Going Dark- the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I love this term...going dark. It means that some serious stuff is about to go down and people need time to focus on that. I am as guilty of this as anyone else.

Flipping my classroom does not mean that my life is easier, in fact I would argue that it is much harder. I have to be "on" every minute. I can't switch my brain off and drone on with lectures, I get to walk around the classroom and create relationships with my students.

It takes a lot of mental and physical energy to do this, which is why I have been living in the dark. For years, I have been successfully flipping my classes and having amazing success and keeping it all to myself. Not because I am ashamed or afraid, but because I thought that no one would want to hear what I have to say. So starting this school year, my goal is to blog at least once a week about what is going on in my classroom - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Background: I am teaching four classes this year - one AP Literature ( a new prep for me - never taught, never trained), DP Senior English, Film as Literature, and Theory of Knowledge.

Plan: In the first few weeks to evaluate where my students are in reading and writing and set goals for them and an action plan to help them improve through my teaching.

Update: I have finished collecting the reading/writing samples and are evaluating the data. I am going to share data with the students today. I have created them score tracking sheets so that they can track their performance on various reading and writing tasks. They are going to record not only the score, but a focused improvement area as a type of metacognitive step.

I'm teaching what?

Gotta love August! I just got a call from my Assistant Principal and guess what - my schedule changed. Now I am teaching both DP (Diploma Years) senior, but AP Lit Seniors as well!

So as my head is spinning, I am so thankful that I have flipped my classroom. There are so many things that I will need to offload for my students in order to have the time in the classroom to practice writing (both timed and not) as well as testing. I am thinking about flipping all literary terms and grouping them so that we apply each to a certain part of the syllabus. I don't know what that will look like, but I am spitballing here. I have to go back to the basic question - what is the best use of my class time for my students?

I am so glad that I use that question to ground me for every class that I teach. I feel that if I did not do that, I would be huddled in a corner crying about being given an upper level class that  I have NEVER taught or been trained in. This one questions allows me to look at ANY class and get a handle on how to help my student's succeed.

That does not mean that I will not be stressed - not in the least. But at least I can create meaningful content both in and out of the classroom with some experience.

The Sadness of Leftover Mac-n-Cheese and Writing

I know that this is a strange post title, but I have found it to be oh so true. I have loved mac-n-cheese since my childhood, but if you don't eat it all on the first go around, then reheating it does not bring back the original goodness.

I bring this up because I was thinking about the writing process. Students think that their papers are like mac-n-cheese. Sit down, make it and then you are done with it. But that is SOOO wrong.

This past year, I implemented a 10 step writing process for all of my students major papers (see below)

This is what I found:
1. Making the reflection piece worth as much as the actual writing piece made a huge difference in quality
2. The biggest impact from the student's perspective was having to read their papers out loud and then listen to it and edit their paper.
3. While this is very technology heavy, it can be done in other ways. This is where the flipped classroom helps me in giving me more time to focus on the best use of class time and homework load.

Let me know what you think about this and if you have a secret for reheating mac-n-cheese let me know!

Standards Based Grading

The number one request I get is about standards based grading. I am in the process of creating videos to explain the concept, but in the mean time, here is what I have to share:

Standards Based Technical Document




Standards Based Grading for Back to School Night

Things that I have learned from 7-11

I know that this is a strange title for a post, but it is true. Even though 7-11 is not an educational institution, I found that I still learned so much from them (No - I do not own stock in 7-11 but I do love their slurpees. I will be a slurpee fan until I die!)

1. Know your audience - they knew that a long name would not work and they needed to let their customers know when they would be open. Keep it short and simple and sweet - how often in education do we NOT do this??

2. Duck rule- I found myself at a local Kum and Go ( I know...horrible name but I did not choose it) and was willing to try their Kooler (aka slurpee). It was not the same!! Just because something looks like a duck and walks like a duck does not mean that it is a duck. In education, we are always looking for the next big thing or the silver bullet that will solve all of our problems. We need to be weary of ducks that come waddling our way and investigate for ourselves.

3. Give them what they need - 7-11 is not a replacement for a supermarket and they know it. They only stock what their customers need. Why don't we do this in the classroom? I know that differentiation has been a buzzword for a while, but is there more that we can be doing to give the kids exactly what they need and nothing more or less?

4. Keep current - 7-11 always is running promotions with the current movies that are out. We as educators need to stay current in our pedagogy and practice as well. Sure they have a whole department that dedicates itself to doing this, but we can make a small effort. Any change is better than no change at all.

Disagreement helps or hinders knowledge

I was watching the video on Ted by my acquaintance Ramsey Musallam. He did an amazing job- check him out here.

One thing that he mentioned in his talk was about flipping the classroom. He spoke about flipping the same old material and then just transferring it to video should not be the focus of our student's experience. I could not agree with him more.

Although he and I might differ in what we call our classrooms and how we manage them, we both want to create more instructional time when we can encourage our students to ask the questions that will inspire them to learn more.

Some may say that our ideas of flipping are too different in ideology and pedagogy. I say the fact that people are even having that discourse is amazing! We should all be reexamining our teaching and assessing of student learning. And the fact that this little disagreement sparks this conversation, I say Huzzah!

This year, one of the TOK prompts that my students wrote on and that I graded for IB spoke about how disagreement helps or hinders knowledge. I say that it can do both, but the dialogue can change someone forever..

Flipped Videos - Alone or Collaborate

Over the past few webinars and Twitter discussions, the idea of collaborating making a better video for students has come up a few times. Although I do see the benefit of collaboration, I will not say that they are better than others. I have been on my own and making videos and content for over four years and I would not say that my videos are any less than people who are collaborating in the video process. In fact, my videos are very specific and tailored for my students. That is not to say that I do not collaborate. In fact, I collaborate more now than I ever have done in the past. I seek the feedback of others in my department and in my school before I record a video or create a meaningful activity.

I am of the opinion that you don't have to make videos with other people in order to make them more meaningful. The purpose of flipping my class is to make learning more meaningful for my students,  to make learning supportive and and relevant to them. If other teachers want to collaborate and make joint videos, then I think that is a great idea. But I think that you have to go back to your reason why you are flipping the class and the answer to the big question - what is the best use of your class time?

I am selfish in my motivation - to help my students. If that is a bad thing then so be it....I am ok with it as long as my students are succeeding.