I had several interesting experiences yesterday in the course of my flipping. Firstly, Edmodo didn't allow the students to watch their video, so I had to resort to the "old" way of teaching. It was back to the old way of people not paying attention, talking to each other, and generally not being interested. While I could take offense to that, I am generally certain people/teens usually enjoy listening to my lectures. I can often get students involved in the lectures. However, yesterday, they were not listening. We were talking about "Inverses" and it is a difficult topic. I understood that students would not be interested and generally tend to be less interested the more difficult the topic is, it was jarring to see my normally (since flipping) good classes go downhill so fast. I was motivated to teach, but they were not motivated to learn.
Then, in 4th block, two students, upon learning we would be doing things the "old" way, asked if they could take some computers into the hallway to attempt to watch the video again and learn on their own. Because I know they would have been nothing but trouble in the classroom (back to their "old" ways), I consented. They kept periodically coming back into the classroom to ask questions. They found other videos to watch and took detailed notes on that video. They asked intelligent questions about the video and compared it to what I was asking of them on the videos. It was remarkable and exactly what I would like to see with all of my students.
Then, today, following my second unit of flipping with my Algebra 1 class, I decided to see how THEY thought things were going and was pleasantly surprised. I administered a survey and had a good long chat with them about some things they thought about Khan. They liked being able to learn at their own pace. They liked having help from the website to figure things out on their own and only needing to ask me when they simply couldn't understand. They said they had learned more in two units with this class than they had learned all last year. They said that math didn't seem so difficult with Khan. They said that they had regained confidence in math that they lost in middle school. They said that while Khan was not "fun", it did keep them wanting to do the math and was way better than doing on a piece of paper. The comments in favor of keeping the Khan Academy in the classroom was overwhelming.
My main struggle now, is convincing my colleagues that this is a good idea for my other Algebra 1 class to begin. I have options, but the kids in my flipped classes are so much more engaged and learning a lot more than the kids in my other classes. I wonder now, how that will translate to long-term learning on their part and, eventually, enhanced performance in math.
I have been getting comments about how hard I push kids in math. Some colleagues think that I ask too much of them and that they should take things a little slower. However, the community and school board want higher ACT scores from these kids. How am I going to do that if we don't push them to learn more and learn it better. If I can use things like Khan to engage them so THEY want to learn more and it is easier for them to learn more, why not?! If I don't have engaged students, then students aren't learning. My students are engaged in my flipped classes...I have no questions about that. Even though they may not always watch the videos, they are even more engaged in my non-Khan flipped class than my regular class. Evidence of this was when I couldn't flip for a day. They were lost and frustrated and showed it by not paying attention to me. Hence, they did not learn.
What do I want from my classes? I want them all to be as engaged as those two students yesterday. I want them to want to learn and seek out things to help them learn from wherever they need to. I want to have students enjoy the work in my class and have that translate to them learning more from all their hard work.
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