Innovation

The number one thing that I have done in my classroom that is innovative, is to switch to flipping my class.  When I started flipping, no one in my district had heard of it. Doing something that no one else was doing, for the good of the student, is innovation.  I have lead many different professional development lessons on the topic within my district, and now outside after attending #edcampPGH this weekend, trying to persuade teachers to try it. Give it a chance.  I have had fellow colleagues tell me that I flip because I am lazy and don't want to do anything with the kids, and I flip, because I don't want to plan for my classes, and I flip...the list goes on.  I was bored, and was actually starting to look outside of the educational setting to find something else to do when I happened onto flipping. One week later, I assigned my first flipped lesson, and the rest is history.

This weekend, I attended my first #edcamp at Baldwin High School outside of Pittsburgh, PA.  I drug my husband, who also is a math teacher, along with me, since we were going to Pittsburgh anyway to see our son sing in his last choral performance. I wanted to attend to learn, to see innovation, to network with like minded teachers. I ended co-leading a session on flipping the class.  I got to share my excitement about flipping with other people that were interested.  My husband enjoyed the sessions he attended to, even though he wasn't planning on participating.

As for my colleagues at my district, I am slowly getting other people in other curriculums flipping, and they are encouraging others too. It's an exciting movement!

The innovation continues because now that I am fully flipped, and have been for almost 3 years, I now find/design activities that allow my students to explore/learn a topic in a different way. I have started to flip mastery one of my courses as well.

As I told a person in a a session this past weekend, if you stop learning, or if you feel that you have completely figured out the teaching profession, leave. Get out of it. One should never stop learning in our profession. Students today will so much different than students 5 years from now. There are jobs that don't exist now, that will exist in 5 years.  We have to stay fresh, in order to keeps students excited about learning.

What do I take away from conferences?

I attend professional conferences for many reasons.  I want to:

• meet people that love doing what I do
• network with people so that I am not always recreating the wheel
• to get rejuvenated about teaching
• to learn neat things to take back and share with others.
• to have fun!
• to laugh!

This past summer, I attended #flipcon14 in Mars, Pennsylvania, and it was one of the best decision I made about teaching and my professional development.  The single best decision regarding teaching was probably choosing to flip my classes.  I met so many people, and learned so much. I left there with so much knowledge and so many cool things to take back to my classes and colleagues. 

How do I remember what I attend and learn?  I am actually very old school.  I took at composition notebook (the kind that is stringed together) and mapped out what sessions I would go to and what I would watch later via online access.  For each session, I wrote at the top the name of the session, the presenter, locations, and anything else I knew prior to attending.  While in the session I take notes, write quotes, small things that would remind me about what I heard and saw.  Each night, prior to going to bed, I would review my notes, add anything else, star the pages, etc and then review what sessions I wanted to see the next day and make changes based on what I saw that day. 

For instance, I saw Crystal Kirch on the first day and knew I needed to see her second session the following day.  I am so glad I did.  I learned about Kahoot, about WSQ, and about many other things I wrote about.  I use the WSQ daily with my students and it has improved my teaching and my knowledge so much.

I also tweet and email colleagues with things that I saw and and want to remember.

I am also lucky to have a husband that also teaches math, so I also call him on breaks, at dinner, drive home, etc, and tell him what I saw and learned.  He often asks me about it later reminding me.

I had made the decision that if my attending #flipcon15 was denied this coming summer, I was paying my own way! It was so worth every penny! I can't wait to see what I walk away with this coming summer!

Mental Health is far more important than Content

Tonight's #flipclass #flashblog is something that has been in conversations in my circles for several months now.  How do I manage to cover content while balancing student stress levels?

My students know that they can "tap out" if things get way to stressful.  If a student has a major exam, lab, project, etc on the same day as a summative assessment for me, my students are permitted to take my assessment on another day.  I have had teachers tell me that students will do that just so that they can talk to other students to find out what is on the exam and have an unfair advantage.  My responses to that include:

I tell my students what is going to be on my exam.  Why the surprise? I give my students a "focus list" with how many questions, how many points, and the type of questions.  It really should be a guessing game!

I also would rather my students show me "what they know", and not "what they could remember under the load of stress."  I would rather my students be fresh and unstressed.  I believe I can get so much more from them when that happens.

I trust my students.  Until, I get something that makes me question their integrity, they have my trust. It all comes out in the wash, right?  If a student is going to cheat, he/she WILL get caught.  I absolutely feel that way.

I rarely have a student "tap out" more than once a year.  I keep track of the tap outs.  My students don't abuse it! But, it's there for them if they need to.

How does this affect my curriculum? It simply doesn't.  That's the beauty of flipping.  I do so much more than my curriculum calls for, AND I am finished for the year with a little less than a month to spare.  I have the room to adjust my schedule so that my students are overwhelmed, aren't stressed, aren't suicidal, enjoy math, and actually show me their knowledge.  I know that this is rare.  I don't teach an AP class, but is curriculum more important than health. The kids are kids!

Why has this been in my circle lately?  I have a student that I share with other teachers (obviously) and it was brought to our attention that this young lady was sad.  So sad that she was vomitting, missing school, wishing for death.  This is a student that wouldn't speak up and make teachers knowledgable about this.  A student that appeared to be fine when in school.  Just a bit shy! We got an email from mom making us aware.  I got a private email from the mother, saying that my class was the only one the her daughter was stressed over, since she knows she can tap out if needed.  So, my students will always be able to tap out.  Math can be second!

Also, our high school is moving to a block A/B schedule next year.  Part of the reason for this is because of our building project (new school being built while we go to school in it!) and because a survey by parents and students revealed that the level of homework and stress on our HS students is very high.  Have 4 90 minute periods a day for 2 day cycle will hopefully lessen that stress and amount of homework.

I believe in teacher the whole child.  The whole child is far more important that math, I truly believe that.

A lesson that ...

I was teaching (or trying to teach) conic sections.  I wanted the students to fully understand the definition of each of these conic sections.  The students were having a hard time understanding the idea of the "sum of the distances" for an ellipse, and "absolute value of the differences" for the hyperbola.  To understand these phrases from the definitions allows one to take the concept to a deeper depth.  So, I decided to design my classroom desks in an ellipse one day, and a hyperbola another.  I had a long rope that I had bought from Lowes, and designed the room so that the desks were in a true hyperbola with the "absolute value of the difference from the focal points" being constant.  I had a center point, endpoints, vertices, foci so that the shape was true to definition.  I randomly had 2 students that were sitting on the "wings" of the hyperbola measure the distance from the foci (another student holding the rope).  The students could visually see what was meant by the distance.  I did the same with the ellipse.  After defining and visually moving thing around, we then came up with the equations using the distance formulas.

The students found this approach more meaningful and more memorable.  When a student was stuck at a point in problem solving using hyperbolas and ellipses, the students would say, "Remember when..." and the students would be unstuck.

I am not sure that this would be considered an "off the wall" type of lesson, but it certainly was a lesson that wasn't normally planned.

Deep Learning looks like...

• chaos

          Very rarely will you find the class working in any particular order.

• students  working together

          Students never work alone.  They are discussing, scribbling ideas, trying different things.

• students yelling (well, not really yelling, but disagreeing about an avenue)

          Some groups actually end up disagreeing and then agreeing and then disagreeing.

• students walking around room talking to one another

          Often, the students are going from group to group to discuss with each other their ideas

• I am no longer the center of attention or even in control.

          I circulate around the room, stirring the pot, offering counterexamples, but never telling what to           do.

• many "aha" and "wow" moments

          Students get the smiles, when they might have it.  I love to hear the "wows" and "really"

• authentic learning!

          Students not being talked at, or lead.  Students create the road.

What I heard in my classroom, on a Monday!

I happened upon a twitter hashtag of #CelebrateMonday.  It got me thinking about my Monday, my students, and my classroom.  Here are some of the comments that I remember students saying today that made me smile.  There were many, but these are the ones that came to mind as I was thinking about my Monday.  These are in no particular order!

1.  Can't I just stay here with you? Your room is my happy place. (This came from one of my low-level remediation math students!)  This was probably my #1 #CelebrateMonday comment.

2.  Who knew that fractions made things easier?  (I wasn't going to bust her bubble and say that I knew! Students were working with fractional exponents.)

3.  I love radicals within radicals.  (One of my 8th graders shouted out as I he was working on a team check with his team.)

4.  Why can't all teacher's teach this way?

5. Math counts, BABY! (I gathered that one of our middle school math counts teams did very well this weekend!)

6.  Rational exponents are HARD! Time to rewatch the video! (said to the "Time to make the donuts, theme!)

7.  Thanks for caring, Mrs. McGowan! You are like our mom!

8.  I hope we have an early dismissal, BUT after this class, of course! (and no, we didn't have an early dismissal.)

9.  Student 1: Can't we just abolish Mondays?
     Student 2: Then Tuesdays will become the new Monday.

So, as several of my teaching hero's say, "You got a day here! Make it a great one!"

Depth vs Breadth, that age old question!

What I teach in which course actually is on both ends of the pendulum.

In my Flipped Mastery remediation course, I have to cover/review topics from Algebra 1 to help the students pass the Keystone Exam.  I really have the say of what I remediate and how I remediate those students.  I generally use the Keystone Exam results to structure those topics. Not much depth goes into that because it's a limited amount of time that I see the students prior to them taking the exam.  I try different activities to engage the students, such as popsicle stick activities, online matching activities, puzzles, online interactive games, and stations, but the depth isn't really there.

As for my Advanced Algebra 2 class, my department got together and looked at the PA standards for all strands, and decided where certain topics should be and would be taught.  So, the course is outlined for me.  We do take the standards to a much higher thinking for the advanced level student, and cover far more content than our college prep level of Algebra 2.  With flipping, I am able to teach the basic foundations through video, which allows class time to take the depth a little farther.  Without flipping, I never had time to pause and explore.  Now, I do that with my students far more often.  When a student fills out a WSQ that asks a question that is perfect for this, I am able to use the time to have students explore.  Before flipping I used to have to say, great question, research it at home, and tell us about it tomorrow.  Now, we don't need that.  Also, now that we are 1-1 with chromebooks, students have the devices at their fingertips (or at least in their backpacks.)

I wrote a blog about my espoused platform just recently, and in it, wrote about how my teaching philosophy has changed over the 19 years of teaching.  As it was discussed at Flipcon 14, learning is at the intersection of content, curiosity, and relationships.  My classroom has moved from content heavy to where there is starting to be a balance of all 3.  It only took me 19 years, and it wouldn't have happened without flipping.  So, the skills that I feel that are important to teach my students tend not to be entirely based on math, but on living.  Here is a short list to start those skills:

1.  I want my students to learn how to appreciate everyone, accept everyone, and to get along with all beings.

2.  I want my students to take risks, and learn from failure.

3.  I want my students to be able to work with other people, to problem solve with each other, and to trust each other's opinions.

4.  I want my students to be able to communicate effectively and affectively.

Oh Yeah,

5.  I want my students to appreciate math and learn life-long skills.1