by Julia Maffei

The Lilly Conference has become my yearly opportunity to rub elbows with innovative educators. This year, I was pleased to attend the conference as well as present there. My colleague, Anne Fletcher, and I spoke about “Motivating and Engaging Students.” I focused on the importance of establishing connections among students and the teacher to create a learning community to foster student success, while Anne Fletcher spoke about the importance of students’ metacognition of their brain function and how they can use that understanding to achieve their goals.

The two sessions that I attended that resonated most deeply were accounts of creating a flipped classroom. E. Turnell presented “To Flip or Flop” about flipping a math class at Houston Community College, and M. Hernandez spoke about flipping a Spanish class in “Building Language Skills Using Team Based Learning Approach.” I teach English to Speakers of Other Languages, so I am a language teacher, like M. Hernandez. I found the session on the foreign language class particularly interesting, as most flipped classes that I had heard about had been in the sciences, not the humanities. Both Turnell and Hernandez noticed gains in student success and engagement in their classes.

In both sessions, the speakers used team-based learning and grouped students into permanent teams. First they studied material independently outside of class. Later, in class, they were assessed individually and then collaborated on the same assessment with their group. Next was a class discussion to clarify questions, a mini-lecture to clarify the muddiest point and finally active group work on the subject of study. The active learning could extend to more than one class if needed.

I was inspired by the sessions to flip a portion of my ESOL Writing and Grammar 5 class. Following the team-based learning cycle, students are actively studying grammar outside of class, and we are following the steps of the model in class. I have had to be flexible to accommodate students’ needs and make some adjustments, such as adding more out of class practice materials and a short Q&A before the quiz, but so far, so good! My hope is that this method pushes students to be more autonomous in their learning.

Once again, lessons learned at the Lilly conference have motivated me to be more thoughtful, creative and dynamic in my teaching!

A note from the editor: Applications for next year’s Lilly Scholarship are now open! Learn more and apply by November 3, 2017 by visiting: http://sites.austincc.edu/fctl/lilly-scholarships/