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.

In the last post, I talked about Guiding Principles for flipped reading instruction.  This is now two posts because someone...who will remain nameless...told me that it was too much for one post (he's right, of course.  I just spiral out of control when I'm excited about an idea. Or fifty).

Today, I'll deal with the last Guiding Principle, particularly as it applies to shorter works (GP 3):

4. Flipping reading has to be about process and skill rather than content

For my Essay and Exposition class (an 11th/12th grade English semester-long elective):

• Units are roughly a week, but part of a larger sequence, planned using Understanding By Design, and incorporating my adaptation of Ramsay Musallam's Explore Flip Apply structure:

            Explore Flip Apply Explore Apply Assess

More on that in a minute.

• Students will be about 75% self-paced. Monday will be the one day that is rarely/never self-paced.  
• We will read a short text together on Monday - the class focus is on essays and creative non-fiction.  This includes selections from Essay Connections, The Orwell Reader and The Blair Reader, as well as Me Talk Pretty One Day.  Because I realise that is VERY different from what most people are teaching in US English classes, I've done my example here with two poems, which at least are easy to modify for your own context.
• After reading together and assessing basic comprehension, students will either work alone or in groups to look at theme/structure/style/whatever the focus is.  This will usually take the form of inquiry.  
• • Sample Inquiry/Explore Questions (again, these are 11th-12th grade level, but could be adapted for lower levels):

• • What common structures can you find in the language in the text? 
    
  • skill: analyse impact of author's choices on text, analyse impact of word choice on text, CCS 11.3-11.4
  • Example with one text: What patterns can you find in the LANGUAGE (i.e. only the explicit/literal words in the poem, not the inferences you might make) in "Red Dust"?  
  • Example with two texts: What patterns in the language are found in both "Red Dust" and "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?
  • How is the idea of (x theme) developed in the text?  
    
  • skill: determine theme and trace development, CCS 11.2
  • Example with one text: What explicit words and implicit ideas/inferences in Philip Levine's poem "Red Dust" would lead you to believe that the author is writing about sorrow?
  • Example with two texts: What explicit words and implicit ideas/inferences in "Red Dust" and "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" can you find?  What common theme can you draw from those patterns?
  • Compare (x text) to (y text).  What do you notice about (x) pattern in the text?  
    
  • skill: analyse author's choices and development of theme in two texts, CSS 11.2-4
  • Example (with two texts, obviously): What do you notice about the patterns related to mortality in "Red Dust" and "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"?  What is similar?  What is different?  Which (in your opinion) delivers the theme/impression most effectively?
  • What [figurative language/literary device/poetic meter/etc.] is used in the text?  What patterns do you notice?  What inferences can you make about the text based on those patterns? 
    
  • skill: determine meaning of words and how word choice impacts the text/theme, CSS 11.4
  • Example: Levine uses intense juxtaposition throughout the poem "Red Dust" - what controlling impression does that create?  What word patterns help you understand the controlling impression?
  • What personal experience have you had that you can relate to this text?  Explain the connection and how it relates to the text using specific examples of the language in the text that made you think of the connection. 
    
  • skill: cite textual evidence to support a claim, CSS 11.1

After they read and complete the inquiry task, we will discuss those ideas in class.  This may bleed into Tuesday (or homework for Monday night), depending on the length of the text.

• From there, students will be self paced, using roughly this format:
• Skill: Video on technique/theme/style analysis (flip)
• Practice Skill: Complete task that builds skills with a similar text (apply)
• Process-Teacher Model: Video on choice of texts with guiding questions (explore)
• Practice Process: Analyse text of choice (apply)
• Process-Student Model: Write/do project to show mastery (assess)
• Work on WBP project, either as homework during the week or with left-over class time (explore/flip/apply)

I didn't want to break up the flow of that list, so here are some additional details about those steps:

The work will be completed in order, but it can be done in class or at home, as the kids find easiest/most productive for them.  They do have to be working during class time, but not requiring the videos for homework makes it more self-paced and asynchronous.  There will be a "Watch" station so they can view the videos during class.  

There is potential that some students can skip the skill/practice steps if they can demonstrate mastery.  No point in making them build a skill they've mastered, right?  In that case, the assess phase would have to show mastery AND excellence, since they are now challenging themselves beyond basic mastery.  The will probably end up also having masses of time to work on WBP, which is okay with me.

I'm using these loose definitions for the skill/practice/process terms:
[note: these are VERY under-construction.  Feedback appreciated]

Skill: anything that builds a necessary reading, writing or thinking skill.  Usually modelled explicitly in a video.

Practice Skill/Process: anything that allows a student to work on the skill or process.  It will usually be a reading assignment, a conversation, or a piece of writing.  This is the skill-building stage that allows students to move towards mastery.  This is the step I will be most directly involved in during class time.  I will be working with students individually or in small groups.

Process-TM: these are videos that I'll make with Andrew Thomasson where we model the writing process, a reading strategy, or have a reflective conversation.  Whatever process we model, students will be expected to show mastery of in the Process-SM phase.  If we show a reflective conversation, they will be expected to have a reflective conversation.  If we show writing, they'll be expected to write.  Etc.  

In this example, we will talk about the three texts as a preview and walk through the beginning of each text, showing the beginning of the process we expect them to finish (like marking up figurative language and analysing the impact on tone).  This will evolve as we start trying it [as of now, we've only hazily talked about it and this is probably the most complete description he's read at this point...so Andrew, if you have feedback or think this is a stupid idea, we can/will talk about it more...].

Process-SM: this step is where the students use the exact same process Andrew and I modelled in the Process-TM to show that they've mastered the process AND skill taught that week.  So in the unit I've outlined above, students would have to film themselves (alone or in a team) walking through the process we modelled on a brand new text, or they could mark up the text in writing or in a VoiceThread.  That would be assessed, and if students need to go back to build mastery, they will repeat the Skill/Practice steps with more explicit guidance from me.


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This is overly reductive, but using that model means that the content you use (i.e. what you read/watch/talk about) doesn't matter NEARLY as much as the process and skills you're building.  You can read a Cornflakes box and make it work in this format if you're clever enough.

I also know that I tend towards overly complicated systems and structures.  It always gets more simple as I bounce it around with Andrew and the rest of the Cheesebucket Posse.

I've spent a considerable amount of energy this summer trying to figure out this difficult problem: How do you flip reading instruction, particularly in a self-paced, asynchronous mastery environment?  

I don't know that I have an answer yet.  But I have thoughts.  These thoughts were HEAVILY influenced by lots of people (yes...the usual suspects).  In fact, let me make that more explicit.  These ideas are not mine.  I can't claim them and I refuse to claim them.  They only exist because of the amazing people on Twitter who process with me constantly.  They only exist because of the webinar we had last Tuesday.  They only exist because of Andrew Thomasson and Karl Lindgren-Streicher.  Andrew said it better here...and that's how things tend to work.  I talk forever and in circles, and then he just puts it so simply and beautifully, in a way that is perfectly understandable and yet so profound that I just shut up and agree with him.

So I agree with him.

That being said...writing "we" instead of "I" just sounds weird.  So mentally, when you read "I" know that there are multiple "I"s represented in this amazing collective of colleagues.

I'm going to start by listing the general ideas, then I'll give specifics after the list.   This got really, really long.  And it's probably confusing to anyone outside my own head.  For that I apologise in advance.  

Guiding Principles
1. Flipped reading is more than "reading at home" and "talking about it in class."
2. Flipping reading requires way more creativity than flipping grammar or vocabulary or even writing, and it greatly depends on instructional context.
3. Flipped reading works better with shorter texts than with longer texts.
4. Flipping reading has to be about process and skill rather than content.

Explanations of those Guiding Principles

1. Flipping reading is not reading at home and talking about it in class.
This pops up every now and then, and I just have one thing to say:
How is it flipping when you're just following the commonly accepted instructional paradigm?  That's not flipping.  That's traditional.  

So stop saying that is flipped English...please?

You can read Troy Cockrum's thoughts on the matter here.

2. Flipping reading requires creativity and depends on instructional context.
The first part is obvious - the reason there are VERY few strategies for flipping reading is because conceptually, it's really difficult to get your head around.  It takes creativity, which is where the Explore Flip Apply model comes in (more on that later...and there are tons of entries if you look back through my post history).

The second part, about instructional context, is really important.  What will work with me at Redwood High School is not what worked at San Lorenzo High School, and it may not work in your school either.  I don't know.  You're the teacher, thus you're the expert on how to teach your kids.  I can only tell you what I do, and give you guiding principles for how to structure your units and instruction.

When I flipped Night last year, I made videos of myself reading the text.  We had Today's Meet live discussions in class as the videos played (basically, it allowed me to participate in the discussion and manage the room instead of trying to read + do all of that).  Then students compiled theme and figurative language examples in separate Today's Meet threads and on Edmodo.  Then we did a lot of writing and discussion questions.  We watched a lot of related documentaries and film clips to give context.  We discussed them all.  I had a few skills videos, but not many - probably because the skills were mostly higher-level and based on lower-level skills they had learned earlier in the year (either on video or back before the flip, by direct instruction).

I consider that unit flipped.  But a lot of people wouldn't.  This is why we need to come to a common understanding of what flipped English is and isn't.

It also leads to my next Guiding Principle:

3. Flipped reading works better with shorter texts than longer ones.  
Jessica McGrover lays out in this post why this is true.  When you're having students flip a longer work and go at their own pace, they will inevitably do what you want them to do and end up working at their own pace.  And you can't have discussions about the book unless kids are at roughly the same point.  Imagine trying to discuss the theme of fate verses free will in Romeo and Juliet when one student is in Act I, scene v (after R&J meet), another student just finished Act III scene i (where Mercutio/Tybalt are killed), and another student just finished the play.  Unless you explicitly give them permission to talk about the entire play (which "ruins" it for the student in Act I), you are going to have frustrated students and a flat discussion.  Which ruins the whole experience of collaborative conversation.

The plan I've got for my flipped classes this year is to have some strategies for flipping shorter texts, and some strategies for flipping longer texts.  

Read the second part of this entry here.  It was way too much content for one post.

This is what I woke up to this morning.  I haven't included all 50 or so tweets, but here's enough to give you the picture....

So here's the deal we struck:

Look for that in the near future.  And update your bookmarks please!

And the most hilarious part of the whole exchange was this:

I'm pretty sure you automatically win the internet if you get retweeted by ButterChallenge.  So bravo, Andrew Thomasson.  I look forward to your explanation of why this blog is now called MorrisFlipsEnglish Blog: Ion Lucidity.

So one of my biggest challenges in switching from my home of four years, San Lorenzo High School, to my new home, Redwood High School, is that I will now be in charge of planning my own curriculum.  I used to do that, but when I moved to SLz, everything was planned collaboratively.  It taught me a lot about scaffolding and structure, and I am SO thankful that I learned so much while I worked there.

But Redwood isn't just asking me to plan my own curriculum - they want me to plan curriculum for three different upper-division electives (for 11th-12th graders) at a college level.  Seriously.  Last night, I brought some of the texts I'm using over to my church home group, and everyone said something like, "That's for high school students?  I didn't read that until nearly the end of college!"

One of the biggest challenges is a class called Essay and Exposition.  It's not quite an AP class, but it's still the "best and brightest" in the school who sign up.  

That being said, I was reading a fantastic article by Mike Fisher, called Snapshot of a Modern Learner.  If you haven't read it, you should.

The basic premise of the essay is that the modern learner approaches learning differently than school offers it.  

That got me thinking...what if I had students read the article and then write a portrait of themselves as a learner in the style of Fisher's essay?

It serves myriad purposes:

• working on style imitation, which is a goal of the class
• it tells me about them and their own learning context
• it leads into the unit on definition essays

It also ties in nicely with my White Blank Page project and the goals of a flipped class.  I think part of why I'm freaking out about this year is because I want to have something planned out fully and I don't.  But I also know that personalisation is a major factor in my flipped class, and without knowing the students, I don't know what they need.  Those two competing forces have made my head a really unpleasant place the last few weeks (and I'm sorry to my friends who've had to hear verbalise the neurotic personality inside my head).

In fact, Crystal Kirch, Karl Lindgren-Streicher and I were talking about planning for the year last night on Twitter.

Planning for a flipped class is really, really hard.  And even more so in English.  I mean, I can prepare content (see: Thomasson and Morris Instruction), but I can't prepare for what they know and what they will need to know.  That is only compounded by the fact that I have a very vague sense of Redwood's school culture and student makeup. 

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I'm not sure how this post descended into my own insecurities.  It probably has to do with the fact that, as a learner, I always feel like I should know more than I do.  I always feel like I am so far behind everyone else that I'll never catch up.  There are reasons for that (none are relevant for the purposes of this post), but it certainly impacts how I teach.  

I think I need to write my own "Snapshot of a Modern Learner" essay first.  

Patterns are everywhere.  Whether we realise it or not, our life is dominated by and surrounded with patterns.  

Teaching students to harness the power of patterns to help them make sense of reading, writing, and critical thinking gives them a toolkit that will allow them to understand the entire world.

The way I teach my system, which I simply call "Patterning," is fairly straight forward.  And what I realised is that it's Explore-Flip-Apply without me even knowing it.  There are two systems, one for shorter works (generally it works best with non-fiction), and one for longer works.  I'll describe my system for longer works first, and I'll address the other system in another post soon. 

I could go on and on in words, but I think it's much easier to understand Patterning if you look at this document:

That is the first page in Virginia Woolf's The Waves.  You can see that we found and traced seven patterns.  Some of those are the ones that I showed them (shapes and colours), and the rest are student-found patterns.  

Here are the instructions I gave:
Anytime an author uses a word, it is intentional.  They thought about that word and the way in which it fits in to the entire work.  They use related words, phrases, images, and ideas to create patterns.  In this section, there are lots of patterns - your job is to find them.  If you think it's a pattern, it probably is.  

Then I give them about 10 minutes and instruct them to mark them in different colours.  A requirement of my class is that they have 5-6 colours of highlighters.  Short of having all my students on iPads with Notability, I'm not sure I can make that part digital...yet.

After they found patterns, they shared out with the class.  You'll notice that some patterns intersect, but that's okay.  I love using Virginia Woolf for this exercise because her writing is so freaking intentional.

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In a novel, I'll sometimes give them the patterns ahead of time, and have them trace them through the work.  Here's an example from Toni Morrison's Beloved, which I taught to 11th graders in summer school last year:

You can see the pattern groups at the top of the page.  

Yes, I photocopied the entire book for my students.  But it only took 30 pieces of paper for the whole novel because I put 8 book pages on a single sheet of paper.  And I wasn't allowed to bring them from my school to the SS school site, so it was the best option I had.


After we read a section, I would give students time to find ANY evidence of their pattern and highlight it.  Then they would choose their Crystal Quotes - the one or two quotes per section that best illustrated their pattern.  When they were ready, they would come mark them on the class copy.  After all groups were ready, we marked them up as a group so all students had all the Crystal Quotes for every pattern in their packet.


You can probably see the +5 next to some highlighting.  The way I motivated groups to find the best quotes was that I chose two  Crystal Quotes of my own, and if they chose the same ones as me, I gave them extra credit points.


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So basically, they're finding evidence of a theme, but I'm not using the word "theme" because it's unnecessary.  And when the time comes to write the essay for the novel, they have already selected all of their evidence for a variety of themes.  


I'm sure I'm not explaining it perfectly, but that's my system.  My kids find it incredibly useful, because finding "patterns" is so much more concrete than "analysing a theme" or "choosing evidence to prove a claim" (but it's the same thing).


This system also fits in to my first day activity (White Blank Page - if you haven't read it, you should!).  When I pull them out to do their video interviews, I'm looking for their ability to make inferences and find patterns.  We'll cover the explicit vs. implicit evidence, finding patterns in their own life and in the world around them, and how to apply that to reading, writing, and thinking.  


I'll probably show Derren Brown's AMAZING TV show, The Heist to show them how  one person manipulates others using only patterns.  I am (not so) secretly in love with Derren Brown (side note: he's British, but some of his work is about to be put on Hulu!!!!  You should definitely check him out...you will be entertained and amazed).


Then we'll use those skills in the research unit and in the White Blank Page project I talked about in the last post.  And thanks to Karl for posting the Google Doc description we (really, he) wrote.  I didn't have permission to share it... :-)

In terms of how to use this in my flipped class, I think I'll push all the "here's how you use this system" to video, and then have them mark it up for homework, rather than in class.  That way we can spend class time discussing and analysing the text.  If my guiding question is "How do I use my face-to-face time most effectively?" then I think the best use of in class time is not having them highlight for 30 minutes.

In the next post, I will probably cover my text-coding pattern system.  Probably.  

So in the last week, I've recorded and edited about two hours worth of content with my co-conspirator, Andrew Thomasson.  I wrote about what we've been up to in the previous post, so I won't spend too much time on that.  Right now, I have a few exciting announcements:

1. ShowMe, the iPad tool I use to create videos on an interactive whiteboard (you can see all my videos here), named me one of the first ever Master Teachers.  If you go to my profile, you'll see the little title next to my name.  It's a big honour, and I really appreciate the value they see in my work.

2. I will be co-presenting a Language Arts/Social Studies Flipped Class webinar, with Troy Cockrum, Andrew Thomasson, Crystal Kirch, and Karl Lindgren-Streicher, and another presenter TBD. We will be discussing lots of questions Troy and I have received in the last few weeks, and I think it will be a good introduction to flipping English for those who struggle to know where to begin.  We'll also address Social Studies because of the links in the Common Core Standards (for ELA people and others unfamiliar with them, the CCS in Social Studies aren't content-based - they are literacy/skills-based), with Karl as our resident expert History teacher.  Crystal will be there to help moderate and take questions from viewers.

We will publicise the link on Edmodo, Twitter, and our personal blogs (e.g. here) on Monday, as the webinar will take place on Tuesday at 5 PST.  All you need to join in is an internet connection!  I hope we'll have a good turn-out, and that it will prove useful to people.

3. Finally, I will be starting a project based on a previous blog post about my first day of school activity, White Blank Page.  Here's some additional information, as we're seeking 1-3 more high school teachers to join us (because I'll have seniors, it just seemed wrong to open it up to 6th-8th graders, as it will be heavily collaborative between students).  So far, Karl Lindgren-Streicher and Andrew Thomasson will be joining me on the project.  We'd love to have other teachers of ANY discipline, so long as they teach HS and can commit to the project.

Students would add their questions to a Google form, and then we would archive it on the project's website.  Each semester, students would choose a minimum of one question to work on.  There are lots of ways to do this, but the three of us will probably use it as a Google 20% project, where students get roughly one class session a week to work on it.  Finished projects would be posted to the project website, where students could comment on other projects and get ideas for their next project.

This project is constantly evolving, but we'd like to have at least four, but as many as six, dedicated teachers signed up to the project before 10 August.  If we have more interest than that, we would be HAPPY to help you set up your own project (this would be ideal if a lot of middle school folks wanted to do their own!).

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Also, if you didn't notice, I have made some changes to the organisation of this website.  I added a tab for Thomasson & Morris Instruction, which is where you'll find updated information about my collaboration with Andrew.  Our future plans are HUGE, so check back frequently to see what we're working on.  Right now, I'm attempting to cut together something coherent out of our (ridiculously fun) chaotic 65 minute recording session from yesterday.  As we go on, it's feeling more and more like two friends hanging out, rather than doing "serious work" - and I think that's great.  We want students to see us having fun, but also working hard, and I think we're finding that balance.  

I'd also like to publicly thank Andrew for being the best collaborative partner I could wish for.  He keeps our crazy ideas in check, and has allowed me to be more excited to be a teacher than I ever have been in the last nine years.  I look forward to seeing what we'll accomplish together over the next few years.

If you have questions for us, you can contact us here, on Twitter (@guster4lovers and @thomasson_engl), or at our shared email address: tmi@morrisflipsenglish.com.  We also have our own YouTube channel, where all of our videos will be housed.

Andrew and I were actually about to start recording video #4 when we got this.  It took me a few minutes to calm down from the sheer excitement so we could film.

Here are the videos:

And all of this was made possible by Twitter.  Imagine that.

Oh, and PS, if you hate the videos, then it's all Andrew's fault.


(j/k!) :-)

After having such a productive conversation with Andrew Thomasson (@thomasson_engl) yesterday, I was on a #flipclass idea binge.  So as I was driving home from Marin, I was thinking about what my first week of school would look like.

And I made the logical conclusion that the first week of school should be flipped.  

I know...duh, right?

But it's important to consider what that looks like.  Normally, I would give out a syllabus and spend at least a couple of days teaching them how to succeed in my class.  But I kept asking myself the Flipped Class Question: What is the best use of my class time?

So as I was thinking about that, I realised that there is NO better way to give them the typical "syllabus" information than in short videos.  Each night there could be a small portion of some major skill or piece of information they'll need. 

Here's are the videos I'm planning to do (your needs may vary):
1. Signing up for Edmodo and format of Cornell Notes*
2. Rules and Procedures (food, electronics, hats, that kind of thing)
3. Introduction to Flipped Learning 
4. Technology they'll use (GoogleDocs, Today's Meet, Socrative, Edmodo, etc.)
5. Patterning** system

*The really metacognitive part here is that the first video will teach Cornell Notes style, and then they'll have to re-watch the video and take Cornell Notes about the video (super meta, right?) and submit them on Edmodo.

For each of the videos, there will be a specific task, like the Cornell Notes, that will help my students learn what I expect - all without me having to lecture them once face-to-face.  Then the first thing we'll do in class is have them ask the questions they generated during their viewing of the video.

**patterning is a system that I will discuss on this blog at some point, but it's too much for this section.

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The other thing I needed to figure out was what it would look like to do an inquiry unit (roughly an explore-flip-apply unit) for this information.  That's when I had the second Great Idea.  

The inquiry (explore) question is: What is it like to be a student in Ms. Morris' class?  What will help you succeed in Ms. Morris' class?

I will have them answer those questions (just outside my classroom, so they can't hear each other) in a short video interview on the first day, while the rest of the class is doing White Blank Page.  What they say will be interesting, because it will be based on whatever evidence they've managed to glean about me from being in my classroom.  That tells me something about their critical thinking, and will help guide me as I create the research unit videos.  It also gives me an opportunity to talk about first impressions, and the psychology around the way we use language - verbal and body language - to help guide our impressions about the world around us.

At the end of class, they'll turn in their White Blank Page assignment.  The next day, I'll show them how I can glean evidence about them from their work.  They will use those skills to gather evidence about me based on what I've put up in my classroom and what they can learn by asking good questions.  I'll probably do a little with personality/ learning and brain-based learning.  I know there isn't a ton of science behind MBTI, but ever since I had several students email me or come find me after graduation to tell me that was the most useful thing they did in my class, I decided to keep doing it.  I'll cover that at some point if people are interested in seeing it.

The eventual result (apply) will be them writing an "essay" that will answer the inquiry question and help me understand them.  That will also help me diagnose what writing skills need to be covered.  

It's only June, so I'm sure as the summer goes on, I'll have more ideas.  I'd also like to hear your thoughts!

I'm not sure I understood the full benefits of collaboration before I began flipping.  I mean, I knew that it was good to have smart people around you...but I didn't realise that those people didn't have to be in close physical proximity.  In fact, opening up the walls of my classroom to the entire interwebs has given me an almost unlimited supply of smart, like-minded, innovative teachers.  

One of those people is Andrew Thomasson (@thomasson_engl).  He and I met through Twitter, while following #flipcon12 and #flipclass.  There are so few of us English flippers that we get really, REALLY excited to find another person crazy enough to plow head-long into the unknown.  After dozens of messages back and forth, we decided to just have a real conversation over FaceTime.

It started with the idea of creating some skill-based videos together.  We're both flipping primarily 11th-12th grade, with high achieving students.  And then we came onto the idea that changed everything:  working together, we could create a series of videos that follow the writing process from idea to publishing, and shows a complete essay as it's being created.  We'll work with a teacher/student dynamic, and flip roles periodically.

He came up with this filter to spiral out our skills (because you obviously can't cover everything in one video):
--What should a serious essay include?
--What should a competent essay include?
--What should an awesome essay include?

For the first video, we'll cover the research process/essay.  More info to come (when we figure it all out).

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This is only one of the projects that I'm going to collaborating on with other teachers over the summer.  I don't know why I never thought to expand my classroom walls previous to this.  Okay, that's not true.  I do know why.  But it's not relevant to the classroom.

Another part of my summer collaboration is to interact with the Edmodo group for English Language Arts teachers who are flipping or planning to flip.  There are now over 80 people in the group!  It's amazing how much the idea of flipping has spread.  I'm excited by the opportunity to work with such talented, visionary people who work so hard to make the classroom the best possible environment for learning.  It's an exciting time to be a teacher!

If you're interested, below the fold is the document I put together using the Common Core Standards connected to each part of the writing process.  I hid it beneath the fold so that you don't have to scroll forever to get to the end of it.