what I've told people on Twitter:

There is no one right way to flip your class.

There is no How-To binder for sale.

There is no panel of experts to tell you what to do.

However, there is the Flipped Mindset. 

We chose to use the term Flipped Mindset intentionally - we don't want to define Flipped Class as a pedagogy or an instructional method or a theory. 

We want to define it not as something you do, but something you have. 

Within this framework, you can have thousands of different iterations that are all flipped, but are equally different.  In fact, I would argue that no two flipped classes should look the same; if we are differentiating for the kids in the room, then every classroom, and even every period, HAS to be different. 

So what makes up the Flipped Mindset? 

There are three pillars:

1. Teachers make the best use of their face-to-face time with students.

2. The classroom uses student-centred pedagogy.

3. There is an intentional focus on higher-level thinking, rather than rote memorisation.

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What do those pillars mean?

For the first pillar, what you're really talking about is being a reflective educator who uses the tools they have available to reach their students in the most effective possible way.  For me, that means using social media and video (both collaborative with Andrew Thomasson and on ShowMe, my iPad app) because technology is the language my students speak, and I think it's important to A) teach them how to use it responsibly, and B) show them that learning can happen regardless of what tools are used.  Additionally, I think there are some really cool things that can only be done through use of technology (see: collaborative videos with someone from across the country).

However, if the use of video is what is holding you back from flipping, then hear this: IT'S NOT ALL ABOUT THE VIDEO!  What it IS all about is your students, and how you can best serve them in the time you get face-to-face in the classroom.  If something is less important, you can off-load it to out of class time.  If your students won't do homework, then make your class asynchronous or set up stations for different learning tasks.  I should clarify: this doesn't mean that there is never time given in class to students acquiring knowledge.  If that's the best use of your class time, then that's fine.  The key here is reflection and understanding of your students.

The other thing to consider is the tasks in your discipline that would be most difficult in terms of cognitive load.  Those are the tasks that would be most productive to have students engaged in while the teacher is present.  In English, those tasks are reading and writing.  Having students read in class and write in class, while they have access to their peers, who are working on the same thing, and access to their teacher, who can help when they get stuck, gives them the opportunities they need to build those skills, make mistakes, and catch those mistakes without becoming overwhelming.  Students learn to collaborate, but they also learn that even "experts" make mistakes and have to work through them.  And using the face-to-face time you have with students appropriately lets you guide them through those processes which they will find most challenging.

For the second pillar, the teacher is no longer the centre of the classroom.  The entire environment is geared towards the student not only being an active participant in the learning, but also helping to drive the learning.  While it's not possible for students to always create content or allow student choice determine what is taught, including students in the process is key.  Rather than the teacher being the one driving learning and dragging the students along, the students are collaborative.  Rather than being competitive with each other, students share their understanding, which leads to a deeper comprehension and increased ability to make meaning from it.

When Andrew and I started making our collaborative videos, we began at the same point that most other Flipped Class educators do: with content videos.  We wanted to make videos that would allow our students to learn the information they needed to write a research paper.  However, we quickly found that what we were teaching was not content, but rather process.  We were showing students the steps and content of what goes into an essay, but we were also showing them what it looked like to compose that essay, with all the mess and all the problems, and all the real things that happened. 

We went from being teachers with all the answers to students who were actually learning from each other, collaborating with each other, and composing an essay that was far better as a result than one we could have written alone.  That element is key in the shift we made to a more student-centred approach to video in our flipped classes.  It also pushed us to go even farther than that, and develop something we're calling the MetaFlip, or making the process we go through when we read, talk, write or think visible and transparent to students.  It takes us one more step off the stage, and shows students that we make mistakes, that we have to work to understand material, and that collaboration is the key to all the good ideas we ever have.  We'll talk more about MetaFlip later.

The third pillar, engaging in higher-order thinking, is based on Bloom's Taxonomy.  At the top of the pyramid are the higher-order thinking tasks: application, synthesis, analysis, and evaluation.  At the bottom are the rote tasks of comprehension and knowledge.  A class using the Flipped Mindset does deal with facts and basic information, but the priority is taking those facts and working with them, transforming them, and making meaning out of them. 

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Those three pillars are the three things you need to flip your class.  And guess what: YOU DON'T NEED VIDEO!  And guess what: YOU DON'T NEED TO HAVE STUDENTS DO HOMEWORK!

If you really want to know whether your class is flipped, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I intentionally plan my face-to-face time in order to allow for the tasks that require the highest cognitive load?  Do I use that information to guide my students as they learn the content and processes?

2. Are students at the centre of my classroom?  Am I in a "guide" role, rather than a "sage on the stage" role?  Am I emphasising collaboration over competition?  Can students see me as a learner, including when I make mistakes?

3. In the assignments I create and assessments I give, is the emphasis on knowledge that is not "google-able"?  Am I asking students to analyse, apply, synthesise, evaluate, and create, rather than just know and understand?

If those questions can be answered yes, you have the Flipped Mindset.  You HAVE flipped your class!

That being said, while I believe that using technology is essential for ANY modern educator, the three things that define what it means to flip your class do not have to include technology.  There is no reason that equity, technology access (or lack thereof), or teacher familiarity and skill with technology have to be barriers to flipping your class.

I know that most of the ideas that build the three pillars returns to the constructivist pedagogy of the past.  And that's why I believe that using technology is important for all teachers.  Students "live" in the world of technology, and if we speak their language, we can help them transfer all the skills they use every day and make them work for their education as well. 

When you have the Flipped Mindset AND you embrace the technology you have available to you, your students will only benefit.  But flipping isn't and shouldn't be synonymous with video.

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Wow.  That's a lot.

You can read Andrew's post on this subject here.  We will be making a video about this soon, because I think talking about it on screen, with multiple educators, using real examples of how it looks in their class, makes this subject much more clear and comprehensible.  We also will be covering the tools in the toolkit for each discipline and how those apply to our flipped classes.

I know that there is a lot of work to be done before the start of school in a month.  But it's exciting work - and it has helped me become a far better teacher than I was before I flipped my class.  I flipped in the middle of the year.  I wish I had started over the summer, preparing and getting things ready so that those first few months weren't so chaotic.  So if you're looking at this and wondering where to start, find us on Twitter!  Leave a comment!  Get in touch in some way.  There are loads of us willing to help you get started, because there were people before us who helped us get started, and you will in turn help others when you've on your way.  The collaboration I've found through the #flipclass community is amazing, and I am blessed to count my co-authors/originators on this post not only as collaborators, but as friends.

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Thanks to Jon Bergmann for the shout out/Friday Follow in this tweet a few days ago:

There are exciting things happening.  And not just on my vacation.  But I'll start with those:

1. I got to meet Karl Lindgren-Streicher!  In person!  In Seattle!  Not just on Google+ hangout!  We spent a fun day talking Flipped Class and General Life Topics of Interest.  I also got sunburned...at a beach...in Seattle.  Will wonders never cease?  And since Karl and I live, like, fifteen minutes from each other, we will certainly be doing that again....although next time, probably closer to home.

2. Andrew and I have some big, big ideas to debut soon.  None are really ready for Prime Time, but the afternoon I spent with Karl yielded some amazing things when Andrew and I debriefed.  Yes, this is totally vague and general.  But you'll all know soon enough!

3. Blank White Page has gone meta.  I'll talk more about this as we get the site built, but Andrew, Karl and I have been working on our VERY OWN BWP project.  Since Andrew has never been to the Pacific Northwest, we were talking about what the armpit of California looked like (the answer? Corning).  Then we realised that instead of describing it, I could just start texting him pictures along the way - the BWP question was "What is the West Coast of America like?  How have those places shaped who you are?".  And thus was a BWP Satellite project born.  So when I met Karl in Seattle, he gladly offered to join the cause of "Show Andrew the West Coast" and the project went from "fun distraction" to "a whole new level of awesome."  We will be cataloging and posting this project when both Karl and I get home.

4. With Andrew's encouragement, I've started writing some creative non-fiction.  It has been really rewarding and I want to (again, as always) publicly thank him for not only encouraging me, but making the first draft of what I wrote readable to someone who is not in my head.  Writing is something I gave up on years ago, and it's been fun to remember all the reasons why I loved writing so much.

Here are some NON-vacation updates:

1. The Research Paper Writing series is pretty much done!  I'm still editing the final conclusion videos (and I'm half done!), but all the prewriting, drafting, and introduction videos are posted to our YouTube channel.  We think they started getting better around video 4, but we're proud of the progress we've made.

2. Next on the agenda is the first in our flipped reading strategy collaborative video.  We will introduce a writing strategy and then walk through a text and a literary analysis essay.  That series will start soon...as soon as we can get a functional wifi connection and some time.

3. We have posted another Conversations in Flipped English video on YouTube.  This time, it's about keeping the humanity in flipped English class.  The first in the series is found here (on Content vs. Process flipped videos).  We hope you find them helpful!  Here is our ENTIRE Flipped Professional Development archive as well.

4. As we finalise our plans, we will be posting the first unit plan Andrew and I plan to teach (that we wrote together).  It covers the basics on technology, what a flipped class is (for students/parents), reading and writing basics, blogging, working in a collaborative group, using peer feedback and group evaluation to develop norms, etc.  It's in (near) final draft, so you should see it here soon.  It is our intention to post our curriculum material and videos for free, so that as many teachers as possible can see that English is flip-able, and is something they can do without throwing out everything they've ever done. 

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That's about it for now.  I'm looking forward to a few more days on the road, then the Flipped Class workshop in San Jose on the 2nd (and meeting Crystal Kirch in person, finally!), followed by a mini-retreat to have some time in solitude, then coming back rested and throwing myself into preparing for school!

I have loved reading all the comments from people here, and I'd also love to hear any questions you have about flipping English, or topics you'd like Andrew and I to cover in our next Conversations video.  And I really hope you all are having a beautiful summer, which is at least as full of family, friends, and fun as it is of flipped class work. :-)

A few hours ago, something happened.  Well, a lot of things happened, but this is one relevant to this blog:

I sat down to work on a few things (like the video on content vs. process videos), and I saw that Jon Bergmann wrote a blog post about Andrew and me and the videos we're making.  

I just don't have words for something like that.

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There are some experiences that words just fail to capture.  Like ion lucidity.  Or ubuntu.  Or friendship.  

And there are some friends who don't just get close enough to see your metaphorical demons, they help bring in the light to chase them out.  I am blessed to have those kinds of friends.  I realise I write about them a lot.  But they remind me that there is nothing so dark that it can't be walked through together.  

And that's something I never want to stop writing about.

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Something else I never want to stop writing about is music.

There was a long period in my life where I intentionally did not listen to music.  It wasn't that I didn't love music; it was that music has a transformative power to reach beyond what is rational and cognitive and grab you in the inner being.  And there have been times in my life, where being ripped out of the rational world and into the inner being was just so painful that I couldn't allow it to happen.  I needed those worlds to be separate, so I could maintain some semblance of order.  

So my iPod was abandoned and I filled my commute with words - NPR, podcasts, whatever.  I told myself that it was about being a "life-long learner" and that I was "modelling learning for my students."  And I was straight-up lying.

Those days and circumstances are long gone, thankfully.  And now that I have both musical friends AND emotional health enough to access my iPod again, I've discovered new music, like Mumford and Sons and The Avett Brothers.  And when I say "I've discovered" what I mean is that my friends have assisted in that discovery process.  Sometimes with youtube links randomly thrown into conversations.  Sometimes with long lists of albums I have to buy "RIGHT NOW" when I ask for a single recommendation.

Both of my new-found bands have the ability to hit what Andrew and I call "physical resonance" - you don't understand it, but you GET it.  Like, at such a deep level that you feel it.  And every time you try to capture that feeling so you can try to explain it, it eludes you, taunts you, escapes your grasp.

So here's a part of song by the Avett Brothers called Salvation Song.  I'm posting it not because I have something to say about it, but because it physically resonates with me right now.  I don't understand it, but I get it.  And that's enough.

And I would give up everything 
No, this is not just about me 
And I don't know a plainer way to say it, Babe 
And they may pay us off in fame 
Though that is not why we came 
And I know well and good that won't heal our hearts 

We came for salvation 
We came for family 
We came for all that's good; that's how we'll walk away 
We came to break the bad 
We came to cheer the sad 
We came to leave behind the world a better way 

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As teachers, we could make those last four lines our mission statement and not miss much that's important.  

We all start off believing that we can do good and that our small presence will impact the entire world.  And most give that up within five years, leaving the profession for something that doesn't demand such a high price.  Few people are willing to be so consumed by something that has so few tangible rewards...and I totally understand that.  But I don't GET it.

There is little about my life that does not connect to my classroom.  There is little about who I am at a fundamental level that does not reflect my choice of profession.  It has a high cost in time, energy, and emotion.

But here is the payoff: I love what I do.  I love the long hours.  I love the intensity and overwhelming nature of the start of school.  I love February, where my students inevitable fall apart and I'm there to catch the emotional shrapnel.  I love June, when I send them out into the world with what I've taught them (and which is never enough) to live the life they choose.  

And I love the way in which it opens me up to other people getting involved in my "mess" - both professionally and personally.  There are few professions that allow for the kind of honesty and intimacy that are possible in education.  Students trust us with their mess and we are blessed that they trust us enough to be vulnerable.  What happens in the classroom, especially in a flipped classroom, is meta-rational.  It is beyond what can be described in words.  Like good music, or friendship, what we do in our classroom cannot be captured in mere words.  It is, as my friend puts it, concerted chaos.

And we invite in that chaos, knowing that bringing order to chaos is a privilege reserved for us, and something that we may not understand, but we GET.

And that's enough.

I don't know a single teacher who hasn't, deep down, wondered if they were doing a good job.  I don't know a single good teacher who doesn't think that constantly.

Some doubt that more than others.  In fact, some of the best teachers believe that they are failures, and wonder if they even should be in the profession at all.

I stake no claim for being a great teacher; I've never been happy with the job I'm doing in my classroom.  For years, I've masked it with a completely fictitious act of over-confidence or with a tendency towards perfectionism (the socially acceptable form of always feeling not-quite-good-enough).  But deep down, it's there.  Lurking, rearing up whenever I feel most vulnerable.

It's the blessing and curse of the reflective teacher: you are always thinking about how to make your classroom better, but you're always struck by just how far you have to go before you are where you want to be.  It's an exhausting place to be in, emotionally, physically, and professionally.

And while I don't trust teachers who say their class is perfect, I also don't trust teachers who say they are doing a bad job.  Because here's the thing:

Learning is messy.  Teaching is messy.  Life is messy.

When we hide that, we hide the reality of who we are and what we do.  In a weird way, we have to show how much of a mess we are to show what a good job we're actually doing.  And in a flipped class, if your class is not a little chaotic then it's not truly student-centred.

Part of the partnership Andrew and I have built is on the premise that we never "hide the mess" - from each other or from our students.  We believe that it's essential to show students how we fail and then try again and then fail again and then eventually (maybe) succeed.  We want them to see us fail because it shows them how NORMAL it is, and that the acceptable response is not to give up, but to get up.  To slip and not be buried.  To fight and not be defeated.

In any educational movement, including the flipped class movement, there are people held up as "experts," but here's what I have learned: there are no experts.  We are all constantly learning, and if we stop learning, we stagnate.  And if we stagnate, we become irrelevant and ineffective...which is death to the classroom, and certainly does not an expert make.

While I see the value in there being people who are willing to put their information out there (I am a blogger who claims to know something about teaching in a flipped English class, after all), I think it's also vital to stop perpetuating the myth that they are (and I am) doing an amazing job and should be revered and held in awe. 

Put even more bluntly: if you don't show me your mess, I'll assume you're lying or irrelevant.  Because the mess is there, whether I can see it or not.

Some of us have been lucky enough to have had some of the mess cleaned up by years at good schools.  That's where I'm coming from.  I went from being a broken teacher, disillusioned with teaching and with everything that wasn't about the relationship between me and my students, to someone who was suddenly a valued and respected colleague.  It helped me clean up my metaphorical living room, even if the rest of my house was still a mess.

But San Lorenzo was the school that taught me how much I had to give and how much I actually stole from my colleagues by not sharing with them.  It was there that I first learned that in the act of sharing your curriculum, you actually are sharing your mess alongside your ideas.  And when it isn't thrown back in your face, but rather taken and made better just by the act of sharing and collaboration, you start to wonder why you held back for so long.

There is a concept very close to my heart that drives at this same idea.  It derives from the Bantu word, "ubuntu."  It is the South African driving principle that affirms that, "I am who I am because we are." People are people THROUGH other people.  There is no such thing as being alone.  We are all interconnected, and as such, we must act accordingly.  We may not see the ties that bind us together, but that doesn't mean that they are not there.

In America, we've never really had this concept, let alone valued it the way my South African friends do.  In fact, it's so foreign to us that we are genuinely surprised when people make choices that are not in their own self-interest.  And yet, according to ubuntu, acting in the interest of others IS acting in self interest, because when someone else is exalted or esteemed, we all are exalted and esteemed.

On the flip side, when one teacher is disillusioned and broken, we are ALL disillusioned and broken.

And that is the state most of us are in.  Is it any wonder that schools are so broken and students are so disillusioned?

And yet.  By showing all of you the mess underneath my thin veneer of competence, I'm hoping to give you some hope that by embracing the mess that is our lives and profession, we can become something better together than we can alone.

Andrew and I named this blog Ion Lucidity, partially as a joke.  

But we were recording a few nights ago, and suddenly, it didn't feel like a joke anymore.  As weird as this sounds, it became the exact phrase we needed to explain what had happened in a single moment.

I'll back up a little bit.

We had spent hours planning a complicated shoot that included topics on which neither of us are experts.  When we started filming, my physical exhaustion and his mental exhaustion was palpable.  I can hardly watch the footage because of how present that exhaustion is.  

After about 20 minutes, we did our typical stop and check-in to see what else we still needed to cover.  And we did something that we do far more than work:  we just talked as friends.  It was an attempt, for a few minutes at least, to try to hold on to our last bit of sanity.  Through that conversation, it became clear we needed to start the recording over from the beginning (this is something that happens regularly in our partnership...which explains the many, many 13 GB Camtasia files on my hard drive).

So we started over.  And that's when it happened: we reached Ion Lucidity.  The ethereal moment when we went from exhaustion to clarity, solely through the act of conversation and collaboration.

Here is something I know: We are so much better together than we are alone.  By working together, we have ideas that are better than any either of us had alone.  It starts from incoherent rambling and flowers into something neither of us expected or imagined.  

And not only are we lucky enough to work with each other, we have been so fortunate as to find other like-minded educators to share our mess with us. 

But what I barely understand is that they care so much that they refuse to leave it that way.  They jump in and help figure out how to make the mess visible, and by doing so, exorcise it for good.  To loosely quote the Avett Brothers,  they love me for the person I'll become, not the person that I am.  That is something beautiful and incomprehensible.

Here is something else I know: the only word other than Ion Lucidity that makes this concept make sense is ubuntu.  

And here is what I believe more than anything: There is a magical quality to collaboration that allows you to be so much greater than the sum of your parts.  It allows you to see what was obscured when you tried to view it alone.  It pushes you beyond where you could ever imagine going.  It supports you when you feel like you will be crushed under the self-doubt and failure.  It reminds you that you are never a failure...it is just your mess becoming visible.

And it is there that we are most powerful: When your mess is visible to the world, people recognise their own mess in the midst of yours and it becomes okay to show theirs too.  And by the simple act of sharing, you are living ubuntu; the ties that bind you to everyone else go from being invisible to being so obvious you wonder how you've missed them for so long.

And you wonder how you ever lived without seeing them, because your life is so much more rich and full than you could have ever imagined.

Call it collaboration, call it Ion Lucidity, call it ubuntu...it doesn't matter.  It replaces that deeply held belief that you're not doing well enough with something even better: the realisation that when you AREN'T good enough, there are people who will love you anyway, and will help you be far better than good enough.