Fliparse = to flip out / freak out. In case you were wondering.

Today I spoke with a student of mine before first hour. Let’s call him Mark. Mark often arrives long before first hour starts and gets homework done in the quiet of our classroom. Sometimes I pick his brain about high school, especially with regards to the Spanish class. I think he’s able to be pretty honest with me because I am the student teacher and not the teacher. I figure it’s a win-win because I get to hear a student’s perspective, and he gets a Spanish warm-up before class starts. It’s always a pleasant surprise to see how willing students are to give honest feedback about their school experience. I feel very lucky to have gotten to know my students well enough to be able to ask them.

Today, when talking about which classes were the most difficult, Mark mentioned that his math class is flipped. What an opportunity! I thought. I have already asked a couple of students about online classes (something that didn’t exist when I was in high school), and now I had the chance to ask about flipped classrooms! I had plenty of questions to ask, and Mark was quite willing to talk, despite the early hour and his teenage inner-clock telling him that it was way too early for Spanish conversation.

It turns out that Mark is not a big fan of having a flipped class, not a huge surprise to me given how much hype it gets (I tend to figure that, when I hear teachers hyping something, and don’t hear anything from the students, there are still some bugs to get worked out). I had assumed that the issue would be the lecture-at-home part, but in fact, what Mark disliked was that he rarely was able to finish the “homework” in class, and therefore had both homework and lecture to do at home. He regularly spent at least an hour on this homework/lecture combination, which, in conjunction with other AP or IB classes, can be killer. No wonder he often looks so tired!

Mark’s comments made me check my earlier assumptions about where the issue would lie. However, just because Mark had mentioned something I hadn’t thought about doesn’t mean that I had not also been right. So I asked him if he understood the lessons at home, and if not, what happened. He said that he generally did understand them, and when not, that he could ask Mrs. S when he got to class the next day. Well then, I guess it’s not as big an issue as I thought – at least not for this particular student. I would still ask a larger variety of students before drawing any strong conclusions.

One thing that surprised me was that Mark’s comment that flipped classrooms were less work for the teacher. From my perspective – not at all! So much video-recording, uploading, etc. A tech-newbie’s nightmare! So I asked him to elaborate, and he said it was easier because the teacher didn’t have to make new notes for them; she could use the ones from the year before. Ah, I said, then it’s more work the first year, but less afterwards. Yes, said Mark, and it’s more work for the students. Hmm. More work for the students isn’t an automatic problem in my book, but it must be justified very strongly. As other students started to arrive, I left Mark to his devices. I knew I had some food for thought to keep me thinking for a while.