Organized Chaos

One of my first blog posts was titled "Self-Paced Learning." At the time, it was just an idea, inspired by the book Flip Your Classroom. One of my colleagues, Rachelle Terada, could be described as a "go-getter." I admire her willingness to dive into an idea that she believes in. She will see something that another teacher is doing, or she'll get an idea in her head, mentally chew on it for a bit to decide if it's worthwhile. If it is, watch out! She's all in. She read Flip Your Classroom over the summer, where the authors describe how they moved to a flipped model in their chemistry classrooms, and within a few years, were encouraging students to work through the curriculum at their own pace. Rachelle has done all of that in a few months. She recently took a video of her classroom. We turned it into a GIF for the purposes of social media and this blog (unfortunately, the translation made it a bit blurry):

Well-Oiled Machine

At the beginning of the loop, you see a few students taking quizzes in the front of the room. As the camera pans to the right, there are four separate tables of students doing labs. Among the four groups, there are actually three different labs going at once. In the back corners of the room students are working on worksheets in small groups or watching lecture videos on Chromebooks.  Between the windows, you can see a group of three boys working on a worksheet together. Oh, and this is a general level chemistry class, not Honor's or AP.

Everyone's Learning

Of course, there are a few students that are already behind. They haven't planned out their work well and haven't gotten much done in class. Overall, though, students have signed up to take quizzes or do labs a day ahead of time so Rachelle knows what she needs to have ready. They've clustered into groups and are working together for the entire period. They are getting one-on-one feedback from Rachelle as she works her way around the room, pushing them toward higher levels of understanding and competency. 

Rachelle, too, is learning. She's learned about her students as she checks in with each student and as they've rated themselves in various skills or conceptual understanding. She's learned more about how to structure the system for efficiency. By no means would she say that she's already got the system to a truly "well-oiled machine" status, but it's impressive how quickly she was able to get the system to a point where it's working well. She mentioned the other day that the labs she's getting are some of the most high-quality she has ever received.