In a traditional school, students typically are lectured in class by a teacher when, by definition, there’s very limited opportunity for discourse. Yes, you read that right, very little opportunity for interaction when the student is together with their peers and their teacher. They are then assigned homework that they will do by themselves at home at precisely the time when human interaction is most needed. Despite the crippling limitations with this process, it works quite well for middle income students because they have the support system at home to explain salient points they might have missed during the lecture. Not so much for kids of low-income parents. Essentially, middle-income students have the support system at home to close the knowledge gaps as soon as they are formed. Middle-income students do not carry those gaps from session to session or grade to grade causing them to fall further and further behind as time goes by. Low income kids, on the other hand, carry those gaps with them all the way to the working world – and that’s if they can find a job.
So what if we flipped it around? What if the student experience the lecture in the home setting and do the assignments in a place where help - the instructor and peers, is readily available? For low income students in particular, this is great! The advantage a middle-income child had is now shared with the low-income child! With technology, students can now watch a lecture in the comfort of their home or library, where they can replay as many times as they want to understand the concept. If they still don’t get it, they can bring it to class where the teacher or another student will now have plenty of time for discourse that they did not have when the session was spent mostly for lecturing. In addition, they can get a head start on hands on activity and come to class having experienced the concept many times already and would have gained at least a partial understanding of the material.
Flipped classrooms is not merely about exchanging the places where lectures and homework happen. It’s about providing lectures in a way that students can repeat and pause many times to build their understanding and then providing opportunities for students to work on assignments in the classroom where they can get support at the time when it’s most helpful to them.
This process relies mostly on technology to work. Yes, access to the Internet is more difficult for low income kids but for most it’s not a big hurdle. Computers with Internet access is available in schools and public libraries. And Internet providers offer significant discounts for low-income families and devices for watching videos are becoming cheaper with time.
Talk to your child’s teacher about flipped learning. If they are hearing about it for the first time refer them to these resources.
Flipped Tutoring.
As a new tutor of 3rd and 4th grade math, I quickly realized that it’s one thing to know how to do math, and it’s quite another to teach it to a 3rd grader. Having recognized my inadequacy I went to YouTube, where I found no shortage of videos explaining pretty much every single thing one would need to know in 3rd or 4th grade math! At first I went there to learn how they taught the concepts, then I realized, I could just send the videos to the parents and have them watch the videos and get a head start on the exercises before coming to class! Now the families are now deeply involved both at home and at school. The net of it is that the third grade kids will be finished with 3rd grade math in December!
Robert St. Cyr is the father of a Capitol Hill Montessori kindergartner. He is an advocate for better learning environments in DCPS system. He also runs a volunteer tutoring program that matches parents with groups of 4 to 6 students with the goal of each student exceeding common core standards in Math and ELA.
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