How many of us put conscious thought into our teaching persona?  

Last year, when I had a student teacher for the first time, I had to seriously reflect on who I am as a teacher and what influences have forged that persona over the last nine years.  

Some are good influences:

--team teaching with my (at the time) best-friend who taught the same course in the adjoining classroom for the same period.  Stealing her mannerisms for comedic effect, then never un-stealing them.

--sharing a room with a beautiful, wise, collected veteren teacher my first year.  Watching the way she pushed her students and yet communicated how much she valued them as human beings.  Taking her way of fielding questions - "hmm", thoughtful pause, eyes to the ceiling, rock back onto the other foot, finger to mouth, gather thoughts, smile, respond (usually with a question, instead of an answer).

--being young, inexperienced, and scared because I had no training and little classroom experience.  Seeking help from everyone who would listen so I could do better for my students, and stealing their best ideas.

Some were not so good:
--moving from a school where students loved me and valued what I had to offer, to a school where students were suspicious of me because of my colour and vocabulary.  Shutting part of myself down so they wouldn't hurt me any more than they already had.

--finding wonderful teachers who were talented and far more structured than I ever had wanted to be...and stealing their structures to hide behind when I couldn't make my students care, either about me or the curriculum.

--adopting a brand new mindset where I wouldn't have to show them who I was or of what I was capable, intellectually or pedagogically.  Hiding behind "every student every day" because if I did little whole class instruction, I wouldn't have to prove myself publicly.

**

As I write out that list, I see that all the things about my teaching persona that I see as positive, were in my first three years.  And all the negatives are in the last six.

And the last six years have all but obliterated the gains from my first three years.

And therein lies the central narrative, the central problem, the central struggle of this year, and in fact in my whole life:  I don't know who I am.

I'm struck by the fact that in the first three years, arguably my most successful years, I was just stealing pieces of other teachers' personas (EXCELLENT teachers though they are).  And yet, that was more me than what I showed in the following six years. 

Frankly, these last six years have been about adding artifice.  Creating layers to make sure that there was always a strong public persona.  I spent six years forgetting that what is important is who I really am, as well as the dignity, value, and worth I have to contribute to my students as their teacher.

That is even why Flipped Class appealed to me.  Video is the perfect medium for me to hide behind.  Hell, collaborating with my new BFF** is a way of hiding - we teach together, so there is less attention on either of us individually.  I find comfort in being part of a team - less risk, less pressure on me individually, and someone to steal from full-time.
 
And yet, paradoxically, it is only as a member of that amazing team that I finally saw myself as I really am.  Part of that is down to having someone there, in the middle of all your mess, stripping away the layers of BS, until what is left is just...you.

And here's the most revolutionary idea yet:

What if the point of collaboration and friendship was NOT to fix each other, but rather to move to the place where nothing needed to be hidden?

Hiding never made me a better teacher, a better collaborator, or a better friend.  And by flipping my class, I was hiding.  So now, all of those problems and that artifice is being purged - the intense pressure we've been under in the past few weeks has burned away everything unnecessary, leaving only what is actually me.  That is a scary place to be, and it has been an extraordinarily painful and revealing process.

And through that process, the alchemy continued: my individuality, once revealed, did not drive Andrew's personality out; instead, finding what it means to be myself leaves much more room for him, both to find what it means to be himself, and for what it means for us as a collaborative partnership.  

So I may not use the Zunin Reflective Pause, or the Genevieve Voice, or the I'm Drowning Please Save Me Colleague! mannerisms, but I've found the part of me contained in each of those positive thefts.  Even the negatives were redeemed through this crucible: I've embraced the structure I learned at San Lorenzo without losing my vulnerability.  I've accepted my own racial and educational background and the ways in which I am shaped by factors within and out of my control.

And I've continued down the flipped path with Andrew.  And I still occasionally steal his quirks and phrasing, and I still regularly defer to him (because he's smarter than me!), and I enjoy being part of the team, rather than standing alone.

But there is a way to be a flipped teacher AND be myself.  There is a way to be a Andrew's collaborative partner AND be myself.  There is a way to embrace the things, both positive and negative, that I've experienced and yet move forward.

Because those things may explain me.  

But I refuse to let them define me.

What defines me is deeper than what I do.  What defines me is deeper than how I teach.  

I am defined not by the experiences, the mistakes, the failures, the successes, the things I've done, the things done to me.  

I am defined by the choices I make.  By the person I am underneath all the artifice.  By the communities and people I love and who love me.

And that is incredibly freeing.





***see tweets below for context.

Over twitter the past few days, a lot of us have bemoaned the fact that our students 
Just. 
Aren't. 
Getting. 
It.

They fight back against the newness of flipclass, they fight back against the demand that they take responsibility, they fight back against the level of thinking we ask them to do, or they just fight because they don't know what we want of them.

And as frustrating as all of that is, they are not the problem.

We are.

I can't tell you about your classroom, but I can tell you about mine, and a little bit about Andrew's, because those are the only two I've seen from experience.  The "we" and "our" from this point on refers to both Andrew and I.

The problems:

1. We jumped in full force.  Our students went from knowing nothing about us or our class to being full flipped mastery, Explore-Flip-Apply, student-centred, higher order thinking, asynchronous, etc.  Since we were both new to the school, we couldn't even pull on our former students and our ethos to protect us from the backlash against everything we were doing.  So we just assumed they would trust us.  And many did, but some didn't.

2. Lots has changed from the first day.  We didn't have enough organisation, especially around how we managed/used technology.  They were confused and frustrated, and arguably still are.

3. We had curriculum, but it was in progress and brand new to both of us.  We didn't know what to expect when we were planning over the summer, so we did our best.  But there were SO many things we couldn't have expected or planned for.  So we were/are unprepared.

4. We forgot just how much we know and have gotten used to.  Our kids had never blogged, used Twitter, had two teachers, watched videos for instruction, used backchannels, used Edmodo, etc.  Every time we talk about our flipped class with newbies, it reminds us of how much we take for granted, and how unique our class really is.  But we didn't give our students the same schema so they feel lost, confused, and frustrated.

5. We want them to love our class and how we teach it.  And when they don't, it makes us question if we're doing the right thing.  Which makes it worse.

6. We didn't scaffold them up to the release of responsibility - we just believed that they would "get it" along the way.  Even though we were teaching skills slowly, and building their technology skills slowly, we still expected them to be able to keep track of their work and progress.

***

Yes, our students bear some fault.  But it's still our responsibility.

I don't know what the answer is, except that we are the problem.

The honest truth is that there are some things that are more important than what happens in our classrooms.  And without going into too much detail, we have had a lot on our plates outside of our teaching.

But This is the Truth:

• Our students need help to see the roadmap we've written.  They can't see the connections, and they can't understand why things have to change.  But they trust us to teach them what they need to know.  And they keep turning up.  So we need to do better.  We need to be better.
  
• There is no situation beyond redemption.  We always have another chance.  If we have a bad day, our kids will give us another chance, so long as we are honest and transparent with them.  It's never as bad as we think it is, and never as good as we think it is.  And each day starts new.

• Teaching, just like friendship, is a commitment.  We can't just give up because we don't feel like it. When it gets difficult, we have to press in to our community.  And we have to trust that our community will help us, even when we don't know what we need.

And so the only way we can find our way out of this mess is by working together.  We need to find ways to introduce our students to the radical shift in educational models.  We need to find a bridge from the factory model to the student-centred, higher level thinking flipped mastery asynchronous whatever that we're heading towards.

So if it's a mess in your room, and your students aren't able to take the responsibility required to function in a flipped class, let's start a conversation.  We don't have any answers.  

But we believe that together, we can make it work.

Andrew and I have worked incredibly hard this year to make our team-teaching a success.  We spend hours planning over G+ Hangout, or in Google Drive documents, and we are pretty proud of what we've accomplished.  None of the material in our first unit was anything we had ever taught (with the exception of one of the short texts each).

We also believe in open source, free materials for teachers.  We do not intend to ever sell our materials.  We want to give them away for free with the caveat that you give us credit for the work.  We, by no means, want to present the material as if we think it's perfect - it's not.  There are lots of changes we will make when we teach it next (since we both have new students at the semester, it will be January-February when we teach it again).

But for now, here is the unit - complete with planning documents and links to every assignment, text, grading rubric, and warm-up.  If something is listed but doesn't appear, let us know and we'll fix it right away!  Almost all of the links are through Mentor Mob, since that's where we store our student playlists.

I hope you find it useful.  It's been amazing to plan and teach, and we hope that others can use some of the ideas we have developed here.

Here is the information from the document linked above:


The Master List of Unit 1 Resources
Andrew Thomasson and Cheryl Morris

Planning Documents:
Original Unit Plan (with full assignment descriptions, although a bit different from what we ended up teaching)
Skills Map (Thomasson’s iteration)  
Morris’ iterations: 1 2 (Morris modified her maps from the main document)

Playlists:
Weeks 1-3 (Morris)   
Weeks 1-2 (Thomasson)    
Smoke in Our Lights (both)    
Weeks 3-6 (both)

Unit Goals:

1. Introducing students to the technical processes they need for the class
2. Easing them into the flipped class part - how to watch video, how asynchronous instruction works, how mastery grading works, etc.
3. Familiarise them with the patterning strategy and why we use it
4. Making inferences based on evidence
5. Constructing a definition, both in narrative and informational writing
6. Collaborate with peers on a variety of tasks, and differentiate that from doing Group Work.

Essential questions:

• What is a flipped class, and how does OUR flipped class work?
• What goes into a good definition, and how does that differ based on genre and purpose?
• What is the best way to collaborate, and how is that different from cooperative learning/group work?
• What is a pattern and how do those patterns build meaning in a text?
• How do you access meaning beyond the literal/surface level?

Since our classes are asynchronous much of the time, this is mostly a suggested pacing, and is close to our actual pacing.  It took Morris six weeks, with about 240 minutes per week (11th-12th graders), and it took Thomasson four and a half weeks, with about 450 minutes per week (10th graders).  Please use any resources freely, so long as you give us credit for our work.

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.

As teachers, we have lots of opportunities to think about, plan for, and look back on first days.  We're trained to think in terms of "starting strong" and told to "not smile until [insert fall/winter holiday here, depending on how strict you are]" - that if we don't "set firm boundaries" that we can "never be more strict than we are on the first day."

I think that's all crap.

Am I anti-structure?  No.  I think you'll find that beneath the seeming-chaos in my room, there is a definite order and structure to what's happening.  In the next few weeks, Andrew and I will be writing in depth about, and sharing all our resources/plans for our course.  There has to be order for the chaos to function effectively.  You will see a few of our resources at the end of this point so you have more of a framework to understand what our classes look like.

****

At one time, my ideal classroom looked a lot like an example from a Harry Wong book.  Students were conditioned (some would say manipulated) to perform actions by rote to the point that class runs without teacher guidance.  

It's funny how close the end result is to flipped class, while being on the complete opposite pedagogical scale.  In a flipped class, students take responsibility for their LEARNING, which leads them to use behaviours that make the classroom function seamlessly, whereas in a Harry Wong class, students take responsibility for their actions, which is supposed to make the learning function seamlessly.  

But what often happens is that students learn to act that way in one context, at one time.  How many students sit in a classroom like that and by the end of the year permanently morph into compliant, disciplined learners?  No, they go to the next class, and if the teacher has different structures, they start all over.  Even if the teacher is similar, at some point, they will be expected to do more than show up, take notes, and follow procedures.  And they won't know how to do it.

In a flipped class, the idea is that when you teach students the habits of mind, the skills, and the knowledge they need to be responsible for their own learning, they also start to learn that certain behaviours are more conducive to them reaching mastery, so they start regulating themselves without even thinking about it, in order to push themselves and their peers to learn more.  This is exactly what happened in my class last year - they went from unmanageable to self-managing.  In a matter of weeks.

So both Harry Wong and flipped class reach similar end results in terms of behaviour, but vastly different in terms of learning and attitude.  And if we really think about it, as educators, which should we value?  Should we value teaching students to be compliant, while explicitly managing their behaviour for them through the use of punishments and rewards?  

Or should we be teaching our students how to engage in the messy and beautiful process where making mistakes, failing, trying again, and finding their own way out helps them find not only what they were looking for, but something that is far more valuable: the ability to find, manage, curate, and create information in any discipline, situation, or venue?


****

As someone who values backwards planning, I like to start with my desired end result before I know where to begin.  If I want students who can think critically and creatively, who can build and use with skill a toolkit more vast than just the one used in my own discipline, and who refuse to give up when they fail, but instead reach out to find different solutions from the resources available to them, then starting the year with Harry Wong just won't cut it.

It's why I'm starting with Blank White Page, a project where students generate questions, then find answers to those questions.  They can work on their own, or with peers (from their own school or from three others around the country).  They can use any resources they can find.  They have complete freedom on what to study, how to study it, and how to demonstrate their knowledge.

It's why I'm starting with a video introducing not only myself, but Andrew as well.  Where we explain why we've decided to team-teach their class from 2,500 miles apart.  Where we model what it looks like to have your ideas become something better than you ever could have imagined.   

But most of all, it's why I flipped my class.  I don't know of any other way to teach students to be who and what I want them to be...no, who they NEED to be to succeed in the "real world" outside my classroom.

There are lots of things I want my students to understand about me and about the class on the first day.  But I'm not the centre of my classroom anymore.  If I stand up and talk about my rules and policies on the first day, then I'm still trying to be the centre.  I am communicating to them that what's really important is ME and them following MY rules, MY procedures, and fitting into MY world.  I am telling them that I have all the answers.

That's why I'm not going to talk much on the first day.  I am going to assess my students on the first day - who they are, what they know, what interests them, how they interact, what they expect from school, who they like/hate, etc.  I am collecting evidence and making inferences...which is exactly what I'm teaching them how to do in the first unit.  Because THEY are important.  And the end goal is for THEM to learn, to grow, and to succeed.  

I want them to see that NO ONE has all the answers.  That there will always be blank white pages ahead of them, and it is their job to find ways of filling them in most effectively.  I want their life to be a Blank White Page project - prompted by curiosity, driven by a constant search for answers, and always building towards becoming a life-long learner.

So as I plan for the first day, I ask myself if I'm backwards planning for that end goal.  Will our students walk away equipped with a toolkit that will transfer from the content taught in our class to the content of the rest of their lives?  Will they learn not just compliant behaviours, but habits of mind, skills, and how to be a critical and creative thinker?

****

First days are important, sure.  But what's really important is the LAST day, and thinking forward to One Day, when they leave our class and go on to whatever comes next.  The time when routines and structures are gone, and they are left facing their future.  Will they see something that is chaotic because they have no one imposing structure on them?  Or will they see a blank white page that is just waiting to be filled in and expanded and created?

I know which one I'd choose for them.





I linked to a few videos in the post, but here are some other resources for our first unit:
Mentor Mob Playlists for BWP and Strand 1
Video playlist for unit 1

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.  


******


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.

*****

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.


*****

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.

*****

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.  

******

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.

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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.