Time to Celebrate

  My friend Ruth Ayres has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about sharing yor own celebrations. So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating. Normally, I would give you a link to her site and the exact page, but I am writing this from my iPhone and haven't figured out how to do that yet from the blogger app:)

This week I'm celebrating...

My new iPhone 5c. It took along time to convinced my husband that a smartphone was worth the added expense and then that we needed two cell phones. It didn't take long for him to decide he liked all the iPhone could do, especially getting directions when we were a little lost or getting the road conditions while traveling. Right now he got himself a tracfone, but I have a feeling that by this time next year, he'll have his own iPhone. 

Celebration 2. The new blog that my school family and I have started. As part of our professional learning time, we have started a blog to reflect and share information on our flip class journey. Check it out if you would like over at flippingfamily. blogspot.com. We've written our intro posts and a couple of others, so things are getting started.

Celebration 3: We also got a nice write up from our district. I'll see if I can figure out how to link that later:). Let's see if I've got it now

 http://howard-winnpublicrelations.blogspot.com/2014/01/exploring-flipped-learning-at-howard.html?m=1. 

 Woohoo. Except it doesn't link. Hmmmmm

Celebration 4: my creative writing 2 class is coming along. They have blogs up and running  we have connected with another small class accross the state, and the drafts of their first genre has been handed in. I think I will find lots of reading and writing joy as this group continues through the semester. 

Well, that about does it for this week. Hope you all found the fun and the joy in your week. Be sure to celebrate and share it with the world over at ruthayreswrites.blogspot.com

Aloha

Celebrate VI: A Week of Professional JOY

My friend Ruth has started this Saturday celebration. I find that I am constantly on the lookout for those little bits of JOY that fill my day. If you want to know about this celebration, check out the page Ruth created on her blog.

Professional Learning

Tuesday I spent in Des Moines with not only staff from my district, but teams from 9 other districts in Iowa learning about Competency Based Education. All ten teams were awarded a grant to study and develop competencies for the state of Iowa.. It's a one year commitment, with no mandate to implement. It's really a group that will study and learn together. Some of the teams have actually begun CBE in their districts. Others, like ours are just in the investigating stages. I'm looking forward to this learning. I've always wanted learning to be more concrete. For learning to wrap around students' passions. CBE will hopefully fulfill those wants!

Professional Development

Wednesday was an inservice day in our district. And most of our inservices this year are personally directed. We study and learn about what interests us, what will help us become better teachers. My learning community are those in the district who are flipping one or more of their classes. We're settling down into a groove. Wednesday we listened to a fellow teacher explain how he wants to see his classroom progress. He knows he's not there yet, but it was his vision for the future. There was a little philosophical disagreement, but that brought out great conversation and really made him think about his teaching. And isn't that what professional development should do?

 Personal JOY

Spending the weekend at our youngest son's home and babysitting the grandkids today.  The middle one, Tony,  crawled in my lap for morning hugs. A little sneaky grin showed up. Knowing him well, I asked what he wanted. 

"Remember at the cabin we have hot chocolate in the morning?"

It's our tradition, Tony and I, to sit and have hot chocolate and coffee together in the morning when they stay with us. We're the early birds (although little brother Max often joins us now). We talk about our weeks, the plans for the day, and sometimes, just silly stuff. Today, however, we made the all important Christmas list.

So these are my celebrations this week. What brought a smile to your heart?

Flying....

Last night, I read a blog post by Dave Mulder. I began to comment on it, and then realized, it was probably a blog post. Go ahead and click over there to read what he said.

I'll wait....

I substitute taught for a few years before I began teaching. It was probably one of the best ed classes I ever had.

One year, I took a long term sub position for an elementary teacher in our district who was actually quite well respected (at least I thought so). She was having a surgical procedure, so I had time to meet with her before she took her leave.

The day we met, she proudly showed me a file box on her desk.

Inside it were 180 notecards.

One for every day of the school year.

Her lesson plans.

They never changed.

She was my Carl. She lived in her little classroom and never changed a thing. She was too afraid to fly...although I don't understand why, she had some great ideas.

As a sub, I was thrilled. Here was every thing I needed to teach in this classroom for six weeks. No calls to the teacher. No having to fake it. No work involved.

Plans!

But it didn't take me long to start thinking about that little box on her desk. She had made it quite clear that I needed to make sure to put the days card in the back of the file box each day. I shouldn't write on them. I mustn't lose them.

She used them every year...and was proud of it.

Years later, when I took my first job teaching 7th grade English in the district, there were no plans, no ideas, no curriculum for me to follow. I asked the head of the department what I needed to teach. He told me, "Anything you want."

I longed for that little file box on the desk.

So I started. I made things up. I tried and failed. I tried and succeeded.

I flew.

And I kept all my lesson plans in a notebook (not a file box, mind you). But I did things a bit differently--- I wrote all over my plans. The notes were reflections on how the lesson went. What worked well, what needed to be canned. I also wrote ideas for the next year all over the place.

Then I started using binders for each unit.  And in the binder were always ideas for improving, new things to try. I seemed to instinctively know that I couldn't teach each new class the way I taught the old one. Heck, I couldn't teach each kid in one class the same way I taught his classmates. They were all so different!

No two years were ever the same.

And then, after seven years, I was a little bored. Our district was studying literacy and how to teach it. It excited me, so I switched over and began to teach 7th grade reading (English and Reading are two separate classes in our middle school).

Same thing. Binders full of units and ideas. No year was the same as the last.

And after seven years, I was bored again.

So I went to the high school. And instead of teaching one class, I teach four. And that could change every semester. I love it.

But, as a seasoned teacher, I understand the file box on the desk. It certainly makes your life easier. You don't have to fly into the unknown. Every day is predictable. Every day in the same.

Nothing changes.

It's comfortable.

It's boring.

Change is good for a teacher. 

Trying new things is good for a teacher. 

Failure is good for a teacher.

Learning is good for a teacher.

So each day, I remind myself to try something new, struggle with a new idea, and try not to be afraid to fail.....

Ugh. Cheesy.  I know. But I really do try to remind myself of this. 

Because each year, 

even though it might be your 25th year 

in this class, 

it's your students's first...

5-5-5-5

One of things I promised myself after attending FlipCon13 in Stillwater, Minnesota, was that I would be more intentional on reflecting and sharing my flipping journey. In their final "chat" with us, Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergman asked us all to write down what we would be doing in the next 5 days, five weeks, five months, to move our flipped classrooms forward. And then, we did we see ourselves in five years.

That's a lot of thinking.

And it's been in the back of my head since last Wednesday.

Now it's time to put those thoughts into the universe.

These past five days....

It's been percolating (that's what I call prewriting in my little universe)

I've looked through notes and visited blogs
I've gone back to presentations. Watched them. Remembered the excitement I felt as I listened to those who are flipping with success.

And one keynote, one person, stays with me.

Ramsey Musallum.

I've seen him twice--once in April and again in June. I love his passion for learning and teaching. Here's his TED talk video.



This resonates with me because I want to be a "curator of curiosity", not a "disseminator of knowledge". I want my kids to be passionate about their learning. I want them to figure out things on their own. I want to be their mentor, their guide, their partner in learning.

When I saw him in April, Ramsey shared his "Explore, Flip, Apply" method that he uses in his chemistry classes. This just clicked with me. It made so much sense to have students explore a bit before they started new learning. This is what I want my students doing in class.

How will I work this Creative Writing and English 9?

Well, that's what the next five weeks will be about. I'm going to start with a unit on Why People Write. I think I will use it with both classes. So I'm going to be collecting pieces of writing for students to read and think about. They'll discuss, together and as a class, about the purpose of those pieces. Why did someone feel compelled to write the piece?

They'll write themselves--what are the reasons that they write? How do they feel about writing?

And then we'll move into the real work of class (not that the above won't be real work). My units based on Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle's work will include examples of the genre, to be followed by discussions, practice, and writing their own pieces. They'll also be blogging and creating an online portfolio. Hopefully, I can get a good start on these ideas over the next five weeks.

English 9 is a little different. I'm still thinking about this one. Writing units will be similar to Creative Writing, but the reading and the lit I need to think about a bit. Background knowledge will be relatively easy for me to flip, but the reading of the lit is what I need to consider. I don't want to send them home to read and discuss in class. I believe kids need more support than that. So I'll keep thinking....

In five months, Thanksgiving break or thereabouts, I plan to have this up and running. I also plan to be writing about this journey more, reflecting on my practice (something I haven't been very good at!). I'm thinking I need to pick a day of the week and schedule that blog post in. I seem to work better that way.

In five years...well, that remains to be seen. I could be retiring by then, although this concept has me fired up about teaching, so we'll see. I will be a "curator of curiosity" and there may be something new that has me fired up and ready to teach!

Most Important Take-Away

This simple tweet pretty much sums up the best take-away from the first day of flipcon13. In fact, it pretty much sums up teaching in general, don't you think? At least for me it does. I've never been able to  teach a kid anything if I didn't have a relationship with them in the first place. That's why I've always spent the first few days of a school year getting to know my kids. I use some silly activities (but not many, because as an adult, I hate touchy, feely get to know you activities), kids give little speeches to introduce themselves,

and we talk.

We talk a lot.

We talk about summer.

We talk about sports practices
play practices
swim practice

We talk about jobs
We talk about cars
We talk about friends

And snuck into all that talking...
We talk about books and writing and homework and school

And I learn a lot.

Now, don't get me wrong. I learned a lot in all my sessions. There was a great one just for English teachers and we just talked about how to go about this thing called flipped learning. At first it seems like it can't be done, that it's just for those science and math people. But then little ideas start creeping in--what if I have students get their background knowledge in some other way, in some other form, without me lecturing?

What if there's a way to teach/reteach grammar rules, writing rules, without drill and kill worksheets?

What if I can figure out more ways to give them choice? Do kids have to take a test to show what they have learned? What if they have a better way to share their learning?

Do they have to complete the activities I have come up with?
What if they have something else they want to try?

What if....
The possibilities are endless.

And there are two amazing English teachers who team teach their classes....
one in California...
one in North Carolina.

Cross country, team teaching. Revolutionary.

So even though I will flip entire classes instead of units next school year, I won't cheat myself and my students out of that community we build each year. In fact, that community, that family, will be more important than ever. We will have to learn from each other, depend on each other, share with each other.

And if that isn't 21st century learning, I don't know what is.

Where I'm Headed

I first heard about flip classrooms last year. And, true to form, I began reading and learning all I could about them. I didn't jump right in. I sat back and watched and learned.  Here's what I believe and where  I am headed (and in many ways, I'm already there).

Flip class--giving students what they need when they need it. Not on my time. Their time. So I'm not flipping lectures. If I need to say something to the whole class, then I'll talk to the whole class (and record it for those who are absent. A bonus for those kids who want to go back and see it again.) And maybe that's blended learning.....

Flip class--expecting students to take charge of their learning. Yes. I know I have to help them along the way. Yes. I am the teacher. Yes. I need to give them a gentle nudge once in awhile.  But they need to take charge. What do they need to know to move forward in their learning?  I expect them to tell me and find some of the information themselves.

Google it. The most powerful words I know.

If I want to learn more about something, I first google it and get the basics. Then I find a book. Then I find people who know more than I do. Or sometimes, I flip this. I go to the people first. I move on to google. Then I find a book. It really depends on what I want to know more about.

And I don't limit myself to those things--I blog and love the comments. I use Twitter. I have asked my Facebook friends. I ask students.

Flipped Learning. That's where I'm going. I expect my students to take control of their lives and their learning.

Besides modeling what a lifelong reader and a lifelong writer look like, I want to show them what a lifelong learner looks like.

Because I am one.

Ready to Flip

Twitter is my favorite PD. Last September, I found an article through a tweet that introduced me to flipped classrooms.  I immediately retweeted it and noted that it was something I was interested in looking into.  My wonderful new principal (whom I didn't know very well at the time) asked if I would be interested in seeing it in action. Before I knew it, three colleagues and I were on our way to his former school to visit with teachers already implementing flip classrooms.

It was mind changing.  They were honest with us about the work it took, the drawbacks, what it took to get it going.

And it got me reading. I've read the pros and cons.  I've pinned articles to my Pinterest board on Flipped Classes so I can go back and review them. I began lurking on #flipchat on Twitter. I follow blogs and news articles.  Most of the information I find deals with math and science classrooms, but I don't believe they are the only classes this can be done with.

And I am ready to make the commitment.  My summer challenge for myself is to prepare materials and flip my creative writing class. Creative writing seems the easiest of my classes to flip. The main reason being since I use a writing workshop approach, I have many mini lessons prepared already. The directions and the examples are ready. Also, I reworking the details of this class anyway, and following Kelly Gallagher's ideas from Write Like This: Teaching Real World Writing Through Modeling and Mentor Texts. 


It just makes sense to flip this class.

And the bossman challenged me to get this going next year.

So...
What is a flipped classroom?  Essentially, for me anyway, it is a delivery method.  The flipped classroom delivers the instruction for the class outside of the classroom--generally online (although a podcast I listened to yesterday says it doesn't HAVE to be online). The learning, the "homework" is done during class time. During class time, so the teacher is there the moment a difficulty arises.

Flipping a classroom really creates a student centered classroom--well, it does if you do it right. It does if the teacher is willing to give up control. Teachers must think through their lessons. Here's what the students need to know when we are done. How are we going to get there? Content before technology.

And, students need to take control of their own learning. And they need to know it will be hard.

So, stay tuned. I'm sure there will be more posts as I struggle to change the way I "Stand and Deliver".