Flipping the classroom

Currently, high school teachers are being more misused than laptops in a college classroom.

Trust me, everyone knows you aren’t taking notes. Stop reading Supernatural fan fiction in class. It’s weird.

Education in this country is a pressing problem for both our generation and those to follow.The cause of  the problems depends on whom you ask.

Republicans point blame at teachers and teacher unions, saying tenured teachers and union thugs are turning education into a battlefield to try and get more money.

Democrats point to failed education policies.

In Indiana, for example, now-infamous Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett instituted grading policies that punished underfunded schools by cutting their funding further.

There’s one suggestion that is more realistic — teachers skills are wasted on our current education model.

I’m a big fan of “flipped education,” which models what a lot of universities do now.
The traditional model involves teachers standing at the front of the room and lecturing for 45 minutes, slowing down to help students and generally repeating information from a slide or book.

Too often, students are lectured to about an abstract or complicated topic and then expected to solve even more abstract or complicated problems by themselves.
In the flipped education model, teachers record lectures that students can watch at home.

The teachers then spend class time the next day answering questions and helping students with homework.

I’m a big fan of flipping education from just a business standpoint, for one. Teachers are hired, paid and trusted to teach students material. Teachers want to actually teach, a concept that has escaped lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

This style of education also allows students a better educational experience.

Students who are more advanced can watch the lecture once, go to class, have a few of the finer points explained and generally have not much change.

For students who need a little more help, though, it can make all the difference.
They can watch, rewind and view lectures more than once, so they no longer have to slow an entire class down to have a topic repeated.

Education makes a lot more sense when teachers help students through the difficult part of learning — analyzing and applying the information they’ve learned

Flipping education is significantly better than an A-F grading scale that punishes Gary schools by stripping their funding and giving more money to Carmel schools.

­— ajguenth@indiana.edu
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@GuentherAndrew.