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?
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?
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