Recently, a few of my Twitter friends had an exchange about one way that teachers engage and share ideas online: Teachers Paying Teachers (TpTdotcom)

There are lots of ways to share ideas on the internet, and I recognise that many teachers find the idea of making money on the lessons they've developed in their own classroom appealing.  In fact, there is nothing objectively wrong with it.  No matter what state you teach in, you probably don't get paid what you should be paid to do the work of shaping the minds and hearts of young people.


But there is a fundamental problem, at least in my mind (and I think the boys would agree): We Are What We Share.


In all aspects of culture, I believe in free and open sharing.  My favourite bands all allow their fans to bring in recording equipment and trade the tapes freely.  My favourite software companies are (or have been) open source and have understood that a key part of their culture was bringing in the best possible ideas, even if they didn't exist in the corporate structure.  Many companies, like Google, even give their employees paid time during the day to work on a project that doesn't fit into their job description but is exciting to them....and many of those projects have become the technology we use every day, like gmail.


Turning back to Teachers Paying Teachers, I think the major problem I have is that it turns what we do into a product, rather than something that is a collective endeavour that is better when it is shared in community.


This post didn't start out being a rant about TPT.  In fact, I started writing to talk about something Andrew and I have built into our practice: a weekly Twitter chat.  But the reason I talk about TPT is that it is exactly the antithesis of the #flipclass chat Andrew & I moderate on Monday nights (8 PM EST/5 PM PST).  The chat is built around bringing together smart, passionate teachers who believe in sharing openly and freely.  Ideas are regularly given away and even improved upon through conversation.

The #flipclass chat community is something Andrew and I are very intentional about cultivating, and we have seen somepretty amazing things happen.  But what keeps coming back is that this group of educators believe in giving away their work in order to help other teachers improve their practice, and with the belief that any time you share an idea with someone else, it doesn't return to you void.  

As an example: I came up with the idea of using todaysmeet as a backchannel for discussion as I played a video of me reading the text.  So students were hearing the text, seeing it on their screens (or on the main one) and were able to interact immediately with their peers (and with me).  Having the reading on video meant that I could be far more present with them, but I found that the number of questions I answered actually went down because they were getting answers from their peers too.

So that idea is something I shared on Twitter a lot.  Now, I see lots of variations on that idea from tons of #flipclass teachers.  Did I invent it?  Probably.  But I also know that no invention is truly a work of a "lone genius" or "Eureka moment" and that the #flipclass Twitter community helped me have the idea in the first place, and have made it so much better now that it's been out there for a while and tried in tons of classrooms and blogged about...etc.  

And that's the tragedy of TPT.  That kind of group collaboration and open sharing of ideas just doesn't happen when you're locking your ideas behind a paywall and then taking it back to your classroom...the only one that will be changed by those ideas.  That is depressing. 

I think I'm a great lesson designer, and I bet I could have made tons of money if I had done TPT for the last few years.  But I can't put a price on the ideas I've had improved by my people in the #flipclass chat community.  I can't put a price on the ability I have to share openly and know that others are helped by what's happening in my classroom.  

I can't put a price on a community that has changed my life, my classroom, and the way I think about education.  This community brought me a collaborative partner, a group of teachers who love me and challenge me and support me, and a weekly chat that inspires me and keeps me pushing towards the kind of classroom I want for my students.

That is priceless.

**

Never done a Twitter chat?  Andrew and I made a video about the weekly #flipclass chat and how to get involved.  We hope to see all of you there!

Andrew and I tell the story of our collaboration frequently.  We did the Flipped Learning Network's opening webinar a few weeks ago, and we presented at the Global Education Convention about our journey together and what it has done in our classroom and to our practice.

I never feel like we can truly capture how much has changed as a result of committing to work together.  The easy answer is "everything" but even that doesn't feel like enough.  In truth, meeting Andrew was like taking collaboration crack - he and I started creating and never looked back, to the point now where not one aspect of my life is untouched by the influence of our collaboration.

And yet, it is only recently that I've begun to see the way in which my view of creativity has been shaped by our collaboration.

I never thought of myself as an artistic or creative person.  I do know how to play several instruments, and I can sew, knit, and crochet, but the nerve damage in my hands has made the fine motor skills required for art nearly impossible for me.  You see, my definition of "artistic" was "can draw well" and because I couldn't, and had little "innate talent" (really, a desire to work as hard as I would need to in order to improve) I decided I just wasn't a creative person.

What I missed in my narrow definition was that creativity isn't about drawing.  It's about thinking differently.  It's about bringing new things into the world for the purpose of making people's lives better.  That's what I learned in my first few years teaching, and became for me the point of my professional journey: helping students see differently, and create in them a desire to continue learning because of the content and skills developed in my class.

When I met Andrew, I exaggerated my video editing capabilities.  I knew I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but hadn't had the need to before that point.  He brought the impetus, so I learned how to edit videos.  And eventually, I started to see video editing as a creative endeavour as much as visual art is.  All art is about telling a story, not about lines or shapes on a page.

The story we were telling was not just one of classroom transformation.  It was one of personal transformation.  I now see the ways in which I'm tremendously creative, almost to the point that I feel ridiculous for ever thinking that I wasn't.

Seeing that shift, I began to see the role of creativity in my classroom differently too.  I used to have art projects as part of the curriculum, but I phased them out because rigor.  I used to have students do elaborate projects that were often beautiful and artistic, but I stopped because standards.  I used to try and make creativity the bedrock of the student experience in my class, despite my narrow definition, but I stopped because confidence.

Genius Hour cemented in my mind how much has shifted because of the influence Andrew has had on my practice.  Actually, that's not quite accurate.  Yes, it was Andrew's entrance that marked the beginning of the change, but really, it's all about what we've built collaboratively.  It wasn't Andrew or me acting in isolation - all the good ideas and creativity and innovation come as products of our time spent in collaboration.  None of it exists without all of it.

My students almost all did their project on something to do with creativity.  I heard them discussing what it means to be creative, and it mirrors my own (much better) understanding: being creative is seeing possibilities where others see only limitations.  It is being willing to be different, even when that's the harder choice.  It is taking risks and daring greatly, even when it pushes us so close to the edge that we fall off a few times.  They all understand that.

And that's the real beauty from Genius Hour: only a few students wrote down facts or specific details about the content of what we learned.  Instead, they made abstract renderings of those ideas.  The common themes were about divergent thinking, growth mindset, factory-models of education being crushed by a new way of learning, how puppets are a pedagogical tool, and even why flipped learning gives them more control over what they learn, how they learn it, and how to demonstrate their learning.

Our students are experiencing something profoundly transformative: that collaboration drives creativity, and you have to practice taking risks to be able to truly learn.  

I now know how to use Adobe After Effects - professional level graphics software as well as basic video editing programs because the collaborative relationship Andrew and I forged compelled me to truly learn, even when it took failure after failure to produce success.  In a very real way, I am now able to be much more creative because there was a space made and a spark of inspiration lit by the relationship Andrew and I have.  And my creativity fuels the learning environment in which my students catch the spark to light their own creative furnaces.

That's what collaboration can do: light fires that had been extinguished.  Foster creativity and critical thinking.  Provide the space and motivation to learn something deeply.  That's why Andrew and I will continue to tell our story.  We believe that ALL teachers should have the same opportunity we did to be transformed.  We believe that our students deserve that.

And we believe that our collaboration will continue to produce more creativity as more teachers start the journey we've undertaken together.  I hope we can continue to point the way to the road less travelled, where while there are thorns and rocks and unsure footing, there is also great beauty and joy and when you've walked far enough, you get to see something that never before existed.  Something that wouldn't be in the world, but for you finding it together.  It is that collaboration that will make you more creative, and will in turn give your students more opportunities to be creative as well.

Collaboration will change your view of creativity forever, just as it has mine.

This collaborative road will be more difficult.  Sometimes, it will be so difficult that you struggle to remember why you started walking in the first place, but if you have found a partner who makes your classroom better, it will be worth every moment of difficulty.  

We - all of us - are #bettertogether.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

But only sarcastically. 

One of our friends on Twitter, Gary Strickland (@SciAggie), recently asked me to share the workflow and logistics of my collaborative partnership with Andrew Thomasson.  

If you're new to this blog, I'll start with a little context.  I flipped my high school English class for two semesters before looking to Twitter to find people to help me.  I talked to a few English teachers (there weren't many around then) and had some great conversations.  But none of them seemed like a match - either personality-wise, or with the classes they teach, or what they were looking for from their flipped class.  I still work with many of them, and have learned a lot through their sharing on Twitter and on their blogs.  Here's the blog post I wrote after our first conversation.  

So here are Rules For Finding a Collaborative Partner.

1. The first rule of finding a collaborative partner is that they have to be the right person.  I had to meet and interact with lots of people before I felt like I found someone with whom I could work.  And with Andrew, from the very beginning, it just felt right.  That's almost impossible to quantify, I know.  But there was an ease to the conversation, and an obvious chemistry when we started recording videos (as cringe-y as I find watching them now, it's still there).  As we started working, it became clear that we also were a match in personality and classroom contexts that fit...and those things were just as important as the work we produced together.  We only completed a single video before we started talking about non-school stuff (first conversation: "What music do you like?".  Very important).

2. The second rule is to try to produce something and assess the way each of you work and approach the work.  At FlipCon, we observed that nearly all collaborative partnerships have the basic dynamic that Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams do.  Jon is more type-A and organised, Aaron is more care-free and improvisational.  I'm Jon, and Andrew is Aaron.  Without me, we might not finish anything.  Without him, I would get bored and/or never take risks on things that might not work.  Now we're actually pretty similar in most ways, but that one difference means that we get a lot done that neither of us would ever do on our own.  We want the same things: intellectual engagement, new and exciting ideas, projects that become bigger than we would have committed to alone, and to have fun.  I know that I would eventually get frustrated if I was working with someone who was more driven than me.  And Andrew would be frustrated if he was working with someone who wasn't open to being flexible and changing products every now and then.

3. The third rule is to have your students and PLN assess the work you've done and listen to what they say about the success of the product and partnership.  We had Crystal Kirch and Karl Lindgren-Streicher help us pretty early on, and it made a difference that they were solidly supportive and thought our work was interesting.  We also got attention quickly from some of the people we most respected - Jon, Aaron, Brian - and they loved what we were doing.  Now, I have done enough collaboration to know that if people are uninterested in what you're doing, it's not always because you're uninteresting.  But if the collaboration chemistry isn't right, and other people sense it too, then it's probably not going to last.

4. The next rule is that you have to have time for the collaboration, and when you don't, that you make time for the collaboration.  At the beginning, we probably spent about 15 hours a week together.  And during the school year, we spent about 3 hours on school days talking, reflecting, and planning.  That doesn't include emails and other textual communication.  We planned for nine classes together, and wrote all new curriculum, so it took a lot of time.  Plus, there were lots of classroom issues and school issues and...well...issues.  We needed that much time, and whenever we had an article to write or other professional obligations, we needed more than that.  Most other years where we were teaching classes we'd taught before, or in schools where we were more established (both of us were at new schools), or with less insane workloads (6 new preps and 310 students for me), we would have needed far less time.

5. The final rule (for now) is to be the collaborative partner you want, and be prepared to compromise and discuss when that doesn't happen.  Like in any relationship, we have to put aside the things we want sometimes to do what's right for the other person.  Each of us sacrifices for the other, and if we weren't willing to do that, there's no way we could still be friends or collaborative partners.  There were times that we wanted to kill each other, so we developed a set of rules so that we wouldn't actually commit murder from across the country.  Seriously though, do you know how easy it is to hang up the phone, turn it off, and shut the laptop cover?  It's much easier than walking out of a room to avoid an argument.  I won't share our rules in their entirety because they don't make sense out of the context of our relationship, but here are a few, with explanations:

• Friends first - we put the friendship and the other person's emotional health above the work.
• No shutting down to avoid an argument - shutting down can be emotional or technological.  Even when it's uncomfortable, we stay and fix it instead of running.
• No self-criticism - we're both convinced the other person is smarter, better at everything, and that we are getting the better end of the deal in this partnership.  And we don't allow self-deprecation, even as humour.
• Cheryl always spells things correctly - this is mostly because Andrew uses too many z's (like in realize, instead of the right spelling - realise) or like missing the u in colour or humour.
  

I'm going to write some more posts in this vein, as there is a lot to say about collaborative partnerships, and I've learned from someone that it's better to have short posts with one main idea than one post covering a million ideas.

So much to say.

In the last few days of our time in Minnesota, Andrew and I talked a lot about what the next year will hold for us.  You can watch our 5-5-5-5 video reflection here, but that's really just the Big Picture Overview.

And the first thing you have to do when you look at changing your classroom is take stock of where you've been.  I haven't blogged much since early March, which is for lots of reasons (all of them, I assure you, are Very Good Reasons.  I know that Andrew will write me a note attesting to the veracity of that statement).  Practically, what that means is that all of the work we did in the last two units are completely and utterly unblogged.

So there are several major summer projects on the table for Thomasson Morris Instruction (TMI), but more than anything, we need to start by reflecting on the work we have been too busy working on to blog about.  Here are some of the blog topics/subjects we'll be covering in the near future, either as separate posts or combined in some way:

• Close reading
• Collaborative reading activities
• Student-designed novel unit(s)
• Use of student-made #coflip videos
• Integrating blogging into the 20% project (Blank White Page)
• Integrating blogging into a novel unit
• Going paperless without having 1:1
• The Really Hard (but No Rules) College Test
• Flipping feedback with VoiceComments
• Reading analytically as you go vs. reading entire novel, then analysing it
• Socratic Seminar as part of #CoFlipReads The Fault In Our Stars
• Student-selected literature circle unit (hint: Not A Success)
• Reading journals with a difference (and choice!)
• Student feedback and reflections
• Critical reading --> critical thinking --> critical writing?
• Using new media and YouTube Edutainment to engage students

That's a pretty good list.  And of course, that doesn't include any of our plans for next year, or our extended reflections on #FlipCon13.  We have about two hours of video with Andrew and me IN THE SAME ROOM AT THE SAME TIME and that will eventually be a series of short videos about what we learned and how we plan to use it in our classrooms.

Now, because I believe in adding value, I'll write about one thing in this blog post that's not on the list, but is relevant nonetheless.

Andrew and I are approaching summer much like we would the regular year.  We have a schedule that includes several important projects: short and long-form writing, making and editing instructional videos, planning our courses for next year, etc.  My first administrator told me that if you ever take a summer off from work (he was talking about summer school particularly) that you'll never go back to it because you will be forever spoiled by luxury.  Well, that turns out to not be true in this case.  I took the large majority of last summer off, and this summer, I'm actually MORE excited to work than I have been in a while.  I know the tasks won't all be "fun" but honestly, there have been very few times in the last year (of intense collaboration) where it hasn't been enjoyable.  It feels less like work and more like hanging out with my best friend and co-teacher.

I know inspiration is fleeting, but the excitement I have for our summer work is founded on a few reasons.  First, FlipCon helped to light a fire in me.  I have been so drained and worn down and exhausted that I really limped over the finish line of spring semester.  But now, I have had so many ideas, and feel much more energised and ready to work.  I know it will be difficult, and there will be times we don't feel like continuing on.  But this is more excited than I've been about summer....maybe ever.  And it's not because I get to sleep in until 10 AM every day and watch a lot of Dexter and Wheezy Waiter all day; it's because of work.


Well, it's sort of about work.  Like EVERYTHING we do, it's more about collaboration.  Andrew has made even the most mundane of tasks much more fun.  There is a rumour that we are indeed one person, and sometimes, that doesn't feel so incorrect.  It's pretty difficult to write anything substantial without his #SpecialSkillz in writing and editing and thinking now that I've gotten used to having his help.


But more importantly than a shared brain, is the real reason behind "Better Together": that we know we would have burnt out alone.  Yes, the collaboration gives us new ideas, and it gives us a second brain to help when ours isn't finding the right words.  But more than anything, I have someone invested in my success.  I have someone who believes in me far more than I believe in myself.  I have someone to filter my thoughts and writing so I don't say something stupid on the internet...where NOTHING EVER DIES.  Andrew pushes me to be a better teacher, a better writer, and a better learner.  I know not everyone needs that, but I do.  He knows when I'm doing something half-assedly, and isn't afraid to call me on it, but then also will help me fix it.  I trust his opinion more than my own.

It is totally possible to flip your class on your own, but we sure don't recommend it.  I think the reason our story resonates with people is because most teachers, and nearly all #flipclass teachers, want someone who will help them do a better job for their students.  But the reality for most of us is that there are few colleagues willing to help us do that, or if some are willing, many are pedagogically opposed, or over-scheduled to the point of uselessness.  That's why Andrew and I needed each other - neither of us had colleagues willing to experiment with flipped learning.  Neither of us had the knowledge, the tools, or the experience to know how to flip our class.

So we embarked on this journey together, just three days short of one year ago.  I would not still be blogging, I would not have attended #FlipCon13, I would not have several Very Exciting Offers to consider, and I would not be as happy as I am now.  I don't need Andrew to be a good teacher.  But this way, even with the many, many challenges we face, is So Much Better than anything I ever did on my own.  And I am grateful - ridiculously so - to have a teaching partner and friend like Andrew.

So I'm really looking forward to this summer - there is much to be done, and I am excited to see what crazy ideas we hatch as we dive into our projects. I would love to hear which of the topics you'd like us to write up first, so leave that in comments if you have a preference.  And if you are part of (or starting) a collaborative partnership, please let us know!  Andrew and I love to talk to people who are starting this same journey.  We were lucky enough to meet half a dozen collaborative partnerships at #FlipCon13, and we'd love to add to that list.

Happy start of summer, everyone, and we'll see you all at #flipclass chat Monday night!  All are welcome, 8 EST, to talk about #FlipCon13, #CanFlip, and all other #flipclass summer work and reflections.

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.

Tonight I don't have much time to write.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the writing assignments from the semester:

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

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

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

Okay.  Back to work.