Flipped Classrooms are what will allow teachers to be teachers and students to take charge of their own learning. It will help with differentiation, collaboration, higher order work, engagement and social equity. None of that matters to the doubters. Why? Because of the two arguments that always arise.

The main argument against a Flipped Classroom is that many of the students we serve will not have access to the technology in their homes and will be unable to do the "homework". This is poppycock (great throwback word...19th Century I believe)! One of the main ideas or pillars behind the Flipped Classroom is to allow for flexible learning environment (Flipped Learning Network, 2014). So let's discuss what that flexibility can look like. Today's cell phones are incredibly powerful, and can work with flipped apps. No internet access? If students don't have access at home, have them do their "homework" at the beginning of class. That's what a friend of mine who taught at Dunbar for several years told me he did when he flipped his class. Or, don't have homework at all and create a blended/flipped classroom using groups/stations. I started to play with this at the end of last year. I worked with my students who were struggling or well below grade level first while my sharp shooters worked the laptops (I had not gone robust yet like our EdPuzzle demo). For the most part, it was very successful.

The other great misconception is that a Flipped Classroom is flipped every day. The fear behind this, and understandably, is that a front-loaded workload will be overwhelming for the teacher. This does not have to be the case. Flipping could be daily, but could be once a week. Again, this goes back to the pillar of Flexible Environment. The goal is to free the teacher to answer and challenge the students while in class and to get away from the lecture model where only a few of the students typically stay actively engaged. Speaking from experience, that model no longer works, and the work that is not done on the front end will be done during class, only instead of using positive energy to facilitate student learning, one ends up using negative energy trying to manage a class because most of the students are not engaged. I can't tell you how often I have felt that it is my job to keep these students interested and how frustrated I become when they don't respond.

Flipped Learning Network. (2014). What is flipped learning? The four pillars of F-L-I-P. Retrieved from http://flippedlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FLIP handoutFNL_Web.pdf