Flipped Classroom Success Stories

Brenda in 4th grade, Keri in 7th grade math, Jessica in high school chemistry, Megan in Algebra 2, and Charles in high school ELA… all are teachers who flipped their classrooms this past school year and are now on the other side of their hard work reaping the rewards of the flipped model and ready to share their own and their student success with you.

I’m compiling experiences into this one episode and hope that the stories shared allow you to see the possibilities for your own classroom and daily teaching life.

After listening to this episode you’ll be inspired by the success teachers of the flipped classroom have found, and see yourself in their transformation, knowing that this time next year, your classroom or student success story will be told.

Let’s get to it.

Before we get started I want to point you to a resource that I think you’ll love seeing and that is all of the stories I’m going to be sharing with you today and WAY MORE are available to you and anyone else who wants to hear them on our website at this link. So at any point you’re wanting to hear more of a story or hear a story again, please head to that link to check them all out.

The first story I want to share is that of Keri Tafuro in Vacaville, CA.  She’s a middle school math teacher, and after taking Flipped Classroom Formula and flipping her 7th & 8th grade math classes, she was nominated as teacher of the year by her colleagues!!  Seriously, how amazing is that?!?  

Keri shared not to long ago in a Facebook live talking to teachers about the flipped classroom with me that she wasn’t all too sure about flipping her classroom.  She had actually seen it in action when her daughter’s 7th  grade math teacher flipped his classroom, but unfortunately it didn’t go well.  In fact, it went really badly.

And yet she was still intrigued by the idea of it.

So she found my flipped classroom workshop last year, attended it saying it was a great training, but even when she signed up for Flipped Classroom Formula, wasn’t all to sure about her decision.

Now I’m not telling you this today so that you sign up even when you don’t feel confident - HA! - no, not at all.  But what I do want you  to know is that once Keri finished the 10-week course and had her entire first quarter of content flipped, she was all in.

And because of the structures she put in place that she learned from Flipped Classroom Formula, she had this amazing moment with her students later in the year after she had been flipping all year long, and she delivered a lesson live and in person.  The awesome teacher-win that happened is that her students interrupted her to say they  wish they could be learning the material she was delivering through one of her videos!!!

Hang on, say what?

Yeah!  They said “Mrs. Tafuro, I really want to be able to pause you right now or rewind  you and I can’t.”

So I want you to think of your students right now.  Can you imagine teaching them this valuable, what is a learning skill to take notes from a flipped video, and they  become so good at getting ALL of the content from it - more so than they would from a live lecture - that they eventually prefer it???  

How powerful would that be?

To hear more of Keri’s experience with Flipped  Classroom Formula and about her flipped classroom wins, head over to listen to episode 21 for her full interview.

Next up we have Jessica Verrill, a high school Chemistry teacher in central Maine, who shares in episode 23 about her experience inside the flipped classroom, so be sure to check out that episode for her full interview. In this episode she is sharing about how her hard work in flipping her classroom is going to pay off in the future as we get back to a more normal schedule, but she got a glimpse of that this year. 

Jessica had been mostly remote or on a hybrid schedule for most of the school year, and was quite apprehensive about going back to a more “normal” schedule when they decided to bring students back four days per week.

She was worried about being absolutely exhausted at the end of the day, much like she was in her hybrid schedule, even with a flipped classroom because it was such a mad rush to get through the content in the limited time she had.

To her delight and surprise at the end of that first week, she looked back on her ability to be in the moment with each of her classes, guiding them through the lesson without feeling overly rushed, and watch her student dive deeper into the content within her lessons since they had received the basis of the content in a video at home already, and she realized she wasn’t exhausted, she was effective and still had energy at the end of the week for her family.

She is  so excited to use her flipped classroom in a normal schedule next year, and get to measure more comparable data on its effectiveness with students.

So, could  you imagine that?  Could you imagine being incredibly effective with your students and NOT being exhausted at the end of the week.  I don’t know about you, but effectiveness and exhaustion seem to be best friends - there is no separating them.  But with the flipped classroom, they absolutely are mutually exclusive, and that my friend is a huge teacher win!

Now I would like to share a few quotes I have from teachers that have taken Flipped Classroom Formula, and how they now are benefiting from the flipped classroom model in their daily teaching lives.

Kim Ulven, a high school social studies teacher shares, “I have been teaching for almost 30 years and decided I needed to beef up my game and wanted to better prepare for the school year.  I wanted to quell my anxiety a bit by being proactive in getting my classes flipped so whatever the scenario is when we go back to school, I will be at least one step ahead!  This course also helped me to be more organized - love the binder/stamp process and the fact that students will be taking on more responsibility of learning the content.”

There’s nothing like some good organization when it comes to being effective with students and sustainable as a teacher, am I right?!?

Megan Bauer, a high school intervention specialist who teaches math, says this about her flipping experience.  “My team and I are so thankful for the Flipped Classroom Formula. It TRULY made our life this year so much more enjoyable and easier. Our summer was a bit chaotic making the videos but we divided and conquered as a team. We split up the video creation process based on each of our teaching-strengths, and went for it. Now we will be reaping the benefits come fall of this year! We gave all of our kids a survey asking if they liked the flipped classroom, and over 98% said yes! I say that’s a success! It was a wonderful teaching style and I am so thankful to have taken the course.”

You’ve got to love some data that shows your hard work paying off.  Not that kids’ approval ratings are everything, but when it’s there along with student mastery, it makes you just feel good as an educator.

Next up I want to introduce you to Brenda Thompson, a 4th grade teacher in Washington state.  In a video I actually have available at the link in the show notes below where you’re listening, Brenda shares with us how she and her team of 4th grade teachers were able to divide and conquer the 4th grade content to flip reading, writing, and math for their students - as in all 4th graders, not just the ones in each of their individual classes.

So because they worked together, each of their 4th grade students had the same accessible content for writing, reading, and math, and they all got to build connections with each of the 4th grade teachers, not just the one who was physically in their classroom.

Could you imagine that level of connection and camaraderie in your building?  And it’s all centered around accessible content?  How awesome is that?

Alright, teacher-friend, I hope hearing about each of these teachers’ experiences with the flipped classroom and with my online course Flipped Classroom Formula was valuable for you. And don’t forget that you can listen to and read about all these stories and many more on our website at teachonamission.com/teachers whenever you want.

I hope now that you’ve listened to this episode that you’re inspired by the success teachers of the flipped classroom have found, and see yourself in their transformations, knowing that this time next year, your classroom or student success story could also be told.

At the time that this episode will air on the podcast, Flipped Classroom Formula is open for enrollment for this summer’s last cohort of teachers looking to sustainably and effectively flip their classrooms.  But enrollment does close soon, so be sure to head here to see all the details and join before the course starts.  I hope to see you there, and I know I’ll see you next week for another episode right here on the Sustainable Teacher Podcast.

Bye for now.