The Flipped Life

I've heard a lot about the flipped classroom. Five years ago I had never heard the term, and now it is prevalent in many conversations with teachers and leaders. My eldest son is in his second year in a flipped math classroom. It has made sense for his learning and he certainly seems to be growing in the experience. Math made sense. Children watch the video of the instruction. Replay the skill a couple of times. Teacher does guided practice in the class. Ok, I get it. Then I started to hear more and more. His English-Language Arts teacher shared that she was flipping the grammar instruction. He brought home the video. In great Cameron style, 5:10am will snagging down some pancakes, we were introduced to independent and dependent clauses with a few references from the Simpsons. Ok, I get it. Later that morning, I was talking to his cross country coach and she shared that she was flipping her PE class. OK, I didn't get it.

She explained, that while she has been teaching for twenty-something years, she always is looking to try something new. Like all teachers, her instruction has constraints. She is limited by a 39 minute period and wants to maximize movement, dialogue, and skills during that time. In flipping her classroom, the children watch 5-7 minutes at home and then can maximize their feedback and processing time with her. In her world the interchange of dialogue, practice, and reflection was the priority. Distribution of content knowledge needed to at times come in a different form.

It was a lot to process. So many of us had gone to school to be content specialists. I was a Chemistry and Political Science major. I had a vast background in two disciplines that I loved to share. Yet, as constraints are starting to pull on how we use our time, here were several veteran leaders in multiple disciplines giving up their group knowledge distribution fix and focusing their time and energy into processing, reflection, and feedback.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that as a society we love flipped learning. I remember growing up watching Bob Ross and the Joy of Painting on PBS and Bob Villa on This Old House. I have spent more than enough time watching What Not To Wear and HGTV. Simply we want content knowledge when we want it.

Moreover, our children are learning to find and seek resources in this manner on their own from their friends. Children learn ways to shoot basketballs better, build/mod Minecraft levels, and new fashion tips from "YouTubers" everywhere. They are teaching themselves how to gather content knowledge in quick and efficient methods from short videos they find online. Our students are leading the flipped life. We can to. Whether it is learning to fix the laundry machine online or refining our movie editing skills with a professional course at lynda.com there are flipped opportunities for all of us.

That's the funny thing. When my wife was in her social work program, she would often say, "meet the client where the clients at." These teachers, whether math, language arts, or physical education have begun to realize, that the path to knowledge distribution is now more often on video. The way they find value is how they can guide these students to refine their work, products, and practices. It's a different world, one that is truly moving from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. A world where content knowledge is a commodity and teacher feedback and guidance is where the true value lies. It's a flipped life, a life where each of us can be a difference maker.

"We don't make mistakes; we just have happy accidents." -Bob Ross

Courage and Kindness

When it comes to movies, I am a simple person. There are three genres that interest me, "stupid action," "stupid comedy," and "romantic comedy." While you may find me watching Kentucky Fried Movie or Bulletproof Monk, I have missed out on quality films such as Shawshank Redemption and The Dark Night. See life is about choices: who we choose to be, who we choose to be around, what we choose to do and how we choose to go about it. These are important not just to us, but to our children and the children we teach.

As a principal at Pleasant Ridge School, we focused on the "Fish Philosophy!" as a way to help both ourselves and our children learn the social-emotional component of life. In "four easy steps" the "Fish Philosophy!" helps individuals approach their day to day life in progressive steps that allows them to seek happiness and fulfillment. It's powerful stuff, focusing on what we can control: Choose Your Attitude, Play, Make Their Day, and Be Present. Simple stuff that is not automatic. We found it to be powerful also. Focusing on what we could control. Aiming at what we could do to be better and make the day better for others. Four steps that adults could do, children could do, bus drivers could do, teachers could do, and principals could do. These daily directions, and sometimes redirections, helped us take on challenges both academic and social.

In one of our kindergarten rooms, there is one rule, "Be Brave." See, when you are five years old, for many of us the world is an intimidating place. Learning to take steps in a world in which you may not be comfortable is a challenge. When I first had the chance to work with our kindergarten team, they lamented about how play and socialization had been pushed out in favor of more and more academics. We had lost our "Kindergarten Magic." In a world in which we ask children to "Be Brave" we need opportunities for them to learn courage and kindness. This comes through play and socialization. It's not only true in kindergarten but in life. Whether children or adults, we need to learn that simple magic, learn to be brave and make daily choices that demonstrate courage and kindness.

Students, teachers, and schools have been asked to be a lot more productive. We have higher expectations and have not been given additional resources. There is not extra time, money, or people. Just us, having to rethink how we do what we do. Learning to maximize time, money, and ourselves to make a more impactful difference. It is easy for each of us, student, teacher, parent, or leader to become sullen, angry, or overwhelmed, or we can learn to "Be Brave." We can take on each day, choosing our attitude, playing, making other people's day, and being present. Working to make baby steps forward in our learning and our practice. Carrying ourselves with courage and kindness, and seeing in others those same qualities.

I choose movies where the hero wins. Impossible moments like Ferris Bueller dancing in a parade and Will Smith & Jeff Goldblum doing a victory lap saving the world from aliens.  I like television shows like the Flash, where the protagonist and his friends take on impossible challenges and seek opportunities to make a difference. And this weekend, my wife, son, and I watched the latest version of Cinderella. Learning once again, courage, kindness, and forgiveness will bring a little magic to everyone's life.

Cinderella 2015

"If the Commonwealth's High Guard
had a weakness, it was this:
Its officers were too competent,
too caring, and too brave."

Opening Scene - Andromeda Television Series

Frustration and Resilience

Warning... I am not a golfer. I have never been a golfer. I have been on a course three times in my life and then only once actually taken a couple of shots (BAD!). The closest thing to golf that I get is to watch Caddyshack and Happy Gilmore.

This weekend I had the opportunity to "caddy" for my brother-in-law as he played in a Golf-Amateur
tournament this weekend. My brother-in-law is a former high school and collegiate golfer. Aside from being a talented individual in life, he enjoys time with his brothers and friends on the course. He took this opportunity to select a course near Chicago so I could join him on his adventure. An opportunity I am grateful for as it was an incredibly relaxing experience for me. I didn't touch email, work, the blog, twitter, or anything. I sat on the shores of Lake Michigan and watched sheep graze and grown men get upset as they swung a stick around in the wind.

Perhaps I should provide my unique interpretation of the word "caddy" as it applies to me. To caddy: to drive the cart that holds clubs up and down the cart path with some strange guy from the foursome while my brother-in-law walks the course to keep his rhythm while occasionally handing him a club, a range finder, or his putter. Pretty much I got sun, enjoyed the countryside, and watched 3 out of 4 grown men have a meltdown as they did five and half hours of forestry with a poorly formed scythe. Now to be fair, there were high winds and the course had lots of rolls and hills. The experience for the participants was frustrating.

While the first hole went fine for most, it was a downhill decent from there. By hole 9 we were watching internal combustion. Some were falling in the forests. Some were muttering under their breaths. Some were hyper analyzing their game. By hole 12 it sounded like a Tourette's convention. Grown men who were well established in their perspective fields sounded like 14 year-olds upset with their homework. By hole 18 they were at peace, opportunities lost and found again. The day near-ending a performance in the books, more over than anything else. Five and half hours of frustration. A gentleman's game? A lesson in frustration and resilience.

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to facilitate our annual Ellis Island simulation with our fifth grade students. We had about 60 of our 120 students due to the Columbus Day weekend. This provided a challenge for us as the nearly 2 hour simulation relies on having long lines and getting children to experience the arbitrariness and frustration of the immigrant experience. We warn the children for two weeks before hand that this is a frustrating experience and annually children break down into tears.

This year was no different. It doesn't take screaming or shouting. It doesn't take stealing of paperwork. Simply telling children to go back in line. Telling them their paperwork is wrong. Stating that they need to make corrections. Arbitrarily moving them from place to place. The tears well, anger raises, and the flood gates open.

When analyzing this experience we share the story of a recent immigrant who is a parent in our Sunday School. She talked about even today needing to go back on a daily basis for another paper, another document, another line. She shared that it took months to complete the process. Two hours in lines and some of our children are in pieces each year. When processing our children made the connection that their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents took on challenges that they themselves may not of been able to handle in order to become citizens of this country.

The children also realized that this bureaucratic frustration is not limited to immigration. They themselves may need to do the same thing for they driver's license or to get service from Comcast. Furthermore, we need to give them challenges so they can learn to master their craft. Imagine if Thomas Edison had given up on try #6 or the Wright Brothers had thrown in the towel. Learning to master tough skills is not inherent to us, resiliency occurs as a result of experience. It is a great gift we hand a child to make them revise, re-craft, and learn to make their work better. A lesson that will help them on the golf course and in life.

Thomas Edison Quote

Happy Overcomes Challenges

Reinventing Play in the Classroom

It's October and a first grade girl looks up at her mom and says, "You know, I really like first grade, but where did the toys all go?" Kindergarten, even in the world of Common Core and rigorous learning, a place of magic and play. A space in time when children explore their world and each other. A moment that becomes shorter each year as the pressures of core academics invade its space. However, have we really explored the consequences of work with less play at the elementary level.

Eight years ago a thin gentleman in a black turtleneck and jeans got on stage and introduced a radical idea, a smart phone without a keyboard. People said it would never work. Eight years later, his company sold 13 million of these phones in two weeks. As I play with this phone, when I press down more things happen. Pictures, sounds, and actions occur. I look at my friends' phones, on some of them the display wraps around the sides. I have one friend who takes pictures of everything he sees with his phone. Growing up, a phone was a big boxy thing attached to the wall. My aunt was cool, she got a phone one year that looked like Mickey Mouse was holding it.

Where do these ideas come from? What pushes us to move our world forward? Is it the relentless pursuit of content and knowledge, the recitation of key information and algorithms? Or is it finding ways to explore the world differently? Could we benefit from pursuing time with divergent thoughts and ideas? Sir Ken Robinson believes so. In his speech regarding Changing the Educational Paradigm, he discusses creativity and divergent thinking and how participation in schools correlates with reduction of these values. Why, because we learn there are certain ways to do things.

Life doesn't need to be that way. While science class is an opportunity to breed inquiry and ask why, if we include engineering we begin to ask so what solution could you make. In science we observe a situation and begin to question what makes the situation occur. In engineering we see the situation and we say, well what can we do with this. Steve Jobs' team saw a phone and asked, what can we do with this? Instead of taking in the knowledge of this is an instrument that allows verbal communication between two parties, they saw an object that people carried that could be a lot more if we allowed it. They asked, could it be a map? a clock? a communication device? a camera? a weather tracker? By the engineers playing and asking questions they innovated a lot more.

Playing is something we see less and less in schools. Some will say it's a product of the video game/cell phone generation. Since students have these electronic gadgets, they don't socialize or play. However, my observational experience says otherwise. When alone, or with their parents, they don't choose to socialize. Although, I'm not sure teenagers and pre-teens ever wanted to socialize much with their parents. However, when students congregate, they want to talk, explore, and play.

My third grade child's teacher has done something radical this year. She has apparently read some research and decided that it would be more valuable if the children read for 30 minutes a night and didn't do other homework. The result in our house has been not only less conflict between parent and child but also a constant collection of Zoobs being played with, imaginary dialogues about lightsabers, and a multitude of odd Lego structures. His friend, who is in the same class, has arranged a near constant playdate each afternoon. When after school care ends, the party continues at one house or another. Children dashing from place to place having complex dialogues about things I quite frankly don't understand. Since neither child has homework, it's okay to play, socialize, and invent until about 7pm each night. The ideas they are coming up with are wild. The intricacies of the dialogues could be scripts for a screen play. When we let children's imaginations run, they innovate.

The Second Calvin & Hobbes Wiki - Character by Bill Patterson

Innovation can happen in the classroom as well as at home. Throughout the country, schools and classrooms are creating Makerspaces where children build, innovate, and invent. School leaders and teachers are beginning to understand that learning isn't simply intaking other people's ideas and regurgitating them but also asking what could this possibly become or how could you make this better and different. In some classrooms, teachers are understanding that reading and writing can be amazingly better if the children read books written by other members of the class and write scripts that others can act out. Innovation is something we need to encourage and nurture. To do so, we need make the time and space to play.


“Bean heard him climb into bed. He got up from the floor and did likewise. He thought of a half dozen ideas before he went to sleep. Ender would be pleased—every one of them was stupid.”

Excerpt From: Orson Scott Card. “Ender's Game.” iBooks. 

More Than Just a Princess