How Does A Flipped Classroom Work?

Many teachers already do something quite similar to this in one way or another. I do it all the time and it works quite well.

Don't Isolate It

MinnPost had a great piece recently on the achievement gap which pointed out the obvious problem in tackling it-don't isolate it.

Before I am accused of opposition to solving the achievement gap or opposing all forms of educational reform, let me say that I am only pointing out that to solve the achievement gap we need to admit that it is part of a larger struggle against racism that dramatically impacts our educational systems, our employment picture, our health care system, and our public safety institutions.

The latter is particularly true. Black people are more likely to be convicted of a crime and our prisons have an insanely high rate of blacks residing in them.

If we are going to tackle this problem efficiently, we can't just look at the achievement gap as an education problem. It's a societal problem which means the path to a solution is how we handle the interlocking complexities of prejudice and racism.

Getting Better

The National Center For Education Statistics released its 2013 report card and much to the dismay of right wing bloggers everywhere, it shows improved reading and math scores for both 4th and 8th graders. Granted, the improvement is small and there still is an obvious achievement gap issue (which, in the bubble, means "Who gives a fuck? They are all lazy") but it clearly shows that we are geed in the right direction.

For those of you who have trouble with the English language, that means not collapsing:)

It Begins (And Ends) With The Parents

Nearly all of the challenges I face as an instructor are due to poor parenting. Parents do indeed really suck and they are getting worse. Even the number of sucky parents are on the rise as our culture becomes more and more cemented in the misplaced and harmful values of the Michael Jordan Generation. It's very clear that parents are just not doing their job.

Never was this statement more true than with the parents of the shooter in the recent Sparks, Nevada Middle School shooting. While it hasn't been fully confirmed yet, the student who killed teacher and vet Michael Landsberry and wounded two other students likely got the semi-auto 9mm from his parents. What the hell were they thinking? And what kind of a fucking country do we live in where a guy who does tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan lives through that but gets shot in his hometown? It's stuff like this that completely disgusts me.

This would be a clear example of people who should not be allowed to own guns and why our laws regarding arms need to be changed. Their license to own a gun should be taken away and they should face criminal charges. I'm wondering if they were "live free or die" types like Nancy Lanza who also thought it would be nifty to let her mentally ill sun have access to her guns.

The facts of this case have been very slow in coming but my takeaways are that it's clear there was some sort of bullying involved (more on that later), the shooter was mentally ill, and his parents are directly responsible. Further, this latest incident has led me to reflect about Newton and come to the conclusion the ideology that bloviates from the gun community is also responsible. This is particularly true in the case of Nancy Lanza who bought their lies to such a degree that she felt she needed a fucking arsenal to protect herself.

It begins and ends with the parents, folks. If they don't do their job, we end up with situations like this. And more and more of them these days are failing miserably.

The Harmful Myth of Collapsing Schools

One of the most cherished tactics of the Right is to find a policy (health care, immigration, budget...whatever), find the flaws, and then blame anyone who isn't exactly aligned with their moonbattery about what to do regarding that issue. It's very convenient because there are always going to be flaws so they will always be able to find something. Nothing is perfect. Well, check that. Inside the bubble, everything they do is perfect despite reality (see: self delusion). Never is this more true than with the issue of education. Everything is terrible, they say, because liberal ideology has taken over and our students are stupid as a result. They point to test scores and other bits of information from the right wing blogsphere that "proves" public education is a failure.

A recent piece in Politico posits the question...what if a big part of our problem is this exact mentality? And not even close to being true besides? As the cartoon below this posts illustrates, we know full well the agenda of the Right. Those on the left that complain about education invariably want more money or power for their particular corner of the world so their intentions aren't all that much better. Yet, as the piece shows, we aren't really doing that bad and we should take reports of our "collapsing schools" with a grain of (actually, a giant boulder of) salt.

Then again, we’re 32nd on just one test. American kids do better relative to the world — though they’re still far from elite — on the PISA science and reading exams. And they do better as well on a different, equally respected, international math test known as TIMSS. On the most recent TIMSS test, from 2011, American eighth-graders handily outscored seven nations that had the edge on the U.S. in the 2009 PISA exam, including Great Britain, Australia — and, yes, Slovenia. Fourth-graders rocked the TIMSS test even more: They came out ahead of a dozen countries that had beaten the U.S. on the PISA exam.

Exactly right. You have to look at more than one test. And how about that ol' China canard?

As for China, it doesn’t participate as an entire nation; only students from three relatively wealthy regions — Shanghai, Macao and Hong Kong — are tested. That’s important to note because income correlates with success on standardized tests.

If the entire country was tested (as we are), China's scores would be considerably lower.

Ms. Simon does an excellent job of blowing up several of the myths about the state of our education system. The next time you see a story about how awful our schools are, please kindly refer to this article.

The Next Generation?

The recent report that students leaving high school today aren't doing much better than they did in the 1970s seems like bad news at first glance. Dive into it a little deeper, however, and we see this.

The news was brighter for younger students and for blacks and Hispanics, who had the greatest gain in reading and math scores since the 1970s, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. “In some ways, the findings are full of hope. Today’s children ages 9 and 13 are scoring better overall than students at those ages in the early ’70s,” said Brent Houston, principal of the Shawnee Middle School in Oklahoma and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which administers the tests.

Does this mean the achievement is closing? Possibly. A big part of the reason for this is the Common Core program started by the states, not the federal government, although it does have the full support of President Obama. The key thrust of the CC standards is to develop students' critical thinking skills and not simply test their short term memories. This leads to what we call in the biz "enduring understandings" and the best instructors know how to achieve this goal.

It's going to be very exciting and interesting to watch how our test scores rise over the next decade due to the changes being made now in our education system. It's about time!

What We Do

"We had to pull a car off a teacher and she had three little kids underneath her," one first responder, in tears, told KFOR. "Good job, teach." 

"I was on top of six kids," one sixth grade teacher said, working her way across the rubble. "I was lying on top. All of mine are OK." 

Teachers helped tear through several feet of rubble to rescue sobbing students, some of them injured.

He Is Saying Things That Need To Said

There are so many things to love about Peter Brown Hoffmeister's recent piece that was banned from the Huffington Post that I don't even know where to start. He is saying things that need to be said and forcing us to confront a very deep fissure in our culture. In many ways, he speaks to the heart of the problem with young men in this country and how a few of them end up going on shooting sprees.

He should know. He was one of those young men and he made it out and became mentor and teacher himself. Correctly, he identifies the ingredients that get these young men to the point of shooting people and it's not just the guns.

Now I am not anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson. I’m not suggesting that everyone who plays a video game will act out that video game in reality. But I am saying that it is very dangerous to allow troubled, angry, teenage boys access to killing practice, even if that access is only virtual killing practice. The military uses video games to train soldiers to kill, yet we don’t consider “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3″ training for addicted teenage players? A high school boy who plays that game 30 hours per week isn’t training to kill somebody?

Now combine that with a mom who buys into the whole "live free or die" horse hockey and decides to allow their son access to a large quantity of weaponry and you have a disaster. Why is that the parents of these shooters never have their feet held to the fire? In the final analysis, it's primarily their responsibility. Nancy Lanza was a complete and total failure as a parent and her incompetence resulted in the deaths of 26 people.   There are thousands more like her out there and they truly, truly suck. They need to stop sucking. Yesterday.

Where are the parents in this situation or others like this one?

I was walking behind two teenage boys in the hall at my high school the other day and I heard one talking about slitting someone’s throat. He said, “I just came up behind him, pulled out my knife so quietly and cut his throat.” The other boy said, “Yeah, then I killed everyone else in less than, like, 10 seconds. Just slaughtered them.” 

I looked at these two boys: Tall and awkward. Unathletic. I knew that they weren’t tied-in socially, that they both struggled in classes and with peers. Yet they were capable of incredible and sudden violence on screen. Together, they could slit throats and shoot everyone. I asked one of them later, and he said that he played Call of Duty “an average of 40 hours per week, at least.” 

Is this what we want angry, adolescent boys to do? Do we want to give them this practice? Do we want them to glorify violent actions, to brag about violence in the school’s hallways? Or even worse, given the perfect equation of frustration + opportunity + practice, do we want them to do as Weise, Roberts, and Lanza did, and act out these fantasies in real life? Do we want them to yell, “I am the shooter” as they enter a crowded mall – as Roberts did? Or dress like video-game shooters – as Lanza and Roberts were – before heading into a murder spree?

When I was an awkward teenager, all I thought about was sex. All my friends were the same. We smoked pot, listened to music and were obsessed with progressing around the bases in terms of carnal escapades. That is definitely not the case today. Sex is very verboten subject with teenagers and they are much less sexual active than they were in my generation. There are drugs, of course, but they are viewed so negatively by our culture that the deviance takes on a truly ugly hue for the kids that do them...even marijuana. I can't help but think that if some of these kids just smoked some pot and made out with their girlfriends or boyfriends, they might be more at peace.

Hoffmeister closes the piece with a direct appeal to parents. I agree with it completely and I will close with it as well.

Get kids outside. Take them out and let them wander around in the woods. Let them canoe across a lake. Let them backpack through a mountain range. Give them a map and compass assignment. Give frustrated youth an opportunity to challenge themselves in the natural world. Have you ever heard of a school shooter who’s hobbies are kayaking, rock climbing, and fly-fishing? If that seems absurd – and it does seem absurd to me – we might be onto something. I don’t think that those hobbies can create a school shooter. There’s just something abut the natural world that defuses anger. I know this because the outdoors helped saved my life. An outdoor diversion program for troubled teens started the process when I was sixteen. Camping and hiking and climbing helped me mature further as a nineteen and twenty year old. And now, as the director of a high school outdoor program, one of my student leaders said recently that “the outdoor program saves lives.” That’s not me. That’s nature. Kids need the outdoors. Help the young people. Get them outside.

Amen.

How To Torpedo A Weasel Question

Yeah, not really a good idea to fuck with the son of a teacher.

,

The Most Irresponsible People I Have Ever Seen

When I arrived at school today, the office staff was buzzing. There was a shooting at a school in New Prague, a city 45 miles south of the Twin Cities. Everyone began checking and refreshing their smart phones. The next bit of news we got was that there were hospital staging areas being set up. The principal sent out an email saying that it wouldn't be long before the students started getting texts from their parents making sure they were OK. Our instructions were to tell them that our school was safe and to focus on getting their work done. It was a tense few minutes.

Thankfully, it turned out to be a prank call by a 12 year old and no one was hurt. Yet, this incident is what educators and their support staff now have to deal with every day. People that don't work in a school simply have no idea what runs through your head when something like this happens or even if it is just your standard lock down drill. The simple fact that we have to do it is a really disgusting statement on our culture. Adding to the nausea is that our country is effectively being held hostage by the most irresponsible people I have ever seen: the gun lobby and their supporters. Their view of the American people is FUBAR.

I say this because these are the same people who claim that because human beings are, by nature, corrupt, we should never trust them with the responsibility to govern. They whine like little babies about liberals and how the left's embrace of Jean Jacques Rousseau's social contract is naive and ultimately destructive. Yet, when it comes to guns, suddenly (as if out of someone's ass) people are very responsible and it's, "Fuck you, don't take my gun, Hitler!!"

The irony here is that gun right supporters are fully embracing Rousseau's concept of the general will, whether they want to admit it or not. Recall that Rousseau posited that the general will of the people was to embrace their natural state of liberty and freedom. Any sort of collective action would always be good and further the rights of the individual. In the case of gun rights, it's the second amendment. People will always be responsible and act in their best interests because the general will dictates that liberty must preserved.

Even though today's incident resulted in no injuries nor fatalities, it illustrates just how irresponsible people can be. Most people can't be trusted with a phone let alone a gun. What does that say about the gun lobby and supporters who place so much faith in the American people who continually shit all over them every day with thousands of gun deaths every year? Interestingly, I think that gun supporters were onto something when they suggest we adopt a system that is similar to Israel's gun laws. No one is prohibited from owning a gun but if you want to own one, you have to prove that you can be responsible with one. In fact, I'd go as far to say that would include any gun, automatic or semi-automatic. Go through all the necessary training, mental tests and background checks...all of which will be checked on a regular basis...and you are free to build yourself an arsenal if you so desire.

In short, don't ban the guns (the supply), ban some of the people (the demand). They are not, by nature, responsible nor are they good.

Daily Reminder

I need to remind myself more often that patience is all that is required when it comes to nearly all of the issues I gripe about on here. In the final analysis, reason always prevails.

For example, Oklahoma rejected SB 758 just a few days ago. This bill would have required teachers to address "controversies" like evolution and climate change.

In Arizona, SB 1213 didn't even make it out of committee. This bill would have allowed teachers to present creationism as a "balance" to evolution as well as right wing blogs in juxtaposition with the National Academy of Science.

And in Indiana, the Hoosiers rejected extremism again (remember Richard Murdock?) when HB 1283 died in the House. Check out the language in this bill.

“To help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the strengths and weaknesses of conclusions and theories being presented in a course being taught by the teacher.”

Funny, because they do that anyway. That's why evolution is settled science.

Of course, even if any of these bills had passed, it's not likely that any teacher would have used this leeway. While some of my colleagues are conservative, they haven't completely abandoned reason. They might believe in smaller government or have a different view of the Constitution but none of them would ever teach creationism in a fucking science class.

It's comforting to know that even in these deep red states, people can still be rational.

A Profile in Courage

The media tends to love talking about conservative activists like James O'Keefe, Bill Whittle or Erick Erickson  but they never really talk about the liberal ones like Zack Kopplin. Man, is he making life hell for the creationists down in Lousiana.

Encouraged by Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University — and a staunch critic of intelligent design and the Discovery Institute — Kopplin decided to write a letter that could be signed by Nobel laureate scientists in support of the repeal. To that end, he contacted Sir Harry Kroto, a British chemist who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. Kroto helped him to draft the letter — one that has now been signed by 78 Nobel laureates.

I can't figure out why creationists and intelligent design folks aren't content with teaching their stuff in church. They can talk about how Jesus rode dinosaurs or whatever they want in there. Kopplin had gone after the voucher program as well.

School vouchers, he argues, unconstitutionally fund the teaching of creationism because many of the schools in these programs are private fundamentalist religious schools who are teaching creationism. "These schools have every right to teach whatever they want — no matter how much I disagree with it — as long as they are fully private," he says. "But when they take public money through vouchers, these schools need to be accountable to the public in the same way that public schools are and they must abide by the same rules."

Those rules being a strict adherence to the scientific method. There is nothing scientific about creationism.

"Creationism is not science, and shouldn't be in a public school science class — it's that simple," he says. "Often though, creationists do not, or are unwilling, to recognize this." Science, he argues, is observable, naturalistic, testable, falsifiable, and expandable — everything that creationism is not. But what also drives Kopplin is the inherent danger he sees in teaching creationism. 

"Creationism confuses students about the nature of science," he says. "If students don't understand the scientific method, and are taught that creationism is science, they will not be prepared to do work in genuine fields, especially not the biological sciences. We are hurting the chances of our students having jobs in science, and making discoveries that will change the world."

"We don't just deny evolution," he says, "We are denying climate change and vaccines and other mainstream science. I'm calling for a Second Giant Leap to change the perception of science in the world."

In the final analysis, this is really the crux of the problem. In an age of globalization. we can't afford a bunch of religious nonsense to interfere with our economic growth and security. Young men like Zack Kopplin give me a lot of hope that intelligence is alive and well in young people in the deep south and the time to put this assinine, anti science garbage behind us is yesterday.

Honestly, I thought we already did that in the Age of Enlightenment but I guess we still have a few stragglers:)

SOTU Bite Size Chunks (Part Three)

Here's a segment of the SOTU that won't get much press coverage.

But none of it will matter unless we also equip our citizens with the skills and training to fill those jobs. And that has to start at the earliest possible age.

Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road. But today, fewer than 3 in 10 four year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program. Most middle-class parents can’t afford a few hundred bucks a week for private preschool. And for poor kids who need help the most, this lack of access to preschool education can shadow them for the rest of their lives. 

Tonight, I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America. Every dollar we invest in high-quality early education can save more than seven dollars later on – by boosting graduation rates, reducing teen pregnancy, even reducing violent crime. In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children, like Georgia or Oklahoma, studies show students grow up more likely to read and do math at grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, and form more stable families of their own. So let’s do what works, and make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind. Let’s give our kids that chance.

It's actually much more than the president is saying. The social cohesion in this country would be vastly strengthened if we started spending more money and time on ECFE. In the long run, it saves us much more money because people that learn the value of an education at a very early age end up being more successful in society.

In short, they become more responsible.

A Very Stale Conflict

The recent conflict over the nature of social studies curriculum is tired, old and very, very stale. Yes, we know that the liberals can't stand the fact that America has actually done a whole lot of wonderful things in  including the spread of free market economics around the world which has clearly raised prosperity in such remote corners that it's likely world hunger will be eliminated within 50 years. Or that our military has ensured this freedom across the globe and saved countless lives from a whole host of threats, both human and natural. And we know that conservatives are literally foaming at the mouth even at the mere hint of America being at fault for anything in its 200+ year history. Whenever anything bad happened (slavery, coup in Iran, Vietnam, Iraq II), it was no one's fault. Shitty things just happen sometimes and if you blame America, well, you're a fucking commie!

What both sides in this debate completely fail to realize is that they are having the wrong argument and are wasting an enormous amount of time. The discussion shouldn't be about content. It should be about rigor. The same level of attention that is applied to math and reading should be applied to social studies. That includes high stakes testing with severe repercussions for those districts who fail to achieve the basic standards set out by the state in history and civics.

I'd wager that none of these people has been in a classroom in the last decade because the simple fact is that young people don't give a shit about civics or history. Without the priority placed on it by the state, why the fuck should they care? Our education department, as well as others across the nation, is hammering it into them that math and reading are more important than any other subject. Certainly, they are important but when many of the kids I get into class don't know who the vice president is or how a bill is passed or that there are even three branches of government, that should be a strong indicator for change.

The first thing that needs to happen is that the conclusion of 9th grade should bring with it a basic civics and history exam to be taken by all students. By that time, they should have taken both a US History and a government class so they should have the knowledge. The data we could glean from such exams could be an excellent metric for the pedagogy of today's social studies teachers. It's long been my belief (and the data would likely bear this out) that social studies teachers skate by on doing the minimal amount of work. They don't have a fire under their arses that really needs to be there if we are actually going to get young people to have enduring understandings about history and civics. We have enough to compete with anyway with all the other social influences in kids' lives.

By the time they get to me, I see the results. They don't remember much of what they have learned and had instructors that spent a lot of time showing movies or going on field trips. I'm really sick and tired of people living the stereotype of the social studies teacher being just a slight jump up from the gym teacher. Hell, I'm tired of people living the gym teacher stereotype as well. I'd say that they have done a pretty poor job as well when you consider how rotund our nation's children have become although I know it's not entirely their fault.

So, let's forget this stupid debate about the content of social studies and what political view needs to be studied and focus on the fundamental goal: mastery of basic civics and history. We've gone far too long with young people not understanding the history of our government, how it functions, and the people that have been and are involved making decisions that affect all of our lives. Connections need to be made to their daily lives and the importance of what happens in government and in history must be illustrated in new and exciting ways for each and every student.

It's time for social studies to be taken much more seriously.

In Less Than Seven Minutes

It only took Rhode Island teacher Steven Round less than seven minutes to sum up perfectly many of the things that are wrong with our education system today. Sadly, there are far too many school districts that are like this. Thankfully, both mine and my children's district are not.

His points below illustrate several things. First, trying to have a one size fits all approach to teaching children is an epic fail. If districts are going to chuck Carol Ann Tomlinson by the roadside these days, children are going to lose. Second, we are creating a nation of test takers, not learners and students with enduring understandings. As Mr. Round says in this video, they have no clue what the real world is like. Third, this lack of real world experience is compounded further by budget cuts which means no field trips. Far too many districts suffer these consequences.

This, of course leads to a larger problem  which is a decided lack of socialization time for many schoolchildren of all ages. Having a conversation with fellow students on a regular basis is a very key element to development. Without it, another avenue of real world experience is lost.

Given how so many school districts operate like this one (see: mini-fiefdoms) I fear that Mr. Round is only the first of many abrupt departures.

Resolutions

In many ways, 2012 was a great year for this site. Blogger has made it very simple to bring in widgets and links to allow for more connectivity to outside resources and related sites. We saw more page views and comments than ever before in our seven year history. We also have a core following of about 200 readers and that suits me just fine. I've always wanted to be the digital equivalent of a small town newspaper and now it is safe to say that we fit that description perfectly. And it's been great to have a fellow contributor to take the daily load of posts off...thanks Nikto!

This does not mean, however, that we should rest on our laurels here at Markadelphia. I've been thinking that this site needs some changes, content wise, and so I've come up with a few resolutions for 2013.

1. More World News.

Last in line has quietly chided me over the past few months about how this site used to be more focused on international events. Well, he's right. Those topics have fallen by the wayside and it's time to bring them back (especially now that the election is over). At least once a week (and likely more than that), there will be a post commenting on world news. Will it be the latest on the strife in the Central African Republic? Or how about China's PMI forecast? Who knows? Whatever strikes my fancy, I guess, but it's going to be regular occurrence that will likely be a welcome break from political talk. Speaking of which...

2. Pop Culture.

Most of the readers of this site don't know that I am a massive fan of pop culture...music and film, in particular. In addition to the weekly world news post, there will be one that comments on pop culture. I do one at the end of the year but there just has to be more. My passion for this is simply too great to ignore it further and, again, talking about politics all the time can get rather tedious. I will probably throw in some sports posts here and there as well.

3. Education.

I have far too few posts about education which is odd considering that I am teacher. Part of the reason for this was to keep a degree of privacy in my life. Yet, I find that there are some experiences  in my classrooms  that I should write about and as long as they are done in the broader context of the issues facing education, I think I can maintain that public/private balance. So, expect more posts about the state of education in our country and the world (starting tomorrow with a video sent to me by last in line...him again!). These will likely have a more personal tone as well.

4. Science

Many of you may not know this but Nikto is a classically trained scientist. He's thrown out a few posts here and there with different scientific themes which have given me the idea to make this a more regular occurrence. Expect more posts that focus on innovation and science in the world today. Yes, that's right, Nikto, I'm volunteering you:)

These four resolutions can be summed up simply by noting that there is going to be more of a mix of content with less politics. That doesn't mean that my quest to destroy the right wing bubble is at an end. Far from it! I just feel the need to stretch myself out more with some different content which makes me look forward to 2013 with a large amount of gusto and zeal!