Over the past year (and intensifying particularly over the past month), collaboration has become one of those omnipresent educational buzzwords. It is often attached to things like "21st century education" (which is a silly term how it is used--we're "preparing" students for "a 21st century world"-- I'm pretty sure that we're almost fifteen years into the century now...).  

Sorry for the digression. Obviously, if you've read any of my blog (or Cheryl's), before, you know that collaboration in its purest, non-transactional form, is the cornerstone of our practice. We'd never want to stop.

However, there seem to be a few reasons we don't collaborate as a general rule. The first two are obvious; the third, perhaps less so. 

The first reason teachers don't collaborate is the culture of competition we have in our schools. We want everyone to do well, but just a little less well than us. We forget that we're talking about students here, not numbers on a page.  The second reason, and the one everyone gives when asked why they don't collaborate more often, is time. Many teachers are set in their ways, many have small children, many have hundreds of other responsibilities, and collaboration just seems like another item to add to the list.  

It's not; it's critical for professional growth and personal sanity. But that, again, is a different thread for a different time (though it's one that Cheryl addresses in 90% of the blogs she writes). 

My concern here is with the third reason people don't collaborate. This reason is perhaps the most insidious of the three, because it's not a reason we can get rid of via external means, like eliminating standardized tests or giving teachers an extra hour of planning time a day.  

The reason that underlies so much of the non-collaborative spirit we see in schools today is that we don't think our ideas are good enough. We don't want to share because we're afraid of being mocked, or being told we're doing it wrong, or people suggesting "improvements" to something we thought we'd perfected. 

I am certainly guilty of this. I share the class difficulties I face with Cheryl and the other members of the #CoFlip Collective (hereafter #TheCFC), but as for sharing things here, with the larger educational world...I definitely hold back. I hope that the result of this withholding isn't that everyone who reads my blog thinking I have all my class stuff perfectly together. I don't. (Nor does anyone.)

Education is messy. That's why this blog is called Concerted Chaos.  There is a point to what we do in class, sure, but we aren't dealing with little automatons. We teach and learn with real people.  It's chaotic. 

I think it's important to share the struggles we all have during our school days.  Other teachers need to see the mess-- one of the most dangerous trains of thought for any teacher is "It's only me that's having this problem, and it's my fault."  Actually, it's probably not your fault, and you're DEFINITELY not the only one experiencing that problem.  

True collaboration is an art form--it requires us to be vulnerable, to say, "What about this?" without fear of being shot down immediately.  We need to have safe spaces to say what we really think, and have real practitioners offer real solutions.  That's what collaboration has given me. It took me a long time to trust my own voice in our collaborative partnership. I have realized, though, that I can't withhold my ideas, no matter how terrible I think they are, or how badly I think they reflect on my classroom.  

Those bad ideas may not be bad at all.  And they very well might be the seeds of far greater things to come. 

To that end, #TheCFC will be introducing (in the next month or so--stay tuned for specifics!) the Flipped Learning Journal, an online collection of the best ideas regarding the Collaborative Flip.  Our intent is that this will become a place much like English Journal is for NCTE/English teachers, where we publish concrete, nuts-and-bolts, this-is-how-you-do-this-in-real-classrooms types of articles.  Also in the works, to go along with the FLJ, is a vodcast through which you will get to tour actual live flipped classrooms and see how they really work in the real world. 

We're very excited about this-- we're certainly not perfect, but we have some ideas.  It'll be cool for everyone to see what they look like where the rubber meets the road. 

I haven't been on a plane in 15 years. The last flight I took was on a hummingbird matchstick two-propeller plane for a little less than an hour, from Charlotte, NC, to Chattanooga, TN to visit my cousin.  I had no real problems on the flight, though my seatmate was not a pleasant human being. He insisted I twist my knees under the seat in front of mine, which was tilted back into my bubble as it was. He encouraged me to not listen to my Walkman so loudly, too, as Ed Kowalczyk probably violated his Sade sensibilities. 

This summer, though, I get the opportunity to fly again, to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area for FlipCon13, where Cheryl and I may (if we're lucky) get to present something about this crazy beautiful year we've been having with the #coflipallstars. It will be a time of joy and laughter and cupcakes and learning.

And, to be fair, some terror. 

This impending summer trip is kind of a microcosm for this whole year of changes: new school; new subject matter at a new grade level; new friends; new colleagues, both on the local campus and worldwide; a new expanded teaching style; a new expanded insistence for students to take control of their own educations and try things that terrify them. It's only fair, then, that this year of educational transformation be bound on both ends with major changes. On the front end, deciding to team-teach English classes with a person I've never met from 2700 miles away; on the back end, getting on a plane to fly halfway across the same country to meet this person (and dozens of others who have changed/challenged/pushed my thinking and grown my educational reach).  

It's easy to sit in my green chair and say that I should just shut up and face the fears and get on the plane and everything will be hunky-dory. It's easy to say, from this seat, that this is just another example of modeling the type of courage in the face of new experiences that I expect from the students I share my classroom with.  

It serves us well, though, to fly this metaphor a little further (surprising, I know, for an English teacher).  

First, it would do us all good to remember that school, every day, is the kind of terrifying for some students that walking into that airport may well be for me.  Every day represents something new, something that pushes them outside their comfort zone, either academically or socially. Every day, they are probably faced with a whole bevy of problems they probably have no schema to understand or face or solve.  Every day, their sense of competence and control is subsumed.  Even as flipped educators, what we're asking from kids is new and difficult and challenging, even if it's challenging in a completely different way than asking them to memorize a ton of facts. 

Second, for some of us (like me), the fear of flight is literal.  But it works as a metaphor for all of us, especially the teachers among us.  My fear has more to do with lack of control than height--but we need to remember that to reach those dizzying heights and speeds on an airplane, we have to give up control (or get a pilot's license).  

And so it is in the classroom as well.  Cheryl and I have talked a lot about student choice lately, and the bulk of that conversation belongs in another entry.  However, we recognizse that for our classes to reach the beautiful mountaintop edu-awesome heights we plan and dream for, we have to give them the parts to build a plane and, with guidance, let them have at it.  Yes, some days in classes like that, we crash into the side of a mountain. But some days are helicopter days, going up and up and up with no end in sight. 

So yes, I'm getting on that plane this summer. And yes, I'm going to be scared.  And yes, our new semesters hold days of wreckage and days of perfect propellors, but man. So totally worth it. 

Special thanks to Cheryl, Karl, Crystal, and the rest of the #coflipposse, who, if I try to name all of, I will leave someone out and cause wailing and gnashing of teeth. You are all amazing. I can't wait to #cofliptheworld with you.