Personal Narrative: A Career In High School

Throughout high school, I got along well with my teachers and got many As. But that all changed in my junior year, when I took U.S. History 2 with Mr. McLaren. He had been Teacher of the Year at River Edge. The twins down the street raved about all that they had learned from him. But there I was, two months into the school year, falling farther and farther behind. Moreover, my varsity field hockey took time away from my studies. When I did get to work on assignments, usually on Sunday afternoons, I had trouble linking the readings and writing assignments to the previous week's lectures. I lived in fear of getting called on by Mr. McLaren, dreaded tests and quizzes, and shook every time he handed back a graded assignment. I was never a quitter but didn't know what to do about the problem. I needed a good grade in U.S. History 2 on my transcript! Then I spent a holiday weekend with Kara, a friend from summer camp who attended high school in Austin. She explained an unusual approach to teaching U.S. history at her high school: the flipped classroom. …show more content…
The teachers make videos on their computers and post them to a site; students follow a link to that site, watch the videos, and use Google Forms to submit a summary and ask questions. The next day, the teachers answer questions students have uploaded and review key points. Then the students debate about the issues in the video or work in small groups on legal cases and historical documents, applying the previous night's video lecture. According to Kara, she's never liked history more nor understood it any