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.