57 Mastery Flip
00:00:00 Jon Bergmann: Averting eye stupefaction. Why I'm flipping my class again. Hey, that's the topic of today's episode of the Reach Every Student podcast.
00:00:15 Jon Bergmann: In two thousand and seven, when Aaron Sams and I first started recording our chemistry lectures so our students could watch them at home, we didn't realize we were going to start a movement. We just wanted to stop teaching to the middle, and we wanted to reach the students who were struggling and challenged the students who needed the extra help. It's today in my fortieth year in teaching. I find myself teaching in this classroom. Right. we're at the precipice of a second, more profound revolution. If the flipped classroom was about reclaiming the group space, the space here in my classroom, then the next evolution that I'm going to call the mastery Flip is about protecting the human mind from the very tools designed to assist it. So I think we're in the midst of what I'm calling the great bifurcation. There's the there's two versions of reality that can happen. There's the crutch versus the engine. The path of the crutch is the path of stupefaction. You see, I think we've got a choice right now in the history of education. It's a bifurcation that is going on right now. There are two options right now for education. I fear that both of these are going to happen. Path number one is the path of the crutch. This is the stupid faction trap. This is the future where AI becomes the ultimate shortcut. When a student leans into the I to give them the answer, rather than leaning into the productive struggle that there. And what happens is their brain atrophies. We risk we are risking a generation that is stupefied by AI, depending on the algorithm to tell them what to believe, how to think. But there's a second path. That's the path of the engine. I'm going to call this the soaring generation. This is the path of the what I'm going to talk about right now, the mastery flip. It's an engine that doesn't replace the driver. It allows them to go further in this future. Students use AI as a Socratic coach tutor, a thinking partner that pushes them to synthesize and elaborate. These students won't just keep up with the world. I think they're going to soar in the world. I have students in this room who I see every day, who I see that's going to happen, and I fear I may have some students on the other path. This leads us to like a new rule of homework, right? In the old flip the independent space. That's the homework, right? Was static today, AI can solve that problem, but it's created a new one, right? Because you see, the reality of modern classrooms is this we can no longer send home the cognitively complex work, because if we do, it's too tempting for students to just use AI to cheat. And so I recently had a conversation with one of our English teachers. I said, sending home the essay is dead now. She said, oh yeah, I mean, that is the reality of the world we live in, we're living in, right? So we need to avert this. Stupefaction so I'm going to flip the model again. We must use digital tools to clear the fog at home, and we must bring the heavy weights back into the classroom. So here's the big idea, right? The big idea is that I've created a new framework that I'm going to call for right now, the Mastery Flip. It's built on three pillars. Pillar number one is AI engines. Number two analog routes. And number three human checks. Here's the truth about this vision that I'm proposing here. The infrastructure for what I'm about to talk about isn't built yet. We are at, like, the dial up version of AI, and it's what we need. what I'm calling for is for tech companies to rise to meet the needs of education. You see, here's the issue I'm seeing is that AI was built for business and built for, to supercharge business people. It's not built for educators, and it's not taking into account the productive struggle that's needed for a adolescent or pre-adolescent mind to think through new concepts. So pillar one AI engines. All right. AI engines want to turbocharge the independent space you see in that old flip the independent space. The student got stuck at home. and three minute mark in the video, they were stuck. They just couldn't do anything. You see, it's always been a weakness of that flipped classroom model is that a student can't raise their hand and ask a question to Mr. Bergmann. All right. So but in the mastery flip, that independent space could become a vibrant, adaptive conversation. Imagine the student interrupting the AI, an AI version of me, which is weird. They're watching a video of me teaching them a physics or geology concept, whatever I'm teaching. And then they they can ask the question of the AI what? I think what we need, this is what I'm calling for. We need a new set of, I'm going to call it term wrappers that wrap around the AI. And but they're designed for cognitive development based upon what we know about education and how students learn, how the brain learns, all the stuff that we know it. It's not going to provide a solution for our students, but maybe provide them a hint of logic. It's going to identify what specific misconception they have, and maybe it'll offer like a personalized metaphor for them. So kids into skateboarding, boom. They get skateboarding metaphor to explain something. Uh, lots of things like that. All right. So that's pillar one. Pillar two is I'm going to call the analog routes. This is the anchor of learning. Hear me carefully. Thriving doesn't only happen behind a screen. In fact, rarely does. I'm increasingly intrigued by the analog roots movement. This is you see this in some of the classical schools that are growing, right? Or there's Sweden has recently said we're going to get rid of of digital tools, and we're going to move back to paper textbooks. Uh, things like that. So there's a growing realization that low tech actually means high cognition, the analog anchor that's leaves the levels the playing field ensures the focus remains on the student's internal logic, rather than their access to a high speed internet or the latest version of ChatGPT right in the mastery flip. This is the anchor. We must resist the urge to digitize everything. I see a future where AI serves as like a pre-check while the deep work happens on paper. Paper? That's right, I said paper. Whether a student uses an AI engine to clear the fog of the physical textbook, that may not be such a bad thing. But see, there's something about writing. There's something about personally drawing a sketch, a diagram of a mind map that research shows us really works. So to that end, I'm going to call for this. I'm calling for a resurgence of the student use of printed materials. Yeah, yeah. In class, students answer questions in packets or on papers. I have packets where they are. Here they are. I hand out packets of paper to my students, and they actually physically write things in these packets. Something I've noticed in the last number of years is students handwriting has diminished. But I think it's because they're typing so much and they're not using just that tactile motion additionally, I think we need to ensure that classrooms are used the best active learning strategies. So for example, my students are going to be building something like this. This is a ancient trebuchet. This is a smaller model. They're going to be a monster one. And they're going to go to the football field and they're going to launch them um, many, many yards. That's the goal. We'll see how it goes. And they have to physically do things. So you need to have active learning, the best understanding of active learning. So let's review. Pillar one was we need to have AI engines. So that's a good thing right. Second we need analog roots. And third we need human checks. This is where we validate their cognitive journey. So while the analog roots provide the soil think of it soil for the struggle. The human check is where we harvest the results. A little sort of metaphor of growing things. Right. Uh, and this the idea here is, I think here I got three things. Okay. Number one in this is I'm saying they need to have an artifact, an analog anchor. So they're going to take this paper here. This is my physics one. And they're going to actually have this in front of them. Right. They're going to do work right here. This is the analog anchor. They're going to fill out these things. They're going to work on this in class right. Because you want to do the cognitively complex stuff in the classroom not outside the classroom. And then the second step is what I'm calling the interaction or the mastery check. So I've started this I've been doing this now for a number of years. Is it's expected that when a student completes this section, this is section eight point two right here in my physics section, they are required to have a conversation with me where I'm going to say, please explain how you did number five or can you explain this thing about this geological phenomenon? Uh, uh, last yesterday. Yeah. Yesterday we were talking about floods and streams and the conversation was, tell me the difference between a regional and a a flash flood and what causes one versus the other. Lots of very interesting things that you can. And it's such a rich conversation, such a rich reach out to me. I can show you examples of these. I have some students permissions to show you what these conversations look like, so I call these. These are the mastery checks. And these students have to explain what they learned. You see this is the ultimate AI killer in terms of using AI in the wrong way. Because what it does is the students are it's like a it's an oral exam. It's an oral mastery check. It's a two minute conversation and they have to be able to explain it. I mean, it's not uncommon for me to go and work on an mastery check and say, dude, you don't know this. Figure it out and I'll talk to you later. And then they've got to go back. And then they they'll open up their laptop and they will start working on trying to understand the concept. This mastery check is such a beautiful thing. And it doesn't just work in a science classroom. It works in any kind of a conversation. Tell me more about the causes of the Civil War or whatever. I mean, whatever the topic is that you are teaching, it's going to work and you see the result of this is what I want to say is retrieval mastery. So I still believe in sound crazy, right? For me, I still believe in paper tests. I still believe in multiple choice. I still believe that the old assessment strategies that where students have to prove that they've learned something are still valid. So I still give old school exams. Okay. I think that because they have to walk in there with no help and only their brain to learn, and that preparation is preparing students. It's not just preparing, it's preparing students to think, because our goal is to teach them how to think, right. We we don't want to stupefy our kids. All right. All this to said, uh, that's that's the big three, right? My three pillars. And but as I think about what needs to happen in the world of education is I think we've got some things that need to be built. So edtech guys, hear me out. Here's what I want. Okay. Build this. This doesn't exist yet. Okay. Number one, the content wrapper. When a student's watching the flip video, I kind of alluded to this earlier. I guess the idea is I want you to build something where the. They're watching a video, and it can be interrupted, and they can have a conversation with the video, either via, like texting the AI. They're confused. They're lost. This has always been one of the weaknesses of the flipped classroom. But I also want this stuff, the data coming back flowing to me so I know which students are struggling with what the there's AI summaries of the conversations that they had with the AI when they're doing their flipped video homework. This would be so powerful. So number one, the content writer. Number two, the cognitive twin. All right, big guy. This is a big ask. Okay. We need an AI rapper that follows a student from early grades to graduation so that it it identifies what their gaps are and helps them. This will lead us more to a competency based, mastery based learning. It would change everything. Got this okay. Now number three. All right. Not necessarily in any importance to this list. We need what I'm going to call the simulation wrapper. This is where the AI can generate like a whole world, right? They could build a virtual world that follows the laws of physics. I'm now thinking from a science perspective that would just be built on the fly, sort of a play place for them to make a quick little like test of something, and it gets built on the fly. The next one is a translator. So number four is the translator. Some students are very into one thing versus the other. so if you're a skateboarder then teach physics in the context of skateboarding, if you're a skateboarder, there's a way to I don't know how you do this. I'm not that creative, but how could you do skateboarder metaphors when you're teaching somebody how to speak a different language? Uh, use skateboarder language? I don't know. There's a way that the AI is going to individualize and personalize for each kids. These rappers aren't built yet. We need them in education. Number five, we needed integrated AI assessment tools. All right. So I've got some assessment tools I'm using, but I don't like them. You see, I want ones that can quickly grade student understanding, so I often have students type a response. I have to read carefully each response. And I know there's like AI graders for these kinds of things, but it's not all in one platform. I guess that's what leads me to, um, two more. Uh, number six is a coach's assistant during my little five minute little conversations. Here's what I want. Or my two minute conversations. I want to somehow have a record button to record the conversation. And while it's being recorded, I want AI to be a coach for me, to help me ask better questions, but also to summarize the conversations and identify what that looks like for kids. These tools exist now, like you have these recording devices that record meetings and summarize the meetings. I've used them. They're awesome, but it needs to all be integrated into in a more cognitively Appropriate system for our students. It's more education centered, I guess, because again, at the top I talked about this, right. One of the problems I find is that education AI is built for productivity for white collar professionals. That's basically what it is. And it's not been very useful for it's hurting students. Okay. So overall this is number seven. This is what I think is probably the this is the pie in the sky idea. Please, please build this. We need something I'm going to call learning OS. With learning OS I think of it like an advanced LMS that takes all of these rappers, puts them together, and it's all a seamless whole. Instead of having I've got an assessment tool and I've got a presentation tool and I've got video tools and I've got ways to it's they're all over the board. It's not helpful. Teachers need a simple way. They don't need to be crazy technologists. They need to teach. Duh. Right. Okay, so here's my my big call to action guys. Um, for forty years, I've been working on the blooms double sigma problem. we need to scale the human connection. This is all about actually making education more human. We sadly have made it too digital, and we need to bring those analog roots back. You see, the mastery flip these three pillars is is the Bloom's double Sigma problem at scale? And by the way, Bloom's Double Sigma is that bloom was in Benjamin Bloom in the nineteen eighty four. He he challenged us to make education as effective as one on one tutoring. One on one tutoring, they say, is pretty much the best way to learn. However, the problem is, is you can't scale that well. This is mastery. Flip is Bloom's at scale, you see, because it prioritizes Socratic dialogue. It protects that analog anchor. This I'm holding in my hand. Right. And it elevates the human check. You see, we need to make the highest value be the human. The human. And I'm referring mostly now to the teacher teachers who are listening to this. That should be our highest elevation. The mastery flip is you see that scale. It's not about replacing the teacher with a robot. It's about using the robot to free the teacher to be more human. Right. As I shift from information provider, I've actually made this shift. But as teachers move from information provider to cognitive coach, I see horizon where every student has the support to thrive in our world. We have the tools and the research. We now need the courage to demand the struggle, the wisdom to protect the roots. And the heart of our students. So we can finally make good on the goal. That has driven me in the vast majority of my career. To reach every student, in every class, every day. Let's stop worrying about the robots and start focusing on the humans. Let's build the engines, right? This is about the engines that will help us to soar. Let's protect the roots and then we can watch our students thrive.
00:17:30 Jon Bergmann: Thanks for listening. This has been Jon Bergmann. If you like my podcast or whatever. Hey, you know the thing. Click subscribe. I'd love if you shared it. Reach out to me at jonbergmann.com and ask any questions. Have a wonderful day.
