Pro and Con
Flipped Classroom When every semester ends and a new one begins, within a year or between, a lot has to shift for students — teachers, classmates, schedules, extracurriculars, you name it. One of the most jarring shifts for students, though, is the switch in classroom structure, particularly the possible shift from a traditional classroom to a flipped classroom. Flipped classrooms operate on modern educational theory. Within one, students study the material at home and teachers provide guided, supplementary classroom activities. Designed to end both lectures and quiet class study alike, the idea of a flipped classroom is one that more and more teachers are finding ways to implement in their subjects. The pandemic largely tainted the reputation of flipped classrooms, though. Even in subjects that didn’t always fit the model, and with teachers who hadn’t developed plans to segue, flipped classrooms suddenly became the digital norm by default. The active Zoom breakout rooms never seemed to catch on. We shouldn’t let those experiences taint what the idea promises. Teachers should incorporate more elements of flipped classrooms, if not fully adopting the structure into their classes to ensure equality between students whilst also making the material more accessible and providing students with a deeper understanding of the course. In a system where most teachers have at least two different periods of the same course, it’s impossible to teach the material in the exact same way for all periods. That’s where flipped classrooms can help to ensure a more equal, level way of learning between students. Flipped classrooms exist at Whitman now, though there aren’t many. Classes like AP Chemistry and AP Calculus AB are fully flipped, while others incorporate bits and pieces of such a structure, like AP Microeconomics and Macroeconomics and AP U.S. History. If more teachers were to adopt more of the flipped structure, more students would receive the same instruction regardless of their period, meaning any educational discrepancies between periods would be largely eliminated. On the other hand, traditional classrooms often perpetuate these disparities; inevitably, one period will get cut short or held late, allow-
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ing the learning gap between periods to widen. And, to be frank, teachers are bound to miss a piece of material or explanation in multiple live lectures, so the use of flipped classrooms could potentially lessen the impact of many otherwise unavoidable obstacles. Class size also changes how long it takes for a teacher to cover the material. A classroom of more students typically means more questions and deeper explanations, while fewer students might correspond with a faster-paced class, allowing the teacher to cover more material in a given period. Flipping classrooms would ensure that all students in the course receive the same lessons at the same pace, removing this disparity.
PRO: by Jacob Cowan By translating the content into students to learn the material at home, at their own pace, students can mold their classes to fit personal needs. For instance, if one student falls sick for a few days, they’d typically have to try to meet with their teacher to cover the material they missed outside of regular class time. This game of catch-up causes them to fall even further behind as the teacher moves forward. Flipped classrooms, however, allow students to learn the material at home even when they can’t attend class on a given day. This accessibility extends beyond just sickness, though. If a student has a doctor’s appointment, college visit, family conflict or can’t attend class for any other reason, they won’t need to worry about falling behind. Additionally, students can replay videos endlessly should they need to hear concept explanations more than once. The accessibility of flipped classrooms is only one part of the argument, however. Accessibility means nothing without quality, and contrary to popular belief, flipped classrooms can enable teachers to delve deeper into the content
of their courses. Since in a flipped structure students learn the foundations of each unit at home, teachers can spend their 45-minute periods answering questions and providing practice for the students instead of teaching the foundations during class. Students come to class ready to enrich their understanding of a concept rather than to learn it for the first time. Nevertheless, it’s essential to recognize that flipped classrooms are not 100% beneficial. Naturally, solely lecturing students is detrimental to student morale and comprehension. However, by the same token, never teaching lessons live, or placing the entire learning burden on students is equally stressful. The cost of flipped classrooms comes in planning time for teachers. They have to effectively turn those lectures and chapters into something digestible and mostly understandable at home. Teachers film themselves delivering the information to free up class time for review activities. That process can take time. The benefit is that once it is done, teachers can use the same content they’ve created in the near future, if not for longer. Administrators at Whitman and elsewhere in MCPS should do what they can to free up teacher planning time to allow them to actually move what they cover into a permanent digital format. While certain inequalities, like students’ access to the internet, are exacerbated by this model, the benefits of a generally more accessible classroom structure far outweigh potential issues. Flipped classrooms are a catalyst — an opportunity, even — for teachers to enhance student comprehension and engage them in class, as long as they balance it with in-class structure and guidance. Students should treat the in-person class as a time to enrich and extend their learning, building on what they’ve previously learned from videos and readings. The flipped classroom structure should be a priority for every educator dedicated to the success of their students, and likewise for every student dedicated to their own learning.