• Flipped Learning: a crash course
• 10 simple steps in the flipped learning cycle
• What the process can look like for individual learners
• An example of how a flipped model could work for small groups, mentors and coaches
• A look at flipped learning for an entire school or district

If you’re a parent, you can relate: “Sorry, Jimmy, it’s not healthy to have dessert every night. Finish your vegetables, do your homework, then it’s off to bed.” Eventually Jimmy’s light goes out. You wait 15 minutes, just to be safe. At last, you can open the fridge and finish that key lime pie.

It’s funny – even when something is “good for you,” we often don’t apply it to ourselves.

You know how creative learning strategies help your students learn. You see the benefits when students absorb teaching outside of classroom time, then come together with teachers and classmates to practice and apply what they’ve learned. Trying (and sometimes failing) in a safe place solidifies the lesson.

“Flipped learning” is clearly good for students. Why don’t we offer it for our teachers?

Flipped learning: a crash course

Flipped professional learning for teachers is the equivalent of flipped learning for our students. In a flipped learning model, teachers can learn on their own time. They explore whatever information, courses and educational experiences they want (or need) — based on personal goals, evaluation results or areas for growth.

But it doesn’t stop there. The key to a flipped learning model is following up with practice and collaboration.

The flipped learning cycle

1. Self-reflect based on feedback and evidence of practice.
2. Identify areas for growth.
3. Engage in an initial learning experience that provides information and assesses retention.
4. Set goals and create a plan to apply selected skills, techniques or behaviors you believe will have the most impact on students.
5. Share your plan with others — a principal, instructional coach, mentor, department or PLC. It’s often helpful to get feedback at this stage.
6. Implement your plan.
7. Self-reflect — how did it go?
8. Provide evidence of your implementation to others — this may be a video of classroom instruction, or perhaps a classroom observation.
9. Meet with others to whom you’re accountable to reflect and get feedback on your implementation so far.
10. Reflect, Plan, Act, Do… then repeat. It’s the cycle for continuous improvement.

Using this cycle over time, you can transform skills, techniques or behaviors into more effective instructional practices. This is evident through observation, feedback from others and student outcomes that reflect growth.

Is flipped learning just another instructional fad?

You might be tempted to think that. But in fact, flipped learning is simply a form of blended learning. And blended learning is here to stay, because — when implemented well — it makes the cycle of learning more possible and more effective.

Providing targeted, personalized content for all of the teachers in your district is a huge task. Often, districts are so strapped for time and money that they’re limited to covering their own core initiatives, leaving it to teachers to seek out additional, more personalized learning. But thanks to online learning, you can offer targeted content to many different people — without taking up valuable time during the school day.

New to a topic? Then it’s generally best to explore that information at your own pace. Teachers can explore coursework, online lessons, videos and eBooks in the order that works best for them — and at a pace and time that fits into their schedule and learning style. Once they’ve absorbed that information, they’re ready to take it out for a spin — putting it into practice and getting feedback from peers, mentors, coaches and observers. This is where blended learning shines.

Evidence suggests that teachers like it, too. In 2015-2016, Montour School District in Pennsylvania started the Montour Learning Network for EdTech and Innovation. Using a flipped learning model, teachers and staff pursue individual learning opportunities while collaborating to support each other. The result? Montour saw a 600% increase in participation in digital professional development.[1]

Blended learning and the Every Student Succeeds Act

If a best-practices argument isn’t enough to get you to try blended learning for your professional development, how about this: guidelines in the Every Student Succeeds Act suggest that we must move toward using the entire learning cycle to create real impact on teacher skills and student achievement. Blended learning makes that kind of targeting and differentiation possible within a constant cycle of feedback.

Flipped learning for individuals

When we think of a “flipped” form of blended learning, we often picture groups of learners, like students — but it’s ideal for individuals as well. How could an individual teacher use a flipped model of professional development?

• Schooley could use improvement in her communication skills with students who are English Language Learners. Feedback from a recent classroom observation shows that she still falls back on poor coping skills like raising her voice when she gets frustrated.
• Her principal recommends a series of online courses that cover best practices for working with ELLs in the elementary school age group. Ms. Schooley and her principal agree to a follow-up conversation in two weeks to discuss her “Application & Impact Plan,” which demonstrates how she’ll implement her new learning in the classroom and measure its impact on student learning.
• Schooley takes the courses on her own time and bounces some ideas off a colleague who teaches a foreign language. She crafts her plan, describing the new tools she’ll use to rephrase questions from her ELLs when communication breaks down, and the positive impact she believes applying this new technique will have on her ELLs and other students.
• She shares her plan with her principal, who approves it and assigns a follow-up conference for one month later. In the meantime, Ms. Schooley has a PLC meeting in two weeks.
• At the two-week mark, the PLC meets in an online Group — a collaboration center for PLC members to connect and support each other’s learning through shared conversation and resources. PLC members come from several different schools across the district, and are grouped together due to similar topics and age groups, and dissimilar levels of experience in order to get different perspectives on the same topic.Schooley brings up the work she’s doing on her new communication techniques, and mentions some of the challenges she’s still working on. The group encourages her, and has ideas for a few tweaks, which are recorded in the team room. Ms. Schooley also adjusts her Impact Plan and shares it with her principal.
• Two weeks later, during the follow-up conversation with her principal, Ms. Schooley believes her skills are improving because she feels frustrated much less frequently, and her EL students seem to be “on task” more often. The principal gives positive feedback for Ms. Schooley’s commitment to her efforts, and asks when she might be willing to upload a video of herself or have the principal visit to continue to provide feedback.
• A week later, the principal visits Ms. Schooley’s classroom and notices a marked difference — the students and teacher seem calmer, and when ELs have questions, they don’t seem afraid to raise their hands. The principal notes a few additional strategies Ms. Schooley could apply to refine her techniques, but the overall effectiveness of her practice has improved. Ms. Schooley’s growth journey is evident through multiple sources that remain available for future reference.

Flipped learning for small groups, mentors and instructional coaches

Flipped learning can help facilitate learning for small groups as well. For example, an instructional coach or mentor may be responsible for guiding a group of fewer than 30 teachers. Using evaluation results, the coach determines the three areas of focus that will have the most impact for students of this group overall:

1. Communication skills
2. Time management
3. Consistency of assessment techniques

The coach creates a “curriculum” that will cover the school year, each semester targeting one of the three topics. In each case, the semester begins with members of the group taking assigned courses on their own time.

Flipped learning for large groups, schools and districts

You can also use a flipped approach to blended learning for large groups or even district-wide professional growth initiatives.

Let’s say one of your goals is to strengthen the Response to Intervention process in your district. You’ve put a software solution into place, but implementing that software was only the first step — now all of your teachers need to adopt behaviors that support the RTI process. That’s no small task! Here’s how it might look over the course of a school year.

Time to apply

The flipped learning concept is simple, but it’s flexible enough to meet the needs of almost any individual or group. And the benefits are nothing to brush off: time that would have been required teach a workshop can now be reclaimed (saving money on substitute teachers) or used for collaboration and application.

The search for more effective ways to teach students never ends. You research. You get creative. You lean in, put your weight into it. You do these things because knowledge — and the skills to gain knowledge — equips students for success in life.

What would it look like to apply some of these ideas to professional learning? To move past the sit-and-get workshop? To find creative ways to provide the kind of learning opportunities each individual teacher needs and wants?

Flipped professional learning is a great place to start.

[1] Sams, A., & Aglio, J. (2016, September 12). We flipped professional development and our teachers loved it. Retrieved November 08, 2016, from http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/09/12/we-flipped-professional-development-and-our-teachers-loved-it/