Reaching every student every day in every class can seem like an impossible task, but the truth is if we want to have the most significant impact, we must do just that. Recently, I decided that when I started this school year, I was going to make reaching every student a priority. I wasn’t really sure how I was going to make this happen, I just knew that it needed to happen.
I started by committing myself to the idea: I told parents at Back to School night that I was going to do it (still didn’t know how I was going to do it). The reaction from the parents told me that connecting with every student every day was essential. I told parents that I would know their child’s voice and that I would be checking to see how their child’s day was going. The smiles, the expressions of relief, and “thank yous” cemented for me that connecting with every student every day was what every parent didn’t know they actually wanted from their child’s classroom teacher. I was on a mission to make the idea of connecting with every student a reality. I decided to create a basic checklist that would allow me to know where students were with their understanding of content, how well they understand the expectations, what progress they were making on personal and academic goals, and finally how is life. These conversations would allow me to see every student, hear every student, and value every student. I wasn’t sure how the students would respond to me chatting with them every day. I wasn’t sure if they would feel annoyed that I was disrupting their efforts in class or if they would welcome the dialogue. The first day I started meeting with students, they were a little nervous, but when I asked them how their summer went, their shoulders relaxed, and they just started talking. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to meet with every student. When students entered my room on the second day, I actually had students come up to me and say, “Mr. Jones, we didn’t get to chat yesterday. Are we gonna talk today?” They noticed the conversations I was having with other students, and they wanted that same experience. The students have started to look forward to the conversations. They have remarked that the dialogue helps to keep them accountable, and they know that I genuinely care about them. I have been able to help students work through academic issues more instantly, and the students feel supported more than ever before. I want to challenge you to look for ways to reach every student every day. The smallest gesture could have a huge impact.
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During one of my first years as a teacher, I remember standing in front of my class, and a particular student was not paying attention. I noticed that he was drawing instead of listening to my lecture. I wasn’t trying to make a big deal of it, so I continued my lecture as I walked up to the student and placed my hand on his notebook. The student looked up at me with rage in his eyes and lifted his pencil as though he was going to stab me. My heart raced, and it was at that moment that I realized that I had never even had a conversation with this student before I attempted to discipline him. We have all had students that have made us more than a little nervous. Over the years, I have had students threaten to injure me, other students, or themselves. Since I have flipped my classroom, I have been able to lessen, not eliminate, but lessen the aggressive behaviors in my class. Within the past few years, I have had a couple of instances where the relationships that flipped learning allows me to build has enabled me to recognize more of the red flags so that I could engage parents more quickly, alert administration, and make the necessary calls to area agencies.
One thing I have noticed since I have been flipping my classroom is that I have more time to build relationships with my students. Robert Talbert, in a recent interview about his book, Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty, said, “A flipped learning environment is one where you as a faculty member can have meaningful contact with every student (or at least every group of students) every day.” Each day, I walk around my classroom chatting with every single student. These conversations have a dramatic impact on the atmosphere of the classroom. Most of the time, our conversations are related to the curriculum that the students are working on, but there are times when it drifts to other topics: “How was your weekend?”, “How did you do in your basketball game?”, “Did you get enough sleep last night?”, “Why are you struggling to get your homework done?”, etc. Flipped Learning provides teachers with the time to build necessary relationships that allow each of their students to be seen and heard every single day. Before I flipped my class, I dealt with many disruptions in my classroom. I had students that were utterly defiant, belligerent, and toxic to the learning environment. I also dealt with the reclusive students that did not want to be seen and just wanted to blend in with the shadows. I broke up numerous fights within my classroom, and I sent plenty of students to the office for being disruptive; that all changed when I flipped my class. The connectedness and relationships that I now had time to build flipped the entire atmosphere of the classroom. An article by Melissa McInnis Brown, PhD, and Teresa Starrett, EdD titled Fostering Student Connectedness: Building Relationships in the Classroom reports that a study they did on how connectedness impacts students showed “Almost all students (94%) indicated that they felt connectedness improved their academic performance.” Due to the nature of a flipped classroom, I was able to create an active setting that engaged my students. They didn’t have time to be disruptive. There is always something to do. When students are engaged, the off-task behaviors seem to melt away. The class time now had a purpose for my students. It wasn’t a place to show up and mess around. Another significant change was that I now have the time to engage my students on a personal level. This engagement allows me to see them. I am not just talking about seeing where they are struggling with their work, but seeing them as a person. I can tell when they are struggling emotionally, or when they just feel lonely. I am also able to see the red flags as they come up. Having the time to engage every student in every class has the potential to be a life-saving tool in the classroom. It can save the life of the student that is having thoughts of suicide, and it can save the lives of students throughout a school. I cannot overstate the importance of building relationships. Relationships create trust and confidence in ways that are difficult to comprehend, indeed. Flipped learning provides me with the time to have classroom conversations about real issues. Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools wrote an article about their personal learning program. The article focused on their morning meetings. “Morning Meeting gives kids energy, helps them perform better in school, and helps them make better choices throughout the day.” During my classroom meetings we talk through bullying issues and what to do if they or someone they know is being bullied. We talk about the importance of being kind. And we talk about the importance of taking what students say seriously. It is these conversations that have shown me that flipped learning was more than a meta-strategy for education, it has been the meta-strategy for advocating for my students. Flipped Learning will not solve the violence found within schools, but it is a step in the right direction to enabling teachers with the commodity of time to have a conversation with every student every day in every class. It gives teachers the chance to see those who feel unseen, hear those who feel ignored, provide a voice to the silent, and encouragement to those who are struggling. |
Mr. Dan JonesMaster Flip Educator with 13 years experience in the classroom. FLGI Faculty Trainer who trains based on the Gold Standard of Flipped Learning 3.0. Expertise in project based learning. Archives
October 2018
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