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

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

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

We are.

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

The problems:

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

But This is the Truth:

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

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

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

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

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

How do we get students to take responsibility for what they are learning, rather than expecting us to help them every step along the way?

It's a hard question to answer because I believed that I never had to have anyone motivating me to do my schoolwork.  

But that's not entirely true.  There are many times (even now as an adult) that I act much like my students who would be on the "not taking responsibility for learning" list.  So I tried to find patterns.  Here's what I came up with:

1. When I feel as if my time is being wasted, I stop caring.
2. When the instructor proves to be incompetent, either in content knowledge or in adequate preparation, I stop wanting to listen.
3. When there is open disdain or resentment towards me/the class/the audience/the subject/the organisation, it shuts me down.
4. When I don't get enough time to process, I stop "playing school."
5. When I don't see the relevance to my life or practice, I tune out.
6. When I am personally overwhelmed by something wholly unrelated to school, I disengage. 
7. When I am not treated like a respected colleague and peer, I fight back or I give up.

Are those the reasons my students don't take responsibility for their learning?

I had to honestly ask myself these dangerous questions (and I encourage you to as well):

• Do I prepare enough to make it feel like class time is productive, rather than wasted?
• Do I present myself in such a way at to make students think I believe I know everything and am the sole/main source of learning in the classroom?
• Do I treat my students as peers in learning, rather than as passive recipients of knowledge?
• Do I give them enough time to process and reflect, and help them understand how what they're doing is relevant to their lives?
• Do I take good enough care of myself that I'm healthy and able to do my job effectively as much as humanly possible?
• Do I use my authority to shut them down?  Do I make them feel like they aren't as good as me because I am the one with her name on the door?

Sometimes, I do a good job.  Sometimes, I don't.

***

The thing I think Andrew and I haven't done well enough this year is helping students see the relevance of what we're doing, and how it is helping them learn important skills.  

We started this unit with these goals:

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

And these were our essential questions:

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

So those were great goals and essential questions, but none of the instructional design matters if I'm not creating a classroom where students are responsible for their own learning.

***

So I need to change.  These are my answers to my own questions:

• Do I prepare enough to make it feel like class time is productive, rather than wasted?

Most days, I am prepared enough to make it through that day.  But the last few weeks, we haven't been planned far enough ahead that I could LET students work ahead.  Which meant wasted class time.

• Do I present myself in such a way at to make students think I believe I know everything and am the sole/main source of learning in the classroom?

No.  I believe that I've presented myself as someone who is learning alongside them.

• Do I treat my students as peers in learning, rather than as passive recipients of knowledge?

Yes. I've even had days where students suggested doing something related, and we've changed the plan.  Some of those were the best days.  I believe that I have as much to learn from them as they from us.

• Do I give them enough time to process and reflect, and help them understand how what they're doing is relevant to their lives?

This is the one that hurts.  I think I give them time to process, but there have been times when I've cut off a discussion because we needed to move on.  I also haven't let them reflect enough to make meaning of everything we're doing.  I haven't convinced them that learning how to use a blog is useful.  I haven't convinced them that patterning is helpful.  This is the place I need to focus for the next unit.

• Do I take good enough care of myself that I'm healthy and able to do my job effectively as much as humanly possible?

I want to say yes to this.  I'm pretty sure Andrew would say no, that I'm not.  Working on it.

• Do I use my authority to shut them down?  Do I make them feel like they aren't as good as me because I am the one with her name on the door?  Do they feel safe, emotionally and academically in my class?

I think I'm doing okay on this one.  There is always room for improvement.


***

So here's what I've decided on why students not fully taking responsibility:

1. We are not always planned enough to let them work at their own speed.  We need to plan more so students can work ahead.
2. They don't understand why they are learning what they're learning.  We need to show them exactly what they're learning, because they are actually learning a lot.
3. They need more time to process, which means less synchronous work.  The end of this unit has been on collaboration, so a lot of it has been at the same pace.  But not all partners work at the same pace, so one group inevitably finishes early and another is still working after the bell.  This will change in the next unit.
4. They don't see how everything connects, or where it's going.  That was intentional, but I think it was the wrong decision.
5. They aren't reflecting enough on their own learning process and progress.  In the final assessment, there will be a reflection to help address this.

So in the next unit, those are our key focus areas.  If you have ideas that can help, please let us know!

Coming soon: our entire first unit with all the resources we used for six weeks of a high school English flipped class.  We will publish EVERYTHING.  For free.  We're really excited to share it - we're proud of what we've accomplished together in this unit.

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.

This week was the half-way point for June School.  After 2:10 today, there are only four days left.  And a lot of my students have earned enough minutes to finish a few days/hours early.  That's worked out really well, and students seemed to really feel a sense of ownership when they could choose when to do their time.  They really wanted me to come in at 6:30 every day, and there were always a few who wanted to stay until 3:30 (usually different kids...the most time any student completed in one day was a little over 9 hours...with no breaks.  Crazy).  Because of early starts and the intensity of #flipcon I'm struggling a little bit with tiredness, and residual sadness at leaving a job I love and in which I have invested so much.

Part of the craziness of FlipCon12 was that I spent one day teaching and doing virtual attendance.  Here's what it looked like:

Twitter+Flipcon Streaming+Posting the DOL=epic #multitasking.  Notice that my RSS reading (I always read my Google Reader feed with my kids each day) was an AskMetafilter (my other internet obsession) forum question about using a skin graft as a wedding ring (i.e. each person has skin taken from the ring finger and grafted onto their spouse's ring finger).  Never a dull moment in my RSS feed.

Here I'm also monitoring their Edmodo assignments.

Leo thought it was funny to post that he was bored.  He wouldn't have been if he had been watching Aaron Sams and Jon Bergmann's plenary session. 

And here you can see that the kids are still turning in work, even while I was at FlipCon.

Last one:

I BROKE THE TWITTERZ! :-)

I'll post my thoughts on Bergmann/Sams' Plenary and the sessions I attended later.

****

Anyway, we're at the point in the Skills assignments that they are planning or working on their finals. 

Here is what I gave them for their finals:

Vocab/Speaking Final: Research this question and prepare a presentation to teach your chosen strategy to other students: "What strategies can you use to help you understand the meaning of words you don't know?"

Research Skills/Essay Final: Research one of the questions we developed together (about the Holocaust) and write up what you found into a research essay.

Show Not Tell/Creative Writing/Grammar Final: (recycled from Resilience Project) Write an original short story with the theme of resilience.  Must use show-not-tell language and proper grammar/conventions.

Theme/Reading Final: Read a section of Rena's Promise, write an objective summary, and find evidence of a theme.  Write a one paragraph objective summary, then write a claim paragraph defending your choice of theme with evidence from the text.

Grammar Final: Get a DOL perfect.

Those are all the major skills in my summer school class, so I feel pretty good about the amount and quality of work they are producing.  And giving them a week to work on the finals (or for some of them, two days...since they've banked so many minutes so far) feels about right. 

Other than the research essay, I've been pretty flexible with how they can show me mastery (i.e. what the final product is).  I'll post some of the results when they finish.

Looking forward to the weekend, but more than that, I'm looking forward to having a Google+ hangout with fellow English-flipper Troy Cockrum (Twitter: @tcockrum) tomorrow morning.  He's so much farther down the garden path than I am that I'm excited to see what I can learn from him.

Woke up this morning with my head not quite in the place it needs to be.  After a morning of state testing, my 5th period class is being filmed to show what flipped learning looks like in my district.  The video will be part of the board presentation about technology in a few weeks.

But I'm flagging.  The thing about flipped learning is that it takes a lot of energy to run class. 

The results are worth it though.  I'm sure the kids will be great, as always.