Lodge McKammon, author of the 60-30-10 plan for teachers in North Carolina, which would encourage larger class sizes, sent this comment:
“For the record, this article in NC Policy Watch was published before I had a chance to speak with the author. These are, in a sense, some of the ideas that I have been brainstorming over the past few years. However, this write-up (including the document) is taken way out of context. My main goal is to find a way to motivate teachers to flip their classrooms because I truly believe it can help every educator and student. In fact, I am so passionate about this idea, that I continue to offer free training for teachers. This article was published before I was asked about it and contains information that was part of a private discussion. Contrary to what the article states, to my knowledge, this is not being discussed by policymakers. These ideas are part of a brainstorming process, by a small number of people, and were not meant to be shared publicly.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I suggest that Mr. McKammon watch this video on why brainstorming doesn’t work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgPIkx2JyQU
It might explain why this idea is so flawed, yet out there as a great possibility to “help” students and teachers.
Flipping is just some “magic bullet” concept that takes the student making meaning out of the process and just adds information transfer. It definitely doesn’t align with the mathematical practices portion of the Common Core, in this case, it’s a poor alternative to a vibrant problem solving culture of a good classroom.
Yes, yes, it’s much better that you were discussing this in secret. Of course.
Anyway, so you’re passionate about “flipped classrooms”. Okay. How do you envision that working in, say, a literature class? History? Pretty much any subject other than math (and even math is problematic with a flipped classroom). Oh, wait, I forgot, “learning” is going to be all math and reading drills. There won’t be any history or literature. Sorry, my bad.
And also, what does limiting teachers to 20 years have to do with flipped classrooms? And what about paying teachers practically minimum wage? Could you explain just why you are so passionate about those ideas?
Yes, the key comment in that response was that this was not meant to be shared with the public.
I am doing it with economics, and my colleagues are incorporating it into a number of other disciplines across the humanities, social and natural sciences. The largest language department in my university is adopting many of the tools with great enthusiasm to help with language acquisition. After all, once you graduate from school everything you learn from then on must be “flipped” in an important sense.
Why do you think this is only useful for math? Make history come alive and stand where Joshua Chamberlin stood on little round top. If not in person, stand there virtually. Look up at Cemetery Ridge from the Emmitsburg road and think of Picket’s men. The possibilities are endless.
Yes, but if you don’t know anything about Joshua Chamberlin and Little Round Top, then it’s just a nice view. While having the technology is nice, having someone to connect with history is the biggest part. My mother was in essentially the 1960s version of flipped classrooms, where the teachers did nothing but show films. She learned nothing and hates history to this day. But, when she sees how passionately I teach history, she said she might have liked history if she had me! Seeing a lecture or reading an article without passion and context ruins history for many people. I use some technology in my classroom, but I also interact with the kids, and they interact with each other. That’s what SOCIAL studies is all about.
You don’t show films in class. You have conversations in class (a conversation is not one to many, but many to many). You do more things that can only be done by gathering together, and fewer things that could be done just as well sitting alone in a quite library.
If they’re turned off by history when they’re forced to watch lectures as homework, they won’t turn on to history in class. I teach 8th grade. This is my experience all the time.
I would not suggest simply recording yourself speaking. A little of that might be useful embedded in a presentation, but there are many other video and audio sources that can be used.
You want to “motivate” me to “flip my classroom”??
Do tell.
LOL
His response was at least thoughtful. Flipping a classroom is an interesting idea in some cases, but with larger class sizes attached interaction during the practice time becomes difficult.
The problem becomes, as he has seen in this day of information immediacy, that some idiot in the legislature is going to pick up on the tracking idea and make it law.
By the way, what does he propose a career educator do after their 20 years? Why would someone commit to the profession knowing they’d have to start over in their 40’s? How many greeters does WalMart need anyway?
Whatever. He didn’t like being caught with his proverbial pants down.
“Flipped classrooms” only work when you have ideal conditions – i.e. highly motivated students, students with resources at home, and certain content. Much like merit pay, it is an idea that comes and goes in various forms, gets resurrected and pitched as the next great idea. I can always tell when ISTE is pushing something, because one colleague at work will suddenly come up with “this great idea to ______”, which means it showed up on the ISTE cover, and we’re to be subjected to him pushing this idea for the next 4 months.
“My main goal is to find a way to motivate teachers to flip their classrooms because I truly believe it can help every educator and student. In fact, I am so passionate about this idea, that I continue to offer free training for teachers.”
You believe you can help every educator and student? Really? That’s quite a potent statement. My experience as an master teacher and your knee-jerk defensive reaction to this post make me think differently.
If Lodge McCammon is so passionate about how well this idea serves children, why doesn’t he move to an urban area–a really, really bad area–and get a job teaching at the worst high school so he can use this method to help those kids?
Until he does that, he has no credibility with me.
Perfect response! First, he should prove his ideas (the ones he shares freely with teachers) work, and then he should make his class sizes larger and keep his pay low, and finally, find an unbiased researcher study all of this and determine the effectiveness of his ideas. Just another crazy with no experience in real-world education trying to force crazy ideas on helpless children and over-stressed teachers.
As a 7th grade teacher last year, I had a brief brush with “flipping”, as our then principal appeared to be seduced by this ‘sexy’ new technology approach. As a teacher of middle and high school students, based on my experience – ‘Flipping’ would leave even more students behind. It is not developmentally appropriate for middle school students, who are still trying to learn what it means to handle assignments outside of the classroom, and need the careful scaffolding of a classroom teacher to practice this kind of management. High School students are mostly also still trying to learn how to, or practice homework assignment management. Shifting the bulk of the academic learning to at-home learning, when many kids don’t have computers, have chronic technology issues, share a computer with other family members who need the computer for school or work, AND who participate in sports, religious or music activities – including, taking care of younger siblings when a parent or parents need to be at work. AND – even if a student were able to do some of the reading, lessons, etc. at home on their computer, not having a teacher present, in their living room, to address questions and to clarify lesson points, will, my guess is, result in massive confusion, discouragement and kids will turn off, shut down, and do something more rewarding, like update their Facebook profiles.
Lauded as one of the countries with a highly functional education system, Finland does not appear to get seduced by technology, possibly because they can’t afford it: That money goes to teachers’ salaries.
In order for “Flipping” to become successful in every school community, every family would need to be supplied with computers and daily tech help. Virtual teachers would need to be on call 24/7 to address and clarify questions about today’s lesson. Talk about unmanageability. Good luck with that one.
Flipped classrooms—Just another “so-called” fix for all. Duh…this is NOT a magic bullet. If there is a magic bullet, it is free access to a wide assortment of books for all students, as well as making sure the students have good nutrition and healthcare as well as a safe place to learn.
I conducted my own brainstorming session and deconstructed each one of these ideas. I am quite happy to share them publicly. http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/message-to-north-carolina-teachers-we-hope-you-die-young/
Note to Mr. McKammon, any idea you come up with privately that you are embarrassed to have shared publicly is most likely a bad idea.
“Note to Mr. McKammon, any idea you come up with privately that you are embarrassed to have shared publicly is most likely a bad idea.”
Great line! That made me LOL for real.
Great quote and comment.
Have I missed something? Is Lodge McCammon someone whose name I should recognise? Is Lodge McCammon someone whose name NCers recognise? Are none of us allowed to have private conversations about ideas we find fascinating? I do not share McCammon’s zeal for flipped classrooms, but is he some honcho that has the ability to preemptively act on his passion? Does he need to be squashed like a noxious bug? I really didn’t find his dancing videos too threatening. 🙂 Correct me if I am wrong, but he struck me as a pretty average guy who likes to play with ideas. Unfortunately, these days you can end up “sharing” with the world unintentionally.
I guess it depends on who his playmates were. He refuses to name them. He was employed by the Friday Institute for Innovation Education, which seeks to inform public education policy in NC, until last September.
I’m glad that someone shared your brainstorms with Diane’s readers.
I do have one question: How does paying people less “motivate them” to try something new? This video by Daniel Pink explains what motivates people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc. It’s autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The 60/30/10 scheme implies that the majority of teachers should be treated like servers at McDonalds… and should be paid accordingly. Like the VATs that accompany this line of thinking it assumes that teachers are “piece workers” who are motivated by turning out more widgets faster. Sorry, teachers are masterful professionals who want to determine the best way to engage their students. In some cases a flipped lesson might work… but it can never replace a live human being with a deep knowledge of the child watching the video at home.
“It was not meant to be shared publicly.”
Once again, these “passionate” types who want to enslave everyone with their “great” ideas can’t grasp that the world has changed.
The days of scheming in secret are just about over. The peasants are armed with blogs and we’re getting better at mobilizing against those who would harm our children.
As posted before:
Lodge,
“. . . were not meant to be shared publicly.”
Why not?
What would be so drastically wrong to have any and all ideas out in the open, especially when they deal with PUBLIC education?*
Thanks,
Duane
*ideas would not include individual personnel discussions, decisions obviously for the purpose of this discussion.
Here’s an idea I’m passionate about…
Why not let teachers decide how and when they will utilize various teaching strategies based on the needs of their students?
Enough with the “top-down” oppressive passionate ideas!
Yeah, but what would you know about teaching? You’re just a teacher.
Hey, a teacher can dream, can’t she?
this.
Amen!
Big money in training teachers to flip their classrooms can make you passionate.
Dear Lodge,
I invite you to come to my 93% high poverty Title 1 middle school in NYC and flip away. See how that works out for ya!!! You can get my email from Diane.
Yet another micro-managed mandate from yet another person with a pet idea telling teachers how do do their job.
Whether to flip a classroom should be the teacher’s decision based on the characteristics of the class and each student in the class. No single approach reaches all students every single day. Some topics require delivery in smaller chunks with frequent teacher/student interaction. Flipping is not the same as individualized learning. It is not always effective. If students do not view the instruction at home, the in-class sessions must “catch up” the student and either revert back to direct instruction or have so many threads of learning, the class becomes unmanageable. You realistically can’t explain quadratic factoring on 50 different days to 50 different students. There are economies of scale in learning that can work just as differentiated instruction can work.
Flipping is a tactic and not a classroom strategy. Like any other instructional method, they should be a tool in the toolbox and not overused.
For the record, I reached out to Dr. McCammon for his comments five hours prior to when this story went live: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2014/01/22/update-nc-teacher-compensation-plan/
I would suggest to Mr. McCammon that he has an outlet for this passion: charter school. Enforced legislation to “encourage” a method that is periodically useful but far from universally sound is classic reformer methodology. Sounds like a mini-Gates. (Because this seems like a Khan Academy solution.)
Flipped classrooms would most certainly fail in my class (AP European History). McCammon has the ideal solution in charters. In fact, this is what the origins of charters specifically envisioned twenty plus years ago. An experimental instructional method that could be scaled up if successful.
But like Gates, McCammon doesn’t really understand unintended consequences. Legislators don’t think or know that this will actually improve education. But it will cut costs and gives them an excuse to demoralize and wage slash. He’s simply flattered that they would make this policy based on his “big idea” that will cure so much (perhaps).
Do you still use Palmer for AP Euro? I had a weird thing for that book. It was so big and heavy and the print was so small. Anything I wanted to know seemed to be in that book. At the time, it made me feel like I had finally shed my training wheels.
Palmer was great for AP Euro in the days when I began teaching (late 1990s). But the test has evolved and Palmer’s overwhelming volume of facts doesn’t play well in the new approaches. With the upcoming adjustments for AP Euro (2015-16 school year), Palmer would be a great supplement but not a good choice as the main textbook.
The test has become more about thinking like a historian than cobbling together a huge amount of facts. I use Kagan Ozment now. Though truth be told, the textbook is not that important in my opinion. I find students do much better with the resource pool that I’ve developed over the last few years (Lots of primary docs.)
Thanks for the trip down memory lane! Sounds like maybe the course and exam are improved? Still, I have no complaints. I loved AP Euro.
…Says the “expert” with 2 years classroom experience…
I thought they did a study that Baby Einstein videos don’t work. Video teaching? I don’t think the attention span works for most people under 18. I suppose they could give it a try to make college cheaper and see if that works first.
I don’t think the flipped classroom is such a new idea. One type of homework has always been assigned reading to prepare for the next day’s class. My experience as both student and teacher is that few students do the reading. This requires the teacher to present the same information to the whole class.
Having students watch a recorded lecture online is just another medium to accomplish the same goal. Some kids will prefer the recorded lecture. But some would still prefer to read. And some won’t have an Internet connection at home. But it’s still homework and I don’t see where this will get noticeably more students to do it, especially after the novelty wears off.
If kids don’t do their homework and watch the lecture, the teacher won’t be able to move on to the extended activities based on it. How is this really so new and different?
It’s not new. What has changed is the ability of the instructor to make custom, one of a kind presentations to fit what is going on in the classroom or with a particular student. When students email a question to me about an economic model, I can answer their particular with a screencast, giving them a more complete answer and saving me the effort of trying to describe a drawing in the text of the email. If a student wants to stop and think about some point I am making, they can pause me and think while others go on.
Multimedia presentations used to be expensive, and because of that, needed to be generic. Now they are inexpensive to create and because of that, can be very targeted.
I have 243 students. I’m supposed to make “custom, one of a kind presentations” for most or all of them? Not happening.
I have 260 in one class, 30 in another, and 36 in a third. I don’t make individual screencasts for each student in each class, but do make a screencast for each major bit for each class meeting and recycle it in following semesters. I steadily add to the library.
I do make one off screencasts to answer some email questions from students because it takes less time to answer the questions with a screencast than to type an answer in to an text based email. Along the way I build a set of screencasts presenting the material in exactly the way I think is best, not what the book publisher believes is best for my students.
246 in one class! Great to know that you students are able to get individualized attention from their economics professor.
The largest class this semester is 480. That is how we keep tuition below $10,000 a year in a research 1 university. The next classes up are between 30 and 40.
Please, everybody, do NOT take the next few comments as support for this “plan” or the author of it.
This idea of his is not only about watching a video the night before, to allow in class enrichment time. It also includes students preparing videos, as if they are teachers themselves. Some positives, but still hardly a magic bullet that should be the only ammunition that is given to a teacher.
EXACTLY! Plus, what if a student has a question or a new thought to add? It gets missed by everyone else. And are teachers supposed to be on-call 24/7 for any questions?
Florida Virtual School teachers are supposed to be on-call from 8 am until 8 pm. If they don’t ask answer the phone they are penalized.
New thoughts are available to all if you use a tool like VoiceThread. (http://voicethread.com)
I have a serious question. What is so remarkable about a flipped classroom? To put the question another way, how is a flipped classroom any different than adding 15 to 20 minutes to class time?
One difference I can think of is that students can’t have their questions answered immediately during the time they’re watching the video at home.
If just every core class did this – English, Math, Science, and Social Studies – it would add at least an hour to the time spent on schoolwork. I’m not saying that’s bad, but we need to consider the implications of this added time on students’ ability to process the information, as well as the implications for those students who do not complete the work assigned to be done at home. But plenty of people above have noted that concern.
Is it possible we could achieve a similar result by carefully and thoughtfully, based on current research into how the brain works and learns, paring standards so that fewer topics in a given subject could be taught in more depth?
The idea of adding to the time that students sit in front of a screen connected to hi-tech sent me back to re-read this fascinating article, which can be found free online. Just Google the title:
Rest Is Not Idleness: Implications of the Brain’s Default Mode for Human Development and Education
The one-sentence synopsis: Time spent apparently day-dreaming, with one’s thoughts focused inward, may be essential to the development of abstract thought.
I suspect that for at least some students, they are more likely to get their questions answered and explore interesting side issues if they are online at home than in a live classroom. First, they have to ask the question in front of their classmates, not an easy thing to do. Second, the teacher must be willing to spend time answering the question, making the judgement that it is ok for the other students to spend their time on this perhaps marginally relevant question. Finally, the teacher must know the answer if there is to be immediate feedback.
On line, your peers do not have to know that you are interested in the etymology of the word in the story you are reading, you can follow that rabbit hole for as long as you like without the impatient stares of classmates, and the internet knows many, many things.
It appears to me that the CONCEPT of a “flipped classroom” has some real potential for positive use of technology in an instructional environment. However, the underlying goal of what is being discussed in NC looks like just another way to reduce the costs of providing education, without serious regard to the impact on children. First of all, this looks like a bad idea for primary age children who will not do things on their own and need a strong presence of teacher or parent to focus learning experiences. However, for older students there looks to be real benefits if this methodology can free teachers from the regimented (and boring) process of force feeding facts to students and then testing them with standardized tests.
If you were to reduce class sizes to about 10-15 students in a class for the interactive part of instruction so that every student got adequate time with the instructor, and provided adequate resources and time for that interaction this concept could really motivate students. Then you should ELIMINATE STANDARDIZE TESTS and allow the teacher to evaluate students based on their classroom performance using the portfolio method which would include written assignments, classroom presentations, succes in project work with other students….
I hear the bean counters screaming already, “ARE YOU NUTS, WE CAN’T AFFORD THAT!”
But the truth is that by letting the budget drive education in America and always going for the cheapest fix we are destroying our nation’s future. What if we trained our soldiers with toy guns and blowup models of military equipment, would they be prepared to defend our country? Let’s quit shortchanging our children and find the best way to education them, then figure out how to pay for it.
Please tell us Lodge who is in the small group? Wouldn’t happen to be any unionized teachers, eh?
Unions are illegal in North Carolina, none here.
Exactly. All the more reason to be puzzled by this drive to fix the teaching force. ???
Many people have ideas they are passionate about, Lodge McKammon. Flipping might be a great innovation in certain contexts. But since educational technology is also being used to increase class sizes (see Rocketship schools), this idea will be met with understandable skepticism until it is evidence based. You need to show in a control-group study that flipping has a measurable effect on learning outcomes. The effect ought to be large enough for others to become similarly passionate about the idea. And the study has to be designed in such a way that people know to which population of students it is generalizable.
In other words – to paraphrase David Coleman – most people don’t give a sh** about your passions. We want to see your evidence, especially if your passions have the prospect of becoming our requirements.
I have never seen one school offer teachers the kind of time they need to make these ‘videos’ to show in their flipped classrooms. With a flipped classroom not only do teacher still have to grade homework and get lessons ready, they also have to make videos at home. They basically have NO LIFE out of the classroom. And I’m sorry but I’ve seen this in action…teachers still have to teach the lesson all over again for the ‘few’ they don’t get it when they do it at home!
Check out his web site. His “genius” idea is that teachers videotape themselves teaching, and then assign students to watch their lectures. This is “flipping”? On what planet would students watch, oh, 6 hours or so of teacher lectures at home each night, one per course, and then go to school for “individualized learning”? First of all, it is very difficult to present enthusiasm when taping yourself and not having student interaction. Secondly, it is much more boring to watch lectures in a room by yourself, when you have no interaction with the teacher. Third, in our reality today, we have plenty of push-back from parents when we give one or two assignments a week, because it conflicts with sports, church, clubs, and other family activities. Not to mention how few subjects can be taught well through traditional flipping.
Good points. It should also be noted that most students don’t do their homework and most students don’t even bother to listen to us in class when we are able to personalize and individualize their instruction by redirecting their attention from their smart phones to our lecture. Do we really think these kids are going to get on the internet at home and watch a boring, frumpy, teacher-made video when they’ve got youtube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to distract them? Maybe that’s why they want to end teaching careers after twenty years. We won’t look very good on camera past our forties : (.
Ah, kafkateach, but they thought of that. All teachers have to retire after 20 years. That was the plan. But I can go them one better:
Years ago, researchers did an experiment with flatworms. They taught them to turn left in a T-maze. Then they ground them up and fed them to other flatworms who turned left without having to be taught!
So, McCammon or McKammon or whatever his name is can take his brilliant plan to its logical conclusion. After people have taught for five years, grind them up and feed them to the new recruits.
Seriously, though, how could anyone who has looked at the schedule of a teacher or at the stats on how many students actually do their homework imagine that this is the way to go for all K-12 education? That’s just looney.
But again, flipping is one tool in the kit. At times, with the right material and the right students and sufficient time to carry it out, it can be a valuable approach. TE makes some valid comments about the approach, above.
But it’s long past time for teachers to start telling these people–the Colemans and McKammons–how presumptuous it is of them to mandate what the rest of us must do in our classrooms. Really, Lodge? YOU are going to tell ME how to teach? Are you freaking serious? If you think that’s going to happen, then it’s you who have flipped, it’s you you have Fizz for brains.
Robert,
(Grinning.) I had forgotten that experiment with planaria. That would certainly cut down the teaching profession. Cost saving and efficient.
Sometimes “brainstorming” takes on a different kind of connotation. Normally, it means a group of people getting together to share ideas and normally those people have some vested interest in the topic addressed. In the case of this author, it meant there was a giant surge of untested ideas roving around in his brain and he unleashed the brain surge to create a storm of insulting, arrogant ideas that he fully expected to be implemented before the public got wind of them. I can do without this kind of “brainstorm”. Thanks to this journalist sending out the message, this author will hopefully be stopped in his tracks. How dare he think anyone would buy into his “benevolent” idea! ughh. And what exactly is Lodge McKammon’s background anyway?
I’m just very grateful to NC Policy Watch for bringing this proposal out into the light. Circulating a 60-30-10 proposal among the political hacks in the NC legislature is a long way past “brainstorming”.
I guess I have to speak up about institutionalized “flipped learning” policies, about which I’ve learned much more than there is to know. Here is Pearson’s site, from which my district purchased about a quarter million $$ worth of “training” for us this year, which was paid for by a “grant” from the Nellie Mae Foundation.
http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PS2244&acornRdt=1&DCSext.w_psvaniturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Epearsonschool%2Ecom%2Fflippedlearning
I’m making all the enrichment videos I can for my students, but the claim that canned or home-made videos can or should replace interactive class time for “direct instruction” is just bogus. It turns out being heard and understood is an intrinsic reward for humans, especially human young. Go figure.
The guys who came from Pearson say they spent years standing in front of the room lecturing at their students without hearing them or interacting, but after this breakthrough, they’re delighted to talk to an empty room instead. The students are free to replay it as many times as they want, without bothering the “teacher”, so that’s personalized. It turns out that when the students come in, the direct instruction is all done, and they can get cracking on the Pearson Mastery Learning online tutorial sequence at their own individual pace, which is thus personalized for them. An algorithm in the cloud keeps watch on their progress.
The district hasn’t bought the Mastery Learning product, and the cover story for flipped learning is that we’re being freed to do higher order activities in our classes. We chemistry teachers do higher order activities for a living, so we just go right ahead with that. Pearson can take all the credit it wants when our classes are observed.
Meanwhile, though, class sizes have shot up to the thirties in many courses. All the difficulties with compliance and enforcement people have suggested here are spot-on, and classroom management advice from our trainers is turning more and more penalty-based.
Keep thinking and keep sharing. There are many great ideas out their and many ways to achieve them. Try this for systemic change and then make it your own. Imagine what could be put in as real proficiencies and the classroom strategies that go with it. Let your mind go crazy http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-personal-map-to-success.html