Richard Whitmire

“At other charter networks, the changes made to boost college success might look a little different, but they share one commonality: making students more independent learners and thus more likely to survive on a college campus. At Boston’s Brooke Charter Schools, for example, which just launched its first high school and has yet to send any graduates to college, the mindset begins in the earliest grades. During one visit there, I watched fourth-grade teacher Heidi Deck practice “flipped instruction,” in which students, when presented with a new problem, are first asked to solve it on their own, armed only with the tools of lessons learned from previous problems. “We really push kids to be engaged with the struggle,” said Deck. Next, she invites them to collaborate with one another to solve the problem, followed by more individual attempts to do the same. Always, Deck expects the students to figure out the puzzle. This is exactly the opposite of the most common approach to instruction, in which teachers demonstrate and then have students practice what they just watched. That’s dubbed the “I do —we do —you do” approach. With flipped instruction —and the many other teacher innovations here —“kids have to do the logical work of figuring something out rather than repeating what the teacher does,” said Brooke’s chief academic officer, Kimberly Steadman. The goal: Starting with its Class of 2020, the first graduating class Brooke sends off to college, all its students will be independent learners, able to roll with the surprises that confront all college students, especially first-generation college-goers.”
― Richard Whitmire, The B.A. Breakthrough: How Ending Diploma Disparities Can Change the Face of America