Tonight in #flipclass chat, we'll be talking about how we use student blogging to promote life-long learning.  This developed out of several conversations between Andrew and me in regards to how students could build their own PLN as part of our Blank White Page project.  

If you're not familiar with BWP, it's modelled after the Google 20% project - students choose something that interests them, they find information on it, and build some sort of project from that knowledge.  The idea is to promote life-long learning and bring student passion into the curriculum.  It's been a huge success in many ways, but there is something missing.

Most of our great ideas involve breaking down our own process and trying to recreate that with our students.  And the big thing missing for our students was the thing that is most important for us personally: our PLN.  Now, I guess we always figured that the students in our classroom made a PLN together.  But that's not a PLN they are choosing, and rarely are there more than a few students in the room who share their passions.

So we are now thinking about ways to help our students build their own PLN.  We acknowledge that having students use social media is controversial, and requiring it involves the cooperation of the school, the parents, and the students themselves.  

But all of our students have their own blog this year, and what we CAN do, is invite them to build a PLN made up of other people from around the world who blog about whatever it is that interests them.  They can also connect with people using their YouTube accounts. 

This post isn't to announce that we have a great, finished idea right now.  It's to help promote the conversation in tonight's flipclass chat.  The hope is that, just like in our own classrooms, if we start the thinking BEFORE we all meet together, we can use our "face to face" time much more productively.

Karl reminded me of several posts that deal with student blogging on a thoughtful and deeply personal level.  I'm sharing them here because it will also help to drive our conversation tonight.


Student Blogging Do's and Don'ts by David Theriault
Why Blogging Isn't Transformational for Our Students (yet) by Will Chamberlain

If you have others that you think will help people make thoughtful contributions to tonight's chat, please add them in comments!  

Tonight I don't have much time to write.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the writing assignments from the semester:

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

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

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

Okay.  Back to work.

A lot of people, much smarter than I am, have been writing what it means to be flipped, and some other people (also smarter than me) have questioned whether or not what we're doing can even be called flipped.

Naming something, defining it, is a way of understanding.  We give things names so we can catagorise, analyse, interpret.  It's natural, and it's helpful.  

But what happens when something changes, expands, grows, and the definition no longer is quite right?  Do we come up with a new term?  Do we become more strict with the definition so as to be more clear?  

Or do we expand that term so that, rather than constricting our understanding, it widens it and allows for more people to come inside and be included.

That, more than anything, defines flipped learning for me: inclusive.

When I happened upon flipped learning at this time last year, I didn't see how I could fit in.  My students were poor, they lacked internet at home, and I had no way of recording video.  Oh yeah, and all the models out there were for math and science, and I taught English.

But there was something about flipped learning that caught my attention.  In a school where direct instruction was mandated and commonplace - almost part of the DNA - it seemed like something that would both please my administrators AND help my students learn.  I could do direct instruction but I could also spend more time helping my students get better at reading, writing, listening and speaking.

It seemed like the perfect solution in many ways.  

So I went looking for a way to make it work.  My district Ed Tech director got me an iPad so I could make my own videos.  I polled my students, and only three of them didn't have a smartphone or a computer with internet access at home (this was in a 90% SED school).  I arranged for those three students to use my devices during break, lunch or before/after school.  So I made some videos with the week's etymology lesson, assigned them as homework, and used the time we would have spent copying the notes practicing with the content, doing real-life examples, and playing memory games.  Test scores on the weekly quizzes went up, and I was confident I was on to something.

Then that same Ed Tech director pitched Twitter to us.  And I was Not Interested.  At all.

For a few days.  Finally, I just asked my students to teach me Twitter and help me get started.  They were happy to oblige.

Very quickly, I was hooked.  And that's also when I discovered that there was so much more to flipped learning than I had ever expected.  

I joined the #flipclass Monday chats (which now I help moderate semi-regularly).

I started blogging and sharing my posts on Twitter (which may be where you found this post).

I had conversations with some of the people I had read about - Brian Bennett, Crystal Kirch, Troy Cockrum, Jon Bergmann, Aaron Sams - and they all helped to push my thinking on various issues.  Many have now become my close friends.

That's how, within six weeks of flipping, I transitioned from "Flip 101" (assigning videos as HW and former homework as classwork) to something that I still saw as flipped, but wasn't the same as how many of my colleagues flipped their class.

My classroom quickly became mastery-based, paperless, self-paced and homework free.  I still made videos, I still used many of the same tools as my Flip 101 colleagues...

...and I still tweeted to the same hashtag.

Flipping my class no longer was my goal.  I was flipped.  Instead, my goal was to make my flipped class the best possible place for MY students, in MY context.  I started to view flipped learning as a place where students had ownership (responsibility was flipped to them from me) and where I used technology to help them learn best.   Later, I moved to defining flipped learning by the Flipped Mindset - a definition developed by several collaborators on Twitter.

Now, a year into my flipped journey, my classroom looks different than it did last fall, last spring, or even at the beginning of this school year.  

I have what I like to call my CoLab partner, Andrew Thomasson.  He helps me plan all of my instruction, prepares for and films video lessons with me, and encourages me to be a reflective practitioner, a good flipped teacher, and a better friend.  I'm at a new school and operate with a BYOD policy and open wifi network.  My students are much higher skilled, and require far less direct instruction (almost none).  I don't assign homework, and don't always use video.  I've stepped away from self-pacing and paperless (without 1:1 netbooks, that's a lot harder) and embraced a far more student-centred pedagogy that focuses on higher-order thinking skills and real-life application of concepts.

There are many people who would say I'm not flipped.

And I would argue, just as vehemently, that I am.

**

When Romeo asked himself, "what's in a name?" I doubt he was thinking about its application to the flipped class community.  Nevertheless, it's a good question.

So, flipped class community, what's in a name?

For me, this is what's in a name:

• a method by which I started to listen more to my students, and work to meet their individual needs.  I learned most of those things from my community on Twitter and Edmodo.
• a move to a more reflective practice - one I never imagined.  I didn't know that to be reflective, you need someone who will help you process.  That is what happens in the flipclass community on a daily basis.
• a return to my writing - something I had always thought of, but never had inspiration to sustain.  This blog is the most meaningful writing I've done since I graduated from college.  And I am now writing more than just blog entries, which has helped me work through a lot, personally and professionally.
• a transformational experience - one that not only changed me, but changed how my students experience me as their teacher.  That was only possible by moving over the bridge that flipclass built.
• a group of people - my Cheesebuckets - who listen to me, protect me, question me, challenge me, and keep insisting that I should not stay where I am, but keep moving forward, getting better.  These people would not be in my life without flipclass.  And my life would be far less rich without them.
• and most importantly: a collaborative partner, a new BFF, someone to listen to me, help me channel my crazy ideas (and sometimes, add more craziness until they actually start to make sense), doesn't let me stay frustrated or resentful, but insists that we work things out, and most importantly, someone I can trust and who I know cares about me, both as a teacher and as a person, and about my work in the classroom.

So what's in a name?  A change that has given my students a better teacher and a better education.  A community where I am inspired, engaged in conversation, and often, challenged so that I don't grow stagnant.  

And most importantly, I now have friends.  Friends who share the family name - flipped class - and unites us around a common goal: making our classroom the best possible place for our individual and corporate student body, and for us as teachers.  

And even though some of us may start to grow into more distant cousins, if we give up the family name, it would mean denying where we came from.  This is the kind of family that doesn't disown a brother who shies away from family gatherings; it's the kind of family that expands, becomes more inclusive as more and more distant relations show up on our doorstep, needing our help, our acceptance, our love.  It's also the kind of family that still welcomes you, even when you don't need it anymore.

This family name is where our roots are.  

This family name is who our people are.  

This family name - flipped class - is who WE are.  Together.

That is what's in THIS name.  

And I'm proud to be in this family.  No Matter What.

I've written about my 6th period class a bit in previous posts.  They've been doing projects on an area of humour that we have not studied together.  

Today, we had a study in contrasts.

The first group started presenting on Friday, but because of some administrative tasks, they weren't able to finish.  Their presentation was about stand-up comedy.  More on them in a minute.

The second presentation group covered ten types of humour, with some examples.  Here is what they did (see if you recognise it):

1. Gave a handout with ten definitions of types of humour (slapstick, parody, satire, etc.).
  
2. Read the definitions off the PowerPoint (exact replica of the handouts).  Around the third slide, they lost the audience.  When the audience started to recognise that the presenters did not fully understand everything they were teaching, the audience responded by asking questions.  It started with factual questions - does that include x? What does y mean? - and progressed to more chatter than actual questions.  The audience actually seemed frustrated to not be learning and resentful of the waste of their class time.

3. At this point, the group rushed through the last few slides so they could get to the videos.  They hadn't made them hyperlinks, so they had to manually copy/paste them into another browser window.  Several members of the audience shouted at them to do control-click.  They either didn't hear or chose not to listen.

4. When they finally had the video ready, they didn't give context.  Just pressed play.

5. Less than half of the audience was paying attention.  They continued regardless.

6. After the first clip, they asked students to write their answer to the comprehension question on the back of the handout.  They had only made enough for each group to have one.  So they told the students to do it as a group.

7. Then they showed a second clip and gave them a second comprehension question.  

8. As class was about to end, they just went back to their seats and told students to "turn in the papers or something."

Is it their fault that their presentation wasn't effective in teaching the students, or engaging their attention?  Not necessarily.  They haven't been trained in how to present information, and have been less than attentive for much of the semester.  

Their presentation was the first one from that class that was anything less than mind-blowing (like producing a comedy video, leading an improv workshop, analysing memes about Marin...all fantastic and very funny).  For a student presentation, it certainly wasn't bad.  Yes, they committed some presentation sins (technical problems, reading off the PowerPoint, not being fully prepared, not keeping the audience engaged, etc.) but they met the requirements set out in the assignment.  They are decent students who are just not terribly engaged in school, and despite having the freedom to choose an elective, ended up in one they enjoyed but didn't really connect to.

**

It had been so different with the first group.  When they finished, I was astonished to realise that they hadn't just learned the tools of humour analysis.

They had learned effective lesson structure.

They had unknowingly used Explore Flip Apply - the same structure I have used to teach them all semester.

I didn't tell them my structure, and so certainly never encouraged them to follow it.

But here's the lesson they presented:

Explore:
Students were directed to a bitly address that took them to a collaborative google doc.  The presentation group asked them to write a joke - any joke.  It didn't even have to be funny.  They watched and laughed as their classmates entered jokes anonymously (since it was a public link, they didn't need to sign in....an intentional move by the group to let people have the freedom to be experimental).

Flip:
The group then presented a few techniques used by stand-up comedians, such as timing, exaggeration, and exploration of the unexpected.  They solicited feedback from the audience to clarify their misconceptions, and posed a few questions to check their understanding.  They showed several clips (since they ran out of time, they assigned one as homework - the "Hot Pockets" Jim Gaffigan routine - best. homework. ever.) and asked the students to identify some of the elements used, as well as analyse their effectiveness as humour tools.

Apply:
Finally, they had students go back to the google doc and look at their own joke again.  They asked them to revise their joke to add some of the elements.  Then they asked students to come up to the front and tell their joke as a stand-up routine, and then asked the audience to analyse the techniques used.  Four students volunteered and shared, and several more would have shared had there been time.

Finally, we did our Seminar Assessment reflection questions (which they had helpfully included in their presentation, even without it being required), where the group listened to the feedback respectfully.  They even offered some additional materials to let advanced learners find out more.

**

They Explore-Flip-Applied a presentation, on their own.  And it was as (if not more) effective than what I've taught them.

So how is it that one group was so successful, and the other group wasn't?  

Was it because of the strength of the relationship built with their classmates through discussions, seminars, and collaborative group work?  Sure.  The second group spent more time checking Facebook on their phone than participating in class.

Was it having clear passion for the subject and an intense desire to communicate that to their peers?  Absolutely.  The second group were far less attached to their topic than the first.

Was it having the necessary toolkit of skills?  Yes.  The second group struggles to think critically and write effectively.

Or was it because the first group took responsibility for their learning, and had ownership, and the second group didn't?

I think that's the key point.  All of the other things were essential to getting them there - relationships, passion, skills - but when they took ownership and had pride in their work, they naturally gravitated to the instructional technique they had learned first-hand from me.  And while the second group learned something, it was the first group that had really been transformed.

This presentation wasn't just something they did.  It became who they are.

And they don't need a grade to prove they learned something.

Nor do I need a test to prove that I taught something.

And now that I have a fresh start coming in a few weeks, I'm afraid that I won't be able to repeat this kind of awesomeness.  It's daunting to see the final product and think about starting over.

But maybe next semester, there won't be a second group.

I keep expecting this project to fail.  Turning over the final month of class to my students is something that scares me.  I actually have had a few mini-panic attacks about planning for that class - until I remember that I'm not planning for them anymore.  My job is just to show up, guide, and get out of the way.

Right now, I have a full class in the computer lab.  They are all working.  Every one of them.  Considering what text to use, preparing presentation notes, writing questions that will engage discussion, and preparing the assessment that will judge whether or not they presented effectively.

And that's the issue that came up at the start of class.  

One of my students asked: "Do we have to make this about humour?"

My immediate reaction was no, because humour can be drawn from nearly every subject.  But then I realised: I shouldn't be the one answering the questions.

If the students are truly taking responsibility, they need to decide on the answer to that question.  It sparked a debate, where they finally decided that, so long as it was different enough from what we've done so far, they could have a broad mandate as to potential topics.

Then I reminded them that they would be the ones assessing each other.  So the discussion transitioned into being about how they would do that in a fair and equitable way.  At first, they were scared.  

Would I override the students, should their grade not be fair?
What if their presentation was intended to be funny but wasn't - would they fail?
What if they aren't confident presenters?  Would that matter?

So I just kept turning the conversation over to them.  I told them I had no intention of overriding grades, unless something went really, really wrong.  And that I didn't expect that to happen.

As we continued to talk about how they should assess each other, I realised something I should have done from the beginning: 

They need to write the rubric.

Here's what they said about how to assess these activities:

• Grades can't be based on whether or not it's funny. 
• Grades should in part be about authentic passion towards and effort to clearly communicate the subject
• Grades should measure what the audience learned, not what the group thought they were teaching

It was one of those moments you don't believe actually happened.  Did my students just articulate clearly the philosophy that Andrew and I set out to implement?  Where the letter grade was far less important than the amount they learned, and where the motivation for learning would be student-driven, not teacher-driven.  Where they were graded on mastery, not completion.

On Thursday, they will write their rubric and we'll make final decisions about how that all works.  

I know a lot of good teachers who would have realised all of this a lot sooner - they would have immediately asked students to develop a rubric, manage discussion, sign up for presentations, etc.  But I'm new at this.  I ran a more traditional teacher-centred classroom for a long time, and the times I tried to get my students to take responsibility for their learning were spectacular failures.  

Flipping my class gave me the tools, the equation, the alchemy of collaboration - and that allowed me to change my class entirely, to the point that my students can run nearly a month's worth of class sessions on their own.

My job is to sit back and get out of their way.  

And you know what's most exciting?  

I get to learn from them.

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

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

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

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

Here is the information from the document linked above:


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

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

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

Unit Goals:

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

Essential questions:

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

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

There are a lot of people who will tell you that mastery grading won't work with English.

Andrew Thomasson and I disagree.  We're doing it, actually, and it's working pretty well so far.

Here's our video explaining the philosophy and basic principles of Mastery:

Our Mastery system is based in large part on an idea stolen from Jon and Aaron.  Here's our latest grade table:

In this first unit, we are assessing the following things for mastery:
1. Process of posting to their blog, accessing and using all their Google accounts
2. Making an inference based on evidence
3. Writing an essay that defines who they are through a transformational experience
4. Developing a project that shows mastery of a concept
5. Having a conversation with a group that shows their ability to come to a collaborative definition
6. Reading a text and finding patterns
7. Making meaning of those patterns to determine author's intent

Some of those are processes, and some are about content.  This whole first unit is built on the idea of Explore Flip Apply, and all of those skills and processes were developed throughout the unit in that way.  As an example:

Patterning
Explore: Students read a text and find any repeated ideas or patterns.  Discuss with group to find commonalities.

Flip: Students watched this video:

Apply: Students went back through the text and made meaning from the pattern we found but didn't explicitly trace in the video.  They had to have a group discussion with us to demonstrate that they understood the pattern and how it affected the meaning in the text.

We patterned several other texts in that way (some with a video, some with live in-class modelling of the patterns we found), and the final assessment will ask students to pattern a new text and make meaning of it on their own.

***

Now, we still live in a point-based reality.  So somehow, we need to give students points for getting to mastery.  The way we decided to make it work is to give students all the points for showing mastery, and none if they didn't.  At the end of the unit, the assessment is graded on a rubric, but all other strands are all/nothing.  So 20 out of the 55 unit points are graded on a rubric.  That means that about 1/3 of the unit points are in the assessment and NOT all/nothing.

If students get all the points for the classwork, the most they can get is an 85% - to get the other 15%, they need to complete the Blank White Page project work for the unit.  This is straight-up stolen from Karl Lindgren-Streicher.  Thanks, buddy.

The last thing to mention is the Behind Line.  That's the date on which work should be completed, but students are not "late" until the unit is over.  I don't think we'll take work after the unit is over, but we need to see how it shakes out before deciding for sure.  It's all based on the idea that students can work ahead, but not fall behind.  Often, we will still do synchronous work in class, so we want students to stay near the same point through this unit.  Again, we'll reassess later.

The students are responding positively to this - in fact, they've stopped asking about their grades now, and seem to trust that this is as straight-forward as we keep promising. The true test will come at the end of the unit.

Every year, I have the same anticipation leading up to the school year.  There are unlimited ideas and possibilities.

And then we hit week 4.

And I'm suddenly aware of how much less I can actually do than I wanted and planned to do.  And that silences me. 

So I stop blogging, just in case someone can read in between the lines at how much I'm failing.  

I stop going on Twitter, just in case someone asks me how things are going and I have to tell the truth.

Colleagues stop me in the hallway, and I tell them that "I'm fine" - which is a total lie.  Because I can't tell them the truth:  I'm afraid that what I'm doing isn't good enough.

I start hiding.

I ignore the evidence that learning is happening and that students are making connections between what we're doing and what I want them to learn.  I ignore the opinion of the person who knows my classroom and curriculum better than I do and believes in me far more than I believe in me.  I ignore the parents who left my room on Back to School Night telling me how "inspired" they felt and how "exciting" it was to hear about flipped class and blank white page and all the other amazing things we're doing.

I ignore all of that.  Because the voice in my head keeps telling me it's Not. Good. Enough.  And that voice turns into a chorus of every bad experience from my eight previous years in the classroom - from overbearing principals, to judgemental colleagues, to critical students.

That's The Narrative.  The voice in my head that repeats every negative thing anyone has said about me, my classroom, and my educational beliefs.  The voice of colleagues who never ran out of things to complain about.  The voice of administrators who just didn't get what I was doing.

The Narrative says that I'm failing.  And for eight years, I had no idea how to stop it.

But now I do.

****

Now, I don't think a reflective teacher can ever stop believing The Narrative entirely, because it comes with wanting to do a great job and knowing that it is impossible.  The classroom has too many variables, there is too little time, and there is always too much we want to do.  We want to change the lives of our students.  We want to make a difference.

And we do.

But life change doesn't happen overnight.  It's a series of small decisions, small actions, small words.  And when we show up every day and put our heart and effort and time into teaching our students everything we can, we change their lives...in small increments.  Trust and community are not built overnight, and no amount of wishing or planning can make them appear.  

The only thing that can build trust and community is love.  Love for our students, love for our curriculum, and love for our profession.  It is the only thing that can change anything.

Love is the only thing that can stop The Narrative.  

I know that sounds a little like I'm singing Kumbyah while holding hands with fairies and dancing around Stonehenge.  

And frankly, I don't care.  

Love is wanting your friends and colleagues to succeed so much that it's more important than your own success.  And paradoxically, having so many people to root for has made me more successful as a teacher than ever before.  And with that many people cheering for me, I can't hide.  

Having so many people on my team means that it's impossible to let The Narrative win.

I have colleagues at Redwood who check in on me to make sure I'm okay.  Before Back to School Night, I had over half the department come to see me to give me advice and see if I needed any help.

I have students who work hard and make me want to work even harder.  Who write about the tragedies that shaped them in a completely open and honest way.  Who can't quite believe that I really mean what I say about there being "no anxiety" in my classroom.

I have administrators who go out of their way to understand what I'm doing and support me so I can continue to do my job.

I have friends in the #flipclass community who give me advice, send me resources, and offer support when I need it.

And best of all, I'm team-teaching with Andrew Thomasson, and he won't let me fail.  He also knows me well enough to see when I'm letting The Narrative take over a little too much and he Won't Let The Narrative Win.  The impact Andrew has had on my classroom and my life is a little ridiculous.  It's been postulated in the #flipclass community that we may even be the same person.  

I can't help but be overwhelmed to have so much support, especially in a profession where isolation is just the accepted reality.  I have never had so many people cheering for me.  All of those things are small decisions that people make, and that adds up to a transformation in who I am as a teacher, as well as how much power The Narrative has over me.

When you have that many people who care about you, it's impossible to close your door and pray that no one notices how much you're failing.  

So it's time to Flip The Narrative:

You can't do this alone.  And when you're not alone, and you have people who love you and root for you, you can't fail.  And when it feels like you are ready to give up and shut up and admit defeat, you look at all the small decisions people have made to show how much they care.  And that's enough to keep going.

In the Flipped Narrative, we all win:
Our students get the best version of us we have.
Our colleagues get the passion and excitement we have for our classroom.
Our PLN gets more resources, more support, and more of us.
And we get people to help us recognise all the small decisions we make every day, and how those decisions are a far better measure of our success than The Narrative would like us to believe.

So flipping my classroom really has changed my life...in small increments.  

And it's Not Over Yet.

And if those next 179 days are as amazing as the first two, it's going to be a hell of a year.  

I didn't start off by telling them about the flipped classroom.

I didn't even start off by showing them a video.

We didn't use much technology.

I gave them a Blank White Page, and they wrote questions on one side, answered one question from me (Who are you?) on the other, and took two pictures.

And the coolest thing that happened was that by 3rd period, kids came in talking about how excited their friends had been after leaving my first two classes.  I had numerous colleagues, including several in the SPED department, tell me that kids had raved about how good my class was.

And that was just the first day.

Today we had LOTS of technical difficulties, but we managed to work through most of the playlist I had set up.  I even have some kids done with it entirely.  Like completely done.  With all 10 assignments they've had over two days.  And no one is behind.  Work ahead, but don't get behind is working.  So far.

I will post more thoughts when I have time, but I seriously can't believe that they pay me to work at this school.  Unreal.

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

I think that's all crap.

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

****

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

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

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

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

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

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


****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

****

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

I know which one I'd choose for them.





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