Highlights (00:00)
a decent quality video by a teacher is better than an awesome video made by YouTuber because relationships, because they have a better connection with you…what makes good teaching good is a combination of two things, active learning and relationships. If you, active learning plus relationships for the win. I mean, I know most of you guys who are listening to this are school administrators, and you know those teachers who have figured it out in your school are those teachers who know how to build relationships with kids, not standing up and doing the lecture chalk talk thing. They have some kind of an active learning classroom. But I would argue that flipped what it does is it's an easy way to move traditional teachers to active learning and it also provides more opportunities for you to build relationships with students which of course is what makes for the win.
Who is Jon Bergmann? (00:58)
Cindy:
Hey guys, and welcome to the School Leaders Project. I'm so excited to welcome Jon Bergmann to our show today. So, welcome Jon, thanks for being here.
Jon Bergmann:
It's great to be on your show.
Cindy:
So set the stage for us, Jon. What is the work that you do that you're most passionate about?
Jon Bergmann:
I'm most passionate about reaching every student. And I actually went on a retreat at one point in, oh, five years ago, pre-COVID, and said, what's my mission in life? And I felt like it was, sort of the subtitle of our first book, Aaron Samson, I wrote, Flip Your Classroom, Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. And I really came back to what is my mission in life, at least from an educational perspective, and it's to reach every student. And I left the consulting world, if you will, to go back in the classroom just to not reach every student vicariously through other teachers, but to reach them one at a time in a classroom. I had kids just two hours ago in my classroom doing the teacher thing.
Cindy:
I love that. I love how teacher centered you are. So you, you called out that you are the father of the flipped classroom, which is pretty cool. So I would love for you to kind of give us some context for our listeners. What is flipped teaching and kind of what isn't flipped teaching in the same breath.
What is flipped teaching
Jon Bergmann:
So flip classroom, if you think of Bloom's Taxonomy, all of your listeners I'm sure are familiar with that, the big idea of flip classroom is that you wanna do the easy stuff, have the students do that independently, and then when they are in the class with your expert teachers, that's where you do the hard stuff. So Bloom's Taxonomy, remembering understanding of the lower two tiers of Blooms, and then application analysis, evaluation, creation are the higher levels. And what you're doing is you're flipping Blooms, spend less class time on the easy information transfer, more class time on apply, analyze, evaluate, create the harder aspects of teaching. That's the key to what makes flip learning flip.
Cindy:
And you started in a science classroom, that's right.
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah, so myself and Aaron Sams were a couple of science teachers in a little town called Woodland Park, Colorado, and we had kids who would be gone, like they'd leave at noon almost every day because what would happen was is the closest high school that they would compete against in like a basketball game or something like that was 45 minutes away, and then it would be even three hour drives. And so we would have so many kids who'd leave early and we were trying to figure out who are missing classes and missing out on constant learning. So that's when we started to play around with this idea of videos, and then we started to say, well, we pre-video it, and then it blew up in our science classrooms and eventually the world.
Cindy:
Did you know when you were making it in your classroom? Did you know that we're onto something this is gonna blow up like crazy or was it kind of a surprise for you?
Jon Bergmann:
It was a mix at first, it totally was a surprise. But then after about, I would say after two years, maybe the third year, we said, I think this is a really big idea. So it came onto us and then clearly we had no idea that it would lead to books and translations and trips around the world. And I mean, who would have ever. I mean, I think it was a mix at first, but then after about, I would say after two years, maybe the third year,
Cindy:
It just deeply resonated. It's an answer to a question a lot of us have and it's just resonated far and wide. So you've worked with schools around the world, implementing flipped classrooms. What do you see as being kind of the biggest benefit for schools moving towards this model?
Jon Bergmann:
Well, I have this significant belief that what makes good teaching good, and this is not just like Jon belief, it's actually rooted in educational research, is what makes good teaching good is a combination of two things, active learning and relationships. If you, active learning plus relationships for the win. I mean, I know most of you guys who are listening to this are school administrators, and you know those teachers who have figured it out in your school are those teachers who know how to build relationships with kids, not just standing up and doing the lecture chalk talk thing. They have some kind of an active learning classroom. But I would argue that flipped what it does is it's an easy way to move traditional teachers to active learning and it also provides more opportunities for you to build relationships with students which of course is what makes for the win.
What is active learning? (06:46)
Cindy:
And can you elaborate on that phrase, active learning? So what does active learning look like, sound like as opposed to more of like a didactic model?
Jon Bergmann:
Well, it's almost more like we know what passive learning looks like, right? Somebody standing in front of the chalkboard doing the chalk talk thing. Active learning looks like a lot of things. So in my science classrooms, it means more experiments. In a foreign language classroom, it means more practicing the target language. In an English language arts class, it means more writing actually in the class and not having them take home and then getting help when they need it. In a physical education class, it means actually practicing or playing games more, or in a woodworking class, it means actually making more things, they're learning how to make things. I mean, it's gonna look very different. It means debate, it means Socratic seminars, it means, I mean, you know what, I mean, if you've been around education, you know what these active learning strategies are, so I could probably list off a dozen, first person there to Socratic seminars, debates, project-based learning, inquiry, all these kinds of things, but the reality is, my guess is, in your school, you don't see enough of that. And what flipped learning does is it gives you more time to do that, right? So you can have more project-based learning in your school if you flip your school. You can do more inquiry. There's a program in the physics world called modeling physics and there was a research study done and they said you know modeling physics is kind of an inquiry based way to look at physics. So think of an inquiry learning. And there was the study basically said when I flipped I had more time to really do modeling well. I mean that's just an example. What are those active strategies, and they’re domain specific, if you’re a science teacher it’s different than if you’re a history teacher.
Cindy:
So what I'm hearing is that it's pretty much applicable in any classroom setting. There aren't, it's not, it only works in science or it only works in specific settings. It's something we can all do. And it's just a matter of recognizing the proper content to do that. Is that right?
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah, I mean, if you look at the research now, when we first started this whole process in 2007, there was basically, there's a very, there's like one research study on it. So people say we founded flip learning, because side note, we thought we had, but that wasn't true. It turns out there was a guy in 1999 who flipped his class, so to speak, he used a different term, but with videotapes. We were just the right guys with the same idea, you know, when streaming video was just getting perspective. And I just lost your question as I went to that little history story. What was the question? Oh, every subject about research. And the research now is clear. It works in almost every subject. There's a research study on how to flip well in nursing, how to do it, you know, to teach English as a second language to Colombian middle school students. I mean, like the country of Colombia. I mean, there's, anything you can think of, people are flipping. The entire province of Misiones, Argentina has flipped and they started with their vocational education in high schools and then they've moved it down to every grade level and every subject. So yes, it works in every subject and the studies are showing that that works in every subject and level and whatever.
Resources needed for flipping learning (10:05)
Cindy:
So cool. So in your work with schools and leadership all around the world, what would you say are the resources that are a must have for a leader who's trying to implement flipped classrooms?
Jon Bergmann:
Well, what I would recommend to a leader is if you really want to do this well, is that you would A, model it. So flip your faculty meetings. So you've got meetings or whatever kind of meetings you have is to begin to flip that. I challenged a principal in Wisconsin to do this. And he came to one of my workshops and we chatted and I said, you want to do this? And he said, all right, I'm game. So he went back to his school and he began to flip his faculty meetings and he said, “I’m not sure I can get enough of a lift because if I ask them to do some pre-work and watch this short video about some of the key things… oh, I know what I'll do. I'm gonna cut my meetings short by 15 minutes and I'm gonna give them like a seven minute video. So I gave them a seven minute video watch and on the first day, I learned this story from him in the past. He says on the first day, I called out the teachers who didn't watch the video because there's tracking software, right? And so track there and he had them go watch it in the back of the room. He had some laptops set up. And he never had a problem with that ever again, by the way. The whole shame thing worked, I guess.
And by the end of the year, he said, Jon, my teachers want the minutes back because of the value of our faculty meetings, he's using it for developing PD and all that kind of stuff, and it just transformed the school. So that model would be, I guess, one recommendation I'd have to you if you're thinking about doing this. Get some resources out there. Aaron and I and I've written things individually, whatever. There's lots of resources that you can get. I would encourage you to find somebody who knows how to flip well. There's a lot of best practices of flip learning and a lot of people think that flip learning is showing a video and that's not true. I mean there's a video element in many cases but it's not really. So make sure you know about what those best practices are or if you have maybe at your school you've got I mean, find somebody who can sort of lead the initiative and coach the teachers through how to do it well. My guess is you have a teacher who's been doing this relatively well, get them even better trained and have them become a teacher leader or better yet, have them teach half time and then half time they could be kind of an instructional coach to help teachers along the path. I mean, there's lots of ways to do this. There's a job, this is crazy. I met some people in Australia. Now there is a job of flip learning coordinator. That's a real job title.
Cindy:
How cool.
Jon Bergmann:
So a whole school basically moved to flip learning. This is not just one school. There's several schools who've found that model and this is the sort of expert. It was a flip learning teacher who understood adult teaching or not pedagogy but androgogy and got some training and basically helped the school through that process of transitioning to flip.
The case for teacher-made videos (13:14)
Cindy:
Very cool. So you said it's not just video making because when I initially wrote this question, I thought you would say things like, high quality cameras or green screens. But are you saying that those resources are less important and it's more the human capital?
Jon Bergmann:
A thousand percent. Yes.
Jon Bergmann:
I would in fact, you know, you can, I mean there are videos on every subject on YouTube made by professionals that are very good. Okay, every subject that you teach at least K-12 is out there, right? And my recommendation is that you have your teachers still make their own videos. But a decent quality video by a teacher is better than an awesome video made by YouTuber because relationships, because they have a better connection with you. There was a teacher years ago that I met in Alabama, and he came to me and he said, I've been flipping my class and it's not going very well. So we're at this one day workshop. And I said, so Adam, what's going on? Tell me about what you're doing. So he was using Khan Academy videos to flip his class. And as I looked at him, I said, Adam, I think you need to make your own videos. He said, but that'd be a lot of work. I said, trust me, it'll work. You need to do more of this. And he’s like, it’s really hard work!
Cindy:
Yeah!
Jon Bergmann:
I said Adam, and so against his will he went back and made and these are like just screencast videos there weren't green screens he was just doing a screencast video with like a little tablet he's a math teacher a little tablet and he came back he saw me like a year later at a conference he said I have to talk to you it's like I used to get 50% of my kids watching the videos and now I have a hundred percent and I teach the he taught middle school didn't like to play math, you know those kids. All right and
Cindy:
Hmm.
Jon Bergmann:
he says now I get a hundred percent. He says it's because of that personal relationship. It's me doing the work. Now I don't recommend that every video every teacher shows is always their own. Okay I mean this last unit in my physics class I used a teacher on YouTube's videos for just the entire unit because at the last minute I said I want to switch this all up I don't have time to make the videos. We're in that class it's you know 90, 10 or 80, 20 my own videos but again it's most of these are little screencasts with me in a you know walk-on pen just making a video.
Cindy:
Well, and if you think about it, that's what you would have been doing in the classroom anyway, that kind of lecture series. So it is work, but it does free you up. There's that tension and balance there for sure.
Jon Bergmann:
You know, one thing I've found when I've worked with teachers is that sometimes they could spend forever and ever ever looking for a perfect YouTube video to show a class. Where there's a certain way that you teach it or that you understand your content and it's actually more efficient for you just to make your own. I mean, just teach it like you would have taught it anyways. You know, I've made some of my videos standing in front of a board with my iPhone pointed at the board while I'm writing on the board. You know, it doesn't have to be high tech. Like I got to figure out big software. I mean, the beauty, this is gonna sound weird. The beauty of COVID is that now every teacher has an, at least from this perspective, knows how to make a video for their students in some
Cindy:
100%.
Jon Bergmann:
way. So this is not, you know, COVID's been bad in lots and lots of ways we could go there. But it has the lift. I used to spend a lot of time when I'd work with schools and teachers, teaching them how to make a video. I don't do that anymore. I just don't. They know how to do this. I mean, I was at a school yesterday. I still do some consulting with schools. I've got a few schools I consult with, and I was at one of my schools yesterday. I have not spent... I spent them a whole year with this school, and I don't think I spent a minute teaching them how to make a video. Now, I talked about the principles of what goes into making a good flip
Jon Bergmann:
There are some research-based principles of good video making that are important to learn, and what software do you use? No.
Overcoming obstacles to flipped learning (17:24)
Cindy:
No, we've all leveled up. And so like you said, that's kind of the one, one great thing that's come out of COVID is that leveling up for sure. Apart from that, are there other obstacles that you've seen that just resurface, you know, from a leadership perspective, that resurface again and again and again when you're trying to implement this model?
Jon Bergmann:
I would say the biggest issue I have seen, and this has been true since the beginning, is having a mind shift change of the teacher.
Cindy:
Hmm.
Jon Bergmann:
You need to let go of some level of control. And you're gonna have them watch this video or do a reading, by the way, another way to flip is with text. So I also assigned text for them to read, pre-reading text. I used some tracking software that tracks it just like the videos and so not all pre-learning is video. But then the idea is that they're going to get and then to trust the kids that they're going to be exposed initially to the material at the beginning and when they get exposed to it then we're going to do something active with that in the class. And then coupled with that I would say the second sort of big hurdle misconception is too many teachers, I think administrators, think that they're by watching this video or reading this text. That is not the intention. The intention is that they're gonna be exposed initially to it, and then you're going to kind of fill in the gaps in person. So, now, some of my students are gonna actually have mastered the content when they come into the class by the video, there's a certain percentage you will, but many of them won't, and so I've gotta have some activities to help them sort of really learn it. I mean, again, that's the expectation that they're gonna have total mastery this video is not happening any day soon. Not in every student's case. So there's a, yeah, like one of the best practices is you need to have a plan. So what are you going to do with the kids who come in with incomplete understanding? So they've done some pre-works. They've done the pre-work. What are you going to do? How are you going to accommodate those students? And there's no right answer there, but there's lots of ways for that to happen.
Cindy:
Now, how might we scaffold that process?
Jon Bergmann:
Right. For example, one teacher I watched in Texas many years ago, he had them watch a video, he's a math teacher, and he had five questions for them to respond to after they watched the video, all like in a Google form thing, I think it was. And then he knew how well they did. They got one, two, three, or four or five points. And what he did is actually the first, he called out three kids who didn't watch the video and said, go grab the Chromebook, you know what to do. And they put headphones on, oops, these kids didn't watch the video. up the vast majority of the kids and kids who scored four points or five points on the quiz. He did a real quick check and said you're ready to start the assignment and then he called up like six or seven kids who had watched the video. He had tracked it and then they'd gotten like one, two, or three points. Then he did a mini tutorial at the whiteboard. They sat on the floor and he did a little thing, right? He did this math and he said now I think you're ready to start the
Cindy:
Awesome.
Jon Bergmann:
and he knew that was going to happen. And he, but he didn't have to like do that, like little mini tutorial to all 30 kids. He only needed to do it to seven kids. And then 20 kids, let's say they were ready to just start. And then he had, you know, some kids who, for whatever reason, didn't do the work. And then they had to play extra to catch up.
Cindy:
One, what a beautiful, like true model of differentiation because sometimes we hear that phrase differentiation and it's a beautiful concept, but in practice, what does it look like? And this is such a practical way that you can see that unfolding and just being simple in the way that we operate in the classroom and that kids would respond well to that.
Jon Bergmann:
I never, to be honest with you, I was never good at differentiating as a classroom teacher when I, for 19 years, stood up and did the chalk-talk thing. Because when I was doing that, every kid on Tuesday had to hear the lesson on 7.5 gas laws or something like that. I had to teach that, and how did I differentiate? I could sort of differentiate assignment, but when I flipped my class, I was able to really do it, I would really call extreme differentiation. get to this but in the mastery learning setting it's like extreme differentiation on steroids. Every kid is getting exactly what they need when they need it just in time. It's the true magic sauce.
Cindy:
We're going to get there in just a second, but before we do
Modeling flipped learning as a leader (22:01)
Cindy:
you touched on how leaders might model the flipped learning model. And I would love just, do you have other stories or examples of how leaders can do this in practice? How might we model? How might we set our staff up for success by doing this?
Jon Bergmann:
So a really cool story is Asher's primary school in New Zealand and I met Heath at a conference and actually Heath was first exposed to flip learning at a presentation that Aaron Sands, the co-author of most of the books, was at and Heath was sold. He went to this conference, he heard Aaron speak, he said, this is the solution to all my problems. But how do I convince my staff? Right, they had a problem, particularly they had their scores, their state test scores, or whatever they would call them in New Zealand, were low, particularly with reading. They had a particular problem with reading scores. And it was a school that had performed pretty well in, you know, the scores of New Zealand, whatever that means. But they were struggling in some areas. And so what he did is he then came to another Jon, I know you're going to be in New Zealand on such and such a day for this other thing. Can you come out and let's sort of plan something?" And he basically, this is the way he introduced me. He said, so I then came, I did a one-day workshop, maybe two days, it was two days, whatever it was, at their school. And he said, I'm sold. The other principals at my school, the other administrators are sold. But I want us to come across as if we're not sold. And so he. So I'm at a conference and I want you to see if you think this might work for us. But I wanna hear from you. So he kind of played dumb, honestly. And after, there were people who were like, the old school teacher, like, well, I don't know about this. And by the end of the session, they were sold. And they said, all right, Keith, how do we do this? The school has completely flipped. They moved completely to a mastery model. to find out how to model and copy what they've done. Their scores are now through the roof. They are a complete model school. I mean, you can't get a job there unless you really, you've gotta be really good to get a job there.
Cindy:
Mmm.
Jon Bergmann:
Because there's a place where you have teacher shortages, they don't have a problem with teacher shortages, they've got a glut of teachers who wanna teach there. Yeah, things
Cindy:
How cool.
Jon Bergmann:
like that. Another sort of suggestion I would have is so I've worked with a number of schools and this is sort of my general pattern is I think get somebody who's a good communicator and then like a fellow teacher and so this is the way I've worked is like give me a day with your teachers or even an afternoon so this school that I've been working with that I was with yesterday I've been working with them for a year and we're not gonna get two to three year plan is I said give me an hour with your staff in August of last school year, and they gave me 45 minutes, and I just kinda told them my story, a little bit of brief about Philip, and we basically said who's in. And so I don't know, at that school district, how many teachers are there? I mean, it's a K-12 school district with, let's say, they got 600 kids in their high school, so I don't know, whatever, how many
Cindy:
Mm.
Jon Bergmann:
students that is and how many teachers that is, you can try and do the math. Out of that, we got 25 teachers. evangelist to use a religious metaphor. And then our goal was to see who would be willing to work with Jon for the year. And we got, you know, we got like 20, 25 teachers. And I just left them yesterday on our fourth visit or something like that. And so start with somebody and there's something about having another teacher who's been there done that.
Cindy:
Mmm.
Jon Bergmann:
to kind of get it started as opposed to, this is an initiative being thrust on you by the principal.
Cindy:
Well, because so much of this feels intuitive, and I think teachers doubt themselves so often, so just having that mentor, that coach that they can come to, and just even that affirmation, you're on the right track with this, try this next. That makes a lot of sense.
Jon Bergmann:
I had one teacher, middle school life skills teacher who was about to quit. I don't think I can
Cindy:
Mm.
Jon Bergmann:
do this. My kids, and so I took a day and I spent a day just visiting all the teachers. I just went from class to class to class and I went into her class and life skills teachers, very severely autistic, one kid wasn't even verbal and I said, what do you need to flip? How to make an egg? I mean these are kids who just need to learn how to function in some level of society and it's like you could do that. You don't have to flip some academic content. You could flip how to fold clothes. I mean, what is it… how to wash a cup? I mean that these some of these kids were kind of that's where the level they were at and it's like What and she was like you mean I this this would actually even work for me She was she had felt, you know insecure and I said you got this and she was like energized. So, I mean, simple things like that, they just need some encouragement. Yeah.
Cindy:
And just reminding ourselves, anytime there's a sit and get, so whether we're an administrator leading a PD session or a teacher leading a life skills class, if the kids are sitting and watching or sitting and listening, why are you wasting your time doing that in the classroom? I think it's just a cool through line of this.
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah. Well, although some kids in my classes will watch the videos in class kind of when they're ready for the next thing, and then they're saving homework time, and that's totally okay with me. That's
Cindy:
smart.
Jon Bergmann:
happening all the time too. Yeah.
Cindy:
Because then we're empowering our kids that learning is something that you do for yourself. And that's something we say all the time as educators, but what an empowering way to actually deliver on that promise.
Jon Bergmann:
Absolutely. Well, and if you've ever read the book Drive by Daniel Pink,
Cindy:
I'm reading that right now
Jon Bergmann:
oh yeah, it's like the greatest book in the history world, he really talks about people having choice, right? That's a huge
Jon Bergmann:
part. What drives people, you know, he says it isn't money, it isn't, but it's if they can have some self-autonomy, that makes a huge difference. And if that's true for us as adults, it's also true for our kids. Give them And you can give people too much choice. I've actually made that mistake. But if you give them some choice and they have some choice on how they're going to do things, that makes a huge difference in their engagement in the process.
The holy grail of teaching: Flipped mastery (29:03)
Cindy:
Absolutely. Okay, Jon, we're at the part I think I think I'm most excited to hear this from you because I was listening to a past interview and you literally called this the Holy Grail of teaching. So flipped mastery. What is it? Why is it the Holy Grail of teaching?
Jon Bergmann:
Well, Master of Learning has been around for a long time. In recent history, if you will, Benjamin Bloom, same Bloom's taxonomy guy, he in the 70s and 80s, he began to experiment with Mastery Learning. And Mastery Learning is if you pass the test, you move on. If you don't, you don't. I mean, we all had to pass our driver's test. And if we didn't pass the driver's test, we didn't get a license. Doctors have to pass the bar, the board, pardon me, whatever it is, the lawyers for the bar, whatever. get to pass your board, you don't get to be a doctor or a lawyer if you pass the bar. So basically it's a similar idea. So in my current classes, the students are moving through the content at a flexible pace. By the way, own pace is a bad word because at least if students in your school are like students in mine, if I say you can work at your own pace, there will be a few students who won't have any pace. So it's more
Cindy:
Mmm.
Jon Bergmann:
of a flexible pace. They move through the content and they get to the end of a group of lessons. unit or whatever you call it in your nomenclature and then they take some kind of a summative assessment and if they can demonstrate mastery on the summative assessment they can move on, if they don't they don't. So that's the big idea of mastery learning and so if you were to walk into my class, which by the way you're welcome to come to my class, open invitation Houston Texas, come send me an email, we'll set it up and you can talk to my students and they're all at slightly We call it level nine the game the class is sort of gamified and they're working I've got students who are working on nine point five and some who are at nine point one and kind of and there was a few students who are still working on passing the Level eight some of his tests like I'm thinking
Jon Bergmann:
one class there were three kids And I'm still working on who are who are struggling with that content and so we had a tutorial session with them So if you were to walk in this room You would have seen the three kids working with and then some kids who are just getting started at 9.1 if you will and then one actually one student raced ahead and was at 9.7 it's like I'm not ready for you there's all these experiments I haven't set up yet you're way ahead of me and they're in slightly different places in the content I can extremely differentiate you know and my brain switches I'm working with remedial students advanced students and these are all happening I'm kind of like I get a lot of steps in my classroom, walking around helping different students.
Cindy:
I can imagine
Jon Bergmann:
It's just walking around helping kids. That's the big gist of what mastery is.
Cindy:
So this sounds wild to me as a teacher. Like how do you keep all of this straight? How are you mapping all of this? What does your process look like for that if you were coaching somebody on how to do this in their own setting?
Jon Bergmann:
Well, I mean, I'm doing two things. I'm doing formative assessments. So what I'm doing when I'm walking around the room is quickly formatively assessing them. So a student, when they finish unit nine, lesson one, they have to come to me and they have to prove to me that they've mastered it. Now the way
Cindy:
Hmm.
Jon Bergmann:
they do that is I'm going to physically check over their paper. Usually it's got a series of say questions. I'm gonna probably ask them a question. checks which are online little mini quizzes and they will quickly grade it for me and I can check that that's a real quick check for their understanding. If they've demonstrated that then they've mastered lesson one and then when they get to lesson seven shall we say then they're ready for the summative assessment. So I mean logistically I have a you know tablet I'm keeping track of you know I'll cover some names here's a class right here my smallest class and I've got check marks you can see check marks and then who's got different assignments and where they're at, and I'm keeping track, you know, basically a little, it's like a clipboard with names and check marks. And then at the end of each week, I sit down and try and figure out who's doing well, who's where I expect them, who's behind, and especially those who are behind. Then I have some, sometimes I'll even send emails home or whatever, or
Jon Bergmann:
those are kids I'm gonna really focus on at the beginning of the week and say, we need to chat, what's causing you to be behind. Sometimes they're involved in the play, You know, whatever. There's reasons. Maybe they're really cognitively struggling. Yeah, et cetera.
Cindy:
Do you have limits? This is a pretty nitty gritty question, but do you have limits on how far ahead students are able to get? Or do you have a fail safe in place for if they get too far ahead, how do you manage that?
Jon Bergmann:
They don't, that doesn't usually happen, honestly.
Cindy:
Huh.
Jon Bergmann:
I'm not that organized to be ready for all of them. Part of it is that, you know, as a science teacher, a lot of these involve experiments, and I can't have 20 different experiments set up at the same time. Now I do
Cindy:
Right.
Jon Bergmann:
have, at the current time, I have two different experiments set up at the same time. And sometimes there'll be three. That's as max as I'll probably allow in my room at a time, just from a safety perspective and just the logistics. So, I mean, the trick on what, in mastery is always the logistics and how do you keep the kids-ish together. And so the trick on this is I actually differentiate the summative tests. So in my new book, I talked about this, the Mastery Learning Handbook here. In my new book, I talk about how I have three different levels of mastery. I call it deep understanding, clear understanding, and basic understanding. And at this stage, I've actually simplified that to just clear and deep. At the end of the unit, the students have a choice to take the deep test or the clear test. And that is, and there's two ways I distinguish, I'll either have more complex thoughtful questions about all the lessons, or sometimes, and actually more commonly, what I'll do is I'll say, I'll sit down when I look at my list of units or lessons, and I will say the first five are you have to have seven are nice to knows. And so the clear understanding test covers the first five lessons, the deep covers all seven. And so then
Jon Bergmann:
students, it's like a choose your own adventure, they can figure out which one they want to do. And I got this idea as I was writing the book from two people. There was a history teacher in New Jersey who was doing something with this, and then I talked to a Finnish researcher, educational researcher, and then it all came and I said this is the model and it really has worked by having differentiated assessments.
Jon Bergmann:
So and that way they can roughly be kept together. They can they're so then I don't have kids on unit 10 and 8. Then I'm logistically I can't make that happen. I gotta keep them “ish” together.
Cindy:
And what a beautiful model for life that you're not going to master all content. You might not be passionate about all content, but there
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah.
Cindy:
is stuff that you need to know. But if you do have that passion, that there is just infinitely further depth that you can acquire.
Jon Bergmann:
It's also helped me to really deeply think about what's really important that a student learns. You know, if you look at your textbook or your whatever your curriculum is and you say these are the things, you know, they list so many things and I had to say what really is the essence of a chemistry program or a physics program? That's the two subjects I teach. But, you know, as I worked with these teachers yesterday in the school, you know, I had fourth grade teachers and they're basically that was one of their things. What is the essence of fourth grade reading, I thought they were fourth grade reading teachers I'm thinking of right now that I was working with, that you need to learn, and what are the things that's not absolutely necessary that every person learn? And then you can really differentiate and help your advanced students and then your students who are just getting by. It's been magic, I'm telling you. I could never go back.
Cindy:
And it requires us to see teachers as masters of curriculum, that you need to take the time to unpack and be well-versed and to be able to have those kind of in-depth conversations about what you're teaching and why you're teaching it.
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah, yeah. But, you know, but yes and no. One thing, I go back to the Ashurst Primary School, New Zealand school, it's a K-7 or 8 school, something like that, I forget. It's kind of a little different than the US system. But they did all the heavy lifting at the beginning, developing their curriculum together. It's all
Cindy:
Hmm.
Jon Bergmann:
in these like shared Google Docs for the teachers. And the expectation is that every year, like, you know, per quarter or whatever it is, they have to create three new learning objects which could be either a group space activity, you know, active learning activity, or it could be what they call a flip which would be like a video or a reading that would be useful. And then now they have a bank of these,
Cindy:
Ugh.
Jon Bergmann:
you know, fourth grade teaching, adding fractions. And they've got three flips that they can choose from, from three different teachers of the school, or, and then they have three different activities and they can sort of build their own menu. What Heath, Heath's the principal, he told me, we plan less than almost any other school, but we get more done, we have better results. Because over the course of, it's probably been now five years since they started this process, they've been building this library. And so when a new teacher comes in, they've already got this sort of established curriculum and their expectations, they're gonna contribute you know, 10 more in the course of a year or five or whatever. And they keep building this process over and over again. And it's been, you know, magical. have to be something
Cindy:
Love that.
Jon Bergmann:
that each teacher has to do on her own in her classroom. Ideally, I mean, administrators don't do this alone. Do this as a school. Get buy-in from your staff. That's part of the process too.
Cindy:
Leaders, let's make a bank of these, right? Can you imagine just getting access to that, that bank of resources and being able to contribute to it? That sounds like a business idea, Jon.
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah, I mean, every, but again, the thing that's also makes that work, again, we go back to the question at the beginning, who makes the videos and the content, and if they see the other fourth grade teacher who makes a video on the same subject, then it becomes a community situation. But if I go and I outsource that to, you know, expert teacher of Australia or New Zealand or whatever, then it's not that personal connection because we can't ever forget that education human sport where it requires connections, physical human contact so to speak. And so I'm not sure this is a business idea like let's make a million videos and then sell them on the market.
Cindy:
won't
Jon Bergmann:
I don't think that’s a good idea.
Cindy:
if it doesn't have that relationship behind it.
Relationships and collaboration in the flipped classroom (40:45)
Cindy:
that's good to know. I've got one other question for you in that kind of field of relationships. So I get how flip learning helps you to develop deeper and stronger and more agentic relationships with students, but what about the students with each other? How are you making sure that they are still collaborating and connecting and problem solving together?
Jon Bergmann:
Well, it's almost just built into the DNA because there's hardly any teacher talk time than the students by their social people. And social people like to be social. And so my students will form groups to work on the same thing.
Cindy:
Aww.
Jon Bergmann:
And so that makes them more social. It's just what it is. And I will force a group like today. I had these three kids, two of them normally will work together, but the third doesn't. And I said, you're part of the group. Now you're building relationships with people who are outside of your friend group or your natural group that you would normally be working with and it's like, you're a group today because you're all struggling with this same difficult concept and you're gonna do a little tutorial. You're all, I had them at the board, it's three little sections and they're doing the problems separately with them, you know, just, you know, they had, you know, whiteboard markers and a calculator out and they were working on these things and they were talking and laughing and learning together and yeah, I mean, it's every foot class is not an issue. The kids are going to connect with each
Cindy:
Hmm.
Jon Bergmann:
other better.
Cindy:
Even those outliers, so even those kids who are really far behind or really far ahead find ways to collaborate.
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah, well, and then one of the students today who was really behind, my student who is now six sections ahead or whatever she is, I was trying to help her, still some more, the struggling student, and then she just went over and said, let me help you, because I was jumping around
Cindy:
Ugh.
Jon Bergmann:
and I was trying to give her more attention, and I just didn't have as much time, and Mia, this sweet young lady, came over who was just way ahead and she said, let me show you how to do this.
Cindy:
beautiful.
Jon Bergmann:
Sometimes it's better to come, yeah it was wonderful. And I'm not, sometimes we say, well we should have the advanced students help all the students who are struggling. Sometimes when you do that, then they sort of resent that. I just, if they want to though,
Cindy:
Mm.
Jon Bergmann:
then that's totally good. I don't wanna force kids into something they don't wanna do.
Cindy:
It's building that capacity for leadership and the opportunity for it, but not forcing it.
Jon Bergmann:
Right, right.
Cindy:
I love that. Okay, Jon, we're gonna pause there. I've got the final three questions that I ask every guest who comes in the show. So are you ready for them?
Jon Bergmann:
Absolutely.
Final 3: The 3 Questions we ask every guest (43:21)
Cindy:
Okay, question number one. What is the book that has had the most profound impact on your life and or practice?
Jon Bergmann:
Well, I am a man of faith and there's no question to me that the book that has changed me is the Bible. And if you honestly look at the life of Jesus, in many ways, he modeled the kind of teaching that I'm even talking about, right? He talked about relationship, if there's anything he was ever about, it was that. But also active learning, he sends his disciples two by two out to do different things. And so from that perspective, to me, that's the book that has had the biggest impact on me. perspective what books had the biggest impact. Actually, you know we talked about Drive really changed Erin and I. When we read that book,
Cindy:
Yeah.
Jon Bergmann:
if you read our first book, Flip Your Classroom, a lot of the elements of Drive really went into our thinking and just the autonomy. And as we began to really, we just said, wow, this is kind of what we envision education should be. And actually, there's an interesting note we didn't know when we read the book Drive, the term flipped classroom. Daniel Pink, who wrote Drive. So
Cindy:
Nuh-uh.
Jon Bergmann:
in, yeah, so in, I don't know the exact, I'll get my dates wrong, I'm pretty close, I bet it's in 2011 or 12, 11, 10. Anyways, Dan Pink got a hold of this guy named Carl Fish, F-I-S-C-H. He was a math teacher in Colorado who had made a video that went viral. He was like, yeah, he was a math teacher. And so Carl, though, workshops that Aaron and I gave about flipped classroom he said I'm in and so he flipped his class we didn't call it flipped we called it we called it pre-vodcasting because we're making video podcasts we didn't have a very good name and and then Dan Pink because he knew him from his sort of celebrity status with this one viral video he'd made about education he said we can learn a lot from this teacher in Colorado and we should call this the And he wrote this in the UK Guardian. You could probably look this up. It was a United Kingdom Guardian. It's a big newspaper, periodical of some kind. And he wrote the fish flip. And of course, Carl being Carl, I said, you can't call it the fish flip because I learned from these two guys up in Willow Park. And so that's where the word flip got used for the first time as far as I know. So, we didn’t invent the term.
Cindy:
That's the coolest story I ever heard.
Jon Bergmann:
yeah.
Cindy:
Yeah, I love that book as well. And it kind of leads into my next question actually, because I'm kind of researching the question of, I find that leaders tend to fall in one camp or the other. They tend to be kind of more centered on productivity and meeting metrics, or they tend to be in that camp of like, let's create a sustainable, joyous environment. So I'm wondering, how do leaders strike that balance behind having joyous, sustainable workplaces, but also really productive places that get things done? Any advice there?
Jon Bergmann:
Good question. I guess. It's you've got to build the relationships. I'm going to speak from a classroom teacher. So, I'm trying to lead my kids into both those things. Right. And so one thing I do every day is we have a sort of a fun question at the beginning of every day. So today the question was, would you rather have a rewind button or a pause button on your life and why? And I mean, just and I do that every day. Or the question is, you know, what's the favorite book you've ever read? I mean, I've got a list of 200 questions that I ask. That builds that fun relationship time. But then they know there's expectations too. They know that there are things they need to get done.
Cindy:
Mm.
Jon Bergmann:
So it's both and. I don't know that you can say one or the other because
Cindy:
Yeah.
Jon Bergmann:
you want to have expectations of a staff if you're a principal. I want them to do this and that and this is my expectation. But if it's couched in a relationship, you know, maybe it's you're willing into it if they see you as a leader being willing to, you know, step into the shoes that they are in. You know, I'm in the middle of reading the book Killing Patton, you know, for, it's about, you know, George Patton. And one of
Cindy:
Yeah.
Jon Bergmann:
the things his soldiers used to say is, you know, he would like go in the front of the army with his, like his car with the, like a no top on it. And they would say, wow, he's willing to practically do anything that we do and that those guys, soldiers thought anything of him because he, you know, he wasn't just, he was willing to take risks and to be a man of his people. And so I think he did that, but yet he had high expectations. I mean,
Cindy:
Mmm.
Jon Bergmann:
sometimes controversially, when a soldier was not doing what they're supposed to do, at one point he got in a lot of trouble for this. He slapped this soldier and called him a coward. So he had high expectations. He got in a lot of trouble and almost got demoted and stuff like that for this. this thing but he had high expectations but yet he was willing to roll his shirt sleeves up so to speak and get to work.
Cindy:
So I'm hearing clarity, empathy, and really walking the walk when it comes to being a leader.
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah.
Cindy:
I love that, Jon. Okay, the final question. You have taught around the world. You're a pioneer in the education space. So given all of these experiences, what would be the one piece of advice, if you could tell a leader one thing that would have the biggest impact on their practice, what might it be?
Jon Bergmann:
I think people need to be believed in. When you see somebody doing something that is the kind of you want them to be doing, acknowledge them in a way that doesn't just speak to their quality of doing something, but to the quality of who they are. And, so one thing I really believe strongly about with teaching is I don't want students to be so focused on getting things done, but I want them to understand is who they are matters more than what they do. And so that element of being You know, you are not a human doing, you are a human being. And I try to say, you know, speak to the kids of who they are, not to just how well they perform. I fear for some of our students who are so focused on performing things that their whole identity is tied up in how well they do on this, that, or the other thing, as opposed to you matter because you're human.
Cindy:
Mm.
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah, I don't know. So how can you do that with your staff is, you know, speak to their identity and, you know, people... Why do people misbehave? I would argue they misbehave because they don't know who they are. If they have a sense of identity of who they are, then they will like, you know, they will behave well.
Cindy:
Rise up
Jon Bergmann:
I mean, I think of... I mean, yeah, they will rise up to like, well, you know, I'm the son of so-and-so and that's a part of, you know, those kinds of people, they don't do X. Why would I ever do that?
Cindy:
knowing our stories, knowing our values.
Jon Bergmann:
Yeah.
Cindy:
I love that. I think that's been a big takeaway for me for this is that a misconception that I had was that flipped classrooms almost felt cold or clinical and that I'm really hearing the human element coming through and the empathy and the relationship building in a way that I hadn't before. So I really appreciate that. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today, Jon. This has really been a masterclass and I feel so thankful to get the opportunity to talk with you.
Jon Bergmann:
Well thanks for having me.
Cindy:
We'll chat again soon.
Jon Bergmann:
Alright.
