I'm currently putting the finishing touches on a presentation I'm giving this week at the New York State Council of the Social Studies Annual Conference this week and I realized that I hadn't posted too much here about my experiences last summer at the Library of Congress Summer Teachers Institute.  Bad Dawn!!!
     One of the lessons that I did early on the year was my own take on the Library of Congress' Connecting with Primary Sources activity.  

In my activity, I used maps!  It was a great way to introduce a wide variety of topics to my US History students because I chose traditional maps as well as infographic type maps which covered topics from colonial times through present day.

      The students walked into the room and chose a map that was of interest to them.  Then I reviewed the process of studying the maps (see above) as well how to use the Primary Source Analysis tool which was created by the Library of Congress (see below).

     I had a horrible time limiting myself to just 25 maps and ended up selecting over 35 maps (see below)!

     After completing their Primary Source Analysis (PSA) tools and answering any of the questions the students had, the students moved on to their next task.  They then had to locate the students who had maps which fell in to the same category as their map.  This was something that I needed to help them out with a bit and eventually I told the students what the categories were and they were then better able to find their matches.  See categories below.

     Lastly, as a group, the students shared their maps and discussed what they found interesting about their maps or the questions that they had.  Then the groups created a headline that would summarize the significance of their maps.  This was an eyeopening part of the lesson for me since the students had a very difficult time summarizing!  It helped me to understand why essay writing is so difficult for them, particularly document based questions.
     Overall, I really liked this activity and really like the idea of doing something like this as a way to either pre-assess student knowledge at the start of a unit or to use as a post assessment.  It's much more informational for me than a multiple choice assessment.

     This past Saturday I attended the Hudson Valley New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE) Conference.  NYSCATE is an affiliate of ISTE.
     One of the best sessions was about implementing Genius Hour.  This is something that I hope to implement myself.  I’m a very cautious teacher and it’s difficult for me to just dive into something new.  This semester with my fully implemented flipped mastery classroom, I am dipping my toe into my very own version of a 20% Project.  The plan is to go all out in the fall or even next spring.  I want to do it right.
     I love the idea of students getting to pursue their passions.  But, the idea of no parameters is too much for me.  Is that wrong?  Maybe, but I am who I am.  That is why I loved the ideas that were presented by three teachers from Arlington Central School District (Kathy Bellino- @kgbellino, Julie Jee- @mrsjjee, Katie Nixon- @smilingIrish215).
     English teachers Julie Jee and Katie Nixon have based their projects (Project Inspiration and The Passion Project respectively) on literature and informative texts.  The students are connecting the curriculum to their passions and vice versa.  It’s truly genius. 
     Kathy Bellino is a social studies teacher who uses 20% time in her Civic Action and Leadership course.  This course is an alternate for the NYS required Participation in Government graduation requirement.  The theme of her Project Action is for students to answer the essential question of: "How can the average citizen bring about positive change in their community?" This warms my social studies heart!
     What I love about all three of these teachers’ projects is that they have created a loose structure for their students so that they can be successful but still be very free to follow where their passions lead them.  I love that they have worked to get students who say that they do not have a passion to discover that they really do after all.  I especially loved that they brought two former students with them to the presentation to give the all-important student perspective of what it was like for them to learn that they are capable of more than they thought that they were.
     All three teachers said that success was due in large part to meeting with students individually to discuss their ideas rather than just having them fill out a form stating what their intended project would be.  They also talked about how student buy in was important to making the project an overall success. 
     Julie Jee has graciously agreed to allow me to share the link to the Livebinder resources used in the presentation. Be sure to check it out and be inspired to reach towards genius status! 

     Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of my flipped life.  I started my spring semester Psychology classes at the beginning of February.  This was probably the worst month to try to get students into any kind of regular routine.  We had two snow days and two 2-hour delays and a four day weekend.  Also, I missed a day visiting flipped mastery in action with Tom Driscoll and a half day assisting with special education annual reviews.  Oh, and I almost forgot, I was “kicked out” of my classroom at one point because a new SMART Board was being installed.  I’m really happy that I’ve got this great technology but it’s still not hooked up yet and thus I haven’t been able to make use of it.  As you can tell, continuity was difficult to come by this month.
     My introductory chapter lasted a lot longer than usual because this time, it included an introduction to flipped mastery and the technology that we were going to be using this semester.  I created a “choose your own adventure” type assignment to introduce the students to the basics of Schoology (our LMS), Weebly (our blogging platform), and other resources they might find useful throughout the semester such as Cel.ly. 
     The students spent a lot of time customizing their Weebly sites (you can see them here) which I knew was going to happen.  It’s actually why I chose Weebly because it is easy to customize and has a ton of options for layouts.  I like pretty things!

     Some students also spent a lot of time trying adjusting to the fact that they had choice as to what to do in class every day.  Some would ask me “what do I do now?” and we would look at their Unit Objective sheet and talk about what they had completed and what might be the best thing to work on next based on the amount of time they had left in the class period.  It was pretty obvious that many of my students don’t have much of an idea about time management or prioritization.  I think that this concept alone will be a valuable one for them to learn throughout the semester.

     Other students breezed through the unit.  Those students were the happiest.  They expressed that they really loved the format of the class and that they finally felt that their time in class was well spent as opposed to being wasted with waiting on other people to finish writing when taking notes or dealing with classroom disruptions.  They are the students that feel comfortable with technology and are able to self-monitor their progress.
     I have been constantly asking the students for feedback throughout the month.  Prior to going to see Mr. Driscoll’s classes, I asked the students what they wanted me to ask his students.  The big fear that my students expressed was that flipped mastery would take away their opportunity to have class discussions or to ask for help when they needed it.  Their biggest fear was that our class would become impersonal. 
     I was sure to talk to Mr. Driscoll and his students about how they were able to keep student/teacher connections.  Mr. Driscoll’s format includes a ten minute discussion time at the start of each class period.  He might give the students a quote, political cartoon, or have them watch a video clip.  The students then reflect on their Daily Learning Journal handout (see below) and then engage in a class discussion.  I like this idea a lot and have been implementing it in my classes as well.

     Also, instead of having the students watch a documentary on the brain independently, we watched it together as a class.  That helped the students who were feeling disconnected too.  I created a “parking lot” on one of my free whiteboards where students could write questions and comments anonymously on post-it notes.  The students are just starting to post things here and I imagine it will be used more as the class progresses.
     I was feeling pretty good about everything until the last day of the month.  One of my students came up to me at the end of the class period to tell me that he was dropping the course.  He is an all-around nice kid, smart, hardworking, thoughtful, the whole nine yards.  I was devastated!  No one has ever dropped my class before; not like this.  He literally said “it’s not you, it’s me”!  He said that the format of the class was just too impersonal and that he thought that there was going to be more discussion.  I told him that we are really just getting started and that there is tons of discussion to come!  I told him that we will be having all kinds of activities that we wouldn’t have had time for using a traditional teaching model.  I asked him to hang with it for another week and see if I could change his mind.  He said that he needs to drop now, before the end of the 5-Week progress reports. 
     I truly thought for a minute that I should completely throw out this whole experiment and go back to my regular way of teaching.  Then I remembered that I have a wide PLN who has experience I can use to get me though my crisis of flipping faith.  I posted on Schoology that I needed them to talk me off of the ledge and they did just that!   I also made a point to talk to my students who I have for both Psychology and US History.  Those students know me well and have no compunction about being brutally honest.  They reassured me that the class is going well and that they truly enjoy it.  When I said I was thinking about doing a unit of US History as a flipped mastery experiment, they were excited.  They said what many teachers have said when talking about implementing a flipped classroom---it’s all in how you sell it to the students.
     I’m thankful that I have a great PLN, wonderful students, and this blog to reflect on my teaching practices.  I think that reflection might be THE most important component to improving as a teacher.  Thank you for being a part of my reflection process and for making me the best teacher possible for my students!