As I’ve been reading some new books over break, I’ve noticed something.

The way I read has changed now that my use of technology has changed.  Let me give you an example.

I read Looking for Alaska. You should too.  But luckily for me, Andrew (my favourite person with whom to read a book) HAS read it.  So as I was reading, and crying, and laughing and wondering how John Green got so nerdfighting awesome, I was also doing something that has become part of my reading ritual/routine/practice these days.

I was messaging Andrew with quotes, thoughts, connections to our own lives, and questions.  I found that when I was struck by the beauty of something, I wanted to just send him the quote.  So I would type out the quote and often realise just how much more beautiful it was as I was copying it verbatim.  And he would respond, and we would talk about it.

And it made me love the book even more.

Then I read An Abundance of Katherines.  And he hasn’t read it.  But he (and you) should.  I found myself actually enjoying it a bit less, not because it was inherently less enjoyable, but because I wasn’t getting the same interaction I had with Looking for Alaska, and before that dozens of other books Andrew and I have read together (synchronously or asynchronously).

When I read, I often take on some of the images, metaphors, turns of phrase, or other subtle patterns in my own writing.  I’ve found that having that kind of assimilation with my favourite books deepens my own ability to express myself, and simultaneously communicates a deeper meaning to anyone familiar with the original work.  I can make an allusion to a character, or a particular scene, and the background of my writing becomes so rich with references that it is a tapestry of meaning to which only some of my readers have access.

That may sound elitist or exclusive, but it’s something we all do.  We make inside jokes with people as a function of relationship.  It connects us to them, and adds shades of depth to our ordinary interactions.  It creates backstory and shared history.  It knits us together in thousands of tiny stitches.  And that’s the same way authors connect to the readers - they give us in-jokes, references to famous stories and situations, and in that way, we understand the world they have created and can see ourselves in it.  If the book is really good, those ideas can actually mean something both inside of and outside of the original context of the novel.

You only have to look to fandom to see that this works extremely well.  How many people dress up like Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc. characters because they feel like it’s a world they inhabit?  On a smaller scale, I was at church on Sunday and someone came in wearing a The Fault In Our Stars shirt (the one that matches the cover, only it says “okay” instead of the book information).  I told her how much I loved John Green and the book and therefore, the shirt; instantly, we had a point of connection where none existed before.  The same thing happens when I wear my birthday present from Andrew - the NOT COOL ROBERT FROST! t-shirt.  Anyone who recognises it is really just recognising one of the stitches that hold us together.

It’s part of human nature to seek connection with others.  And one of the ways we do that is through telling stories and imagining ourselves and other people complexly.

So that is what Andrew and I have been talking about lately.  We wanted a way for our kids to engage in many of the same practices that we do as readers: practices we try to model for them so they can see proficient readers and start to change their conception of what it means to read with thoughtfulness and depth.

That’s originally where the ideas for reading journals came up.  When we read books that we’re teaching (or preparing to teach) we don’t do formal annotation, but we do some informal reading journal strategies (and one of us who will remain nameless uses only envelopes and file folders for these).  So I showed my students my crazy messy notes (that I have cleaned up and posted here, along with instructions if you are interested) and talked them through what my idea of a reading journal is.  

But first, what it’s not:

• Cornell Notes, or other kinds of structured note-taking
  
• Graded or evaluated in any way
  
• Treasure hunting for symbols or metaphors
  

In fact, there are only a few things I insist be included:

• Actual thoughts about the text
  
• Something that responds, connects, or interprets the text
  

That’s it.  They can illustrate or use other visuals, they can write out quotes, they can tell a personal story, they can make bullet points of key words or ideas, they can note patterns or repeating language/ideas/themes, etc.  Most of them do a combination of those things.  Some like to write down quick thoughts and then go back and write a more polished version at home that night.  

The point is that I want them to have something that they wrote about the text during or just after when they read.  I’ve found that it increases comprehension, helps them formulate questions so they engage the text more fully, and assists their composition and planning process when the time comes to write the essay or do the project at the end of the unit.

But here’s the flaw in the plan: they are the only one benefitting from these.  They do share with their group, and then often with the whole class, but that is a very limited sphere of influence.

That’s the flaw this New Idea is designed to address.

So instead of doing all the reading journals individually on paper (some do them digitally on their own device), we want students to choose one section of the book and do a video reading journal.  This will look a little like the Death of a Salesman videos I wrote about in the last post, in that they will get a particular section of the book and will be asked to work in a small group to make a video.

But there’s a slight difference.  This video isn’t about analysing character.  It’s about connecting to the text.  And they can talk about anything they want, so long as it gets them to engage and read both academically and empathetically, treating the characters and situations with thoughtfulness and complexity.

It would be a little like a book talk, but with a focus on pointing out the things in that section of the text that can pull the reader in and help them understand the book more fully.  So a straight summary won’t do it.  Neither will some vague statements about character.

I don’t know if this will work, but I think the primary goal is to get students to make a video in which they make people care about the book and want to read it.

All the videos would be under four minutes, but other than that, could be put together however they wished.  They could use puppets, green screen, animation, RSA-style, still pictures, PowToons style, or just sit in front of the camera and talk.

The first step is to make some model videos.  So Andrew and I are working on a project that involves reading journal videos for John Green’s AMAZING book The Fault in Our Stars.  We’ll post it here when we finish it.  Our hope is that we will put together a series that involves members of our PLN (including non-English teachers, because hey, reading isn't an "English Teacher Only" activity) to model what these can look like, and then we can start our students with a plethora of models for inspiration.  We can also work out the bugs in the system before assigning it.  Eventually we’d love our students to actually make videos to send to their classmates across the country (so Andrew’s students make them for a book my students are reading too, and then my students make videos and then send them back, etc.).

And it just sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.  It’s kind of like a book club with more #EduAwesome.

We’d love to know if you’ve tried anything like this before, or have ideas to make this idea even better.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Nerdfighteria lately.  One of the core values of that amazing online community is that part of our jobs as humans is to figure out how to imagine each other complexly.  We all know the epic failures that happen when one person or culture came to believe a single story about another person or culture - history is rife with examples of times when the failure to imagine The Other complexly resulted in torment, violence, war, and slaughter.

As human beings, our tendency is to try and fit other people into A Story to help us define them.  When we are children, this is necessary.  We need words to define and classify and divide and conquer because otherwise, the world would be a series of sounds and movements we couldn’t fathom into coherent patterns.  We need to define and we need to figure out a way of understanding things generally, or we will never understand anything.

But the more childlike we are, the more we cling to a single story, or a single understanding of something or someone.  The person we’re dating is PERFECT and then they disappoint us and they are suddenly THE WORST PERSON EVER.  We see black and white in all their terrible brilliance, but we fail to see the infinite shades of grey in between.

That’s right.  I just called all the people in the world who only see a single story childish.  And here’s the thing - there are issues where I see only the single story.  There are issues where you only see the single story.  It’s part of being human: if we could somehow actually see EVERYTHING complexly, we would explode trying to reconcile it all.

But we do get to choose the level of complexity we want to reconcile.

And it starts with ourselves.  We know that we each have more than A Story, but we spend most of our life trying to tell that story in a way that takes into account overwhelming complexity but also base simplicity.  If we’re lucky, we live a life where the people around us can imagine us complexly enough to not demand we fit the Single Story into which they’ve molded us.

So when a generally nice person acts like an asshole, we can reconcile the fact that it’s an unusual reaction and give them some compassion in trying to understand why.  And when a selfish person does something so “out of their nature,” we can appreciate the goodness of the deed without changing our overall impression of them.

Part of why I love literature is that it forces us to deal with complex characters who refuse to be defined neatly.  Odysseus is both a hero and not a hero.  Holden is both a whiny brat and a sad, lonely kid.  They defy our attempts to explain with a single story because they are Just Like Us.  They can do beautiful, heroic things, and at the same they can be a passive coward.

So how do we take students who are used to telling a Single Story and help them see characters as complex human beings?  

But more importantly, how do we help them accept their own complexity?  And how do we help them accept the complexity of the world around them?  And how do we help them move from a worldview in which a person can only be one thing to a worldview where a person is many things simultaneously and yet also just one thing?

Humanity is beautiful yet broken, complex yet crooked, terrible and yet transcendent.  It’s art, and music, and war, and YouTube comments, and genocide, and Gatsby and Alyosha Karamazov, and Alaska Young.  Humanity is all of that and none of that.

With all that complexity, how do we teach our students to be human?  And how do we model for them what complex humanity is when they only see us, their teachers, as a single story?

We recently had students make short analysis videos about one of the two sons in Death of a Salesman.  Their videos were supposed to do two things:

• demonstrate they can read with thoughtfulness and depth
• connect with the character and show them complexly

And guess what - they can do the first really well.  But for some reason, most of them had a lot of trouble seeing their character as more than a stereotype.  Happy is (to use his mother’s words) a philandering bum who gets ignored and so needs attention.  Biff is (to use his father’s words) a good-for-nothing bum who steals and hates his father.

But those are the Single Stories that Arthur Miller gives us.  And if we stop there, we miss the beautiful complexity of those two characters.  Most critics spend more time talking about Biff.  So I’m going to talk about Happy.

Happy is a walking contradiction: he never feels like his father loves him enough, and so he looks for love in the relationships he creates.  But instead of looking for women like his mother - solid, loyal, the kind of woman you marry - he looks for women who are unavailable.  He wants to want the right kind of woman so much that he takes those women from other men...thus making them the wrong kind of woman.  And once he has slept with them, he loses interest and moves on.  The need he has to gain approval is never met in the accomplishment of the conquest of women.  But he also realises that his tendency towards philandering means that he loses the approval of his mother.  She sees him as a single story - a story she loves, but a single story.  

All of that can be determined by reading with thoughtfulness and depth - and most of my students said those kinds of things.  

But nothing I just said shows you that I empathise with Happy or see him as a complex human being.  So here’s my attempt.

When you have a parent who always expects more of you than you can possibly do, you choose one of two options: you try harder, or you give up.  Happy knows that his life will never measure up - it’s clear that Biff is the superior brother, but even BIFF can’t make his father happy.  He hears Willy say, “Good job, son.”  And he hears what is not being said audibly, but is thick in the air nonetheless: “You did a good job.  But not good enough.”

So Happy starts lying constantly - that he’s getting married, that he’s got a good job, that he is happy.  He builds up an identity around those lies until his entire identity IS a lie, and he deals with the fact that he feels unimpressive by making himself seem impressive.  Then he hits crisis point - his father dies.  And his father’s death means that his chance to earn Willy’s approval is permanently buried alongside Willy.  After nearly three decades of trying to live up to impossible expectations, he can either admit his failures and try to rebuild his identity from the ground up, or he can double-down and keep chasing the impossible dream.

So which is the easy choice?  Is it easier to admit that your life is a lie?  Is it easier to work towards something that is always a little out of reach?  Is it easier to tell the truth or to continue to try to make the lie the truth?

And that leads to an overwhelming question: What if there is no easy choice?  

What if Happy is far more complex than just a boy needing his father to love him more?  

What if some of our own brokenness was the same as his?

THAT’S what my students didn’t see.  

It’s the same reason why we started this semester with a discussion about the point of reading.  My students thought that empathy was important in reading - they even made it one of the 5 E’s of reading: Entertainment, Escape, Equality, Education and Empathy.  

But they don’t know how to do read empathetically AND academically.

Here’s what I believe about reading, now that I’ve been reading for 26 years, and reading academically for about 16 of those years.

Reading the whole book is important.  You need to know the characters before you can understand them, and you need to understand them before you can imagine them complexly, and you need to imagine them complexly before you can empathise with them.  Reading that way doesn’t make the author less important.  It makes the experience more personal - just as it was to the author when they wrote it.

Reading closely is important.  The words the author chooses are important, and chosen for greatest impact.  When we read closely, we are engaging with the writer on their level.  We are reading in the same way we write - carefully, thoughtfully, critically, and intimately.  Reading that way doesn’t murder the text.  It illuminates it.

We read because we believe that good literature can speak to us, regardless of the original time, place, culture or language.  Good books tell us what it means to be human.  If it’s a really good book, it does it in such a way that it sneaks up on us.  It’s the grenade in the corner that the book leaves, glinting in the sunlight just enough for us to feel its presence.  And when the walls collapse around our life of lies, it explodes, and in the rubble, it helps us see what should go in its place.  It remakes us into more beautiful, equally broken, and stunningly complex human beings.

And the very best books are the ones that not only tell us who we have been, but who we can be.  

They articulate the things we’ve always known, but could never say or explain.  

They reflect us, in all our despair and loss and pain and joy, and help us understand ourselves and each other.

They leave behind pieces of the characters so that we are less alone.

And it is that feeling - the feeling of being less alone in a cold, painful, and lonely world - that I want my students to feel as they read.

That is my personal goal for the rest of this year: to teach my students how to read closely, understand deeply, and allow for complexity.  To empathise with the characters, no matter how bad they seem.  To look for the ways in which they reveal the humanity we all share.

To read empathetically, academically, and complexly.

Like I’ve learned to do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that really what we want to be teaching them?

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are a few main models:

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

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

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

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

**

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

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

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

Andrew makes me better.

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

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

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

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

And neither should you.

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.