Andrew and I tell the story of our collaboration frequently.  We did the Flipped Learning Network's opening webinar a few weeks ago, and we presented at the Global Education Convention about our journey together and what it has done in our classroom and to our practice.

I never feel like we can truly capture how much has changed as a result of committing to work together.  The easy answer is "everything" but even that doesn't feel like enough.  In truth, meeting Andrew was like taking collaboration crack - he and I started creating and never looked back, to the point now where not one aspect of my life is untouched by the influence of our collaboration.

And yet, it is only recently that I've begun to see the way in which my view of creativity has been shaped by our collaboration.

I never thought of myself as an artistic or creative person.  I do know how to play several instruments, and I can sew, knit, and crochet, but the nerve damage in my hands has made the fine motor skills required for art nearly impossible for me.  You see, my definition of "artistic" was "can draw well" and because I couldn't, and had little "innate talent" (really, a desire to work as hard as I would need to in order to improve) I decided I just wasn't a creative person.

What I missed in my narrow definition was that creativity isn't about drawing.  It's about thinking differently.  It's about bringing new things into the world for the purpose of making people's lives better.  That's what I learned in my first few years teaching, and became for me the point of my professional journey: helping students see differently, and create in them a desire to continue learning because of the content and skills developed in my class.

When I met Andrew, I exaggerated my video editing capabilities.  I knew I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but hadn't had the need to before that point.  He brought the impetus, so I learned how to edit videos.  And eventually, I started to see video editing as a creative endeavour as much as visual art is.  All art is about telling a story, not about lines or shapes on a page.

The story we were telling was not just one of classroom transformation.  It was one of personal transformation.  I now see the ways in which I'm tremendously creative, almost to the point that I feel ridiculous for ever thinking that I wasn't.

Seeing that shift, I began to see the role of creativity in my classroom differently too.  I used to have art projects as part of the curriculum, but I phased them out because rigor.  I used to have students do elaborate projects that were often beautiful and artistic, but I stopped because standards.  I used to try and make creativity the bedrock of the student experience in my class, despite my narrow definition, but I stopped because confidence.

Genius Hour cemented in my mind how much has shifted because of the influence Andrew has had on my practice.  Actually, that's not quite accurate.  Yes, it was Andrew's entrance that marked the beginning of the change, but really, it's all about what we've built collaboratively.  It wasn't Andrew or me acting in isolation - all the good ideas and creativity and innovation come as products of our time spent in collaboration.  None of it exists without all of it.

My students almost all did their project on something to do with creativity.  I heard them discussing what it means to be creative, and it mirrors my own (much better) understanding: being creative is seeing possibilities where others see only limitations.  It is being willing to be different, even when that's the harder choice.  It is taking risks and daring greatly, even when it pushes us so close to the edge that we fall off a few times.  They all understand that.

And that's the real beauty from Genius Hour: only a few students wrote down facts or specific details about the content of what we learned.  Instead, they made abstract renderings of those ideas.  The common themes were about divergent thinking, growth mindset, factory-models of education being crushed by a new way of learning, how puppets are a pedagogical tool, and even why flipped learning gives them more control over what they learn, how they learn it, and how to demonstrate their learning.

Our students are experiencing something profoundly transformative: that collaboration drives creativity, and you have to practice taking risks to be able to truly learn.  

I now know how to use Adobe After Effects - professional level graphics software as well as basic video editing programs because the collaborative relationship Andrew and I forged compelled me to truly learn, even when it took failure after failure to produce success.  In a very real way, I am now able to be much more creative because there was a space made and a spark of inspiration lit by the relationship Andrew and I have.  And my creativity fuels the learning environment in which my students catch the spark to light their own creative furnaces.

That's what collaboration can do: light fires that had been extinguished.  Foster creativity and critical thinking.  Provide the space and motivation to learn something deeply.  That's why Andrew and I will continue to tell our story.  We believe that ALL teachers should have the same opportunity we did to be transformed.  We believe that our students deserve that.

And we believe that our collaboration will continue to produce more creativity as more teachers start the journey we've undertaken together.  I hope we can continue to point the way to the road less travelled, where while there are thorns and rocks and unsure footing, there is also great beauty and joy and when you've walked far enough, you get to see something that never before existed.  Something that wouldn't be in the world, but for you finding it together.  It is that collaboration that will make you more creative, and will in turn give your students more opportunities to be creative as well.

Collaboration will change your view of creativity forever, just as it has mine.

This collaborative road will be more difficult.  Sometimes, it will be so difficult that you struggle to remember why you started walking in the first place, but if you have found a partner who makes your classroom better, it will be worth every moment of difficulty.  

We - all of us - are #bettertogether.

Over the summer, Sam Patterson and I started talking about puppets.

Now, we all know he's the Puppet Man, who actually does have Twitter accounts for all his puppets, and even features them on his YouTube channel.

So when I was selected to take over the Leadership class at EBA, I quickly found an application for puppets on campus: hosting the weekly video news broadcast.  Here is the playlist of all the Ninja News episodes so far.  Yes, our mascot is the Ninja.  Purple ninjas, actually.

Now, once other students saw the puppets, they wanted in on the sweet puppet-making action.  So I ran a few workshops on Choice Day teaching students how to make puppets, and we even had all the 9th graders make sock puppets one afternoon.

Here's what I've learned about puppets since starting this endeavour:

• Students come alive when they get to do, make, build, and design
• Students love challenge when it's presented in a way that makes it seem fun (like: build a sock puppet! No directions! No help!)
• Grades and points cease to matter when something is truly engaging.  I did have one student ask if his sock puppet would be graded, but other students told him to Just Stop before I had to.  That feels pretty awesome.
• Kids become kids when they have a puppet on their hand.  Suddenly, they are more playful, more funny, more animated, and more interesting.  Yes, I mean interestING - I think you have to be interestED to be interestING.  They also have started to think differently, and are much quicker to get to creative solutions to problems.
• Making puppets requires divergent thinking, storytelling, imagination, and creativity.  Many kids find that overwhelming, because they are being asked to do things that aren't quantifiable.  They get lost in the design phase because it cannot come from rote memorisation, or reliance on good academic habits.  It becomes scary for them to have to try something that might fail.  Those students need the most help and the least instruction.  I spend a lot of time listening, and then helping them glean their ideas from all of the rubble.  But if I give them an idea, it's no better than asking them to memorise the date Shakespeare was born.  The real work still came from me in organising, planning, and valuing the information.  
• Puppets are a great vehicle for teaching that it's okay to make mistakes.  My first puppets aren't great (in order of how I made them: Albert, Kiwi, Gypsy, New Unnamed Puppet), but I'm proud of them, and I learned a lot more from making them than I did from just using the puppets Sam let me borrow (EduFelon and Tina).  Figuring out how to do something like this required lots of YouTube videos, many hangouts with Sam, and a lot of trial and error.  And it was really, really fun.

L to R (& puppet maker):
Tina (Sam)

Gypsy (Me)

EduFelon (Sam's student)

Albert (Me)

Kiwi (Me)

This is my newest puppet.  He was built with a pattern Sam traced from Wokka.  

The kids absolutely love him.

The staff think I'm carrying a dog when I walk in with him.

Also, people can't agree on this puppet's gender.  I'd like to know your thoughts!


So TL;DR:
Puppets are amazing.  They are viable as an instructional strategy.  They help students be more comfortable in their own skin, and with taking risks and thinking differently.

Go make one.  Now.

I never realised just how much I took for granted about reading.  Every year, I vastly overestimate my students' ability to read on their own.  I assume that just because everyone in my department assigns reading regularly as homework that students are actually doing it and getting it.

This week has been the reality check for me: They aren't.  Even the "high achievers" either aren't doing the reading or they are doing it and not understanding it.  Even the AP students in some cases.  These are kids who get A's in everything, who can write and articulate intelligent arguments.  And they aren't reading what we assign.

These are the kids who are getting accepted left and right to Purdue and Brown and Cornell and UCLA and Cal.  These are the best kids from the best school in the best area.  

The real tragedy is that these are the exact kids who need the beauty and the breath of fresh air that comes with a good book.  The bookroom is filled with titles that I would have killed to teach at previous schools - Kite Runner, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Sula, The Things They Carried, Things Fall Apart, The Namesake, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Indian Country, Slaughterhouse Five, Pride and Prejudice, Man's Search For Meaning...our bookroom has hundreds of choices.

Hundreds of choices that our students pretend to read or understand for most of their four years here.

I'm not pointing fingers at my colleagues - I assigned reading homework last semester, and many of my students told me they didn't read all of those books either.  And some of them got A's from me too.  So we're taking kids who love reading, who read for pleasure, who will do homework, who are compliant, and churning out students addicted to Sparknotes, trained to jump into the point in the discussion where their failure to read or understand will be noticed least, and who think that literature is just an excuse for a treasure hunt for symbols that they can identify and spit back out on a test.

So what's going on?  And more importantly, how do we fix it?

If we believe that teaching through literature is the Right Way, and that the skills developed through beautiful literature can help students see their own life more clearly, analyse more carefully, and engage with the world more actively, then it's imperative we figure this out.  And I'm the least capable person to figure this out, because I did all the assigned reading in high school and college, loved it, and understood the vast majority of it.

So I asked my students.  In a previous post, I outlined the process we went through to ascertain what would be the best reading strategy for them.  I would encourage you to read that before continuing with this post.

So here's are some of the take-aways from that mini-unit.

First of all, it's different for every group of students.  That makes sense - any teacher can tell you that the climate of one section can be wildly different to another section of the same class.  But how often have we treated them the same in the method we use for reading?  I know I have.

Secondly, it will be a system of trial and error.  When we came up with the plan, I had a student ask, "What happens if we end up not liking this, or it doesn't work - are we stuck with it?"  NO!  The whole purpose in giving them voice and choice is to make it work for them.  Why would I force them to stick with something that wasn't working just because "they chose it"?

Thirdly, students are not used to being asked these questions.  They haven't thought about it either, on the whole.  They never think to question their teachers.  They said to me, when I asked why they don't question what we're doing, "But we just assume that either you have a reason or that it would be rude to ask.  So we don't ask why."  I died a little inside on that one.  Any student, regardless of age or ethnicity or grade level or ability, should be able to respectfully ask the teacher for rationale behind any assignment.  And if the teacher doesn't have one, it should prompt some serious reflection on the teacher's part.  I told my students that I would never ask them to do something for which I couldn't articulate a reason.

Finally, it's not enough just to have class discussions or to have students reflect on what they're learning and why.  Students need to be given far more voice and choice than they usually get in factory-style education.  I've found, over and over, that when I ask them for input, their ideas and cognitive process are amazing...often better than what Andrew and I came up with.  Most of the plans are a result of students advocating for what they need, and trying to take ownership over their education.  I'm confident that more students will be reading the assigned novels for these courses.  And it's not because they like me.  It's because they feel like it was their choice, and that if they have something to say about the process, the product, or the text itself, they have the freedom to say it.  They don't have to hide the fact that they hate the book - in fact, sometimes that's the start of the best discussions in my classroom.  And if they honestly aren't reading at home, how is it helpful to act out a farce in which we all pretend they ARE reading?  It's teaching them that education has shortcuts.  That they can get all of the answers off the internet.*  

Is that really what we want to be teaching them?

*side note: When I said that many of my PLN agree that "if you can google it, it's not a good question to include on a test" they just couldn't understand what a test would look like with information that wasn't googleable.  I gave some examples, such as: instead of memorising the dates of the Civil War (googleable), argue whether or not Lincoln did enough to prevent the war (not googleable).  Their words: "Yeah, that second option is way more interesting and useful."  Yes.  Yes, it is.

Below the fold are the specific plans that we worked out in each of my three classes that have started a novel. 

On Saturday, I had the great honour to co-present with about flipped English at the Michigan Flipped Learning Conference.  Obviously Andrew presented with me (we really don't tend to do things separately, if you haven't figured that out by now), but we were joined by April Gudenrath - the most experienced English flipped teacher there is - as well.  The hangout was broadcast and can be seen in its entirety here, and you can view our presentation through Google Drive here, and you can fill out the Flipped English Teacher Community form here so we can get a good list of as many flipped ELA teachers as possible.

Anyway, most of the questions we got this weekend at #MIFlip (and on Twitter afterward) were around how you get started with flipping.  The school year has already started, so that ship has already sailed for this year, right?

I would argue that mid-year is actually a BETTER time to flip than the beginning of the year.  The kids know you.  They trust you.  They believe that you are out for their best interests and care about you.  You get to start ahead.  As many of us found out this year, jumping into the flip with new students is really, really difficult.

So you're convinced you want to try something.  But you're not sure if it'll take, or if you'll have enough time, or how you should start.  Let me see if I can help.

There are a few main models:

1. Flip 101 - take your direct instruction and put it on video. Have the kids watch the video at home. Use class time to help them get more in-depth with reading, writing, projects, or discussion.
2. Asynchronous Flip - use video in class or as a supplement to what you would normally do. Put your novel reading on video and use todaysmeet.com to have a live discussion. Let kids work through curriculum at their own pace, where students can work ahead but can't get behind. Video is one way of accessing the content, and students can choose others, so long as they can demonstrate learning.
3. Flipped Mastery - using either of the two models with the integration of mastery or Standards Based Grading (SBG) to assess student learning.  
4. Co-Flip - short for Collaborative Flip.  This model is student-centred, where instruction takes place if/when needed, and may or may not be on video.  It could be asynchronous or synchronous.  It could be self-paced or with everyone at the same pace.  It could use mastery or SBG or neither.  But the most important elements are 1) student-centred pedagogy, 2) use of higher order thinking, and 3) deep value in and use of collaboration, between teacher and student, student and student, and teacher with other teachers. 

Most of us start at Flip 101 - I did.  And if you use a lot of direct instruction, that's where I think you SHOULD start.  Take those lectures you always give (as April calls them, "points of pain") or instructions you have to repeat over and over, and put them on video.  If you have an iPad, use ShowMe.  If you have a Mac, open PhotoBooth (so your face is on screen) and capture your screen with QuickTime (every newish Mac comes with it, and it's free).  If you don't have either, use one of the free services online - ExplainEverything, Jing, Screen-Cast-O-Matic, etc.  I've used them all, but I prefer ShowMe for quick stuff, and Camtasia for everything else.

If you feel like adding in direct instruction would be taking a step backwards pedagogically, then start by starting the shift to asynchronous or mastery.  Use video where and when you can, but focus on getting students to be responsible for themselves and their learning - that's the first flip.

The way you do that depends on your students and what they need.  You need to use class time in the best possible way, with the intention of creating opportunities in the classroom for collaboration between students, and the availability of the teacher and peers to help.  For Andrew and me, that means using class time to let our students compose in class, do close-reading, work on collaborative projects, and having discussions as a class.  The way you use class time is FAR more important than what you put on video.  Video, like all technology, is just a tool to help your students learn best.  Don't make video the point; make it the process.

**

When you've gotten your feet a little wet under one or more of those models, you pretty much have to move on to Co-Flip.  Flipped learning is WAY too hard to do it on your own.  I don't have any colleagues flipping (or interested in flipping) in my department or school.  But less than an hour away, there are dozens of flipped teachers - even a few who flip English.  And when I broaden the search a little, I find people who not only want to do what I'm doing, but they can push me to get better at what I'm doing.

I know I'm kind of a one-trick pony in this regard, but my classroom didn't really get to the point I knew it could until I met Andrew.  Then came Karl, and Carolyn, and Crystal, and Brian.  Then came the other Co-Flippers: Delia, Lindsay, and Audrey...and the rest of the Flipped ELA gang (see many of us discussing flipped writing here): Kate B, Kate P, Dave, Troy, Shari, Katie R, April, Sam, Natalee...and more I'm probably forgetting.  All of those people have helped me shape the way I think about flipping, and the experience of flipping in my classroom.

There is no way I would be the teacher I am now without them, and I'm lucky to have a PLN that not only supports me and gives me ideas, but will discuss tattoo design until ridiculous o'clock, or run up my tweet total to 5k (special thanks to Sam for that one!) or just be silly and join the #HashtagRevolution.  I'm lucky to have Andrew as a #CoLab partner (get it? Lab partner, only COlLABorative? Yeah, I know I'm #EduAwesome at wordplay).  I'm lucky to have a #CoLab partner who will be as pissed off about the things that I'm pissed off about, but will help me calm down and reason through it.  I'm lucky to have a #CoLab partner who will spend a whole day building a website that we can't actually use, and then will throw it out and start again without looking back.  I'm lucky to have a #CoLab partner who understands my strengths and weaknesses better than I do.

Andrew makes me better.

Don't believe us?  Ask Katie Regan and Shari Sloane (and now Dave Constant, who has joined them as the #ladygeeksanddave) why #coflip is better than any other flip.  Ask Carolyn Durley and Graham Johnson why #coflip has kept them sane.  It's not just the intellectual and practical support.  It's the personal support.  We care about each other, We care for each other.  We're friends first, collaborative partners second.

So once you've decided what kind of flipped model will fit your classroom best, find someone who will help you do it even better.  Ask questions.  Jump in on conversations on Twitter.  Join the Flipped English group on Twitter.  Get on the Ning for Flipped Learning.  Post here.  

Start a conversation.  And don't wait for a "more convenient time" - start now, where you can.  Don't make yourself crazy trying to do everything - but find people who have already done it.  Listen and take whatever they offer.  You don't have to use it for it to be worthwhile for you.  And if you annoy someone by asking too many questions, they probably aren't the person you want to work with anyway.  We're all adults, and personality does make a big difference.  Find people you genuinely like and then see what you can get, and what you can give.

Without Andrew, I would have given up a long time ago.  I never would be presenting at conferences, or writing a few chapters for an upcoming book about flipped learning, or reaching my students in the most effective ways.  No matter how crazy I make him, or he makes me, our collaboration is worth it.  Neither of us could do this alone.

And neither should you.

My brother wants to be a writer.  He has lots of time on his hands.

So I put together my entire Essay Exposition course so he could work through it unit by unit (it was part of his Christmas present, actually).

In the spirit of giving, here's what I did.  I will use this structure again if I get to teach this course next year (it's probably my all-time favourite class to teach, actually) but I will make some improvements to give them more feedback in 1:1 settings.

Now, you lose a lot without all the discussion we had.  This is just the reading we did and the writing we did.  There were daily discussions and frequent seminars on all the reading assignments and workshopping the students' writing.  

If you use these assignments or ideas, please credit both me and Andrew Thomasson.  Almost all of this is straight from the tmi shared brain.

To see the unit plans, follow the link.  If any documents are not available, comment here or send me an email.

And Merry Christmas everyone!

When I told my colleagues in the English department what I was doing - giving intense and personalised feedback on all major writing assignments over the semester - for my Essay Exposition final, they overwhelmingly thought one thing:

Those kids will NEVER read it.

As English teachers, we know how frustrating it is to read essays for hours, make thoughtful comments, and then hand back the papers that have only one letter students care about.  After they see the letter written in red at the end, they often discard the comments.

That was so foreign to me when I started teaching.  In high school and college, I was almost as interested in the comments as I was in the grade.  And I always read the comments first, and tried to figure out what the grade would be before I got there.

Why did the feedback mean so much to me, and so little to my students?  

So I did something drastic: I stopped giving them a grade on their essays.

I taught an Essay class where they never got a grade for a piece of writing.  I gave them credit for meeting the requirements, yes.  But never for the quality of their writing.  And contrary to what many people would think, I don't have all A's or F's in my class.  I have a pretty even spread, pushed towards the higher end - as expected in a class where students voluntarily sign up to take a class where they write dozens of essays.  I had one F (in the high 50's), two D's, a handful of C's and the rest A's and B's.

That being said, I wanted them to divorce grades from writing.  I wanted them to have the freedom to explore the topics and voices they didn't yet own.  I wanted to see the creativity they had, not the structure they had learned.

So what did they do when I gave them the intensely individual, focused and detailed feedback form?  The one that I spent 30-60 minutes on per student?

When I handed them back, there was several moments of near total silence.  They read what I wrote.  They shared with their group members.  They came to ask questions about what I wrote.  I didn't find a single feedback paper on the desks, in the trash, or on the floor in the hallway.

And not one of them asked about their grade.  

Instead, we had conversations about their writing.

One of the proudest moments of my career.

Tonight I don't have much time to write.  

But the reason why I don't have time is important:

I'm reading every major assignment my Essay Exposition (SAX) class has produced.  I'm going through 22 assignments, including a 4-10 page final essay about the purpose of school and how Redwood should be changed to meet the purpose of school more accurately.  All of them have been added to a Mentor Mob playlist that the student manages, and hosted through a master MM playlist that I manage.  It's a system that makes it really easy for me, but is also helpful for them.

Then, after I've read everything (much of which I haven't read - I worked with them intensely on just a few select pieces through the semester) I'm giving them feedback on specific essays (both on paper and as comments on their Google Docs).  I'm analysing their voice and how it's changed.  I'm seeing so many amazing sentences, paragraphs, ideas, and structures that it's pretty easy to tell them how much they've improved and how good I think they are now.

Is it crazy to try and give them feedback like this?  Probably.

But if any teacher had done this for me at any point, I might have gotten much better at writing much earlier in life.

Here's what I'm noticing:  I really really like their writing.  And the assignments did just what they were intended to do - make them a better writer with better ideas and better ways of expressing those ideas.

Here are the writing assignments from the semester:

• 3-5 page definition essay on a memorable experience
• 2-4 page photo essay about literacy
• 2-3 page Snapshot of a Redwood Learner essay
• mixed media format Blank White Page project
• short Narrative List (similar to McSweeneys lists)
• 2-3 page Style Alike Essay on a McSweeneys piece
• 1-2 page New Food Review
• 4-10 page musicology project (with a YouTube playlist of all the songs)
• short Clearing the Attic prompt
• 1-2 page observation piece
• 2-3 page Your Choice Assignment #1
• 2-3 page Your Choice Assignment #2
• 2-4 page If You Really Knew Me essay
• 2-3 page Reading Timeline and Vignettes
• 100-500 word Exploded Image
• 300 word Write Something New (i.e. write something. anything. that's new)
• 300 word Exploded Image on the topic of homework
• revised writing conference piece (a choice from any of the essays we wrote)
• 4-10 page final essay on the purpose of school
• 2 page evaluation of the course
• 300 words-1 page analysis of their writing voice

Wow.  That's actually a lot.  And that's not even everything they wrote. 

Also, any success I've had in this course was due entirely to Andrew Thomasson, who taught me how to do all of this, helped me design and teach the course, and even did writing conferences with me and my students.

Okay.  Back to work.

I've been thinking about beginnings and endings a lot lately.  The nature of my current assignment is that I only get a semester with my students, then I hand them over to another teacher for the remainder of the year.  I do get to keep some, but they are shuffled into different periods and courses.  I also am teaching three brand new courses - one of which has never existed at Redwood, and perhaps has never been taught in any high school context.

I think about where my students started.  Where Andrew and I started.

We had so many ideas.  So much hope.

And we failed SO much.

When the semester started, we had TECHNOLOGY and MASTERY and CROSS-COUNTRY COLLABORATION...

...but we forgot to build a classroom community that could sustain those major changes.  We forgot that our students needed to know us, not just be in the room with us.  We forgot that our students needed a reason for the technology we were using, rather than just being told it was important.

When things didn't work according to our Master Plan, we had two choices: give up or fight back.

Well, really we had four choices: give up on everything, give up on each other and just go it alone in the classroom, fight back against each other and let that destroy our classroom along with our relationship, or to redouble our efforts and fight side-by-side to fix the problems.  

We chose side-by-side.  And after a lot of hard work - on ourselves, on our partnership, on our friendship, and on our practice in the classroom - we started to turn the corner.

Today I saw evidence of that.

3rd period has been my most challenging class in many ways.  I have 2 sets of identical twins, a 35% SPED rate, 6 girls out of 30 students, and a group who seemed to fight me every step of the way.  But today, we had a final seminar about the nature of humour, on the course and what they learned, and what I should do next semester so my students can get an even better teacher and classroom.

Here's some of what they said:

• You guided us in this course, but we were the ones who were driving the curriculum.  Whatever we needed, you helped us find.  Whatever we were interested in, you used it to help us get better.
• After our "Come to Jesus" talk in October (the one where we established the norms we needed for class to run successfully), we all started to feel like we were responsible for our learning.  We knew what we were supposed to do, but you didn't force us to change. We established the patterns of change for ourselves and you helped us take ownership of those changes.
• We've never had a course in English where we felt like it was relevant to our lives in the way this one was.  Everything we did in here was helpful in a way that we can translate to other classes, to college and to careers.
• We got to decipher what made something funny - and instead of killing the joke, it allowed us to understand it better.  And we got to produce funny stuff - including a pretty epic Socratic Seminar todaysmeet thread from this final discussion, that became a true work of humour in and of itself.
• The writing we did in this class was much more creative than the writing we've done before, but we also get the freedom to try out different styles and voices and see how they fit for us.  We got to take risks, and we didn't have to be afraid that our grades would suffer.
• All that being said, we expected this to be a joke of a class (pun intended, obviously).  We expected it to be sitting around, watching YouTube videos, and not doing much. But this class wasn't an easy A - you had to work really hard and learn a lot to get an A. The pace was really fast, but if you used class time well, you would never have to do any work out of class.

Their message was clear:

This class was successful because WE were successful.  Change a few things to streamline the process.  But we learned, we took ownership, we were inspired, and we wish we could keep going until June.

Me too.

**

I didn't have to stand up and lecture to teach them something of value.  I also didn't have to make them write 10 pages essays to get them to be analytical and critical thinkers.  I didn't have to push them to be creative either - I just had to remove the restrictions that kept them constrained.

I'm not saying that this semester was a complete success.  

There was one more thing that happened today that reminded me of why I teach this way.

It's a student that hadn't talked to me much.  He always did the work, but sometimes it felt like he was a little checked out.  He came in after school today and told me that he wanted to get the chance to tell me personally how much the class had meant to him.  He learned a lot, he appreciated me and the way the class was run, and he really hoped he would be in my class again next semester.  We looked up his schedule and both were pretty excited to see that he was staying with me in San Francisco Stories next semester. 

This all happened while I was on the customary afternoon G+ hangout with Andrew.  Andrew said that he wished he had been faster so he could have recorded it because it crystalised exactly what we wanted:

A student who had been transformed by our class.

And in a few weeks, we start over.  But we start with a few kids just like him, bought in, passionate, and skilled, we will get a pretty good head-start.

I've always loved writing, but I haven't always been good at it.

And I've never been good at teaching writing.  I think that's because I never was taught how to write.  I was given writing instruction, sure, but the attitude of my teachers was that writing was something you just got better at when you practiced more.  They focused on helping me develop my ideas and not so much on how to structure those ideas so they made sense to the reader.

That might be giving them too much credit.  I don't remember ANYONE telling me how to write.  I do remember being encouraged to write on a variety of subjects in low-stakes assignments, but that was mostly in college English classes.

I also remember my creativity being discouraged actively, mostly in high school.

My high school grammar teacher (we spent half the year in literature, and half in grammar) would give us daily journals.  We had to write 20 lines, and the topics were things like, "Imagine sliding down a hill" or "What is a song you like, and why do you like it?"

So I decided to start writing an epic short story.  One that would incorporate the topic every day, but would be about this community of elves.  Ones that had mysterious adventures, like sliding down hills while composing their own inspirational tunes.  Where characters were developed and put in situations where they could be tested, or they could demonstrate their true nature.

After two weeks, she collected our journals.  I waited for her feedback anxiously, as I believed my Elf Soap Opera was my greatest writing achievement yet.

I still remember what she wrote at the bottom of the last journal entry:

This is not appropriate and if you continue to not write about the assigned topics, I will give you a zero on every one.  In fact, I will give you a zero if you even use the word "elf" in another journal.

I cared too much about my grade to push it any farther.  But it was just another event, in a long string of events, that convinced me that I needed to stop believing that people would understand me or see me for who I really was.

I got an A in that class.  But my writing didn't improve; in fact, my confidence as a writer dropped significantly, as a result of having a teacher who meant well, but couldn't see me as anything except a kid trying to get out of an assignment.

I never wrote on a creative topic again in high school.

**

I had forgotten about that until a student in my Essay class mentioned that he had done something similar and had a similar consequence for it.  He asked me what I would have done if he had done that for my class.  My answer was simple: I would have written him a comment that told him what I liked about it.  If it didn't meet the requirements of the assignment, I would ask that he make sure he did that next time.

This was in the context of a discussion about how writing instruction is done here at the school.  What my students said was that, at this level, there are just expected to know how to write already.  They said that, other than a few comments on essays and a grade, they hadn't had much instruction in how to improve their writing.  They knew how to write a five-paragraph essay.  But when asked to do a creative topic, they would completely blank out.

They started naming things they wished they could have had in their English classes:

• individual writing conferences, where they are given specific feedback on what to improve and how to deal with problems they struggled when writing in general
• freedom to write something without obsessing about a grade
• the ability to explore interesting ideas without worrying about how many sentences in a paragraph, or how many paragraphs were required
• instruction on how to take their ideas and make it work in writing
• help in developing and honing their voice as a writer

Basically, the exact same goals I had for them at the start of the class.


We did one-on-one conferences (took three weeks of class time), and when I asked them if that had been helpful (and worth the three weeks it took), they said it was probably the most helpful thing we did all semester.

I disconnected writing from grading.  Nothing they wrote for me received a grade (with three exceptions, which I'll talk about in a minute).  If they completed the assignment, they got 100%.  If they didn't complete it or it didn't meet the requirements, it got a 0%.  My theory was that frequent writing practice would build their confidence and ability, and that they had to stop seeing writing as a transaction; good writing evolves and develops, and the idea only ever grading first drafts is not attractive to me.  

Andrew Thomasson and I do a lot of writing together (like, at the same time in a shared Google Doc), so this has really helped me refine my theory on writing instruction.  We have written numerous guest posts (including one next week for the 12 Days of Dreaming project over at Educational Dreamer) and what we have found is that our first drafts suck.  Sure, they say what we think we want to say, but they never say what we NEED to say.  It takes a lot of refining (and often starting over altogether) to find the version we think represents us best.  If our first draft was published, it would be far less than mediocre, and not even a glimmer of what the final product ends up being.

I apply that principal to my students - some drafts are worth refining, and others aren't.  That's why the three assignments I am actually grading are:

1. The essay they chose to have a writing conference on.  Their task was to revise it after their conference, given the feedback and discussion we had.  I only graded it on the things I asked them to work on.  Most of the time, that was a bit of structure, a bit of organisation, and a bit of concept.  
2. The final essay, which is a synthesis of about 50% of the writing they did over the entire course.  It included short descriptive vignettes, which Andrew and I call an "Exploded Image."  It included making an argument and supporting it with evidence.  It included a narrative structure that used elements of a narrative toolkit we developed.  So in effect, I'm grading their ability to perform all those various tasks successfully, as well as their ability to synthesise the information.
3. Their analysis of their own voice and how it has developed in this class.  The assignment is here if you're interested.  It yielded some interesting results.  The reason I'm grading this one is that I want to see their analytical ability, as well as their ability to find patterns (another of the course mega-themes).

Those are the only assignments graded in a more traditional way.  The rest is credit/no credit.  My students told me that it was liberating to be able to write without worrying about points being deducted for a misspelled word, or an incomplete transition.  They also said it allowed them to try on different styles and experiment with ideas that aren't typically found in an "academic" writing assignment.  Some of those yielded the most successful pieces of the semester for my students.

As to helping them find their voice and develop their ideas, the way I did that was through a lot of discussion and feedback.  We wrote every essay in class.  During that time, I would work with individual students on how to best get across their idea and how to make it sound like their authentic voice.  We also had collaborative partnerships, where students would help each other by reading and making comments on ideas only - not on grammar or spelling or other mechanics.  Sometimes they would comment on structure and organisation, but mostly it was about helping the writer develop ideas.  We had discussions about purpose and audience, and how style influenced and was influenced by both the purpose and audience.  I showed them my writing, and they took it apart.  We did the same with some of theirs.

Here's what I didn't teach:

1. That writing should be a single draft activity, where we write something then move on to something else
2. That structure is more important than content
3. That the five-paragraph essay is valuable
4. That all genres of writing are the same, and use the same structures
5. That there are strict rules that all writers follow
6. That the most important thing is completion
7. That writing is an individual activity
8. That we should never experiment or try new ideas
9. That there are "right answers" in writing
10. That the teacher is the audience for all of their writing

I have the great privilege of teaching students who have a lot of training in basic essay structure, who have great vocabularies, and who have great academic behaviours.  Their struggles are more with anything that is different from what they are used to - they haven't been asked to be creative or collaborative much, unless it's in structured ways.

I know that this is probably more freedom than many teachers have, and that my students' academic background is much stronger than most.  But I also see that their writing at the beginning of the semester has improved dramatically.  They went from writing five-paragraph-style essays, and now have much more complex systems of organisation that will serve them well in college.  Their descriptive and observational writing is so much stronger, and vivid.  

And they feel something I never felt in high school: that their voice, what make them unique, is valued by a teacher.  That they can be themselves - even if that is something still in the process of being developed and refined.  That they don't have to worry about a grade and can take risks.  That they have peers who understand and support them, and will help them become better writers.

That their writing is, like them, a work in progress.

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.