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

Cultivating Student Engagement

Educators have been talking for many years about the need to increase student engagement. We all remember sitting in those classes where the lecturer droned on about a topic. The motion picture industry has numerous scenes of the typical classroom teacher talking on and on about some mind boggling useless topic with students holding their bodies awake through the terror of the monotonous lecture. As we have taken this stereotype to mean that we need to move from teaching students as if they were sponges absorbing content to having them actually perform tasks within the classroom.

Students actively doing tasks within the classroom may only be slightly better than half-listening to the parable of the day. Essentially, not all activities are created equal. Early in my career, I remember walking into primary grade classrooms before school each morning to see the teacher circulating around the room distributing the morning work. Piled upon each desk was a set of worksheets. Many easy coloring of letters, sight words, or early mathematical concepts. The expectation was that the children would walk into the classroom and begin their morning work. As the bell rang, the children would walk through the room, give a hug to their teacher, sit at their desks and complete their pile of papers. Sure the children were doing things, but for some of the students, all they could complete was the coloring of the letter, the rest of the worksheets sat untouched. For others, they were done in 6 minutes because the few actual problems within the tasks were so below their level that the answers were rote. And yet for some students, they stared at the pile. The simple set of tasks shut them down before they even considered whether the concepts were above or below their level. Essentially, the majority of students were compliant with completing the daily tasks.

What did the students' gain? What long term learning happened during this time? Are there other tasks that could have been done during these 30 minutes each day, or 90 school hours each year that would have had greater long term benefit? Certainly the children learned to work quietly and independently. The teacher had time to complete the administrative tasks of the day. However, is there more to learning.

In a world where knowledge is not always at our finger tips, compliant knowledge-based learning experiences are less and less meaningful. Engagement in modern education needs to mean more than students simply doing a task independently or with partners. Engagement needs to incorporate manipulation of ideas or concepts. Students need to add value to the knowledge, creating deeper meaning or connections than those that can simply be gleaned from a textbook or Google. Engagement isn't always quiet, although it can be. Engagement isn't always consistently productive. It ebbs and flows. Engagement isn't always collaborative nor always solitary. It moves in and out.

In an engaged learning experience, students have to draw conclusions based on their knowledge gains. Frequently making unique products as a result. In Sunday School this morning, I will be encouraging students to explore Jewish Immigration during the Early Colonial period. Students will be asked to research who the first Jews were to come to the Americas. They can Google that. As they discover that the Jews arrived and colonized in Recefe, Brazil, they will be asked to figure out why they went there and what may have caused them to leave. They move from knowledge to analysis. Drawing conclusions based on Internet-available information. Students will then explore online the first three Jewish Congregations in the United States, comparing the origins of the Congregations to the architectural styles of their buildings. Finally, students will explore a letter from George Washington to one of the Jewish Congregations and explain why the letter is important. An hour later, these 10 year olds will have some tangible artifacts and dialogues about the Jewish Colonial Immigrant experience.

Could we lecture them? Of course, but they would remember nothing except we talked about George Washington. Could we give them worksheets? Absolutely, but they would walk out drawing pretty pictures of Jewish Temples. Giving students big questions and saying you go find the information. Following that with questions in which they need to think and draw conclusions engages children to manipulate the information, connect it to their background knowledge, and generate their personal perspectives. This is engagement. This is when learning becomes personal and meaningful. This is possible in many of our lessons. If this can be done with Early Colonial Jewish Immigration with 25 ten-year old children who would have 900 better things to be doing with their Sunday mornings than be at Sunday School, it certainly can be done when we explore the characters and settings of a story in our classroom or identify volumes of different shapes in our math classes. Engagement is possible if we allow it. Engagement is powerful if we go beyond compliance and make it personally meaningful.

Changing the Variables in Learning

We all remember walking into the class and being handed the syllabus. The preprogrammed guide for each course of this is what was being taught when. Often it was two or three pages, identifying the topic of the week or session, the reading, important points of what was being covered, and what assignments or projects being completed. Some were printed on freshly minted paper, some were not. I remember taking a quantitative statistics class during graduate school back in 1997. The syllabus was distributed and the ink was in this odd purple color. The paper was a blanched white held together by a rusted paper clip. In this class apparently once upon a year the professor had mimeographed his syllabus, put them together, and his course had quite frankly not changed since. His advocacy, introductory statistics hadn't changed, why waste the time and resources to change the syllabus.

The professor wasn't wrong, the course hadn't changed. The challenge was that the learners had changed and the expectations of the learners needed to change. For most of us growing up, the variables in learning where when did the teacher teach the concept, when was the test, and how much of the knowledge did I have at the end of the test. Close the book, pack it away, unseal it for the final, and call it a day. Think about it. How many of us can conjugate the verb "ser" in Spanish now? Most of us "learned it" but did we retain it. How about doing stoichiometric calculations? We spent a month in Chemistry working on it, but do you remember stoichiometry now. The list goes on and on of things that we were taught but never learned.

The paradigm and expectations in education are changing. While I may not agree with the methods for changing them from a National perspective, the values that they are going for make sense. The variable of what is taught no longer matters but rather what is learned. Curriculum is no longer about coverage and exposure but engagement and retention of concepts. The second variable in learning is growth. Simply put, you can't just move the low students up to grade level and warehouse the high students. Each student needs to progress and show gains. Each child needs to move forward. With these two simple changes, assessed by "multiple measures" reported on the school report cards, teacher evaluations, and administrator evaluations, the paradigm shifts dramatically.

See going into that statistics class, I knew my "Measures of Central Tendency," and you probably did too: "Mean, Median, and Mode." Quite frankly, we teach that to some students as early as third and fourth grade. I knew "Standard Deviation," I was a former chemistry major. I could do a "T-Test." In the new world of growth expectations, it wouldn't be ok for me simply to partner up with other kids to teach them what the professor was covering or to sit half-asleep in the back. We would have expected pre-assessment, grouping of students based on the data, and learning experiences to move on. For my group, we may have focused on "Chi squares and ANOVAs" while others were working on fundamentals of samples and populations.

The funny thing is, the students haven't changed, we have always come to school with different strengths and growth areas. We have different background knowledges and different capacities to move forward. What has changed are the variables. No longer is the constant when the teacher is teaching it and how long the teacher teaches it and the variable measured how much the student learned but rather in reverse with the variables being measured when is this student or students' ready for it, how much do they need and the constant being the student demonstrates consistent understanding of it.

Focusing on learning instead of teaching, growth instead of amount learned during a given time will truly make our system better. As I said I may not agree with the mechanisms of change: school report cards, teacher evaluations, and administrator evaluations. However the concepts of not warehousing our high students and ensuring learning matter. A simple example comes to mind. Adding and subtracting fractions, a "fourth grade skill." If a student can do this 70, 80, 90% of the time is that enough consistency. Well, not in my Chemistry class, as they are mixing acids and bases. Not in the art class as they are mixing paints. Not in the kitchen putting together dinner. Not in musical composition when they are making measures. Imagine 2 errors every 10 measures. No, the reality is we need the student to learn it, demonstrate it, and retain it. Otherwise the impact across other subjects and life experiences is dramatic. The variables are changing and we need to change with them. It no longer matters what I have taught and when did I teach it but rather how well our students have learned it.

Voo Doo Economics

Change is Hard

On Wednesday morning I talked to my dad, or more specifically I communicated with him over FaceTime audio as I drove to work. We caught up on the usual things, the Cubs (good), the Bears (bad), and what was going on with the kids. We also talked about my work and us moving from grades to standards in some subjects. As always, dad was enlightening. He reminded me of grading practices from "ancient" past, getting a "D" on a college Russian course test because he hadn't bothered to answer the extra credit question. His colleagues who had earned an "F" because they got it wrong. In this case, the "curve" had saved him. He also reminded me that once, before he was a physician, he was a teacher and his masters' thesis 47 years ago was on mastery learning. How interesting how life evolves, changes, and ideas take time to slowly drip into the system.

Change is hard. There is no question about it. As society over the past 35 years we have begun to ask for more from our teachers and our students. What my dad learned in college physics at University of Chicago, I learned in high school physics at Downers Grove South High School, and now my students learn in middle school science at Herrick and O'Neill. What is being asked from students is different. I had to recite knowledge and skills back. What I could store in my head was what mattered. For our students, all of those skills that I learned can be accomplished by Google. Whether it is showing the math problem, with all of the work, or finding our what the state bird of Georgia is. Google is the entirety of my education and much much more. Students today need to develop skills to apply their ability to find knowledge to create and innovate new solutions to new problems. Teachers also have to change. The goal is no longer how we deliver knowledge, but rather what have children learned.

(de Nys, 2008)

Change is hard. Illinois State Superintendent Tony Smith has been on the job only a few months, but has repeatedly presented the need to move our system from the measurement of seat time as seen by the Carnegie Unit, to a competency-based system that measures what skills and knowledge students have developed. The reality is that the amount of seat time hasn't changed much in the 35 years from when I sat in the desks at Hillcrest School to now as I walk the halls as an educational leader. However, what is expected of the students, the teachers, and the principal has changed dramatically.

Moving away from silos of education, Math, Reading, Science, and Social Studies to an integrated model is hard. It takes time and energy. However connected and integrated learning experiences make a difference to the learner and are more applicable to real life. Moving away from the Bell Curve was hard to the 90, 80, 70 scale was hard, but created a criteria of reference where children were given a chance to succeed rather than simply be ranked. Providing students with different learning experiences because of what they are ready to learn rather than their chronographic age is hard, but something not only can we do but we need to do. 

Reporting out that children are having different learning experiences is hard. It admits that all children are different and that we need to push each of them individually to grow. The reality is we have the tools and obligation to do so. I have the challenge and honor to participate in the move to standards-based grades as both a parent and an educational leader this year. It's different. Our teachers, both those of my children's and those of my student's will try different things. Some will work. Some will not. But in the end, my children and my students will each have a chance to learn and grow more. This week I have the opportunity to read two blogs by my son's teachers: Mr. Humphrey's and Mrs. Spies, each talking about how they are pushing children to learn and discover more. Each trying to find ways to make learning meaningful. The loss of grades, like the loss of the curve, is a moment of evolution, a chance to gather more insight into what our children know and what they need to learn next. 

Change is hard. I am often known for citing Yoda for so many things. Yet the reality is I must accept change too. Yoda is wrong, we must keep trying until we do it and do it well.