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FLIPPING AWESOME TEACHING

Who's ready to play ball??

7/31/2020

I might be a few days off on my prediction [below], but as I type this today nearly 20 Miami Marlins and at least 2 Cardinals have tested positive for COVID19.

If they're not playing baseball on August 1st, then NOBODY in this country should physically be going to school on the 1st day. pic.twitter.com/QVKRIF2d8H
— Andrew ''Working to Be a Better'' Swan (@flipping_A_tchr) July 6, 2020

These are professional athletes who have just one job: keep their body as healthy and productive as possible. They work for a multi-level corporation (their team + the league) with one primary interest: keeping their sport viable and profitable, which means making sure the players can play. The players' job requires a minimum of physical contact (outfielders are 100 feet away from each other!). When not playing during a game, they sit or stand apart wearing masks (at least that's what we see on camera).
And yet even still... some players and staff are apparently this highly contagious disease. Maybe not from each other, maybe not at their workplace. That's for the contact tracers to figure out.

I cannot help extrapolating to schools where...
* students do NOT prioritize their health / safety or that of others
* admins and political leaders have competing interests and limited budgets
* teachers keep getting encouraged to work *closer* to students in the buildings, and even 6 feet apart is a stretch (there is no outfield, or even a dugout)

Some online chatter about SBG

7/30/2020

Last week, in a Facebook group for social studies teachers, I got involved with a discussion about standard-based grading. I would not call this a "debate" because there are no rules in the Wild World of Zuckerberg, and besides the thread never got nasty. I started writing this blog post back then, but got distracted somehow [look, squirrel!] so today I will finish and publish those thoughts.
The OP:

Somebody else replied soon afterward:

Early on I could see the problem: some participants did not understand SBG.
Certainly I can see a range of understanding for the "3 branches of government" standard. Can students apply the concept elsewhere? Are they able to analyze its purpose and effectiveness? Those would be at the "4" level. The curriculum standards are not really binary.

Soon afterward, of course, the thread veered toward compliance:

ugh, SIGH
Again, it is an understandable presumption that "if it's not graded, they won't do it", but I appreciate the way this person chose their words. Teachers can "push for" growth and improvement in many ways, not just with letter grades.

Yeah, I pretty much agree with this person's rough breakdown from 0 to 4. Not sure how to verify a student's understanding "months later", but overall I get their point. I also agree that the topmost level should not be "unobtainable".

Well, my GIF response already speaks a thousand words.
At some point, work is too late. We have grading term deadlines, we move on to the next unit, and reality just has to rear its ugly head at some point. I've made individual allowances under certain circumstances, though.

This person deserves the final word, because they nailed it with no need to apologize for the length of this reply.

Who doesn't like a flipped classroom?!

7/29/2020

Answer: Several students every year, especially at first.
This new definition of homework (and also the classwork) violates their conceptions of school, so it requires some adjustment. By now, I think most students have an idea what to expect because my teaching style is "famous" in the building. Most of them still really need direct instruction in how to watch video lessons, and that's a key focus of the first 3 weeks.
I always do a year-end survey, which I've blogged about elsewhere. My 'job approval rating' hovers around 70-80%, which is fairly acceptable; the disapproval has always been 5% or less, and I'll take that too. Digging deeper into the data, though, I get some interesting critiques in response to the open-ended questions. These surveys are almost never anonymous, so I can align students' survey responses with their class performance and work habits.

My June 2020 survey "job approval" results at a glance (alternate title: "You can't win 'em all")

I categorized the critical feedback in four groups, each with between 1 and 10 respondents:

the Luddites: Edpuzzle doesn't work consistently on their computer, or they are "not a fast typer", or "it's digital and something sometimes goes wrong" ... which is true but I also know that textbooks and worksheets get lost or left behind and there are other problems with analog systems
the Grade-Grubbers: "It's harder to get an 'A' now" was written on a couple cards, and there were 4 other similar critiques. They must go beyond the information stated in the video lesson to meet the standards-based criteria for Advanced work -- but I let them go back to revise their responses after the related class discussions, so my conscience is clear.
Traditionalists who feel guilty and/or confused that they can keep the video lesson open while writing the GoogleForm summary. "It feels more proper to take a quiz in the classroom," wrote one student. I think that's cute.
Fundamentalists who believe that "the quizzes were about memorizing and I think that's the way to learn", or expressed a similar perspective. Four students seemed to prefer that form of learning. Well kids, you will have plenty of teachers in your schooling career who will meet that expectation.

No matter how carefully you construct your flipped class, I believe you are quite likely to experience at least 1 of each type of critical student. That alone doesn't mean you are doing this wrong. In fact, in some ways, that means you ARE succeeding to subvert the dominant paradigm and to teach students the way they deserve (not just the way they feel cozy and familiar).

Another story about why I do "this"

7/28/2020

A few years ago, I subbed for a colleague for three days. My 8th graders had an overnight field trip that week, and I did not have/want to join them in a cabin in the woods! But Ms. F volunteered to go, so that's how I ended up in charge of 6th grade Geography classes. I didn't really have to *teach* because she left a research project to do in the library: make a trifold travel brochure about your assigned country, including absolute location, major resources, etc. The task was rigidly structured with boxes to fill and detailed directions of which library resources to use for each part. Actually, it was really just a series of worksheets rather than a project.
The moment that sticks in my mind is helping two girls at the enormous National Geographic atlas. They had to find the latitude and longitude coordinates of their country's capital city and copy them onto the organizer sheet for a brochure about Great Britain ... but these girls were confused and called me over. They could not understand how London could be at 0 degrees Longitude. ("Is the book maybe wrong?") One of them also could not remember which way is west. I quickly realized they were learning NOTHING about geography from this geography project, despite the colorful appearance and abundant detail the brochures would eventually contain. The pair of girls did not really want to learn about longitude or cardinal directions from me, either. My efforts were wasting time they "should" be spending on the next step of the project sheet.

It was a depressing interaction for me (with two students whom I would later teach US History, but neither remembered this episode). However, that was one early step along the path toward flipping my class structure and creating a more effectively student-centered class with a mastery-based approach. If these girls (and presumably other students as well) had built a stronger basis of understanding about maps, longitude, etc. then the travel brochure project would have been much more meaningful and educational.

We're at the halfway point...

7/27/2020

...between the last day of one school and the first day of the next, and the twinges of panic & doubt are returning to my heart like the flipping swallows to Capistrano: this is an annual event with many previous whiney blog posts on the same subject.

Stop reading! Spare yourself, while you still have time!

So do I, of course. This time last year, I had not yet been stung by 3 hornets who caused an allergic reaction to swell parts of my right leg that robbed me of many August vacation days with several doctor visits and one pre-birthday hospitalization. But I still got quite a lot done that month, including the whole SBG system design.
Now of course I have to play by the rules of 2020, with no clear details about when or where I will meet students. I am pretty sure the SBG system will work, although we don't even have the hybrid / distance-learning policies yet. All we know is that they will exist in a more detailed form than last spring's Pass/Fail ad hoc approach. I also feel fairly confident in the general academic topics I will address first: foundations & purposes of government. Still not quite sure though about how to teach schooling skills like How to Use a Chromebook, or whether that will be addressed in a different way.
Instead, I'm spending most time hiding from the heat in my basement "office space", grinding through some coursework to keep climbing the salary schedule ladder....

What I flipping wanted to tell their parents

7/26/2020

This is a message I wrote in early April, with the intention of sending to the families of my 8th graders. At that time we had been on 'shutdown' for 3 weeks, and the novelty was wearing very thin. I didn't send that email, but figured I should post here for posterity.

Dear parents of my currently-quarantined students,

Perhaps you expected that I would thrive in this new world of remote-learning, where many teachers are using advanced technology to connect and to teach. Maybe you feel disappointed that I haven’t posted multiple video lessons every week, and that I’m not pushing forward more aggressively with the civics curriculum. After all, I’ve been assigning video lessons since the second week of school.
The truth is that a “flipped classroom” needs more than video. It also requires reliable ways to assess learning, it depends on systems for identifying errors and encouraging remediation, and it needs a common space to build beyond the basics from the video lesson – that is where the real learning happens!
I have already learned hard lessons about the limits of online learning. In February 2015, we had 3 straight weeks of heavy snowstorms that cancelled and disrupted school. That was a huge deal at the time, but actually far less pervasive and prolonged than the current emergency. I persevered with video assignments and assessments about federalism and separation of powers. I committed myself to be available anytime day or night for students’ questions and assistance. It did not work well: in-class quiz scores were well below-average, and I had to retread a lot of that material in March. [I blogged about it then, and again more with more detail in 2017.]
Now here we are in 2020. After a couple weeks of experimentation and exposure with GoogleMeet and then Zoom, it seems clear to me that videoconferences during “office hours” do not provide the necessary common space for deeper learning, and meaningful assessment/intervention is also very difficult. During the vidchats, I’m sure that many students have muted the sound. I feel certain that some are using their phones. Watching on “grid view” is actually every teenager’s worst nightmare: everybody really is looking at them!

So honestly, I'm not pushing very hard. I am playing the long game, hoping and trusting that we can keep this going for a few more weeks and that I won't burn out your children. Because there's no way they are heading back into my classroom as 8th graders. Officially, school is closed in Massachusetts until May 4 ... but we all must accept that they will keep the doors shut for longer. Most of all and first of all, I need to stay connected with them as people.
That's why last week I asked your children to answer a short survey (still no response from 15 of them) about their sleep habits, which are clearly visible here.

3 weeks ago I had another survey with the same question as above, and the average 'score' has declined a little but actually not as much as one might expect.

I also asked for some meme captions and got quite a few really funny submissions!

I am doing what I can, even when it seems to be not very much.

Sincerely,
Andrew Swan (still your child's teacher!)

Short flipping post

7/25/2020

Today is Saturday, and I try to take one day off every week. Since it is summer vacation...
...which means I avoid going down to my basement office where my notebook and other supplies reside
... including my district-supplied Macbook which has lots of open browser tabs
... and also a better-functioning keyboard than this HP notebook, where I have to hit most of the bottom row of letter keys (plus 'f' and 'g' and '5') as if I'm using a typewriter! It is really annoying, and my temporary solution of a Bluetooth keyboard just suddenly quit after only 4 weeks of operation. I just don't have the patience to keep going and type much more today. Back to work tomorrow (the 4th Sunday of July)!

Current projects

7/24/2020

I figure that I am the most reliable / frequent reader of my own blog, so this post is a note to Future Self as confirmation that I do not waste all my time during the summer! It is true that most of my deadlines are self-imposed, and I have no student work to grade (one of my least favorite teaching tasks). But hey, I've still got Stuff To Do:

revise the Grade 8 curriculum map with some more detail about each unit, slightly rearranged and prioritized objectives, and a single sequence for all 11 teachers to follow
work on my portion of a webinar presentation about using videos asychronously, as one of the district's professional development summer offerings (August 5 & 10)
coursework on Building Equity in Schools, which only has one book to read but a LOT of writing tasks! (that will earn 3 college credits, I think)
coursework for a UDL class that hasn't opened yet
3 more weeks of classwork and Thursday AM attendance (and then a detailed lesson plan) for a Civic Dialogue workshop with other Massachusetts teachers
collaboration with 4 school colleagues + the principal about designing anti-racism PD for our staff
oh, and at some point also figure out how to translate all my class routines and year-openers into an online format (specifics depend on whether we begin hybrid or fully-online)