Saturday, November 5, 2011

Parent Teacher Conferences

So, as I was finishing up Unit 2, we had fall Parent/Teacher conferences. I am not sure exactly what I was expecting. The flipped classroom is pretty new in my district, and only one other high school teacher, a Chemistry teacher is flipping. We have a lot of students in common and although we are flipping differently - she with flipped mastery, and me with just the flip - I was ready for some parents to be "flipped" out.

Actually the comments I got were almost completely positive. I have one set of parents that thought it was so much better for their child and were almost as excited as I was. Only one conference, where the student said " I don't like having to teach myself" was I sad about. It was a student who has never really said anything about the flip in class. Actually, she has missed quite a bit of class for some family issues, so I would have thought that it was working well for her. During the conference, I reminded her that she is not 'teaching herself'. I am still there to help with work and answer questions every class period. We just use our class time more effectively because the students can take the notes at their own pace. The mom seemed ok, but I don't know about the student.

It made me wonder how many other seemingly fine students were really upset about the flip and just not saying anything. I had already planned on a year-end evaluaation, but now I wonder if I should wait that long. Maybe I should do a little something at the end of each unit? Hmm.....

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