Advent of Hope

Advent.

Its a great season. Not so much for the harried shopping, the wound up kids in class or the incessant pull to attend one more party.

No, I like advent because of the word. Advent.

The coming of something momentous. The arrival. The reaching of an objective.

It feels like hope. As though a sunrise was about to come up on a dark night.

I have recently spoken to my students about what makes the world go 'round. Money or Love. And I pointed out the many, many times in our past and current history how when children are not loved it bends and breaks them, but if they don't have money they still survive and even thrive (please don't misunderstand me, poverty is a real and pernicious issue, and I don't mean to minimise it - but I have seen very happy communities which have no money at all). Hope springs from Love, because Love fuels Hope.

Love is what drives us as educators. Love is what makes us refuse to rest on our laurels (or pre-made lessons/old plans) and pushes us to continually improve. Love is what keeps us up at night working on lesson ideas, worrying about 'that kid' or wondering how the next day will go.

Love lets us go up against entrenched bureaucracies, corporations or ideologies. It makes us tired, driven, joyful, hopeful in the face of despair. Love always, protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13: 7-8)

I feel so privileged to be connected to such an amazing body of people who Love their students and their practise deeply. Who challenge me daily to be better than who I was and give me Hope to reach it.

I remember this during this Advent season and I gratefully bless all of my PLN for how they have blessed me and wish them a warm, enjoyable and restful break.

The Elementary Flip

Ok, so I finally got in touch with the inestimable Rick Mccleary, who wanted to talk about some ideas around flipping middle school LA. An hour and forty minutes later, well, we had touched on the LA thing (but we're both kinda stumped, especially when it comes to vocab and grammar) but we had talked about many more issues we have found in our classrooms, including education innovation, flip and the daily grind.  


It was truly illuminating, and further proof that connected teachers who are passionate about changing their practises need the time to interact with each other.


And truth be told, I am a little in awe of this guy. A great teacher, just check out what he's done on his site if you don't believe me.


Anyways, back to the 'Aha' moment of our conversation. Rick asked about the Canflip conference, and while I told him it was awesome (it was - seriously, sign up for Canflip 13, June 20, 21 in Kelowna) but I was inhibited by the lack of other lower middle school and elementary teachers there. Then he said something which he later tweeted

#flipclass In my exp this is the 1st grassroots change in Ed 2come down from HS. Weneed 2 share how it applies 2 yongr grs


Which kind of blew me away. I had never thought about it that way, but everywhere I look there seems to be an abundance of High School Flippers, but relatively few Elementary Flippers. And the problem seems  to be a perceptual one.

See, I've never felt that as a Flip Teacher I need to rely on video lectures for my students. I've always believed the technology was a way to leverage my class time to ensure students met the goals of mastering curricular outcomes, developing independent work habits and developing their strengths (which I guess is actually a blending of Inquiry with Flip goals).


But most teachers out there, rightly or wrongly, believe that Flip begins with video lecture. This is anathema to most elementary teachers, who rightly recognise lecture as an ineffective way to get information across to their students. Which means most elementary teachers would have little interest in pursuing Flip.


As I say, this is a perceptual problem, since the majority of Flip teachers would argue that it is not about video. But the problem remains, especially in regards to Flipping Elementary.


I don't have the solution at hand, but I think it begins with an intensive discussion among elementary teachers about how to meet the goals of elementary teaching (basic skills and the development of such), while still developing critical thinkers who are able to work independently.


And I think those Flip leaders who have spent so much time developing such excellent thinking around Flip in the HS setting need to seriously examine how to implement Flip in the elementary classroom. 


Just imagine if the students you had arriving at your high school were not already pre-trained in playing school (read a piece of paper, regurgitate info on another piece and grub for marks) but were independent learners who complain to those teachers who are not willing to let them go further and deeper into curricular material than a 45 minute lecture would allow! 


I can envision a legion of students turning learning on its head, not becuase we lead them but because they demanded it.  And I think the solution lies somewhere south of grade 6.

Flipping Without Video

I see one of the most common questions about Flip being "can it be done without video" a la Dean Shareski's tweet today:

Can you flip a classroom without video? And if so was assigning reading like my teachers did in 1977, a flipped classroom?
— Dean Shareski (@shareski) July 3, 2012

So, as a non-video-creating flipper, I figured I should write about what I do to make my classroom flipped.


First, why don't I make videos? Vanity and practicality. I don't like my voice on video (let alone my ugly mug! kidding, I'm actually devilish handsome!) and I don't see my students having success trying to take notes from a video. Grade 6 is simply too young to take notes as a learning method, at least without some serious training, which defeats the purpose of flipping, imo.


So, what do I do? Well, I set up the structure of my class like a college class, with each unit being given in advance, syllabus style. I post my "I can" statements for the class, explain each of them and then let the kids know they will be able to explain all of these to me by the end of the term. And, then I let them know they get to approach whichever outcomes they want, in whatever order they want, in any way they want. This means my students who are physically oriented could make dances or models, kids who are musically oriented can make songs, boys (often) can make Minecraft representations to support what they are doing. 

And for each of these outcomes, I am available to help with as much or as little as they need. I provide all the resources, all the classtime (and lunchtimes if desired/needed) and all the encouragement they need. Then I can ask them to adapt or change what they have done if they do not head in the right direction (part of this is that the kids have certain outcomes they must meet for provincial testing). Plus, the goal is that for each outcome they meet, I can provide a assessment so they know how they are doing against the provincial requirements.


I feel it is the right balance of freedom and structure which my students need as pre-teens and for the parents who send their children to my school for high achievement.


You can check out my (pre-refurbished) flipclass for the unit I did for Air & Aerodynamics here

Update

There has been a sea change where I work. I am now in a position where I can reasonably hope some of the dreams that died last year will be re-imagined.

I am excited.

Opportunity missed

I will not be very specific in this post. The stuff I am talking about has implications within my professional code of conduct and since I don't fully understand what the rules are, (I don't go to enough of my mandated meetings nor do I try to comprehend what is said when I do go) I figure the more vague the better. CYA


This year was a bit of a loss.

At the start of the year, after several months of dreaming and planning, my grade was going to implement something I was really excited about doing. We called it Collaborative Teaching, but it was my hope that it could be a PBL encompassing all subjects (except math, we always exclude math, fooey!) where we got to be very innovative about all our education possibilities.

We even set up the schedule to allow for the maximum flexibility in achieving this goal. I mean, seriously, it was a thing of beauty. All the subjects in different 'homerooms' (which optimally only existed on paper) ran at the same time, so if we needed a smaller group of students we could do that, or if we needed everyone together, well we could do that too. Plus, we had groups divided up by gender during the week, again if we needed to do a project that was more male-oriented (running around, hammering stuff into other stuff, etc) then there was the time built in for it. The only thing we as a grade team did not have control of was options, and hey, we needed a break every now and again anyways.

There was even TEAM BUILDING/PLANNING TIME set aside every week (something no other grade team had).

An embarrassment of riches. Seriously, every little thing we could want, including oversized classrooms.

So, naturally, you know what happened.

Explosions of learning. Children eagerly running to school to take advantage of the bounty their teachers were offering. Parents arriving enraptured to tell us of how their previously reluctant learner was excited about school again.

Well, actually, what we did was create a team who was generally unsure about this experiment and had to have the whole concept explained (hey, its a new thing, of course there is some discussion required) but even then, it was only half-hearted acceptance of the value in trying this out. Then upon looking at the schedule, there was a meltdown. "Where's my classroom in all of this?" Because, without a group of kids who were assigned to a space, there was a loss of professional identity, of the ability to establish personal plans and stake out intellectual territory.

Ok. I can bend. Let's adapt a little.

But then, the death knell came, but I didn't know it.

We tried a completely new and unprecedented activity that took us away from the school for four days to begin the year. There were a number of good reasons to do it and it was a valuable activity in and of itself. The problem came with the four days of planning for it, which took up all of our extra time at the start of the year. And when we got back from the activity we were a week into the school year and hadn't even moved our books to our new rooms, let alone done any decorating.

So yeah, putting uncertain teachers in the hole by implementing a totally new system, without a second of PD, planning or completed room.

Needless to say the timeline went like this.

Week one. Split up the combined time for specific classes.

Month two. Take apart the schedule and reconstitute into a more 'school-like' configuration. No gender classes. No opportunities to combine teaching.

Term Two. Situation back to normal. And get to listen to 'war stories' of how our grade had to survive the first term and how it made the year so hard.

But hey, we got to keep our team planning time. Which we could use to talk about whatever we wanted. Just not how to work together.

It was hard to watch this dream die. I didn't complain (much) because I still work in a very privileged situation. I get to do whatever I want in my classroom, innovate however I choose (I Choose Flip!) and still get admin support, even when something bombs (or smokes, or stinks - I teach science after all). I am given advantages teacher the world over dream of having.

But I remember what could have been. I remember the possibilities. And I remember with my failure (not just mine, but still) the idea of the classroom that I wanted so much to succeed is now an exemplar of what not to do.

Ouch.

Musing on Multiple Choosing

I tweeted yesterday that I am through with multiple choice tests, and I meant it too. 


The problem is that I teach grade six in Alberta where students are expected to perform Provincial Achievement Tests at the end of the year which are, you guessed it, multiple choice. So I am left with a problem. 


How do I, a flipclass enthusiast interested in valuing formative, authentic assessment also train my students how to have success in a multiple choice format? The trite answer is to believe that students with substantial knowledge of the subject will demonstrate that knowledge in any format. Hey, if they know it, they know it, right? Of course, as practical experience shows, this is folly. My students, who show great ingenuity in solving problems and displaying knowledge performed poorly on MC tests all year. In fact, one girl who has been working hard and creating pages of documentation to explain her knowledge in a deep and rich way, scored 65% on the summative MC exam.  This is due, in my opinion, to the multiple choice format which needs to ensure there is at least two correct answers, the right and the righter. When I have kids who are looking at the whole concept and identifying many facets to an issue, to hive off one is too simplistic. Thus, the right answer could be argued to be as correct as the righter answer.


So, I am left with the problem that I need to teach kids how to do the multiple choice exams and I need to make it a part of my practise during the year to ensure they get familiar with it, as opposed to cramming a 'how to write MC exams' unit in at the end of the year.


Which means I need to create some good, robust assessments of content in a multiple choice format. And I say I need to create them, because then I can avoid the problem of having questions from another teacher's point of view and not my own.


I have a second problem. I am not a sequential, logical thinker. The tests I make are error-filled and demonstrate the success of failure.


Sigh.

Teachers Saving the Wooooooorld

I love to learn stuff. I would sit at a desk and read all day - NY Times, hockey blogs, Bio of Abe Lincoln, History of the Byzantine Empire, explanation of nuclear fusion - anything that taught me something. I know that is one of the reasons I got into teaching, because I get to learn stuff right along with the students, and if I do it (teaching) well, then sometimes the kids teach me stuff.

And this curiosity about everything is really the only thing I want to communicate each and every year. I always get up at some point and say "if you leave this classroom having a total interest or obsession with one thing, a passion to know or get better at this one thing, then I will be happy." And I always mean it, because I know that none of the content that I cover will likely be in my students' heads by next week, let alone next year, but that curiosity or excitement to explore should never leave.

Which is why I flip out every time I read some well-meaning politico/liberal thinker type extol the need for something to be included in the curriculum. We need to educate our kids about the importance of recycling! Don't leave out the (name your disenfranchised group) when you cover the history of our country. Make sure they understand that bullying is bad!

Not that any of those things that gets talked about is bad, in fact generally when I see what is being suggested, I nod my head in agreement. Absolutely they need to understand the importance of budgeting and saving. Fer shure, you cannot undervalue the need for good oral hygiene. Expecting teachers to solve social ills simply because they teach something is foolish at worst and naive at best.

Because those things ARE NOT education. Education, in my view, is exposing a kid to the world, showing them how to explore that world and guiding them when they get stuck. I do my worst teaching when I get in the way of that.

Unfortunately, I am constrained to get in the way, because I am given a whole set of obstacles, more commonly described as the curriculum. The curriculum is great in that it sets objectives and outcomes and skills that can be learned. What it doesn't do very well is allow for curiosity.

Let me give an example of what I mean. I teach grade six social studies. And in the course of teaching this fine subject, we come across ancient Athens. Now the curriculum says I need to teach students how decision making processes (democracy) were developed here. What it says I can't do is feed the flames of excitement in each and every one of my students (mainly boys) who say, is this ancient Greece? Can we learn about the mythology? What about the Romans? Can we learn about them too? What I have to point out to them is that we don't have time to even look at the traditional rivalry between Athens and Sparta, let alone Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, the Roman Republic and the rise of Julius Caesar. And I am forced to tell them that they won't get the chance to learn about anything like that until university. And the reason I can't, nor can any of their teachers from here to eternity, is that the subject of ancient Europe, medieval Europe and modern Europe has been ruled out of the social studies curriculum. (this particular vent is my own soapbox, but it could equally apply to the science curriculum or math for that matter).

What would be nice in one of these interminable curriculum reviews would be if someone said, Y'know, these subjects are all pretty full of stuff. What if we eased off a little and assumed that teachers want to teach, kids want to learn and if we give them some space they will do exactly that?

I think it would be fabulous if there was a month of non-structured exploration built into each and every curriculum, for most of the grades. Perhaps some suggested subjects or areas of inquiry, but mostly non-mandated with the only requirement being that the interest of the class must lead the way. Shoot, one of these years I might actually learn about Chinese history from my students (I had never heard of Zheng He until one of my students objected to only learning about Canadian explorers and made her own presentation on this ancient Chinese admiral).

For you nay-sayers that feel there is not enough covered, I point out the Language Arts curriculum, which has very little in concrete outcomes, but yields the most amazing products of all the subjects. Good teachers can let their students roam as far as they want and they very frequently do.

If we take the political/social/pragmatic agendas out of what we teach, or rather what we force kids to ingest, then imho, we would have students who were far more capable of providing nuance and balance to our culture, having discovered their own brains and how thinking for themselves is good.

Oh, and that teachers really aren't the be-all-end-all of knowledge. That would be good too.

Teaching in a Vacuum

Nature abhors a vacuum, says Aristotle, opining on the natural state of matter way back before my European forebears managed to quit building houses with mud. And to a certain extent he was right. But on the other hand, we as teachers prefer to follow Robert Boyle in the belief that a vacuum can exist, though we disagree with him by believing if we work hard enough in a vacuum we can make enough noise to be heard.

Wow, that was a tortuous metaphor.

What I am currently discovering in my flipclassroom is that if I am to continue this long-term, I need an 'atmosphere' to work in. Much like a flame burns out when in a vacuum, sorry, I'll try that again; I as an individual teacher will quickly burnout if I don't find or create a community of teachers who I can share, collaborate and co-create with in my school. There is really only so much one person can do, and the curse/blessing of flipclass is that it can save a lot of prep time, if you do the necessary prep time (which is tremendously more than organising a traditional classroom, let me tell you).

That is why I am glad to see a number of teachers who are not only interested in flip at my school, but an admin team who are very positive about the benefits of bringing flip into the classroom. Which gives me hope the goal of a flip atmosphere will be reached where I am.

Assessment

I suck at writing tests.

There I said it. It has taken me some time in my teaching practise to admit this, but it feels good to get it out there.

And knowing this full well, I had a plan to make sure my assessments for my flipped science class were going to be useful. I took all of the public copies of previous Provincial Achievement Tests, pulled out the relevant questions and organised them by the topics in the unit. This I did during my break, figuring I could easily finish it up during my free time when school started. (feel free to derisively snort at my naivete)

Thus began the longest, and most complex test preparation of my life. I needed 8 tests (well 9 actually, but I couldn't find any questions that fit one topic) which meant 8 sets of questions. Originally I thought I would just scan them all and then post the test electronically, but it was beyond my personal ability at that point and I was out of time. I figured paper copies would do for this go-around and start cut-n-paste old school style.

It. Was. Painful.

Five days later and I was done. All the tests I needed to make were photocopied. I don't need to detail the agony of putting the tests together, all the mistakes I made and re-made, and finally once everything was copied and set out, discovering there were still mistakes, forcing me to go back and re-do three of those tests. Suffice to say, it was not the solution I had hoped for.

And the worst part of all of this, is that I really did not have a strong desire to put the tests together in the first place, I just knew that I needed to have something tangible for parents to put their finger on as we went through the flip together.

Well, maybe the worst part is that all the marking I need to do every class is taking away from the time I actually spend interacting with the students. You see, I allow the kids to work at their own pace, answer each learning outcome in their own time, which means they need to be assessed at their own pace too. I thought by having all these tests out there, the kids would then be able to work, be formatively assessed and then moved on to summatively assess their knowledge for each topic (in regular-person-speak, they show me their answer to the question, I give it a passing mark and then I give them the test). In practise, this means I never leave my intensity table, and am marking something like 6 to 10 pieces of work every class. I almost need to have parent volunteers come in to do my marking so I can do my teaching.

The obvious answer is to digitize the tests, have a self-scoring system in place and then provide access codes to the kids so they can write the tests and we can see the scores when they are finished. Which is what I planned for year two of the flip (baby-steps you see).

But frankly I am getting worn out and I am not meeting my criteria of seeing the kids work. So I am moving to an intermediate step. Tests only happen on two days of the week, preferably in the classes where I have another instructor present (we combine three periods into two by having 1.5 classes in a room with two teachers, I dunno how that makes the math work out, but its what we do). We'll see if that has any salutary benefit.

Locus of Control

(Never pass up the opportunity for gratuitous Star Trek references, I say)

My fellow conspirator innovator @dramaticscience commented on my post the other day no rows, no central point and it helped me realize something - I am interested in giving up control.

Not all the way, mind you, I fully understand how Lord of the Flies a classroom can get without a little bit of dictatorship (I can be a Critias if I need to be, a Julius Caesar when things get really bad).

But I am interested in seeing how far my students can go towards learning outcomes without me giving it to them. And @dramaticscience's comment made me realise that I have really moved away from the teacher as sage on the stage model.

If I was looking at me saying this from the outside, I would probably level some criticism at me along the lines of I guess that means you just tell them what to do and then sit back and watch as they work, right, which I think is a fair criticism. There have been times in the past when I have given the kids something to do and I sat down to catch a breath and get some work done. But now that I have flipped I have found myself working harder than ever.

First there was the assessment debacle (another post on that later) but second there is the sheer level of interaction that is taking place. I am constantly interacting with students, checking up on their progress, answering their questions, (formatively) assessing their progress and even teaching them. And while I have a collaborative partner in my room a few periods a week, I am finding that I am busier than ever. To the point I wistfully wonder if I could just lecture once or twice a week to take a break!

Thus by making my students the focus, I increased my workload (not something #flipclass should advertise a lot, I think).

Highlights

Some highlights from the last two days:

- "Mr. Barreth! I know why the moon has phases. It has to do with the sun shining on part of the moon." (me)"But why are some parts dark?" (student) "Umm. I don't know. I'll find out."

- "Mr. Barreth, how do you spell camera obscura?"

-"Can we work on science this period?"

-"Can I try writing something in Arabic?"

-"How would I spell 'Zeus' in Greek?" (to be fair, those two are from my social studies class)

My Flipping Beginnings

This is the beginning of my flip journey. I am making mistakes along the way, but then again so are my kids. And as we keep reminding each other, the mistakes are where the learning takes place.

Opening thoughts

I have been challenged lately to start to put down my thoughts about what I am doing in my classroom. So here it goes.

After years of flirting with more constructivist practices in my own room, I began in earnest with a visit to Colorado last spring. I attended the Flip conference in Woodpark, CO, headlined by Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams, two pioneers in the flipclass movement. It was there I was exposed to flip class beyond the Khan Academy idea; flip as a philosophy focused on challenging students to take control over what and how deeply they learn. And also to encourage teachers to find ways to interact more frequently with all your students (the goal many participants gave was to interact with each student at least once every day). I walked away from the conference challenged and inspired to figure out how to integrate flip into my practice (and having some really great software from Techsmith to aid me).

But then I went into summer, where I began to understand the magnitude of what lay ahead of me and I chickened out. Well, actually, I spent a lot of time with my kids and enjoying Calgary's brief moments of actual heat which we call summer (and have to be enjoyed when they happen, otherwise they are gone and don't come back). I put the notions of creating a whole catalog of videos aside and concentrated on the challenge of blending all the of classes in one schedule, which was the proposed goal for my grade team that fall.

Fast forward to November. The blended classroom experiment failed with a whimper, (not a bang), and I was left looking at how to structure my own classroom and practice in a way that would bring about the innovation that I sought. Which led me back to flip.

I had done a lot of reading and observing (virtually) of how other teachers were doing flip. I was inspired by the examples of Mr McIntosh, Troy Cockrum, Brian Bennett, and many others, but I also wondered how I could make this method of teaching my own. I am not naturally excited about being on camera and was feeling cautious about importing teacher-directed methods to video and pretending it was the constructivist method I was seeking. The compromise I found was in creating a space for my students to understand what questions were being asked of them (by the provincial curriculum) and to explore the answers on their own terms. I put all of these questions up on our school wiki with each question linked to some resources and then explained how this process was going to work. I showed them the resources, I booked all the necessary computer time (iPads, with the GoSkyWatch app and one of our Computers On Wheels) and emptied our library of all astronomy related books.

So far we are only a couple of classes in, but interest is high, I am excited by the focus students are showing and I am able to add resources as we go (I created a video to help explain what question one was really about, as an example).

What I like about what we're doing is that my students are determining how they figure out the answers to the questions posed by the curriculum and that I get to see what they are doing each step of the way. That way if I see a common problem, I can address it for the entire class in the most appropriate way.

I'm sure there are issues and problems with how I'm approaching this and I would love your feedback.