So in about a week and a half, I start over.  Andrew and I have been brainstorming a way to start the semester, given that about 1/3 of each class will be returning students and the rest new.  I've wished more than once that I could just keep all my kids until the end of the year - we are at the point where the real amazing movement and progress is possible.

But there's no point in looking back.  It's time to move forward.

So the best idea we had was about reading.  All three of my classes are reading heavy - four to six novels in the semester.  I've really struggled with how to do reading in a way that fits with the mindset that Andrew and I have pedagogically and the context I have practically.  I don't want students to have to do all the reading at home.  We know that doesn't work for most of them, and it's often the homework left for last - many times, following 3-4 hours of homework into the early hours of the morning. 

So there has to be a way to give students the ability to use class time to read; that, paired with the ways that I'm encouraging reading rather than punishing the lack of reading, means that students won't have the stress that normally accompanies the teaching of a novel.  And part of that process is helping students explore why reading is so important.

So why do we read?  That's the question that will kick off our Explore-Flip-Apply mini-unit for all three classes.  From reading the essays from my Essay Exposition class about their experience in English thus far, it's clear that they do not understand why we're asking them to read books that have little to do with them or their lives.

Again - why are we asking them to read these books?  

It's because we believe that literature has a universality that can speak to the experiences that make us human.  Books tell us what it means to love, how to grieve well for lost love, why friendship is essential, how travel broadens our horizons.  They connect us to people with whom we have no connection, and will never know.  They show us the range of human experience and guide us through challenges and successes.

But more importantly for English teachers, literature is a vehicle to get our students to write and think critically.  Not to say that the "universality of human experience" angle isn't important - that's certainly the reason that adults continue to read after their education is complete.  But for our students, we use the characters, the plot, the setting and the writing itself to show them how we have analytical conversations, how to build a rational argument in writing, and to make connections.

But what do our students see?  They see us asking them to analyse the development of a main character.  They see us asking them to write a business letter in the voice of a character.  They see us assign reading quizzes and journals that ask them to interpret specific passages through a critical lens.

They don't see that all of those things are building their ability to become strong critical thinkers.  Is it any wonder that they push back against reading?  Is it any wonder that they don't see reading as important?

For our first unit, we want them to see both sides.  I have a feeling they can generate the "universality of human experience" answer, and that is what they will do on day one.  We will pose the question - why read literature? - we will see the reasons they develop.  Then for "homework" that first night, we will have students watch a short video where Andrew and I talk about why we use literature to teach our classes - and they will take notes.  

The next day, they will be in the computer lab and will be introduced to Google Drive and the AutoCrat script* we'll be using to create new documents for each assignment.  Once that is set up, we will compile the notes students took the night before onto a collaborative note-taking document.  The idea is that they start to develop note-taking strategies that will serve them well in college.  They will not often need to take notes in our class (rarely is there direct instruction, rarely is note-taking required while watching a video, and rarely do we assign ANY homework, let alone a video with notes) but working on collaborative documents will set the foundation for the CO-Lab partner work we will do later.  Then they will work on a reading timeline for their own life.  

The last two days of the mini-unit will be a Socratic Seminar (with collaborative note-taking, live during class and a backchannel discussion**) on why reading literature is important for high schoolers and a short vignette about a meaningful literary experience, positive or negative, from their own life.

The hope is that showing them that reading is about more than getting a grade, hearing about heartbreak, analysing a symbol, or memorising plot points will help them see the relevance of the reading we'll be doing.

The next portion of the unit will be watching Derren Brown's Apocalypse, which plays with the notion of a zombie apocalypse and uses a strong literary reference to The Wizard of Oz...yet another reason to read: so you understand references in popular culture.

I'd love to hear your reasons for why people should read literature.  Having a list of reasons for our video that draw from our PLN would be amazing.

*The amazing thing about this script is that students fill out a google form on the tmiclass.com website, then get emailed a document that is automatically shared with us, dropped in the correct folder, and titled with a standard naming convention.  It's pretty much the coolest thing in the entire world.  Second to collaboration, I guess.


**During our Socratic Seminar at the beginning of the year, I introduced a format I used for reading and watching movies last year and wrote about here on the blog.  Essentially, I open a todaysmeet.com thread, and display it on the front board.  Students then choose inner circle - talking - or outer circle - participating on the todaysmeet thread.  Then there is one students responsible for bringing in the interesting ideas from the students in the outer circle.  Started using this structure in September, and students have loved it and told me that it drastically lowers the anxiety associated with how they have been graded for discussions in the past.

My brother wants to be a writer.  He has lots of time on his hands.

So I put together my entire Essay Exposition course so he could work through it unit by unit (it was part of his Christmas present, actually).

In the spirit of giving, here's what I did.  I will use this structure again if I get to teach this course next year (it's probably my all-time favourite class to teach, actually) but I will make some improvements to give them more feedback in 1:1 settings.

Now, you lose a lot without all the discussion we had.  This is just the reading we did and the writing we did.  There were daily discussions and frequent seminars on all the reading assignments and workshopping the students' writing.  

If you use these assignments or ideas, please credit both me and Andrew Thomasson.  Almost all of this is straight from the tmi shared brain.

To see the unit plans, follow the link.  If any documents are not available, comment here or send me an email.

And Merry Christmas everyone!

When I told my colleagues in the English department what I was doing - giving intense and personalised feedback on all major writing assignments over the semester - for my Essay Exposition final, they overwhelmingly thought one thing:

Those kids will NEVER read it.

As English teachers, we know how frustrating it is to read essays for hours, make thoughtful comments, and then hand back the papers that have only one letter students care about.  After they see the letter written in red at the end, they often discard the comments.

That was so foreign to me when I started teaching.  In high school and college, I was almost as interested in the comments as I was in the grade.  And I always read the comments first, and tried to figure out what the grade would be before I got there.

Why did the feedback mean so much to me, and so little to my students?  

So I did something drastic: I stopped giving them a grade on their essays.

I taught an Essay class where they never got a grade for a piece of writing.  I gave them credit for meeting the requirements, yes.  But never for the quality of their writing.  And contrary to what many people would think, I don't have all A's or F's in my class.  I have a pretty even spread, pushed towards the higher end - as expected in a class where students voluntarily sign up to take a class where they write dozens of essays.  I had one F (in the high 50's), two D's, a handful of C's and the rest A's and B's.

That being said, I wanted them to divorce grades from writing.  I wanted them to have the freedom to explore the topics and voices they didn't yet own.  I wanted to see the creativity they had, not the structure they had learned.

So what did they do when I gave them the intensely individual, focused and detailed feedback form?  The one that I spent 30-60 minutes on per student?

When I handed them back, there was several moments of near total silence.  They read what I wrote.  They shared with their group members.  They came to ask questions about what I wrote.  I didn't find a single feedback paper on the desks, in the trash, or on the floor in the hallway.

And not one of them asked about their grade.  

Instead, we had conversations about their writing.

One of the proudest moments of my career.

I've always loved writing, but I haven't always been good at it.

And I've never been good at teaching writing.  I think that's because I never was taught how to write.  I was given writing instruction, sure, but the attitude of my teachers was that writing was something you just got better at when you practiced more.  They focused on helping me develop my ideas and not so much on how to structure those ideas so they made sense to the reader.

That might be giving them too much credit.  I don't remember ANYONE telling me how to write.  I do remember being encouraged to write on a variety of subjects in low-stakes assignments, but that was mostly in college English classes.

I also remember my creativity being discouraged actively, mostly in high school.

My high school grammar teacher (we spent half the year in literature, and half in grammar) would give us daily journals.  We had to write 20 lines, and the topics were things like, "Imagine sliding down a hill" or "What is a song you like, and why do you like it?"

So I decided to start writing an epic short story.  One that would incorporate the topic every day, but would be about this community of elves.  Ones that had mysterious adventures, like sliding down hills while composing their own inspirational tunes.  Where characters were developed and put in situations where they could be tested, or they could demonstrate their true nature.

After two weeks, she collected our journals.  I waited for her feedback anxiously, as I believed my Elf Soap Opera was my greatest writing achievement yet.

I still remember what she wrote at the bottom of the last journal entry:

This is not appropriate and if you continue to not write about the assigned topics, I will give you a zero on every one.  In fact, I will give you a zero if you even use the word "elf" in another journal.

I cared too much about my grade to push it any farther.  But it was just another event, in a long string of events, that convinced me that I needed to stop believing that people would understand me or see me for who I really was.

I got an A in that class.  But my writing didn't improve; in fact, my confidence as a writer dropped significantly, as a result of having a teacher who meant well, but couldn't see me as anything except a kid trying to get out of an assignment.

I never wrote on a creative topic again in high school.

**

I had forgotten about that until a student in my Essay class mentioned that he had done something similar and had a similar consequence for it.  He asked me what I would have done if he had done that for my class.  My answer was simple: I would have written him a comment that told him what I liked about it.  If it didn't meet the requirements of the assignment, I would ask that he make sure he did that next time.

This was in the context of a discussion about how writing instruction is done here at the school.  What my students said was that, at this level, there are just expected to know how to write already.  They said that, other than a few comments on essays and a grade, they hadn't had much instruction in how to improve their writing.  They knew how to write a five-paragraph essay.  But when asked to do a creative topic, they would completely blank out.

They started naming things they wished they could have had in their English classes:

• individual writing conferences, where they are given specific feedback on what to improve and how to deal with problems they struggled when writing in general
• freedom to write something without obsessing about a grade
• the ability to explore interesting ideas without worrying about how many sentences in a paragraph, or how many paragraphs were required
• instruction on how to take their ideas and make it work in writing
• help in developing and honing their voice as a writer

Basically, the exact same goals I had for them at the start of the class.


We did one-on-one conferences (took three weeks of class time), and when I asked them if that had been helpful (and worth the three weeks it took), they said it was probably the most helpful thing we did all semester.

I disconnected writing from grading.  Nothing they wrote for me received a grade (with three exceptions, which I'll talk about in a minute).  If they completed the assignment, they got 100%.  If they didn't complete it or it didn't meet the requirements, it got a 0%.  My theory was that frequent writing practice would build their confidence and ability, and that they had to stop seeing writing as a transaction; good writing evolves and develops, and the idea only ever grading first drafts is not attractive to me.  

Andrew Thomasson and I do a lot of writing together (like, at the same time in a shared Google Doc), so this has really helped me refine my theory on writing instruction.  We have written numerous guest posts (including one next week for the 12 Days of Dreaming project over at Educational Dreamer) and what we have found is that our first drafts suck.  Sure, they say what we think we want to say, but they never say what we NEED to say.  It takes a lot of refining (and often starting over altogether) to find the version we think represents us best.  If our first draft was published, it would be far less than mediocre, and not even a glimmer of what the final product ends up being.

I apply that principal to my students - some drafts are worth refining, and others aren't.  That's why the three assignments I am actually grading are:

1. The essay they chose to have a writing conference on.  Their task was to revise it after their conference, given the feedback and discussion we had.  I only graded it on the things I asked them to work on.  Most of the time, that was a bit of structure, a bit of organisation, and a bit of concept.  
2. The final essay, which is a synthesis of about 50% of the writing they did over the entire course.  It included short descriptive vignettes, which Andrew and I call an "Exploded Image."  It included making an argument and supporting it with evidence.  It included a narrative structure that used elements of a narrative toolkit we developed.  So in effect, I'm grading their ability to perform all those various tasks successfully, as well as their ability to synthesise the information.
3. Their analysis of their own voice and how it has developed in this class.  The assignment is here if you're interested.  It yielded some interesting results.  The reason I'm grading this one is that I want to see their analytical ability, as well as their ability to find patterns (another of the course mega-themes).

Those are the only assignments graded in a more traditional way.  The rest is credit/no credit.  My students told me that it was liberating to be able to write without worrying about points being deducted for a misspelled word, or an incomplete transition.  They also said it allowed them to try on different styles and experiment with ideas that aren't typically found in an "academic" writing assignment.  Some of those yielded the most successful pieces of the semester for my students.

As to helping them find their voice and develop their ideas, the way I did that was through a lot of discussion and feedback.  We wrote every essay in class.  During that time, I would work with individual students on how to best get across their idea and how to make it sound like their authentic voice.  We also had collaborative partnerships, where students would help each other by reading and making comments on ideas only - not on grammar or spelling or other mechanics.  Sometimes they would comment on structure and organisation, but mostly it was about helping the writer develop ideas.  We had discussions about purpose and audience, and how style influenced and was influenced by both the purpose and audience.  I showed them my writing, and they took it apart.  We did the same with some of theirs.

Here's what I didn't teach:

1. That writing should be a single draft activity, where we write something then move on to something else
2. That structure is more important than content
3. That the five-paragraph essay is valuable
4. That all genres of writing are the same, and use the same structures
5. That there are strict rules that all writers follow
6. That the most important thing is completion
7. That writing is an individual activity
8. That we should never experiment or try new ideas
9. That there are "right answers" in writing
10. That the teacher is the audience for all of their writing

I have the great privilege of teaching students who have a lot of training in basic essay structure, who have great vocabularies, and who have great academic behaviours.  Their struggles are more with anything that is different from what they are used to - they haven't been asked to be creative or collaborative much, unless it's in structured ways.

I know that this is probably more freedom than many teachers have, and that my students' academic background is much stronger than most.  But I also see that their writing at the beginning of the semester has improved dramatically.  They went from writing five-paragraph-style essays, and now have much more complex systems of organisation that will serve them well in college.  Their descriptive and observational writing is so much stronger, and vivid.  

And they feel something I never felt in high school: that their voice, what make them unique, is valued by a teacher.  That they can be themselves - even if that is something still in the process of being developed and refined.  That they don't have to worry about a grade and can take risks.  That they have peers who understand and support them, and will help them become better writers.

That their writing is, like them, a work in progress.

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 have (along with every educator on Twitter) been thinking about homework.  Its role in my classroom and in school in general.  Its function and purpose.  Its value, especially in how it fits into flipped learning.

Here is what I have observed in the eight years I spent teaching before Redwood:

• The only kids who do homework are the ones who are A) scared their grade will drop or B) have parents pushing them (and usually both are true).
• Homework is generally worksheet-y, even in English and Social Studies. 
• Teachers are frustrated that students don't do homework.  They continue to assign it and deal with non-completers in disciplinary ways.
• Students hate homework.  No matter the value or purpose or length or subject.
• Many students give up on a course when their zeros keep mounting from incomplete homework assignments.
• Teachers assign homework if students fail to complete the assignment in class.  Teachers assign homework to cover concepts they don't have time to cover in class but are in the standards.  

This last one is more controversial:

•  Teachers assign homework because they are more concerned about teaching Responsibility than teaching the student.  

Some teachers assign homework as an exercise in values.  They argue that in The Real World, we all have deadlines and we all need to learn how to manage our time.  We compare it to chores - something no one wants to do, but just as it is necessary to maintain order in your physical world, it's necessary to maintain order in your academic world.

At Redwood, most of those answers are still true.  The only one that's different is the first bullet point.  At Redwood, 90% of students do homework.  That's in a general class, not an AP or Honours level class.  They expect to get between 2-5 hours of homework a night.

But everything else is the same.  They hate homework, teachers assign it, and it's primarily about teaching Responsibility.  There is an added element of You Need To Be Ready For College (and I can't fit everything into our face-to-face time).

I stopped giving homework when I started working at San Lorenzo.  They wouldn't do it, and I started doing research on the effectiveness of homework as a pedagogical tool.

So when I went to Redwood, I spent some time reconsidering that perspective for one major reason:
        Students would do it, and all teachers expected it to be assigned.

I didn't stop believing the research that said homework was not helpful for learning retention, and often was more harmful than it was beneficial.  I didn't stop believing that students needed the evening to unwind, spend time with family and friends, and pursue hobbies or other interests.  

No.  I started to consider assigning homework because I was afraid of the consequences if I didn't.  The same reason most of my students completed their homework.

I got scared.  What if my colleagues thought my class was "too easy" without homework?  What if my principal accused me of subverting the culture of the school?  What if my students thought my class wasn't rigorous enough?

That is the world of fear many of my colleagues inhabit, and the world of fear that my students pass though, hoping that they will escape when they get to college.  It's the world of fear that keeps them up until 3 AM doing college application because they had so much homework they couldn't start it until 1 AM...and they are so afraid that they won't get in that it makes them angry, depressed, and more afraid.

It's the world of fear that causes good teachers to go against their pedagogy and pretend that they are just "fitting into the school culture."

And it's bullshit.

A classroom built on fear is a classroom that denigrates the importance of community.  A classroom built on fear lives in the reality of reward and punishment.  A classroom built on fear cannot produce students who are responsible for their own learning and who pursue learning from passion and not pressure.

And it's not the kind of classroom I want.

**

There has been a lot of talk on Twitter about how flipped classrooms without homework can't really call themselves flipped. 

Now, I have written about our definition of the Flipped Mindset before.  So you know that I'm not a Flip 101 adherent - instead of flipping lecture onto video and off-loading it from class time, I don't lecture.  Instead of using class time to do the kinds of practice (let's be honest: worksheets) many of the English teachers I know assign, I try to build interesting discussions, engaging projects, and close reading of texts.

So when you ask me if homework is required for a flipped classroom, my answer is an Emphatic No.  The REAL flip in my class is that I have flipped the responsibility for learning to my students, and made the place where my students seek knowledge much more broad and no longer confined to my ten pound inadequate dyslexic brain.

I used to spend a tremendous amount of time rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour.  I had charts and systems.  I had Good Students and Bad Students, and that was largely down to who could most closely match the definition of "good" I had in my head and tried to superimpose on them.  

But why were the Good Students doing the homework?  Did they see the relevance to their lives?  Did they genuinely want the knowledge?  Were they doing it because they liked me and believed in me enough to do what I asked of them?  

Or were they doing it because they didn't want the consequences if they didn't?

The whole point of the flipped class Andrew and I run is to get students to the point where they pursue learning for the love of it and work towards becoming an educated person.  Where they believe in us and know that we believe in them.  Where they see the work we assign is relevant, purposeful, and not excessive.

Where assignments are about mastery, and not a number or a letter.  Where responsibility is developed over time, not as the result of turning in an assignment on time.  Where the Good Students are the ones actively engaged to the best of their ability at that time.

Where there are no Bad Students.  Only students who haven't Got It Yet.

**

So we don't give much homework.  The only major exception is that we have assigned students reading homework for the novel we're reading.  Now, we read parts in class, and often give them class time for the purpose of reading.  But many students prefer to read at home, as they have done their entire educational career.  And it's my job to be flexible and listen to my students.  If they use class time well, and want to read at home, I can deal.  After all, it is all about them.

However, I work really hard to make the reading "homework" not be about Teaching Responsibility or about reward and punishment. 

I work on igniting their passion for the story by creating engaging activities that draw them in, rather than punish them with zeros on reading quiz after reading quiz.  We're reading Indian Country by Philip Caputo right now, and this is what seems to be working:

• I give them assignments that make meaning from the text in a way that gives every student a way of completing it, regardless of where they are in the novel.  
• Every day, I spend a little bit of time talking about something in the section they read or the section they will soon read.  Today, I told my kids that there were two...disturbing...scenes with a woman and a bear.  And it doesn't end well...for either of them.  The one kid in class who had read ahead laughed knowingly.  And ten kids tried to read the book instead of watching the video about the Vietnam War.  
• At the start of class, I ask who made progress in the reading the night before, regardless of where they are in the novel.
• I gave them the power to control when the reading is due.  They named the Final Deadline, which is when we take that section's quiz.
• The quizzes I give are revisable and low stakes.  On the last one, I asked students to trade with someone who was roughly in the same place they were in the novel (so if they were on page 100, they shouldn't pair up with someone on page 3).  Then I had them add to or correct their partner's answer.  That gave them the time to critically think about each question, figure out if their partner answered correctly, and then add to their thoughts.  Many of the questions were opinion questions, so I had them add a personal note to their partner to encourage community.  
• The grade they get on the quiz isn't really important, because it's all formative assessment.  So there's nothing punitive - in fact, the only score they get is a point in the gradebook for completion. They will have to have read to complete the essay and project, and they will need to know enough to participate in discussions.
• The quizzes I give are often verbal.  That way, they can actually hear their classmates answer the questions, and they get to clarify misconceptions.  More repetitions=more practice.  

That list is how I justify asking students to do reading at home.

Because if I can't make a list like that, I shouldn't be assigning homework.  Here are my questions for you to consider in relation to your homework policy:

1. Is this something they absolutely must do or they will not be able to pass my course?  If it is, isn't it important enough to make sure they have the time, space, and assistance in class that they need to complete it?
2. Is this something that I value so much that I would complete it myself? If it isn't, do I really need to assign it?  If it is, am I willing to do it on the same schedule as my students?
3. Am I giving this assignment because I'm afraid?  Am I afraid of what people will think if I don't give homework?  Am I afraid that my students won't take me seriously if I don't?  
4. Am I giving this assignment because I failed to teach something adequately?  Is it fair to punish my students for my failure?
5. Am I giving this assignment to teach something other than the content?  Is it fair to be teaching values rather than content?

**

So that's a really convoluted way of saying that I think carefully about any assignment I give students that requires work outside of class.  I think about what my goals are, what my students need, how to make the work relevant for them, and how to show them what being responsible for their learning looks like.

And if, once in a blue moon, homework is required, I give it.  

I urge you to have the same conversation with your colleagues, your students, and with yourself.  Don't let the culture of fear push you to do something that is not good for your classroom community.

And if you have more suggestions for how to make reading homework (or any homework really) work in a flipped class, or other thoughts about the Great Homework Debate, please comment.  I love the dialogue that has already come from this subject.  And it's good for all of us to examine our practice, be reflective, and adjust when necessary.

And yes, leaving a comment is your homework assignment.  Don't make me put you on the Bad Blog Reader list.

This wasn't planned.

In fact, I'm still not convinced it's an amazing idea.

But this week, I handed gave the reins to my 6th period class....for content, instruction and assessment.

I realise that I may be completely insane.

It started with some collaborative brainstorming on topics, questions, methods, and texts they wanted to study.  Then each student chose a group and topic and started planning their own content to teach their peers.

I didn't even constrain it to humourous topics. But they are so invested in the course themes that the topics they chose were nearly all comedic; they ranged from writing original comedy, stand-comedy techniques, political satire, musical comedy, and improvisation workshops.  Half the class will be producing comedy films and then having the class analyse it closely.

Here were the requirements:
1. Choose a topic/question to cover and choose a group
2. Research and/or create the content/text to be shared
3. Prepare to lead a class discussion (in any format that we've used or practiced)
4. Give students a writing assignment of some kind (in any format)
5. Assess learning
6. Reflect on the effectiveness of their lesson

These units start next Friday.  I can't call them presentations.  A presentation means a bad powerpoint, nervous students, lack of engagement.  These already have a hell of a lot of passion behind them. 

Today I couldn't get the computer lab, so I just said:

This class period is yours.  If you need something from me, I'll be here.  But you guys are in charge.

I expected an argument, or at least a wasted period.  But here's what happened:
They all looked at each other, silently. Then,
Cipriana: Let's watch Workaholics!  It's an hour before Thanksgiving break.
Alexander: No, that's not the best use of our time right now. We need group time to work some stuff out.
Pierre: Wait guys, can we go around and say what we're going to be covering so there's no repeats?  Okay, Chelsea, what are you guys doing, and who is in your group?

They then went around - while the rest of the room was silent - and talked about their concept.  After every group gave their idea, other students expressed how excited they were for the ideas. There was not one group that didn't get a "wow, that sounds cool!" at some point.  The two groups that were a little similar had a quick negotiation to figure out how close their proposals were.  Then they checked in with me about it.

There was one undecided group - they came up and talked to me about their ideas, and with VERY little prompting from me, they came up with a great (slightly scary) question: When it comes to humour about race, where is the line, and why is that the line?  

We talked about how to frame it so it would make the best possible discussion.  And they left really excited.

**

I gave them the keys to the car, then I got in the backseat.  And instead of crashing into a pole, they immediately navigated hairpin turns with dexterity.

I do think they'll run into issues at some point, and will struggle to present their lesson effectively.  But they'll figure it out.  All of us need to make mistakes to learn how to be better.

**

And here's the meta part...or maybe just the uncomfortable part of all of this. 

This week has been overshadowed by a friend of mine being attacked for something she wrote on her blog.  In an entry devoted to asking for help to deal with a frustrating issue common to all of us who teach in a public school - unmotivated students - she was attacked with more logical fallacies than the cable news networks had during the election coverage.

The issue?  Her statement that her students don't know how to learn math.

They don't.  And I think the person most capable of making that judgement - their math teacher - is the one who should make that assessment.  Not some strangers on the internet.

Students DO, however, know how to learn in general, but learning academically and learning in general are different.  We are always learning.  But not everything we try to teach our students is something to which they will connect and in which they are interested.

There are lots of things that I didn't find interesting, but that I'm glad someone pushed me to learn at some point.  Here are a few of those things:

• How to solve for variables in Algebra
• Techniques for creating different effects in painting 
• French vocabulary
• Word derivations/roots/etymology
• Names and locations of every country (and its capital) in the world
• Hundreds of Bible verses 
• Medieval literature and how to analyse the sources that compose a text
• How to actively listen
• How to take notes and make note cards for an essay/presentation

And you know what?  I still know how to do those things.  Even though I wasn't passionate about any of them, because I had the academic ability to learn, I had the skills needed to transfer that knowledge into my memory.

I also have a freakish ability to find something interesting in ANYTHING I study.  My friends in college were absolutely shocked when I gave them the advice I used: Find an angle that is interesting and use that for your essay topics.  They looked at me like I was smoking crack.

That's when I realised that what I do naturally is not what everyone does naturally.

Learning is innate.  But academic learning?  That's acquired.  Some of us are lucky to have acquired it young.  I did.  And I am the exception, not the rule.

We don't go to school to learn how to love playing or eating or sleeping.  Those are things we all can find passion for or joy in.  We go to school to learn how to learn things we wouldn't normally choose to learn.

And we do that because there are some things that are valuable enough to ask everyone to learn them.  That's why the Common Core Standards movement is so important - it cannonises the knowledge we as a culture think is essential for all students to learn.

So what happens when the school system is broken?

You get students who are in 10th grade and have acquired the ability to learn in an academic context.  Students who may master video games, but struggle to write a coherent sentence.  And some people would say use the video game to teach sentence structure, or just don't teach the sentence structure and hope they'll just "get it" over time.

But is that really serving my students well to not teach sentence structure - at least holistically?  Is it a good use of my face-to-face time with my students to use video games to teach sentence structure?  Why would I spend time having them learn something with me that they could do on their own?  Why would I not give them individualised instruction that meets them where they are and them pushes them forward?  And I think that doing that kind of instruction well - where you infuse passion into subjects that aren't natural pairings - is time-consuming and rarely effective.  It just ends up being a little condescending to try and squeeze the names of Pokemon characters into paragraphs that have students practice sentence revision.

I also come from a pretty unique background.  I was homeschooled for 7 years, spanning the late 80's and early 90's, which was the Unit Study era in homeschooling.  We did one on the Pilgrims.  I remember planting a garden, making corn cakes, and creating a replica of the Mayflower.  

And that's it.  I didn't take out of that unit any more knowledge about gardening, cooking, or history than I brought into it.  And I fell years behind in math because math "never fit" with the unit studies, and I wasn't motivated to learn it on my own.  That is one of my biggest regrets.  

Am I saying that it's impossible to do that kind of curriculum well?

Obviously not.  The project my students have started would indicate otherwise.  I believe that student-driven content can be very powerful.

But there are reasons that my project will be successful.  And a lot of it has to do with what we've already learned (not all of which they found interesting), and a lot has to do with what they brought into the course from previous learning.  

This will be successful because my students:

• can research information and find reliable sources
• synthesise and analyse information with depth and clarity
• use technology to compile, organise and present information effectively
• have academic conversations that they run without my help
• can stay on task and focused on the end product

And most importantly, they:

• KNOW HOW TO LEARN

Now, because I have kids at the top of their educational game who are highly skilled and motivated, this wouldn't work with every class.  And it wouldn't even work in some of my other classes.  They don't have the skills they need.  And some of them don't want to build those skills.  They want the grade.  They want to just "get it over with" so they can move on.

So it makes me uncomfortable to, on one hand, turn over a class to a group of students capable of making it a success, and also to acknowledge that they are pretty unique.  For the past eight years, I've worked in schools where this never would have worked.  And yes, I tried.  And it's always been a massive failure.

This is what I think:

Passion + low skills = low effort and/or low quality

Passion + low skills + motivation = variable results (see: Freedom Writers Effect)

Passion + skill + motivation = high effort and high quality

The harsh reality of the state of public education is that not all students come to us prepared or motivated.  Can we help those students?  Absolutely.  That is what my friend wanted: help figuring out how.  And instead of help, she was bullied, harassed, and attacked.  So she is taking her passion and skill and hiding it so she can avoid being attacked further.

One of the meta-lessons of this issue is that passion doesn't make up for a total deficit of skill.  The people attacking her have no lack of passion.  But they also don't seem to understand how to have a respectful dialogue, nor engage in a discussion of the issues and avoid going after her personally.

I sincerely hope that, eventually, everyone will be taught the skills they need to be able to pursue their passion.  And I hope that eventually, every person could be like the students in my 6th period: skilled, motivated, self-directed, responsible, and extremely passionate.

If the world was filled with people like that, it would be a pretty amazing place to live.  It's certainly a pretty amazing place to learn.

I have developed a metaphor for what it's like to work at my current school.

We are all swimming, desperately trying to keep up with the pace of the water, until that crest is almost within reach...so we swim faster, try to keep our head up, barely a breath away from drowning.  Students, teachers, administrators, staff members...all of us, together.

But although it feels like the ocean, when we look up, we realise that we're in a wave pool, not the ocean.  And we're the ones controlling the waves.

So we complain about being exhausted, frantic, unable to keep up, while we dial up the intensity of the waves in the pool.  Worse yet, we look around at our colleagues and see them swimming faster than us, so we turn up the intensity a little bit more just so we don't fall behind them too.

But the end result is that we all drown.  Or we wish that we HAD drowned so we could stop grading papers, get a few more hours of sleep, just BE with our friends and family without thinking about all the prep left to do.

So, to ask my buddy's favourite question, who are we really serving here?

I had two kids burst into tears (unrelated to my class) on Tuesday.  Neither wanted to talk about it.  Neither wanted to ask for anything special - not even a pass to the restroom.  They wanted to tough it out, be strong, keep on going.  

Why?  Because they assume that THEY are the problem.  They assume that everyone else can just handle the load - everyone else can stay up until 4 AM doing homework every night for weeks, participate in sports and extracurriculars, stay awake and engaged in school, make it through the minefield that is high school social life.  

They assume that real life is what happens after high school.  They are there to "pay their dues" before they go on to do what they really love.  They've been told "Be Awesome in Everything OR YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH."

And when they can't be awesome in everything, the only thing left is the belief that they aren't good enough.  And when we don't replace that erroneous narrative, it only embeds itself more fully into their psyche.  When they believe that they are nothing more than a letter on a report card - a letter that is never, ever good enough - how can we possibly expect them to act as responsible, rational, creative, independent learners?

Because when students have always defined themselves based on what they do (and often, what they fail to do), they have no idea how to work in a class that asks them to somehow engage out of who they are.

All the things we flipclass'er believe in creating in our classroom: an emphasis on higher order thinking, self-directed learners who have a choice about content and product, students who value their education and work towards mastery of a concept instead of engaging the prevalent tendency towards point prostitution*...

...all those things are impossible when our students are fighting the pace of the waves that threaten to drown all of us.

And you know what?  We can't be the kind of teachers we want when we live at that pace either.  

Okay, here's my mea culpa: I am not the kind of teacher I want to be right now.  I got scared.  I bought into the culture of fear - when enough people tell you you're going to drown just like them, you eventually sigh in resignation, then try to push your tired arms into sprinting for just a few more lengths.

Like every other story I write on this blog, part of the answer is having someone to stand on the shore, waving a giant handmade sign that both encourages me to keep swimming, and reminds me that the power to turn down the wave is in my control.  

Someone who reminds me that who I am is good enough, even when I feel like I'm barely mustering a C.  Someone who burns my report card because what we're trying to do is not something that is measured in letters.  

No.  What we're doing is measured more in the number of students for whom an hour a day in my room is more of a refuge than a deluge.  It's measured in visible improvement in writing.  It's measured in academic conversations that take on a life of their own.  It's measured in the students who stop asking about their grade, and stop defining themselves by the letter that appears on their report card.

It's measured in transformation.  

And there's not a standardised test in transformation.

But nothing and no one can be transformed when the wave pool is drowning us all.

So for now, I'm turning down the speed and inviting my students to do the same.  Some people probably think they'll start floating and take advantage of it, or without me to push them, they'll just abdicate responsibility for swimming and they'll drown.  

But you know what?  I think that who they are is good enough.  

And I hope that who I am, and who we are, is good enough to help them when they forget that they are not defined by a letters: the ones that appear on a report card or ones that arrive in the mail from their dream school, their safety school, their last chance school.  

And maybe someday, we will all finally decide to leave the false safety of the wave pool for good, and head to the Real Ocean.  

The Real Ocean is where Real Life happens, and the waves can't be controlled.  

It's where our students will try to swim on their own, probably for the first time.   Where letters don't matter.  

And where Who They Are is all there is.

I'm ready.  

Who is with me?


*thanks to my flipclass friend, GS Arnold, who coined the term in a recent #flipclass chat 

Here's what they don't tell you when you're flipping in a highly-student centred environment:

It doesn't feel like you're teaching them anything.

For me, that's incredibly off-putting.

Even when I was doing video more often (the very short-lived Flip 101 days), I felt like I was teaching something.  But changing over to a classroom where I do very little "sit up front and talk" or even very little "watch this video and take notes" means that I often go for days without delivering information.

For the last few weeks, I've been doing the following things:

--helping students curate their work (14 writing assignments in Essay Exposition, 10 in Language of Humour) on playlists on MentorMob.  I wish we had thought of this early.

--individual writing conferences with my Essay Exposition (SAX) students, where they choose one assignment from their portfolios and we discuss what their purpose, audience, tone, and intended effect.  It's been great to work with them so individually and really talk in-depth about their writing.  I think my Language of Humour class will be next.  I just wish they didn't take quite so long...

--analysing a text (The Crucible) through a variety of lenses: psychological, historical, and thematic, through Socratic Seminar, and essay and a project (recreating the Crucible in the modern day)

--evaluating texts that are not typically thought of as narratives (like Derren Brown's amazing work) through discussion and essay

--working on a project that will not only teach my SAX students how to do research and write persuasively, but will help them take action to fix a problem in their own community.  Pretty excited about how it'll turn out.

None of that really involves direct instruction.  Other than giving tasks and having conversations, I'm not "teaching."

I guess it's time to re-define what we mean by teaching.

An exchange on Twitter with another teacher facing an impending observation reminded me that at some schools, the list of activities above is actually much more what they're looking for than the old definition of teaching. 

While I have so many amazing things happening in my classroom, my evaluation still includes a piece on direct instruction; in that, I feel like I'm taking a small step backwards.

And maybe that's why I still don't feel like I'm teaching: my school (and students) still define teaching as "what teachers do at the front of the room, talking constantly, as students take notes."

So how do we redefine teaching in the post-flipped world?

How many of us put conscious thought into our teaching persona?  

Last year, when I had a student teacher for the first time, I had to seriously reflect on who I am as a teacher and what influences have forged that persona over the last nine years.  

Some are good influences:

--team teaching with my (at the time) best-friend who taught the same course in the adjoining classroom for the same period.  Stealing her mannerisms for comedic effect, then never un-stealing them.

--sharing a room with a beautiful, wise, collected veteren teacher my first year.  Watching the way she pushed her students and yet communicated how much she valued them as human beings.  Taking her way of fielding questions - "hmm", thoughtful pause, eyes to the ceiling, rock back onto the other foot, finger to mouth, gather thoughts, smile, respond (usually with a question, instead of an answer).

--being young, inexperienced, and scared because I had no training and little classroom experience.  Seeking help from everyone who would listen so I could do better for my students, and stealing their best ideas.

Some were not so good:
--moving from a school where students loved me and valued what I had to offer, to a school where students were suspicious of me because of my colour and vocabulary.  Shutting part of myself down so they wouldn't hurt me any more than they already had.

--finding wonderful teachers who were talented and far more structured than I ever had wanted to be...and stealing their structures to hide behind when I couldn't make my students care, either about me or the curriculum.

--adopting a brand new mindset where I wouldn't have to show them who I was or of what I was capable, intellectually or pedagogically.  Hiding behind "every student every day" because if I did little whole class instruction, I wouldn't have to prove myself publicly.

**

As I write out that list, I see that all the things about my teaching persona that I see as positive, were in my first three years.  And all the negatives are in the last six.

And the last six years have all but obliterated the gains from my first three years.

And therein lies the central narrative, the central problem, the central struggle of this year, and in fact in my whole life:  I don't know who I am.

I'm struck by the fact that in the first three years, arguably my most successful years, I was just stealing pieces of other teachers' personas (EXCELLENT teachers though they are).  And yet, that was more me than what I showed in the following six years. 

Frankly, these last six years have been about adding artifice.  Creating layers to make sure that there was always a strong public persona.  I spent six years forgetting that what is important is who I really am, as well as the dignity, value, and worth I have to contribute to my students as their teacher.

That is even why Flipped Class appealed to me.  Video is the perfect medium for me to hide behind.  Hell, collaborating with my new BFF** is a way of hiding - we teach together, so there is less attention on either of us individually.  I find comfort in being part of a team - less risk, less pressure on me individually, and someone to steal from full-time.
 
And yet, paradoxically, it is only as a member of that amazing team that I finally saw myself as I really am.  Part of that is down to having someone there, in the middle of all your mess, stripping away the layers of BS, until what is left is just...you.

And here's the most revolutionary idea yet:

What if the point of collaboration and friendship was NOT to fix each other, but rather to move to the place where nothing needed to be hidden?

Hiding never made me a better teacher, a better collaborator, or a better friend.  And by flipping my class, I was hiding.  So now, all of those problems and that artifice is being purged - the intense pressure we've been under in the past few weeks has burned away everything unnecessary, leaving only what is actually me.  That is a scary place to be, and it has been an extraordinarily painful and revealing process.

And through that process, the alchemy continued: my individuality, once revealed, did not drive Andrew's personality out; instead, finding what it means to be myself leaves much more room for him, both to find what it means to be himself, and for what it means for us as a collaborative partnership.  

So I may not use the Zunin Reflective Pause, or the Genevieve Voice, or the I'm Drowning Please Save Me Colleague! mannerisms, but I've found the part of me contained in each of those positive thefts.  Even the negatives were redeemed through this crucible: I've embraced the structure I learned at San Lorenzo without losing my vulnerability.  I've accepted my own racial and educational background and the ways in which I am shaped by factors within and out of my control.

And I've continued down the flipped path with Andrew.  And I still occasionally steal his quirks and phrasing, and I still regularly defer to him (because he's smarter than me!), and I enjoy being part of the team, rather than standing alone.

But there is a way to be a flipped teacher AND be myself.  There is a way to be a Andrew's collaborative partner AND be myself.  There is a way to embrace the things, both positive and negative, that I've experienced and yet move forward.

Because those things may explain me.  

But I refuse to let them define me.

What defines me is deeper than what I do.  What defines me is deeper than how I teach.  

I am defined not by the experiences, the mistakes, the failures, the successes, the things I've done, the things done to me.  

I am defined by the choices I make.  By the person I am underneath all the artifice.  By the communities and people I love and who love me.

And that is incredibly freeing.





***see tweets below for context.