One of the most crucial ingredients in a successful flipped classroom is buy-in. Students have to buy into the model and understand that it’s going to be in their best interest. Parents have to buy in (especially at a private school, like the one I teach at) in order to feel at ease with their child’s classroom experience. As a teacher in a flipped classroom, I have had to come up with ways of explaining and describing my teaching that would “play” to both parents and students, and help with the buy-in. In other words, I have needed to learn how to market my classes.
For me, it’s been all about terminology. I no longer assign “videos” to watch. Instead, the students watch “pre-recorded virtual lectures”. You might think that this is a fairly transparent and minor semantic issue, but you would be surprised at how differently those two terms are received, both by students as well as their parents. “Watching a video” is a passive activity that doesn’t connote a great deal of intense focus and attention. These students watch videos all the time - they have them on in the background while they’re doing other things. A “pre-recorded virtual lecture” however, feels like something that might be important. After all, in their other classes, lectures are how the teacher gets them the important information, which they usually need to write down. In my conversations with parents, referring to the videos as “lectures” adds an air of import, and subtly reinforces the fact that I am still lecturing in this class, just in a different way. A simple change in terminology, but one that has seemed to work.
Equally important is the changing of “homework” to “practice”. When one of my colleagues decided to try flipping, she sent an email home to her students’ parents describing how the students would be watching a video lecture at home, and then doing the homework in class. The uproar that she received from a few vocal parents was surprising and disappointing. They felt that they were paying far too much in tuition to have their children doing homework in class. In the words of one parent, “we pay tuition so that our daughter can be taught by teachers, not so that she can do her homework in school.” This is a natural reaction from someone who doesn't truly understand what the flipped class is all about. Calling the work in class “practice” rather than “homework” (and it really isn't HOMEwork anymore, is it?) implies that we’re simply reinforcing concepts or skills already learned, not just doing the homework in school, even if that is, in essence, what we’re doing (I have more to say on that subject, but I’ll do so in a future article).
Much like a company that wishes to sell a product spends resources and time to get information about that product to their customers, so too do we need to expend effort in informing our students and parents about this whole “flipped classroom” thing, before the class begins. At the beginning of this year, I assigned my students the task of watching an introductory video that is on my website. More importantly, they were supposed to watch it with their parent or guardian. When I met with parents at our Back To School Night, and later at conferences, it was easy to pick out the parents who had not watched the welcome video with their students - they were the ones who were either very confused as to why their child was on YouTube every night, or were angry because it didn't seem like their child had any homework in Chemistry class. Explaining the process to these parents and assuaging their concerns became a sales pitch that I still use to this day when trying to “sell” someone on the flipped classroom experience.
Getting the students to buy into this kind of class means more than just getting them to watch the lectures with the attention that they would give any other teacher’s live lectures. It also involves getting them to understand that class time is now where they ask questions, clarify concepts, practice skills, and clear up confusion. This is most especially true of the unmotivated students - the ones that don’t really want to be there, and certainly don’t want to work. Getting those students to use the time effectively requires a whole different kind of sales pitch, and is often my biggest challenge. Hooking students into a class like Chemistry, fortunately, is sometimes pretty easy; I just have to set something on fire or make some loud noise and smoke, and they key right in!
If you’re new to flipping, you may encounter some initial resistance from students, parents, or even administration. How you present the strategy will go a long way to easing the minds of those involved. If you have the option, it might be a good idea to pave the way for the flip by sending out lots of information before you flip your classroom. Be ready to answer lots of questions, and try not to go on the defensive - remember, this is new to you, and often unheard of by others. New strategies can be scary until they are more clearly understood. Happy Flipping!
