1. #FlipBand
Flipping the Instrumental Music Class for !
Increased Student Achievement
Vincent S. Du Beau!
Delsea Regional School District!
!
NJMEA Conference!
East Brunswick, NJ!
February 21, 2015
5. What if we shifted the paradigm to one where students really did come first? What if students could work
collaboratively in band class on their parts, chamber music, solo literature, scale studies, and come prepared and
energized to their next band rehearsal?
6. What if direct instruction and intentional/instructional grouping could change your program?
7. Imagine how many musicians we could affect each day. Imagine the problems we could solve for students who are
too afraid to stop rehearsal to ask you. Imagine designing individualized goals for students in an environment where
they can work with their classmates to achieve.
12. Shift Content Distribution
Content is delivered asynchronously via video instruction, podcasts, etc. Application and doing occur in-class where
we have the opportunity to work with students, answer their questions, and help them solve their problems in real-
time.
13. What’s the best use of your time? How can you make the most of the face to face time with your students?
14. Students matter.
So do their learning styles.
All of our students learn differently. Yet we funnel them all into the same rehearsal with the same instruction and all
we can do is offer “extra help” by way of lesson periods or after school help. This fails to reach the students who
legitimately cannot make those arrangements. We need to be doing the teaching and the helping on their time, in
the time in their schedules blocked out for our classes.
I’ll come back to this image a little later.
16. Three Phases of Change
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)!
Polish psychologist !
Father of modern social
psychology
Change process result of effort to change food habits during WWII: that is, to “influence people to eat less desirable
but cheaper foods” (Burke, 2011, p. 154). Three phases identified to be successful: unfreezing, moving, and freezing
(often referred to as “refreezing”).
17. Unfreezing
This first phase addresses the confrontation of a problem. In our case, the problems are fairly typical, as we’ll see in
the next slide. This is an important phase because it often challenges people’s sense of normalcy and what they
consider to be right.
18. Need for change…
No time to practice
Not interested in practicing
Don’t know how!
to practice
Ensemble not progressing
Revisiting same material/!
same sections
Students not achieving
Not enough students!
study privately
No time to stop during class!
for individual problems
19. Moving
In the moving phase, we’re talking about actually making the changes to our rehearsal sequence. This means going
from a 5/day per week ensemble rehearsal to something else. In our case, it is a 3/day flipped classroom for
individual practice and a 2/day ensemble rehearsal to check for understanding.
The next slide will explain a bit about how we get into the moving phase, and how we decide what we are moving
towards.
20. Moving in 4 Phases
1. What are you doing? What’s missing? !
2. See what everyone else is doing!!
3. Try it out yourself.!
4. Draw conclusions. What worked? What didn’t work?
(Fullan, 2011)
Phase one of Fullan’s approach, the “What are you doing?”, is embedded in Lewin’s “unfreezing” phase. We know
what’s missing from most programs, that being student practice time and reaching the highest levels of potential and
achievement.
22. No One Right Way
Individual practice in-class!
Video library of common
skills addressed in class!
Use of BYOD!
Journaling (DuFour)
Explain journaling
23. The journaling framework was designed based on Rick DuFour’s model for highly functioning PLCs. That is:
1. What do we want them to know?
2. How will know when they have learned it?
3. How will we respond when they don’t learn it?
4. How will we respond when the have learned it?
27. Once you’ve seen what else is out there, try something out for yourself! You have to gauge your program and assess
its needed. Based on those findings, implement the strategies you find best suit your group and see what works.
Some things to consider:
1. How will you implement the change?
2. What’s available? (you should know this by now if you went through phase 2!)
3. Who’s supporting you?
28. Just in case you don’t know what’s available, here are some screenshots from a couple of quick Google searches.
Also included are our district’s website, YouTube channel, and my blog articles on the flipped band class.
29.
30. Support
Don’t go it alone. If you’re a social media type, reach out to your PLN (Professional Learning Network) and ask the
questions to which you have no answer. Talk with your administration and see what they can help with as you learn
what you need.
Remember this: sound educational decisions will almost always gain consideration, even if they’re rejected the first
time around. Rash, dictatorial demands will just find you right where started at square one.
34. Dress for Success
Safeguard against regression!
Provide students what they need!
Leg work!
Remember Robert Frost…
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
38. References
Burke, W. W. (2011). Organization change: Theory and practice (3rd ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.!
Fullan, M. (2011). Change leader. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.!
Lewin, K. (1947). Group decision and social change. In T. M.
Newcomb, E. L. Hartley, et al. (Eds.), Readings in social psychology (pp.
330-344). New York: Henry Holt.
