Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 3

 

(See this post for some background if this is the first entry you're reading in this series.)

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

• had a productive phone call with the teacher who arranges credit recovery options for students; got 3 students (and one parent) connected with the Google Classroom for credit recovery and got some resources shared with me that I'll be using to help them recover a course they didn't pass with me last quadmester; emailed all the students and parents involved to let them know what's going on
• continued to get parents/guardians of my current students connected with our Google Classroom, in order to feel I'm doing a better job of connecting with families this time around
• visited the school building to pick up a bunch of personal items I'd left there before spring break (including the last of the candy stash I had there) and put away some delicate equipment left out after a lab a few weeks ago (lest a caretaker or someone else accidentally knock it over)
• texted with a couple colleague friends; got one connected with my dentist
• looked up some students' IEPs
• ran afternoon class: first time doing attendance via Classcraft with this group, as well as some of its "random events"; shared some of their Flipgrid intro videos with the class (random idle chatter resulted, and that is GOOD for building class community); further reminders/review and clarification regarding tomorrow's diagnostic quiz; put them into breakout rooms for about the last 10 minutes to get more team names developed (plus one team had an imbalance of Classcraft character types to work out). New amusing team name this quad: pHirst.
• booked appointments (dentist, chiro, massage) for May and June
• took the youngest for a short drive - I like doing this after work to break up the day a bit.
• played the ukelele a little ("My Lighthouse" by Rend Collective, "What if I Stumble" by dc Talk, "Ukelele Anthem" by Andrea Palmer). Made a post on Facebook challenging a friend to a duel of "My Lighthouse" next Saturday, so I guess now I have to keep practicing.

2. What did you enjoy?

My 4-year-old now has a Prodigy account, but they don't have activities for kindergarten kids, so he's trying stuff intended for grade 1 students -- he has to ask for help, but if I ask him the right kinds of directing questions he can figure some of it out, and he seems to be enjoying it! It's cool seeing my kids' little brains develop :).

Also enjoyed my ukelele time.

3. What did you find difficult?

Being at school felt difficult this time. I thought I'd accepted that I don't think we'll be returning to face-to-face classes this school year...picking up all my personal stuff from the building and moving some of the more delicate lab glassware to safer spots had a resignation and down-ness to it I hadn't expected.

My youngest destroyed the last of the candy stash I'd brought home :(. He poured water into the jar that had the last of my cinnamon hearts in it...by the time I discovered this, they'd pretty much dissolved. (I kicked myself later that I should have tried drinking the concoction that resulted, but I thought of that too late...and that might have been too much even for me anyway :).)

4. What has changed?

I took the time today to retry some products for curly hair. Still lots to learn about letting my natural curls do their thing but enjoying what we accomplished today anyway :). Would I take the time to do this if it weren't for the covid shutdown (i.e., when more people will actually see the results)? I guess we'll see, whenever it ends...

I wrote most of this post after class today rather than in the evening. It's good to have a "pause point."

The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

I am so glad I was able to help my colleague get connected with a dentist I know she can trust at a time when she really needs one.

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

I've brought my exercise mat back home from work (one suitable for practicing breakfalls/etc.)...I'm hoping a change can be making more workouts happen at home. If the rain would let up, I could use it in the backyard...

7. What are you scared of?

Not really feeling scared. There are some things that will be background concerns for a while, but as I can't do anything about them right now I'm not giving them the emotional energy of real worry.

Very minor thing but part of me resists posting this now when some of the evening is still ahead of me and things could still happen that I could comment on -- so what? I can always mention anything of note when I post again tomorrow(?). I'm going to post this anyway.

8. What has stayed the same?

Still loving Classcraft :).

9. When did you last laugh?

Still not sure about this one, though I do recall one of the baristas at my local Starbucks amused me with some of his banter recently (lines he's used with me before and which he also used with the car in front of mine, but still amusing).

Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 2

"Bruschetta alla caprese" flickr photo by erik forsberg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hepp/5922705584/
shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0) license

(See my previous post for some background if this is the first entry you're reading in this series.)

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

I taught in the morning today (again, fully online, from home). I spent about the first hour of class after attendance introducing the students to Classcraft, organizing them into teams, and trying to get each team to come up with a team name and decide on Classcraft roles (guardian, mage, healer) for each member. During their first "asynchronous" time, the students had an assignment to start on the history of the periodic table and various scientists who contributed to its development. When they came back, we did some notes on nuclear structure (including what radioisotopes are and why neutrons are important) as well as on calculations of the average atomic mass for an element given the masses and abundances of its naturally-occurring isotopes. They have practice questions to do for homework based on those calculations; they also have a diagnostic quiz coming up on Friday to study for, and part 1 of their ISU on ideal gases is due Monday. (I've connected that ISU to a Quest in Classcraft to reward them with story text for getting through each stage, so hopefully at least some of them will enjoy that.)

After the second live portion of class, I made sure I took care of some work stuff right away -- answering some emails, scanning the day's handwritten notes, and preparing an after-class LMS post for the students -- and then I made sure I walked away from work stuff for a while, making sandwiches for the kids and grabbing some away-from-home food for myself (partly because I wanted the drive). I even took a much-needed nap.

Newly refreshed, I made myself sit down and check off who has and hasn't done items that were "due" on Monday, giving feedback and asking for clarification as needed. I haven't fully processed the results of a loooong survey I gave them, but did take care of a chunk of it, and I've taken care of the other due items for all of those who handed it in. As I mentioned in the last post, I am trying to very intentionally schedule a marking time for each item as I assign it (or rather, I set for myself the scheduled due date and marking date before I even mention the assignment to the students). My reading of Atomic Habits by James Clear and my discussions with others are leading me to try out "intention statements" as a way of much more firmly committing to action on things I know I should be doing even though my avoidant tendencies make me want to put them off (leading to massive problems later). I also meticulously compared the parent/guardian email addresses against the school's official contact list and any associated parent/guardians with the students' Google Classroom listings, then emailed (as a group, Bcc'd) all the parents not already connected to our Classroom to see if they wanted an invite -- the kind of tedious task I absolutely hate, but I'm really starting to think investing effort in those irritating things up front does pay off by reducing the potential for bigger and harder problems later on. I've already heard positive responses back from a few of them and sent Classroom invites their way.

My husband is off this evening at the rehearsal of a wedding he'll be doing the A.V. for (and live streaming!), and I ordered dinner in for the kids and I from an Italian bistro my father-in-law used to like.

2. What did you enjoy?

The quinoa and black bean wrap I got for lunch really hit the spot, as did the bruschetta and Tuscan salad I got myself for dinner (those mushrooms though -- mm!).

3. What did you find difficult?

Getting up was difficult, and I ended up getting up later than I'd originally planned (I had wanted to get more done before school than I did -- it worked out fine but it could have been time better used). Maybe I shouldn't have blogged so late last night, heh :).

I didn't enjoy having to remind one group of students to talk more appropriately in one of the breakout rooms. I did learn that I had to mute myself in the main room because students in another breakout room reported that through me they could hear the students in the breakout room I had to address.

I didn't have a very successful first run with the technical side of the breakout rooms extension I was trying for Google Meet, though I was able to work around the issues I had. I think I know what I did wrong and will try again, as even today I saw someone in a Facebook group mention loving this extension.

4. What has changed?

Some of my priorities in the planning of my teaching are changing. I know I need to build in more support and feedback so the students really have a good sense of how they're doing instead of wondering so much and always asking what their mark is. I'm still thinking through the nuances of what that means and how it will end up playing out.

The Stretch Questions

5. What are you grateful for?

I am extremely grateful to be back to teaching one course instead of two this quadmester. The difference in workload and my ability to plan well for the course I do have is truly staggering.

6. Which changes do you want to keep?

I want to keep going with this new attempted habit of tackling annoying tasks head-on sooner rather than later and hopefully preventing some of the large kinds of issues I've had to deal with over the past few years especially. Maybe at midlife I'm finally growing up somewhat.

7. What are you scared of?

I have to be vague about this, but I'm waiting to hear what the next steps will be in a particular formal issue in my life, and it has potential to keep going on in a negative way instead of finally being over the way I really want it to be.

8. What has stayed the same?

Grade 11 chemistry is still my favourite course, and I'm so glad it's the course with which I get to finish the school year.

9. When did you last laugh?

I can't recall. I'll have to keep my attention open for this over the next bit -- I know I have laughed, I just can't recall why.

-----

Also, here's a random share of a tweet related to the #flipclasschat we had on Twitter this week, by Toronto colleague Andrea McPhee:

(Link to original tweet here)

Happy hump day, y'all, and have a good night!

Cheers,

Joy

Journaling during Covid-19 - Entry 1

Photo 3713471 © Jakub Jirsák | Dreamstime.com

Hello, blog. It's been a while.

I feel the need for a writing outlet. As much as this goes against the typical description of an INFJ, I think I'm missing the idle chit-chat we don't get when lockdown keeps us all away from those casual connections of seeing people you're not related to in the church lobby, lunch room, or non-spatially-distanced coffee and grocery lineups, and I guess Facebook isn't doing it for me right now. This entry isn't likely going to be anything profound, and it may in fact end up just being boring, but I'm mainly writing this for my own benefit and you all can take or leave this as you like <shrug>.

I've occasionally checked out an ongoing blog series by friend and Flipped Learning Network board member Ken Bauer in which he blogs about "life on the ground" during Covid-19 (drawing inspiration from a post by Ben Werdmuller). He's been using a simple Four-Questions-plus-some-stretch-questions format -- also based on a post by Ben -- and I like the way it seems that format can prompt some simple reflection about one's day without it getting overwhelming. I'm going to give it a whirl and see if it's something that can work for me, too. Knowing me, even four questions can be enough to spark a novel!

Since this is my first post in this series, I will give some context.

Here we are currently in a state of lockdown, with all students attending school online only and teachers teaching from home unless they have a case for needing to teach from the school building. Most of our retail is likewise shut down, as is in-restaurant dining (delivery and takeout options still exist). We have upgraded our Internet service at home, and so I am now teaching from home even though during the previous extended period of virtual learning I got permission to teach from the school due to some issues I was having with our service (especially when my husband working from home and my two children attending classes online often means there are four different videoconferences going on at the same time in this house).

In the high school system we recently changed to a new quadmester (started April 23), and I now have a lighter course load than I did in the previous quadmester. We are also about 10 weeks from the end of our school year: the regular classes for this quadmester end June 23, then there are 3 weekdays of "credit rescue" (to try to help students whose credits are at risk do something to try to pass their courses), and then the last work day for teachers is a June 29 P.A. day. The course I'm teaching this quad is one I also taught last quad; I do have to tweak it a little given that I taught it hybrid-style last quad and will be fully online this quad, and there are also improvements I want to make, but quite a lot will be the same. All this means that while I will be able to focus better on my students this time around, I am also definitely feeling a relaxation of the pressure I was under last quad. Summertime's coming -- there are now only 44 working days left -- and the living is, well, not easy, but easier than it has been for months.

The daily schedule for our high schools currently looks like this:

• 8:45 - 10:00am - "live" time with a teacher (Course 1 on days 1 & 2, Course 2 on days 3 & 4)
• 10:00 - 10:30am - break/asynchronous work time
• 10:30 - 11:45am - "live" time with the same teacher/course as above
• 11:45am - 12:30pm - break/asynchronous work time
• 12:30 - 1:10pm - lunch
• 1:10 - 2:00pm - "alternative professional assignments" and "professionally managed activities" for teachers (basically this is prep time and time we can be asked by admin to do other things related to our jobs)
• 2:00pm - 3:15pm - "live" time with the teacher the students didn't see yet that day (Course 2 on days 1 & 2, Course 1 on days 3 & 4)

In my current timetable, I only teach during Course 2 time slots, so I only teach in the afternoons on days 1 & 2 and only the longer morning classes on days 3 & 4.

My own children (as in my offspring) are in the elementary system at two different schools, so they are on different schedules from each other and both of those schedules are also different from mine. My husband has alarms set to remind him to check that the kids are in their various class periods on time; I help with that somewhat, but it's not easy given the overlaps in some of our class times.

The Core Questions

1. What did you do today?

Today was a day 3. I had my first morning class of the quad with this new group of students. After dealing with some unexpected technical issues, I finished going through a review package we started yesterday afternoon recalling several main ideas from the grade 9 and 10 chemistry units. I also set up the Classcraft interface for this new class and sent all my students their join codes through email, though we won't be able to have them set up their characters until we've formed the students into teams and they've decided who will take on what roles within their teams.

Once my morning class was done, I spent a lot of time setting up items behind the scenes for my class, including setting up the first 4 mini-assignments for their ISU in Google Classroom and tying it to a Quest in Classcraft to reward their progress with story text and in-game points (XP and GP). I spent a LOT of time on stuff for this class today, but that up-front investment of time should pay off, and it was made a lot easier by being able to reuse materials I developed last quad and earlier.

At 4pm I was part of a recording session for a podcast hosted by my friend Dan Jones. He has a few different podcast series on the go; I am a regular guest on two of them, with a few other people on the panel with me each time. The episodes are about 10-12 minutes long each, and we record them more or less as a conversation that doesn't take us much longer than the episode length to record once we get started. I record these sessions sitting in my van because currently that's the best way for me to avoid interruptions or noises from the family interfering in the background. Both the series that I've recorded episodes for are still in production, but I'll be sure to share links to them once they've been released.

After the recording session, I took the kids for a drive -- we picked up Dairy Queen and McDonald's (just cheeseburgers for them plus one box of fries for me) and then came back home. I tried to relax some, but I also spent some time continuing my course prep and sharing final marks with my students from quadmester 3 (since they won't get their official report card for the quad for a while but they still need to know how they did). I also looked into how to use a certain extension for Google Meets to get breakout rooms happening more effectively. At some point I put the youngest kid to bed, but then felt like I wanted to get up and blog...and here I am.

2. What did you enjoy?

I did enjoy little things a little - my morning mocha, the fries after school, my youngest giving me a spontaneous unexpected kiss at bedtime. I know I also appreciate the reduced workload compared to last quad, and only having to teach one part of the day. I am still a bit shell-shocked from that pressure, though, and it may take a bit of time to recover from it.

3. What did you find difficult?

Having technical issues with both attempted document cameras was quite frustrating. I know I know my tech stuff and don't like looking like I don't...but I'm also not the one to crack the case open and know exactly what the issue is when things don't cooperate. I had to kick everyone out of the online class, restart my computer, and then get everyone to join again, and not everyone who was present before that annoyance logged back into class, so I guess they may have already just left their computers logged on and physically checked themselves out/gone back to bed (this was about 20 minutes into the start of the first class session).

One student asks a lot of questions in chat that are pretty basic, and I wonder if he really has those questions or if it is a time-wasting maneuver. I do encourage questions but have a weird gut feeling on this one. I did make sure I told the students not to feel badly about asking questions, however, because they are important; I'll just have to monitor whether my intuition seems to be off in this one case.

The topic we talked about in the podcast interview today was a difficult one. It definitely provoked some good discussion, but after the host posed the question, there was probably about a good minute of awkward silence -- we'd known about the subject ahead of time, but no one was keen to jump into it! (Meanwhile, our host silently did the teacher "I'll wait" thing, heh...no rescue!)

I also didn't sleep much on Sunday night, and I find it's the second day after an all-nighter that hurts the most, so it was a bit of a tired, headachey, not-quite-here Tuesday.

4. What has changed?

I'm trying a new thing where I will actually use my planner for school and life stuff both, and each time I record that students have an assignment due or a quiz/test to write, I am also trying to record what day I will assess/mark that item. I need the intention of writing it down and the reminder to set aside proper time to give that feedback in a more timely manner than I have in the past. Hopefully this will also help me to get to know my students better in spite of the mostly-faceless context in which we find ourselves.

I'm going to pass on the "stretch questions" for now as I've already written quite a bit and I think it's time I went back to bed :). Thanks for reading, and I hope you're all well.

- Joy

A New Start: What Quadmester 2 Brings My Way

 

Starting Monday (Nov. 23), I get a fresh start. Secondary schools in my school board will start our second quadmester of the year that day, and students will again take two courses each, in a four-day cycle. The regular teaching days in this new quadmester will end on Feb. 2, with either credit rescue or exam days following on Feb. 3 and 4. We will also have our usual 2-week winter break from Dec. 21 through Jan. 1.

The model

For those students who are attending in person, the model looks like this (each student being either in cohort A or cohort B for each of their two courses -- though, confusingly, they may be in cohort A for one course and cohort B for the other):

For students choosing a fully-virtual model, all the timing is the same, BUT during the slots labelled "In Person @ School" they instead interact live with their teacher online.

In our semestered system during a regular school year, secondary teachers teach three out of the day's four periods, with the other period dedicated to prep time. When our timetables were made for the quadmestered system, our semestered timetables were essentially split in half, basically making quadmester 1 what our mornings would have been in a semestered system and making quadmester 2 out of our formerly-afternoon classes. A serious consequence of this is that, depending where your prep period would have fallen in the semestered timetable, all teachers ended up with one quad where they teach 1 course (keeping their prep period) and another quad where they teach 2 courses (with no prep period). It so happened that my first quad was one of those two-course quads, and let me tell you, it was brutal. Because every day I had to provide 3 hours and 45 minutes of live instruction to one cohort of one class, 3 hours and 45 minutes' worth of work to the other cohort to do without interacting with me during the same time slot, and also provide 1 hour and 15 minutes of live instruction in the afternoon to both cohorts of my other class, I essentially had to prepare a weeks' worth of teaching Every Single Day, to say nothing of the evaluation, feedback, and student care I also needed to take care of for both classes. It was unsustainable, and I am very glad to have the change for quad 2 to a 1-course timetable.

This quadmester, it looks like I have either 24 or 25 students (still figuring out a numbers discrepancy for one of my cohorts), all taking grade 12 chemistry from me. They fall into three groups:

1. I have 4 or 5 students (again, still figuring out a discrepancy) from my school who will attend the class in person. Keep in mind this still means I only see them in the classroom once every 4 days (on Day 3), but we will have some in-person contact. They are my cohort A.
2. I have 12 students from my school taking the course in a fully-virtual setting. They are in my cohort B.
3. Since that means I would only have 16-17 students in the class, spots were offered from it to students who wanted to attend in a fully-virtual setting from another school, and as a result of that I also have 8 students (fully virtual) in cohort B from another school in the city.

To interpret what the graphic above means for me and this class:

• Days 1 and 2: I instruct both cohorts live online at the same time in the afternoon, 2:00-3:15pm. This is the length of one of our normal classes from before the coronashutdown in the spring, so it's not too bad, although I almost never would have talked for the entire period before this pivot. (Sometimes during these afternoon classes in quad 1 I did have them just work on something while connected to the virtual class and ask questions in the chat section as needed, but I definitely talked more than usual for a period over the entire course of afternoons.)
• Day 3: 
• I instruct my 4-5 cohort A students in person live in the classroom from 8:45am to 12:30pm (yes, that's 3 hours and 45 minutes).
• My 20 cohort B students are to have work provided to them that they can do during that time without interacting with me, and that work is to give them "new learning." That work cohort B will be doing has been referred to as "asynchronous" learning by some of those in charge, but there is a Google Form we are now required to have those students fill out by 9:00am for attendance purposes (yes, even though they are all at home and not interacting with me, really -- the Ministry of Education wants this tracked!), so that "asynchronous" bit is now a misnomer.
• Day 4:
• I instruct my 20 cohort B students live online from 8:45am to 12:30pm (yes, again, that's 3 hours and 45 minutes...sitting in front of a computer).
• My cohort A students are to have work provided to them that they can do during that time without interacting with me, and that work is to give them "new learning." Again, this is incorrectly being referred to as "asynchronous" learning, and again, I am required to have them complete an attendance form by 9:00am each of those days.

Concerns and challenges to address (and some thoughts on some of them)

Concern 1: Community and Relationships.

If you're familiar with my teaching, I hope it's become clear that two big pillars in my teaching philosophy are relationships and active learning. I don't make either of those happen nearly as well as I'd like, but they are very important to me.

So. I have three completely different groups of students in this course. I will only see the faces of 4-5 of them in person. Given that turning on the camera during our virtual classes is not mandatory in my system (and I support that!), I may never see the faces of my other 20 students during class. How can I take this mishmash of student groups and form them all into something that truly feels like one learning community?

I have some thoughts on this. First, I intend to have the students complete a Flipgrid "getting to know you" assignment at the beginning of the course, so I can at least see their faces and hear their voices (and a clear pronunciation of their names) at least once during the quad. I am hoping that being able to see each other through that assignment -- and offering some positive feedback on each other's responses -- will help the students and I all feel more connected to each other.

Second, I plan to go back to using Classcraft. This will be my first time trying to use the gamification platform with a group that includes virtual students, but now that I have the additional headspace that a one-course quad has to offer, I think I'm up for the challenge. I intend to have each of my in-person students assigned to a different team that includes a section of my fully-virtual students, and I also want to try to include some students from my own school and the other school on each team. I then need to find ways to help each team connect with their teammates and feel like they are a unit -- and then each of those units will be in friendly competition with the others. I'm actually kind of excited to see where this goes! I also intend to make use of the Quest lines available within Classcraft to give some fun structure to each of my academic units, which has my gamer-adventurer heart grinning real wide :).

Concern 2: Equity of In-Class vs. Fully-Virtual Chemistry Experience

Well...I mean...that's a joke, right? There is no way to fully replicate the ability to handle the specialized equipment and chemicals involved in a grade 12 chemistry course for a fully-virtual experience, but I'm not going to make the in-class students miss out on that opportunity, either (again, active learning is very important to me). So what can I do to help those who are fully virtual still have a really good quality chemistry education? ...I don't know. I'm familiar with various simulations and such we can use, but nothing will be the same as in person. I've requested access to a Google group that's for other teachers of the course in my school board, and I look forward to seeing what ideas they have to offer.

Given that part of my passion is actually for the Flipped Classroom model, and given how much I really enjoyed the couple of days in quad 1 I was able to bring some flipping back into my classes, I'm also looking at how I can get more "flip" into my implementation of my course even given the weirdness of the structure under which I must operate. I truly believe that a flipped model is of great benefit to students, so how can I mesh even some aspect of that model with this weird hybrid thing I've got? I have ideas, but they're not ready yet to be typed out so stay tuned to see how that evolves.

Concern 3: Equity of In-Class vs. Fully-Virtual Assessment and Evaluation

I'm not even going to bother devoting writing space and time here to what the concerns are -- they're common to all teachers who have had to pivot to any amount of online assessment since the spring (if not before). I will be learning more about how to use the Quizzes component of Brightspace (formerly called D2L or Desire2Learn) and giving more thought to diversifying the means I use to assess the course expectations. I plan to make an overall marks breakdown for the course before our first day of in-person instruction on Wednesday so I can tell students exactly what portion of their grade will be met by each evaluation as I give it out -- the clearer I can communicate with them from the get-go, hopefully the less anxious they (and I) will feel about it all.

Concern 4: Diversity of Student Prerequisite Knowledge

Some of these students will have taken their grade 11 chemistry course in the spring, and since their marks couldn't go down after March 13 at least some of them may have stopped engaging in the prerequisite material for this course not long after the spring coronashutdown started. There are also potential differences in background preparation between my students who took the course at my school compared to the other school, or even between the teachers they had for that course. Variations in preparation for a course are always a concern, but they are certainly exacerbated this time around.

Part of my solution will be to have "review" videos or other resources available regarding prerequisite skills for each unit, for "just-in-time" access by the students who need it. I'll also need to ensure I'm on the ball with diagnostics of those prerequisite skills, especially as the fast pace of the course will make responding to those diagnostics while also helping students to master the new course's knowledge challenging indeed.

Phew. That's a lot on my mind at the very start of a course, but again, I am actually looking forward to the experience this time. I intend to try to keep my blogging up during the course this time so you can follow along with my journey, but we'll see how that goes, heh -- wish me luck :)!

The Jiu-Jitsu of Flipped Learning — Part II

This post is part of a series in which I reflect on connections I've noticed between my training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the practice of a teacher implementing the flipped classroom model. You can read the beginning of the series at the Flipped Learning Global Initiative or on my personal blog.

(cross-posted from https://community.flglobal.org/the-jiu-jitsu-of-flipped-learning-part-ii-2/)

2. It’s OK to make them uncomfortable

At one point in SBG’s documentary about women in jiu-jitsu, it discusses a tendency some women have to not fully assert themselves on the mats.* I have seen this in my own training and with some of my training partners (though I have admittedly noticed it less and less the more experienced we've become): some of us can fall prey to over-apologizing and/or being over-anxious in asking whether our opponents are OK. That’s not to say we should have no concern for the humans with whom we roll – we start with easy pressure, to help our partners learn the mechanics of each move before we gradually increase the challenge – but in a sport that involves chokes and armbars, a certain amount of giving and receiving pain is expected and agreed to. It’s because of this understanding that we learn to “trust the tap” and our training partners. (It’s also why we sign waivers before we start!) In the video, Rory Singer points out that to be a good training partner, you are actually supposed to make your opponent uncomfortable. In fact, they should thank you, because it is when you are in discomfort that you realize you need to learn more and grow to address the situation (and avoid ever being put in it again).

"Yikes, this is uncomfortable. How did I end up here, and how can I make sure I never
have to be here again? Also, I guess I should tap out before my arm gets broken."

While flipped learning has been growing by leaps and bounds over the last several years, there are still many students who have yet to experience a flipped class. Teachers of such classes may well hear complaints from such students at first because the structure is so fundamentally different from the one to which they’ve become accustomed. Those teachers who understand the flipped model also understand the benefits that it has for students in spite of this initial discomfort. If we really believe in the “why” of flipped learning, we need to be OK with putting students through some growing pains as they undergo a paradigm shift regarding what school can look like. However, we must show our students that they can trust us as “training partners.” We must help them understand what it is we're trying to do, we must support them through the transition by teaching them how to successfully navigate the new system, and we must give them sufficient feedback and time to help them climb the growth curve. We must also collect feedback from the students in return -- they generally cannot "tap out" of our class, nor have they signed waivers agreeing to any level of pain ahead of time, and so it is critical that we monitor their response and ensure the level of discomfort we cause is a reasonable one. It is fine to stretch our students' thinking; it is not okay for us to cause the equivalent of a pedagogical choke-out. If we are strategic about the way in which we challenge our students, most of them will eventually see the joy on “the flip side” of the discomfort, and thank us for taking them through the adjustment. 

*Note: the SBG documentary addresses this point from about the 27:54 mark through to about 33:29.

Thanks to draft reviewers Anna Muessig and Lucas Conner for their feedback on an earlier version of this post. The points about students not having signed waivers/agreed to discomfort ahead of time and what "trusting the tap" can look like in the classroom have been included due to their input.

The Jiu-Jitsu of Flipped Learning -- Part I

(cross-posted from https://community.flglobal.org/the-jiu-jitsu-of-flipped-learning-part-i/)

Some of the women from my Saturday morning class. My coach is the 3rd person here (in case you can't tell, I'm the 4th).

In October, I did a thing: I started training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and thereby made those close to me drop their jaws in shock (my best friend asked for a DNA test!). Sure, introverts are supposed to protect their hamster ball of personal space with their life, not invite strangers to grapple within it. Sure, those of the INFJ Myers-Briggs personality type are supposed to seek harmony and avoid conflict. Despite all that, I’ve long been intrigued by martial arts, and I’ve had a passing interest in trying one out for years. When I decided it was time to start doing some sort of physical activity again this school year, I decided it was also time to do something different and looked up martial art studios close to my home and school. Straight Blast Gym (a.k.a. SBG) has a location in Scarborough that had consistently high reviews describing it as very welcoming and beginner-friendly. It also offered a 1-week free trial and just happened to have a women’s beginner jiu-jitsu class starting a couple weeks after I started looking, so I once again embraced my theme this year of “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” and registered for a trial week even though I knew nothing about jiu-jitsu.

Almost 6 months later, I’ve now got my first stripe on my white belt. I’ve obviously learned something about jiu-jitsu. What I didn’t expect, though, was the way I’d find connections between my training on the mats and my teaching practice. There are too many for me to share in one blog post, though, so welcome to my first blog post series(!), in which I will share some of the thoughts I’ve had lately about the jiu-jitsu of flipped learning.

1. There is no winning and losing in jiu-jitsu/flipped learning

In one of Steven Grossi’s videos, he addresses white belts and shares “5 tips to improve the jiu-jitsu journey.” One of these is that there is no winning and losing in jiu-jitsu – there is only winning and learning. When you spar against someone and “lose,” it’s actually a type of win, because it gives you a chance to analyze what didn’t go well, learn how to do better, and thereby grow in your game. Grossi goes so far as to call a winning/losing mentality "toxic" for those just starting their training, pointing out, "You're going to 'lose' a lot as a white belt, and that's just the way it goes."

One of the benefits of flipped learning is that it allows teachers to get the delivery of basic content out of the “group space” (time spent with students in the classroom) and instead use that time to provide the students with better-supported practice, more active learning, and activities that move them into higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Since classroom time has traditionally been used for content-delivery lectures for so long, however, teachers new to flipping often wonder what exactly it is they should be doing in class with their students. While it’s true that much has been shared by flipped practitioners about their practice, that training and certification options are available, and that the best flipped educators are often those who collaborate with other flipped practitioners around the globe, there is still a lot of “play” going on as we try out new things with our classes. The flip community grows as we experiment to see what innovations will work best with this group of students, this year, for this course. As they say, though, to make an omelette, you’ve got to break a few eggs, and sometimes an activity we try out with a class falls flat and doesn’t have the success we’d envisioned for it. When you're a white belt of flipped learning (and even as an experienced "flipper"), you will experience some "flops" in your flips! To embrace the jiu-jitsu of flipped learning, we must approach such seeming failures with a growth mindset and see them as opportunities to learn. Reflect on what may have caused that activity to go in a different direction than you’d planned, get input from others (including your students and other flipped practitioners), make adjustments as needed, figure out what may better accomplish the goals you had in mind, and keep going. Your practice can’t help but grow if you don’t give up.

http://theawkwardyeti.com/comic/practice/

Let Your Colleagues Come In (or, So I Hosted a Learning Coach)

I am not feeling the blogging vibe today, yet here am I, touch-typing away to get a reflection in by the end of the day. Why? Because gamification works, or at least it does on me! Andrew Swan has put out a new #flipblogs challenge, and this time, he’s promised badges -- how can I resist? Besides, I may have fallen off September’s 20-over-30 challenge, but I know the reflection of blogging is valuable, so I will try this again for my own benefit, too.