For Jonathan Thomas-Palmer, a CHS physics teacher, learning is more than being taught. And after twenty years of trying to find ways to improve his classroom learning environment, he has essentially perfected it. Through his trademarked brand, Flipping Physics, Thomas-Palmer has come up with an innovative method of teaching students in-person and across the globe.
Flipping Physics is Thomas-Palmer’s spin on a “flipped classroom”; a nuanced learning method that redefines learning at home and in the classroom. A flipped classroom revolves around two basic principles: efficiency and flexibility. This curriculum involves students receiving a majority of direct instruction from home as homework via lecture videos. Moving much of the direct instruction from the classroom means that the work students would normally complete as “homework” will be done in class. For Flipping Physics in particular, at home lectures consist of upbeat, flashy and high quality videos curated by Thomas-Palmer himself, while time in class is mostly dedicated to labs and group projects. This is a complete shift in how people conceptualize school, homework, teachers and student responsibilities. “Welcome to the paradigm shift,” Thomas-Palmer closes his FOS 4 syllabus.
Thomas-Palmer’s road to success was not linear. In 1991, he got his Bachelor’s Degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and proceeded to become a quality engineer at an automotive company for just over a year. But after six months of working, he felt trapped by his job, surrounded by coworkers in their 30s and 40s that were stuck with families to support and responsibilities to uphold. Being only in his mid 20s at the time and untethered to family life, he re-evaluated his path and returned to the University of Michigan for his Masters of Art Certification. After one short year, he proudly graduated with his new Masters Degree and teaching certificate.
Thomas-Palmer stepped foot into a new chapter of his life with a refreshed outlook. He found a job at Northville High School where he taught for 13 years, specializing in everything physics, including AP and college prep courses. It was during his time at Northville High School when he realized that orthodox learning and teaching wasn’t for him.
“After ten years of teaching, I realized the way I was teaching was the way I had been taught,” Thomas-Palmer said. “And I never really considered whether it was a good way to teach or a good way to learn.”
In 2013, Thomas-Palmer quit his job to pursue his business idea, Flipping Physics, full time. That reality was short lived after he landed a job at CHS as a part-time physics teacher in 2015.
Throughout the past seven years, Thomas-Palmer has developed his academic philosophies into a transformative and contemporary outlook on teaching. His ideology revolves on creating a classroom environment that is most efficient with students' time and gives them flexibility to learn at their own pace — allowing students to pick what material they’re going to work on from day to day. But his goal extends beyond the classroom.
“My teaching philosophy is basically to help you figure out how to use your brain to learn,” Thomas-Palmer said. “I don't actually consider myself a physics teacher, per se. I use physics as a tool to help [my students] figure out how to solve problems, and how to take a look at a situation and analyze the situation and learn from it.”
Thomas-Palmer hopes students will take practical life lessons from his physics class: basic problem solving skills and the ability to persevere when confronted with any problem, just to name a few. He appreciates the way that his class gives reason to the math that students have been learning throughout their high school years. His class effectively combines conceptual topics with labs and projects in order to create a more concrete and tangible understanding of class material.
To help convey abstract physics topics in entertaining and informative ways, Thomas-Palmer has the help of three characters: Billy, Bobby and Bo. The notorious characters, all played by Thomas-Palmer, star in Flipping Physics videos. And of course, Thomas-Palmer is Mr. P, the teacher.
The idea of featuring unique characters in his videos was conceptualized 19 years ago, when Thomas-Palmer was forced to miss a few days of school. A stickler for never missing school, he resolved to try something new.
“I decided to make some videos of myself teaching to show to my students while I was gone,” Thomas Palmer said. “Rather than lecture to no one, I decided that I needed students to lecture to. So I went to my closet, and I found clothes that I thought could represent three different people; I found a tie dye shirt, a tie and a Steelers jersey.”
Over the years, Billy, Bobby and Bo have developed into multifaceted and personable characters. Rather than having a singular person preach to viewers about a topic, including various perspectives transforms the lesson into a conversation; a safe space to make mistakes and present things in different ways without a sense of redundancy. Billy is presented as the conventional nerd, Bobby is the removed, athletic guy, and Bo is that laid back kid that contributes as little as possible to the class.
However, Thomas-Palmer wanted to avoid playing off of stereotypes and negative connotations associated with a characteristic. He didn’t want Bobby to be “stupid” and Billy to be “smart.” When he writes scripts for each character, he is very intentional with the interactions they have with each other and their dialogue.
“If you've ever really watched, Billy is really articulate and very careful about everything that he says,” Thomas-Palmer siad. “When Bo speaks, he's actually kind of the opposite. He is most often abbreviating things and making little shortcuts. I use that as a tool to talk about things that students will often do: shortcuts, which in the end, don't work out. But you'll notice, when there are two correct ways to solve something I will often have Billy and Bo correct it both. And then do it both ways and then get into an argument about it. And Bobby is the one who solves the argument.”
Ever since his first Flipping Physics video in 2013, Thomas-Palmer has worked to improve the editing and quality of his videos; his videos now consist of flashy transitions, catchy tunes, funny jokes and unique demonstrations of ideas. From a technical standpoint, Thomas-Palmer has worked hard to perfect the lighting and refine his editing to achieve a seamless video that splices three separate films together. His hard work and teaching style has undoubtedly paid off; he has accumulated 92,000 subscribers and counting on YouTube and his webpage garners high traffic.
As much as Thomas-Palmer has grown, so have the responsibilities and the upkeep of his presence online. With almost 500 videos and a constant flow of comments, emails and direct messages, he finds it hard to stay on top of the workload. One of the biggest struggles Thomas-Palmer now faces is finding the balance between continuing doing what he loves as a one-man show, and pursuing bigger goals and selling out.
“A lot of times you'll see paid advertisements in the middle of videos,” Thomas-Palmer said. “I'm just not planning to do that. I feel like I should be able to do this without needing that. I want to grow my brand, but I want to stay who I am as I do it.”
For the near future, Thomas-Palmer is set on continuing to teach at CHS while preserving his love for Flipping Physics and keeping his workload within his means.