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

In truth, I am scared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does your PLN do for you?

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.

Disclaimer:  I am probably crazy for even considering this.  That's what it feels like as I look out on students preparing right now.

In a week, every 9th grader at East Bay Arts will be delivering a TED-Talk style presentation.  They will get two minutes to talk about something about which they are really passionate.  They have to use a visual of some kind, and have been told DO NOT DO PUBLIC READING. ESPECIALLY FROM A POWERPOINT.  Unless they want to make their teachers cry, that is.

So let's back up.  Every students in 9th grade started the year with a unit on learning, the brain, and education.  The centrepoint of that unit was a series of TED-Talks.  We learned how to take notes and listen attentively.  We talked about passion, and how passion influences people to speak from a place of excitement and power.

Concurrently, they have been working on their very first all-school project.  At EBA, every grade level does one major project per trimester.  For the  first freshmen project, students have traditionally been asked to choose a social issue that is important to them and both write an essay about it and prepare a presentation to be given to a room of their peers and graded by the teacher.

If you read my blog and/or know Andrew and I, we tend to blow things apart and find the pieces in the rubble that work, and then build up the structure around those things.  That's kind of how this project started.  We liked the idea of self-selected topics.  We liked students giving a presentation that means something to them.   We also liked the idea of a project that all their teachers could see, work on with them, and learn from.  

But we also saw problems: most teachers from last year reported there being a ton of speeches on abortion or drug laws.  Having students write a research paper then deliver a persuasive speech seemed like a mismatch, and like too much for first trimester freshmen.  The topics don't necessarily touch the students' lives in a serious way, or in a way that is relatable in a 4-5 minute speech.  Also, the teacher in charge last year pretty much just told the other teachers what to do, and we really wanted to include the rest of the project team on the planning.

So we decided, in collaboration with the other two teachers on the team, to make it a presentation about how they wanted their school to change.  We started gearing up for that when we had a better idea.  Instead of advocating for a change at school, what would happen if we gave them the freedom to share something that made them truly passionate and interested?  What would school be like if every student got to share something they loved for a day?

Wouldn't that be the best day of school ever?  Wouldn't that MAKE the kind of school they would want to attend?

Then the next piece  that fell into place was when we realised that this was basically the structure of a TED Talk.  Since we've watched so many, it was an idea students quickly embraced.  It also has the benefit of being a real-world context for public speaking.  After all, how many people leave high school and ever have to present about a social issue for five minutes on their own?  But sharing an idea with passion and enthusiasm and clarity...that's something EVERYONE has to do.

And the final piece (stolen from Jon Corippo and Minarets): the teachers will not be assessing the students.  Instead, students will judge one another, based on the format of American Idol (the original).  There will be a Simon, a Paula and a Randy.  They will offer feedback based on the rubric categories and will decide the grade...but more importantly, will share what they thought and how it could be improved.

We will be filming the whole thing, and students will vote on which ones to feature on our YouTube channel.  I also told students that this was their chance to show their teachers, their parents, their friends, and the world that they were more than just a "dumb teenager who only cares about stuff posed on Facebook."  This is their chance to prove that they can have 80 9th graders in one room, listening to each other talk about something they love and not fall apart.

I'm writing about it here because I'm very aware that it might fail.  In fact, failure is likely - not of the whole event, but of certain presentations, and certainly technology.  But I'm sharing it so that I am clear going into it that the outcome doesn't matter.  What matters is that we aimed high and worked hard.  And that we learn from whatever failures may come.

In a week, it will all be over.  I'm excited to share what happened.

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.

As a teacher in the flipped learning movement, I sometimes struggle with sharing what I do in class.  Especially when I am running what looks more like a teacher-centred classroom than what I would like.  

However, I've had to come to the realisation that being student-centred is about doing what the students need for where they are in their education and with the content knowledge and academic habits they bring with them.  So sometimes that looks like me being at the "front" (there is no front in my classroom) and everyone engaged in a synchronous activity.  In fact, that's what it looks like most of the time right now.

For both years Andrew and I have team-taught, we started running several minutes before even hitting the ground.  We planned to throw our students into the deep end, and then hope that they could swim as well as we wanted them to.  And yeah, that failed.  Shocking, I know.

After only a few days (it took six weeks last time), we saw that we needed to take a few steps back and build their skills before expecting them to take ownership over their learning in any meaningful way.  Since that's the ultimate goal of any class we teach, it was important enough to change enough that we could get it right.

We were already planning the first unit (for me, the entire first trimester) to be about the brain, how teenagers think, feel, and learn, and to centre around the novel Looking for Alaska, by John Green.  So we started thinking about the skills and knowledge they would need in order to start taking responsibility for their learning.  The short (and nowhere near comprehensive) list came down to:

1. Taking notes, both as annotations while reading and while taking in information from a video or in class
2. Collaborating and having academic conversations with peers
3. Establishing a procedure for writing fluency - writing without stopping or talking for 3-10 mins
4. The basics of patterning - finding patterns in a text, categorising those patterns, and starting to find meaning
5. Using information from sources accurately and effectively
6. How to work productively and independently for a short amount of time without disrupting others
7. Using technology essential to the course - Google Drive, MentorMob, YouTube, Gmail, Blogger
8. What it means to work to mastery, rather than just for completion

We gave ourselves the first trimester or so to teach and assess those skills.

As we started to plan out the unit, we thought about what content we should use for this unit.  Other than Looking for Alaska, we didn't want to use fiction, either short or long-form, or poetry (or at least not predominantly).  So we decided to focus on two things:

1. How the teenage brain operates, and how it learns
2. What the purpose of school is, and how our understanding and decision-making is (or should be) influenced by brain development

So we began to build a unit that would teach our students those concepts; however, the real focus is on the skills.  So we will watch a TED Talk on the adolescent brain, but the actual assessed skill is note-taking.  The question on the open-notes assessment is just a way of checking to make sure students see the utility of good note-taking.  We may do a piece of visual art about one of the videos we watched, but the real skill is in finding patterns and showing the main idea clearly through their art (even if it's stick figures).  All of these skills are things that are required in the Common Core standards, or lead to students becoming more critical readers, writers, and thinkers.  We also believe that regardless of whether these things are in the standards verbatim, they are the skills that literate human beings need for whatever they do after leaving high school.

Everything is leading toward the project students are undertaking that centres around this question:
What is the purpose of a high school, and what can we do to implement one change at our school to make it fit that purpose better?

That question will guide all of our study.  If you want to see what this looks like, here is the MentorMob playlist that has all the videos we're using (we do a video every day at the start of class to get students in their seats on time and focused, and also to give them something to write about if they need a topic for their daily writing warm-up.  We also have used lots of TED Talks about education and the teen brain) and many of the assignments we've created to lead them towards thinking about education and their place in their school community.  I've also started getting in the habit of taking a picture of anything I write, whether it's on the board or my own personal notes about something.  I post these for my students, and many of the steps on the playlist are the notes/instructions that I've modelled and made available for all students.

As with all our curriculum, please take what works for you and use it.  We do ask that you credit us if you take something exactly as-is.  We also acknowledge that NONE of this would be possible without having TED Talks available for free online, and without the work of many of our colleagues, particularly Karl Lindgren-Streicher, who did a version of the "What would you do to make a positive change at our school" project.  We are blessed to have such amazing people share so freely with us, and we'd like to extend the same offer to all of you.

A year ago, we started our YouTube Channel to host our research paper videos.  As we were preparing for our FlipCon12 presentation, we went back and watched those videos for the first time.

Both of us were shocked by how bad they were.  We actually had to stop watching because it made us cringe.

We recognise how revolutionary it was at the time for both of us to be in the same video and to show the process of writing an essay together, live on screen.  But there were lots of reasons why our early videos sucked so much:

1. We didn't know what we were doing
   
2. I didn't know what I was doing with editing
   
3. Neither of us had made enough videos or used them in class to understand what made for a good video
   
4. We were enjoying the process so much that we talked.  Way.  Too.  Much.
   

We didn't end up having a huge need for the video series this year - both of us ended up teaching something different than we had been assigned at the end of the school year, So they kind of sat there on our channel for the last year, and we mostly forgot the existed.

Then when we watched them again, I had an idea.  Now that I know what I'm doing with the editing side, and have some time to kill (yay summer!)I should go back and edit them down from 10-15 minutes to 5-6 minute videos.  So that's been the project that consumes most of my time these days, when I'm not working on our book chapters (PREORDER OUR BOOK HERE!).

I'd love to have some feedback on the updated videos.  I've added the updated video next to the original, just for the sake of comparison.

The old videos are on the left, and the new ones are on the right.  I made the old ones smaller because it made me happy and made the page look better.  The first video is about finding sources.  I've put the videos below the fold because I didn't want them to make the page load slowly for as long as they're on the front page of the blog.  Apologies for the inconvenience.  Please watch them anyway!

This is part three of a series on my collaborative partnership with Andrew Thomasson. 

It seems like every time I write about the mechanics of our collaborative partnership here on the blog, Andrew and I end up fighting.  Not just disagreement fights, where one of us wants to use Batman cartoons, and the other wants to go super arty hipster and use Batman comics...but only in an ironic way.  

No, these are Real Fights.  I guess when we talk about how awesome it is to work together, all that awesome has to be balanced out by some not-awesome.  This fight was about time.  We have about a dozen projects in the works, and we've had trouble finding the time to do any of it.  Even finding time just to be Friends First was tough the past two weeks.  Coming back from FlipCon, where we were used to having as much time together as we wanted, made readjusting to life lived through technology difficult.  

Finding time is probably our biggest problem, either in the school year or the summer, although our summer schedules conflict far more than in the school year.  Without bells to regulate where we are and at what time in a reliable manner, we have to prioritise differently when we do get time together.  There are always more ideas than we have time for.  And there are always more projects than we could finish in years of work.

But you know what?  That's actually a pretty awesome problem.  

We could be sitting there, bored with each other, running on the fumes of what we've already done or trying to reinvent our ideas just a little to make people think they were different.  But we have SO MANY NEW IDEAS that we can't possibly use them all.  Maybe that's why we like blogging and sharing on Twitter.  If we didn't share some of the ideas we have, then no one would ever use them.  

So even when we've seen our ideas on other people's blogs, or shared on Twitter, or in presentations or videos, there's something pretty cool about that.  Sure, we'd like attribution if the idea was taken from us, but we love that our ideas have a life beyond us.  

It's almost like creating more time for our work.  

We may not produce work forever, and it's even possible that we might not stay in a collaborative partnership forever.  But there have been so many cool things we've done, and even more cool things we've seen other people do with help from us or our ideas, that we think our work will last longer than we will.

And none of the good ideas we've had in the last year could have existed outside of our collaborative partnership.  It's the relationship that generates the ideas. 

 Just like in our classroom, it's the relationship that really matters.

Oh yeah, and we're not fighting any more.  When we argue, it tends to burn out quickly and resolve completely within a few hours (or even minutes), assuming we can find time to talk about it.  Conflict is just a part of life, and one of the things I'm proud of in our partnership - that we've learned ways to fight humanely, resolve issues completely, and not allow resentment to build.  As much as it sucks to fight, we've found that even the fighting is worth it.  It helps when you know that no matter what the fight is about, there's no escape hatch.  Neither of us is going to play the, "Forget it. This partnership and friendship is too much work and drama.  I'm out" card.  There's security in that knowledge.

Again, we are really blessed to be working together, even if there are occasional arguments and not nearly enough time for all the awesome we have planned.

There will always be too much awesome to be contained in our CoLab Partnership. 

#CoLabProblems

This is part two in a series on my collaborative partnership with Andrew Thomasson.  Some of you are probably saying, "Um, what post here is NOT about your collaborative partnership with Andrew Thomasson?" and you would be right.  This partnership has defined my career for the last twelve months, and has changed just about everything that happens in my classroom, and even in my outside-of-school-life. 

He and I were discussing this series of posts this morning, and realised that there is no way to talk about our partnership without talking about our friendship.  Without going into too much detail, both of us have had a very difficult personal and academic year, and we both have years and years of bad patterns with friends and work situations.  Both of us have had close friends who tend towards seasonality; friendship with them is great while it lasts, but life moves one or both of us in a different direction and the friendship dissolves.

Given those factors, it makes our partnership and friendship even more remarkable.  As I wrote in the last post, it is pretty easy to avoid one another if and when we want to, unlike with people who are physically in your living room, rather than pixelly (is that a word? No? It is now).  But maybe the fact that we became friends through technology broke that pattern.  While it doesn't occur to me to have a Google Hangout with friends who live an hour away, Andrew and I have always hung out that way, so it doesn't seem weird at all.

The distance also allows us to spend time at lunch and at night together that would be more difficult if we were in the same place.  We can pretty easily wear pajamas and have dessert and work right up until bedtime without a problem.  If we were in the same place, that just wouldn't be possible.  And because there's so much work, that is a massive benefit.

If you've never had a teaching partner, you probably don't know how much extra work it can be over just teaching your own classes.  The first team-teaching situation I was in involved another English teacher who taught English 10 at the same time I did, and we combined for a project.  It was fantastic, but it only lasted for one project.  The planning burden was overwhelming and we couldn't sustain it.  

The second team-teaching situation was a nightmare.  She didn't respect my content knowledge (it was my first year teaching history, even though I have a history degree and had three years of experience teaching English), and I didn't respect her classroom management (it was her first year teaching in an inner-city Oakland school).  The mentor who worked with our principal told us that team-teaching was sort of like a marriage, and helped us through some marriage counselling.  He told us that we had to commit to each other and that we should have spent more time choosing carefully (we jumped in, based on a commitment made in my INTERVIEW for the position).  As it happened, we ended up "married" to someone who hated us and that subsequently made both of us (and our kids) miserable.  Thank goodness that it didn't last long, as I was able to switch to teaching physics instead about two months into school.  


So when Andrew and I met, I didn't expect it to be a team-teaching situation.  I thought we'd make some videos and work on some projects together and that'd be it.

Then we became friends.  The friends part actually preceded the decision to team-teach; we could only make that commitment once we were sure that we knew and liked the other person, and that it wouldn't make our kids miserable.  It took us about a month of working together to get to that point, and it was pretty obvious that we were well-matched by then.  We actually enjoyed spending time together, the work was better when we collaborated, and we compensated for each other's weaknesses.  All of those things were important in assessing whether or not we should dive into team-teaching together.

So if you're considering a collaborative partner, you need to assess those same things.  You also will need to decide how much control you're willing to give up, and how much you are willing to invest in them as a person, as a friend, and as a teacher.  Inevitably, team-teaching involves putting aside what you want and helping the other person get what they need.  This is really, really, really freaking hard.  It also involves mentoring and being mentored.  If you don't respect and value their opinion, it won't work; if they don't respect and value yours, you shouldn't choose them.

When it comes down to it, choose someone who makes your life better, and whom you would hate to live or teach without.  I can't emphasise that enough: you have to be willing to say, "As difficult as this is, I'm willing to persist because I believe in what we're doing, and you're worth it."

Believe me....that will be tested.  For us, that started about three months into our partnership.

Around October of last year, Andrew and I started having arguments for the first time.  We are pretty low-conflict people, and so tend towards resentment and unspoken bitterness...not the best thing when you're working as closely as we were.  There were two options, really:

1. Both of us had to change
2. We had to stop working together

There were a few times that we limited our work because one or both of us was angry or bitter about something.  The trouble was, that once we got used to having a shared brain and had seen how much better it was in our classroom when we did collaborative planning, it was really hard to go back to the Before Times.  


So we - both of us - had to change because that was less painful than walking away altogether.  


We don't talk about this aspect of our partnership all that much, because it felt too private, too sacred to share.  But what gave us the ability to resolve our differences and continue to forge ahead was our shared faith.  We are both generic non-denominational Christians, and that has given us not only a way to resolve conflict, but a community to help us keep going until we felt like it was worth it again.  There were a lot of weeks where Andrew practically joined my community group, and he's been introduced to almost all of them through Hangout.  Having people who know both of us allowed us to get perspective on how to serve the other person, rather than just caring about what we wanted.


We both believe that without that shared faith, we would have never made it through the last year.  Neither of us was good at friendship a year ago; now, I think we've learned a lot about what it means to sacrifice for the other person to get what they need, but also to advocate for ourselves and what we need.  A solid relationship has to balance both - if only one person cares about the other person's needs, then they will burn out on the other person's selfishness.  And if neither cares, the friendship will dissolve or explode fairly quickly.  


One of the reflections we had in the final FlipCon13 session was that in five years, we'd like to be even better friends to one another.  That is perhaps the most important goal we have for ourselves and our work.


We know that people see our partnership and the work we do and want to know how to duplicate it (it's the question we get asked most, actually).  And the most fundamental rule we can give you is this one: Friends First.  The work we do together is made possible by a really amazing friendship that strengthens us, energises us, and motivates us to keep going with the work and with each other.  


That's not to say that it's all rainbows and ponies.  It's not.  We have disagreements still, but we've learned how to actually practice the rules we set in place a year ago.  Here are some of them:

• Trust Best Intentions - I've heard this in every team situation I've ever been in, and it's been followed in just about zero of those cases.  Both of us find trust difficult, and learning to not jump to conclusions and see through the actions to the intentions has been really, really difficult.  There are still times where he won't text me back, or doesn't do something he says he'll do, and I have to stop myself from inventing negative motivations to his actions and trust that there's a reason and that it doesn't come from lack of care.
• Work is Secondary to Emotional Health - there are some nights that, instead of planning, we need to spend time just being friends.  Sometimes, that's hanging out and watching bad 80's movies.  Sometimes, that's talking about whatever is weighing us down.  Sometimes, it's watching Wheezy Waiter videos and crying with laughter.  We've learned that trying to push through and do ALL OF THE PLANNING first is nearly always a failure.  We need to value the friendship above having an amazing lesson plan.
• Talk About Whatever You're Angry About - we don't allow silent resentment to build up anymore.  Instead, we talk about it together - no matter how crappy the conversation is going to be.  We also don't call each other names, ever.  We do tell each other to shut up (or the more adult equivalent) sarcastically from time to time.  And then we laugh about it.  We have never had an argument where one of us resorts to name-calling because we always deal with issues before we get to the point where we are willing to assign a permanent negative label (jerk, asshole, etc.) to the other person.  I've never really been able to say what I'm thinking or what I'm angry about and not have the other person react badly.  I'm really proud to say that Andrew and I are getting good at this, and that it's changing the patterns in our other friendships as a result.

None of those are all that revolutionary.  Frankly, there are probably people who look at that list and wonder why two 30-ish year olds don't just do that naturally by now.  And to those people, we would say, "Shut it."

But only sarcastically. 

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. 

There are some days where you just don't feel quite so alone - that was today.  

For most of my colleagues, the first day back to class meant hiding out, staying isolated all day, learning new names, handing out syllabi, just surviving.

And even though I had five brand new classes that started today, it was a day of really meaningful connection.  I intentionally got out of my classroom to talk to a few colleagues and had some great (short) conversations with them.  

I also got to speak to every one of my new students (all 152 of them!) at least twice, and often five to six times in the class period.  I don't know their names yet, but I have seating charts with preferred names filled out and group pictures so I can try to learn them faster than last semester (I'm pretty sure I was still guessing on names in the 6th week...remembering that many new names in 50 minute periods just doesn't work for me I guess).  I ha former students drop in to say hi.  The best ones were when 6th period was about to start, and a whole group of my former 6th period students walked by - they wouldn't stop telling the newbies how lucky they were, and how they wished they could switch with them.

But the amazing thing was tonight.  For about 90 minutes, Andrew and I had the pleasure of being a part of the largest gathering of English flipped learning teachers that we know about.  Here's the line-up:

• Me, 11-12th grade, California
• Andrew Thomasson, 10th grade, North Carolina
• April Gudenrath, 9-12 IB, Colorado
• Kate Baker, 9th/12th grade, New Jersey
• Katie Regan, 10th grade, New York
• Shari Sloane, Alternative school environment, New York
• Sam Patterson, 9th grade, California
• Dave Constant, HS, Connecticut 
• Troy Cockrum, 7th-8th, Indiana

The amount of knowledge in that room is just absolutely incredible.  I learned so much just from being there and listening.  It reminds me of just how much we really need each other and how important it is to work with each other, but also just to connect and be friends.  We need both.

The most amazing thing is that all this time, there has been another collaborative partnership - Katie and Shari - in the English Flipped world.  It seems that Katie and I play a similar role, and Andrew and Shari play a similar role in the way we work together.  

As Andrew and I debriefed the conversation, we were struck by just how much we know, but how much we don't know.  None of our flipped classes look the same.  We all flip writing to some degree, but it looks different in every context, every classroom, every video.  Reading is a much more open field with far fewer answers.

We recorded the conversation and will be posting it soon.  I hope more people can learn with us.  As Andrew says, we may know stuff and may be "defacto experts" but we are learning as we go.  

If you're interested in joining us for one of these conversations, let us know either here on the blog or by finding us on twitter.  Maybe we can fill the room a little bit more next time.