Opportunities For Growth

"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny!" ~ C.S. Lewis

Each and every one of us controls our destiny. We control our thoughts, our emotions, and our reactions to difficult times and situations. For many, when faced with adversity, dwelling on the negative comes naturally. We tend to find what's wrong with a situation and pick it apart. However, to change our habits means we must change our beliefs. Education and educators tend to be no different. If we are to grow as professionals, we must be willing to throw out the half-empty glass and exchange it for optimism and hope!

Opportunities For Growth, or OFG's as I like to call them, are all around us. We have the unique opportunity to change our mindset in every challenge and circumstance we face. Rather than pick apart a new initiative, we can choose to find the OFG built within the framework of that very initiative. For example, how many of us approach professional development as an opportunity to learn and grow? How many of us are willing to take risks to learn from our mistakes?

If we are to foster a growth mindset in our students, we must be willing to first foster a growth mindset within ourselves. My initial exploration into flipped learning was driven as an opportunity to better use the time I had with students. The opportunity for growth far outweighed any drawbacks I could think of or read about. Wouldn't you know that my students continued to find ways to grow with in my math classes and thrive using a new teaching concept. Oddly enough, my students started to turn in their assignments through photos, video, graphic organizers, and via email. They were willing to try something new because they saw the risk I took and felt comfortable enough to do the same.

Undoubtedly, education today is filled with obstacles to overcome. We are faced with increased class sizes, increased PD requirements, increased accountability, and so much more. However, if we take a moment to sit back and reflect, perhaps the increased demands are asking us to grow! We have an opportunity to change the face of education as we know it - to be a proactive culture that fosters creativity, innovation, and growth. The next time you are faced with adversity, find the OFG!

Is It Working?

For many teachers/instructors in education, change can be a daunting task. Students are evolving at a quick pace and instruction as we know it has been drastically changed. Gone are the days when lecturing for hours on end, or even a class period, is an effective mode of teaching. Teachers/instructors have been charged with finding ways to engage students on a continuous basis through student-centered, hands-on activities that give students the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and learning! Thus, plenty of teachers/instructors have turned to Flipped Learning and Flipped Classrooms!

Proven to be a highly effective instructional strategy, Flipped Learning has given teachers/instructors an edge in creating those authentic learning opportunities in their classes. As those opportunities continue to grow, teachers/instructors are now faced with evaluating their effectiveness to know if students truly obtained the skills necessary to show they've mastered a competency!

While many teachers/instructors can use their 'gut' feeling to measure their students level of engagement, the data will tell the story! Data is such an invaluable tool that many teachers/instructors struggle with. For most, data is an opportunity to PROVE that learning has occurred! But really, data needs to be used to drive IMPROVEMENT. Data does not give us the answers, rather it gives us the questions to drive students and our opportunities for growth and improvement.

The most important data a teacher/instructor can use comes from effective use of formative assessments. Whether we are facilitating small-group discussions, playing Kahoot, or giving a quick 'quiz', we are gathering data that will tell us what our students do and do not know about the pre-class work that was assigned. Only then can we accurately meet ALL of our students needs by adapting what we have to meet them where they are at. Similarly, when we construct activities that ask students to be creative and innovative, we are measuring how well they understand what was given to them prior to class! These opportunities for students to display what they learned and how they can apply that information are what 'traditional' classrooms often miss!

Inevitably, most students will ask "Why do I need to do this if it doesn't count?" Fortunately at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, we are not only charged with making sure students acquire a specific set of technical skills, but Employability Skills as well. The greater Green Bay, WI area expects that our graduates obtain both technical skills and Employability Skills to help foster collaborative working environments, While many teachers/instructors struggle with formally measure the Employability Skills, Flipped Learning and Flipped Classrooms present a great opportunity to foster and measure those Employability Skills.

Rather than building in weekly Employability Skills assessments and targets for students, Flipped Learning and Flipped Classrooms give teachers/instructors an opportunity to specifically identify what Employability Skills they are measuring with each activity. At NWTC, we encourage instructors to build in those skills into their rubrics so that students understand and value how important working collaboratively is. Or valuing differences among classmates and accepting personal accountability for being on time and coming prepared!

At any rate, Flipped Learning and Flipped Classrooms have several options to measure if students are learning. As with many options, the accountability falls back on teachers/instructors to make sure they are using those tools to measure effectiveness and evaluate student learning. The power is in your hands - how will you use it?

Setting the Bar Too High???

"Set a goal SO BIG that you can't achieve until you GROW into the person who can." ~Unknown

Education holds a rather unique position in the development and growth of students. Educators are responsible for delivering content and competencies while simultaneously fostering critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, innovation, and analyzing skills. While educators at many levels have ventured into flipped learning to varying degrees, the greatest truth from all educators is the desire to spend more time with students. As flipped learning provides this desired time, educators are then faced with evaluating the use of the time, student engagement, and the expectations of student learning.

When asked "how do I know if the bar is set to high in my flipped class", I had to chuckle a little at the notion of students not being pushed too hard. Can an educator really push students to hard? While it might be easy to simply say YES, the really answer lies within the approach instructors take in getting students to do what they think may be impossible. As educators, we must realize that what students believe about themselves as learners matters. We must be willing to push them beyond what they think they are capable of and helping them understand that not every challenge they face will be easy,

Likewise, we must also be willing to teach them that it's okay to fail at something in school. To fail (First Attempt In Learning) is part of the learning process - to learn from their mistakes and make changes is how we foster critical thinking, problem solving, and analyzing skills in our students. Let's think about this notion for a moment - imagine you are going to get blood drawn from a hospital. Would you be excited to know that the nurse drawing your blood is doing so for the first time? Or what about the sub-contractor building your house - would it put you at ease to know he's learning how to frame the house for the first time?

You see, education is suppose to be about learning - making mistakes in practice to be able to perform in the crunch. If we are expecting students to be perfect on the first attempt, then why aren't they already out in industry, putting their skills to use. As educators, we must be willing to allow our students to make mistakes at appropriate times, and teach them how to become creative and innovative in fixing their mistakes. We want our students to grow into people that can make changes based on evidence they've witnessed or mistakes they've made.

Ironically, many of our educational systems are too focused on grades, rather than the content to be learned. How do I know? I am reminded of my days as a high school math teacher in Lomira, WI where it was decided that the minimum percentage to pass a class was going to move from 60% to 70%. You can imagine the uproar that ensued from students and parents alike that raising the bar was nor fair for anyone involved. Low and behold, one year after implementation, the number of students failing classes was actually less than prior years. You see, students knew they needed to work just a little harder to meet the bare minimum to pass a class! Students know where the bar is set and will do what they need to get there.

Don't ever be afraid to set your bar high! As we are preparing students to meet the demands of tomorrow's work force, we prepare them for jobs that may not even exist yet. Through fostering opportunities to be creative, innovative, problem solvers, critical thinkers, and analyzers, we give them opportunities to be successful in an arena that is always changing!

Individualized Professional Development

"Change is difficult, not changing is Fatal!"

Much of 21st century education philosophy urges instructors/teachers to meet the needs of their students by creating authentic learning experiences. To do so, one must take the time to understand their students, their needs, learning styles, and talents. As many instructors/teachers have become excellent at adapting their content and lessons, institutions and educational systems as a whole are lagging behind in providing a similar experience for their instructors/teachers. 

I can only imagine how many hands would be raised if asked, "How many of you recently sat through a school-wide training, that offered very little practical use to your professional development needs?" Institutions across America feel the need to prescribe 'canned' professional development to all instructors/teachers to ensure the same content and message are delivered. What if that message isn't needed by EVERYONE? What happened to the exact message we are preaching to instructors/teachers about creating unique learning experiences? Shouldn't the same apply to adults?

Clearly, the answer is yes - we must do a better job of meeting our instructors/teachers needs. While the answer is easy to see, the solution is a greater challenge that all learning institutions must be willing to tackle. Individualized Professional Development requires a great deal of collaboration, brainstorming, communication, planning, knowledge of instructor/teacher needs, and TRUST! As learning institutions begin to explore and implement Individualized Professional Development, students will begin to see and feel the impact on their educational success.

Individualized Professional Development may look at feel different across learning institutions, however, the main goal should always be to identify opportunities for growth, while supporting instructors/teachers in a growth mindset. In order to identify and support a growth mindset, learning institutions must create a culture of reflection, evaluation, and growth. Too often, institutions of learning and instructors/teachers are too concerned about looking 'good' in the eyes of the stakeholders (i.e. Administrators, principals, parents, students, accrediting bodies, etc.) We must make a dramatic shift in looking at deficiencies as opportunities for growth!

One of the greatest examples of a growth mindset can come from sports. How many top-notch athletes do you see that don't look at how to improve? Most athletes identify their areas of weakness and build them into strengths. Instructors/teachers ought to have the same mindset - what am I not good at and how can I improve? Only then can instructors/teachers begin to create a unique, Individualized Professional Development plan.

Perhaps one of the greatest tools to instructors/teachers in improvement will be through instructional coaches. Instructional Coaching fosters a rapport between coach and instructor/teacher, creating a safe learning environment, and opening the door for opportunities of growth. The instructional coach becomes and outside eye and ear in the classroom to aid the instructor/teacher in identify strengths and opportunities for growth in a collaborative nature. Provided the instructional coach remains unbiased - a non-evaluative observer - an Individualized Professional Development plan will begin to unfold over time.

So what's the dilemma? Time and resources continue to be stretched. Yet, Individualized Professional Development will only foster instructors/teachers to become reflective practitioners. If it's good for our students, then it needs to be good for our instructors/teachers. I fear this is only going to become of greater need as funding and state laws alter whom is deemed eligible to be an instructor/teacher (sorry, I'm from Wisconsin!) Just as Ghandi once said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."  

Students Don't Do Optional?

At many colleges across the nation, much discussion is being had regarding student responsibility and self-motivation in achieving the highest 'grade' possible in any given course. As the majority of students in higher ed are adults (by age only!), many instructors believe the responsibility for learning falls squarely on the shoulders of the student. While one can argue that not many employers would hire an unmotivated student, the purpose of this blog will take a different spin by looking at what instructors can do to promote learning in their courses.

As you are reading this, there is inevitably an instructor somewhere on the globe assigning a massive reading assignment to his or her students, "Please read pages 45 - 110 by Monday!" Many students will skim through the reading, trying to grasp at what main highlights, while some students will read the entire selection and take copious notes to be well prepared for class. And of course, there any many that will never pick up the book or even go and buy it, know all too well the instructor will fail in checking whether students read the text or not.

Many of the struggles regarding 'optional' for students comes in the form of lack of engagement with 'optional' assignment by the instructor. We've all encountered the above instructor, only to come to class to either hear our instructor lecture about what we just read, or never assess what we learned from the material we read - not just simply giving us a quiz to 'prove' we learned. Even an elephant can tell you how to climb a tree!

Therefore, the challenge falls solely on the instructor to find and create unique opportunities for using the optional assignment to show students how valuable and important the information was. For instance, using any number of text protocols in small group discussions provides students an opportunity to reflect in a wide variety of ways; assumptions author made, arguments against the author's words, agreements with the author, and aspirations on how the information can be used in students' lives. That's a small sample of questions that engage students in their reading. Providing case studies or hands-on application of material learned prior to class will ensure that students WANT TO do optional to be prepared for class and the 'FUN' activities that are designed.

While it's often easy to point the finger of blame at someone else -  in this case students - we must often take a long, hard look at what we are doing to help students progress in their learning. Are we providing the best learning environment for students and modeling the expectations we have set forth? The challenge is to push students to ask the difficult questions, to be willing to wrestle with the difficult task, and to face adversity head on, overcoming anything thrown at them. We must teach our students to problem solve, think critically, analyze, and evaluate more frequently to prepare them for what the world has to offer!

Flipping in Higher Ed (Part 2)

In my previous post, I discussed how instructors were beginning to feel a time crunch in assessing student skills and use of class time. As some colleges redesign academic calendars to fit more in, instructors are feeling the pinch in adaquately preparing students for the work place. The flipped classroom seems to be a reasonable solution for allowing more class time to be spent on assessing and teaching said skills.

Another huge benefit of the flipped classroom is allowing instructors to assess the soft skills that industry claims to be as important, if not more, than technical skills. I'm talking abou interdepence, collaboration, communication, personal responsibility, valuing othes, and ethics. While these skills are vitally important to a student's success in the work place, they are often difficult to assess and obtain in a classroom setting. Throw into the mix a traditional lecture based class, and instructors have very little means to measure those characteristics.

Through the use of a flipped classroom, instructors can not only build activities to obtain technical skills, but soft skills as well. Just as we urge instructors to design lessons backwards, with their learning objectives in mind, we also must ask them to plan with the end in mind for the soft skills. While it can be easy for an instructor to 'just know' if a student demonstrates certain soft skills, employers and students want to know the specifics. What does being personally responsible look like in a welding lab, or a nursing class? What OBSERVABLE and MEASUREABLE behaviors will a students exhibit that deems them to have excellent ethics or collaboration?

Only after we have clearly identified those observable and measureable behaviors can instructors then plan activities that allow students to demonstrate they possess those skills, while working to achieve a technical skill simultaneously. What a perfect blend? And although identifying those behaviors can be a bit daunting and cumbersome, industry will soon realize the stamp your institution in placing on its graduates. It won't be long before word catches on that graduates of your institution possess not only the technical skills needed, but more importantly the soft skills needed to help their prospective employer thrive in a new and improving world.

Yet, if you are stuck teaching in a lecture-based, teacher-centered classroom, how can you possibly begin to design activities for students so that you can witness these soft skills in action? Shouldn't your time with students be more valuable than standing in front of them, spoon feeding them information? Give flipping a try and reap the benefits that so many others are already noticing. Help prepare your students for the future by building an environment that thrives off of creativity, innovation, problem-solving, interdepence, collaboration, and personal accountability!

Flipping in Higher Ed (Part I)

As the demand for a skilled work force intensifies, the time instructors are able ti spend with students continues to shrink. Given copious budget constraints, academic calendar redesigns, and increased responsibilities, instructors are forced to carefully plan and implement each lesson to meet the needs of every student they encounter. How can instructors be sure that their students are learning? How does he/she know if the students have the skill set ready for the work force? Enter the flipped classroom in higher education.

As K-12 has adopted to changes regarding curriculum, budget, and time with students, higher ed. is slowly following suit. Many instructors at the college I work at (Northeast Wisconsin Technical College) have been eager to learn how they might be able to flip their lecture and utilize their class time with students in a more meaningful and productive manner. Gone are the days of a straight 1-hour lecture. Welcome the days of collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, and interdependence. Instructors are utilizing the little time they have students to assess whether learning has taken place and if students are ready to be tested on a given set of skills/competencies.

Take one of our Medical Assistant instructors for example. Students are required to learn the billing and information system utilized by industry in the Green Bay Area. Students need hands-on, practical use of this system in order to understand its functions. Instead of spreading hours in class teaching the system, our instructor has flipped her lessons to provide students the pertinent details. Thus, she is providing class time to work in small groups so that students can practice the skills necessary to show they understand how to use the system and overcome glitches that may occur. All the while being present to help students if and when they struggle.

We also have a physics instructor that utilizes the flipped classroom exclusively to give students the lecture component of her class outside of lecture time. By nature, this course is designed to have a lecture component and lab component. Traditional instructors would use lecture time to give students the necessary notes and formulas, and ask them to complete practice problems and scenarios outside of class time as homework. For our instructor, she found students coming to lab with plenty of questions and misconceptions about the topic that was to be learned.

Through flipping, she found that students struggled less with writing down and obtaining the material, and more with applying their knowledge to practical problems. She was now able to work more closely with students on applying the knowledge to problems, clear any misconceptions, thus preparing them for the lab exercises at a more successful rate. This instructor has valued the time she has with students to make sure she is available when they are present in her class. In doing so, she has seen her course success rates increase dramatically.

While these are only a few of the many examples of flipping at the collegiate level, instructors would be hard pressed not to think about applying flipping to their classes. Helping students understand the practical applications and skills necessary for a given set of learning requirements will help them be more successful in industry. And we've only touched the surface in the benefits. Next time we will look at the employ ability/soft skills that can be learned through flipped learning.