Throughout
his entire presentation I was enthralled by the dedication and professionalism
that Jon Palmer exuded through his videos. I completely got it. I know that I,
as a student would prefer this method of learning as opposed to a lecture on
physics. As a teacher though, I am a bit stumped when it comes to figuring out
how to integrate this method into the classroom. The majority of class time is
already spent having discussions or allowing students to work independently on
their own work while we, the teachers, answer individual questions and check in
with each student one-on-one.
What
I gathered from our class discussion after the presentation was that the entire
point of a flipped classroom was to get students to take ownership of their own
learning. I would argue that the class I am currently in already does this.
Students are given three weeks to conduct interviews, write a rough draft,
edit, and format their page for publishing. During class time they work on
whatever stage in this process they are at. Some student’s conduct interviews
in the hall, some work on editing their peers’ work, some take photographs for
their article, etc. My mentor teacher and I are there to answer questions and
check in to see where everyone is in the process and what help they need, if
any, for moving forward. However, ultimately it is up to the student to finish
this entire process within the three-week deadline so that their article can
appear in the next edition of The Communicator. The thing about this
process is that students want to see their article in the magazine.
To see the page they themselves designed all glossy and colorful and out there
for the world to see.
So
far in the school year we are about to publish the first edition of the
magazine. Out of the 36 students that are enrolled in the class only one has
not finished their page and article. The consequence for this will simply be
that they will not have a page in the first edition of the new magazine, in
addition to their grade suffering. Is this bad? Is there something else
we could have done to help this student succeed? Or did we provide enough
support and time for this project to be finalized that the responsibility is
all on the student? Could there be a different format for teaching this
material and these skills that would work better for all students?
Or should we accept that 35 students were given this responsibility and
succeeded and that one student might not be ready to take responsibility and
ownership for their own learning?
These
are the questions that have been floating around in my head since the
presentation that Jon Palmer gave. I'm interested to see whether or not my
peers took away the same points. I think that the real idea was an alternative
way to get students to take ownership of their learning, and I believe that
this doesn't necessarily mean that a classroom has to be flipped to achieve
this (it just appears to work really well in a physics classroom). My question
to you, the reader, is this: what about the students who don't take the
responsibility and ownership when every opportunity is given, the students who
don't take advantage of the support and guidance that we offer? How can we help
them achieve; or is what we're offering sufficient and it is now time for the
student to take responsibility upon themselves or suffer the
consequences?
Catherine, as far as I'm concerned, you drew some vitally important meaning from Jon's presentation. As you suggest, the kind of 'flipping' that he's done is but one way to move towards the goal of encouraging greater student ownership over their work, and it sounds like your mentor has a very powerful mechanism in play for doing just that.
ReplyDeleteYour concluding question is a compelling one, Catherine, and I suppose that it is a kind of parallel for the teacher to the challenge of making student ownership over their work your priority. In the traditional model, grades are the leverage teachers have over students, but you and your mentor are trying to reorient that entire framing, and rest more power/control/ownership with the students. I don't know the answer to your question (though I will say that the level of buy-in you're seeing is remarkable) but it does remind me that--especially outside of an intentional community like CHS where students might be more amenable to alternative ways of doing business--that you'll want to focus some consistent attention to the matter of helping your students to create a stronger internal mechanism for thinking about their work than they might otherwise have needed to cultivate.
Catherine, I spoke with Jon a bit further about the humanities, and Jon's first response was the the average literature class is already flipped in some ways: the students are responsible for reading a certain number of pages and showing up to class with, at a minimum, a familiarity with the superficial features of the text such as plot. More advanced courses may ask more of the student: come in ready to challenge the text, ready to ask questions, ready to write, etc. And in considering his answer, it seems to me that Jon would agree with you entirely: the point of flipping is to give the students as much responsibility as possible.
ReplyDelete"As much as possible" is not, as you've suggested, a constant. It changes from student to student and, as Jeff points out, from class to class and school to school. I've certainly seen nothing like the level of motivation you saw in any of my 10th grade American Lit classes. There are some go-getters, but on the whole, they have really bought into the idea that learning about lit is a passive activity: they are there to receive an acceptable interpretation of a text, and then reproduce that interpretation on demand. (The relevant demands to include teacher, ACT, MME, etc.) Point being: teachers have a tremendous responsibility not only to foster in their students a desire to take responsibility, but to scaffold very carefully the increase in responsibility, and to think ahead about what happens when some of the students don't WANT the scaffold taken away.
In an "elective" course, some of that work can be done by being exceedingly honest about expectations in a way that gently encourages those without the requisite motivation to move along. In a "core" class, the expectations still must be clear, but cannot be used in the same way. In that case, you need to be ready for the possibility that some students either prefer the standard lecture format, or simply aren't ready for the flipped classroom.
If you are obliged to educate them nonetheless, it seems to me that the first thing you need to be ready to do in your classroom is capitalize on the motivation that gets students to watch the videos: keep them empowered and moving smoothly through the classroom, so that you can afford to focus your attention on those students who need the help.
Michael,
DeleteI agree with you completely. As Jon was presenting I had the exact same feeling, English classes are already flipped. The presentation was a nice way of reminding us of how we can spice things us a bit so that students aren't being asked to complete the same tasks day in and day out. Each class is different and you're right, it's up to us to figure out what motivates each class and each student. It'll be interesting figuring out how to do it!
If there's one thing that I've really come to realize, it's how different instruction is between disciplines. Maybe that should have been a "duh" thing, but it took until about now in the semester before it really hit me. So, yes, I feel your confusion when it comes to truly flipping an English classroom. More specifically, my concerns came with the idea of flipping a middle school English classroom. We try not to assign too much reading outside of class, because students really need a lot of support in class when reading to help them understand. In these cases, I'm not really sure how comfortable I'd be giving a lot of prep work outside of class - the rule of thumb seems to be 30 minutes or less per night. To that extent, I guess I think flipped classrooms might only work at the high school level.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post about the flipped classroom because it was so interesting to see how different the concerns are in different disciplines. My biggest concern for the flipped classroom is encouraging student buy-in. If my students aren't actually watching the lectures and checking their own understanding at home, then I will have nothing to work with during class.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that students taking responsibility of their own learning is a huge plus of the flipped classroom, I see the major bonus for science is getting students more time 'experiencing' science.