Flipping the Room

“The process has evolved. My goals have changed.”

I’m sitting in Kevin Hickey’s 3rd floor classroom, a large room with little more than neatly arranged rows of desks and whiteboards, but whose spareness belies the dynamic complexity of what takes place there every day. There is something almost monastic about his ascetic style, a vibe that compliments our topic—his AP Calculus B/C course, aka Calc 2—and the purity of mathematics. 

Over the last two school years, Hickey has been embarking on an experiment in the department’s highest offering, ceding a measure of control to his students and finding not only achievement but delight in the process.

“These kids have taken so much math to get to this point that they’ve earned it,” Hickey says. “All of them have a certain level of love for the subject otherwise they wouldn’t be here. Calc 2 is the pinnacle class—they should have some rights to what goes on if only because of the journey they’ve been on. “

For twenty-two years, Hickey has been an important part of LI’s math and science programs. Starting primarily as a physics teacher, Hickey eventually moved into the Math Department fifteen years ago and has been there ever since. His students (including both of my children) have loved his classes not only for their academic excellence but for Hickey’s knack for tangents. 

No, not the geometry kind but instead his custom of taking periodic breaks from formulas and proofs to talk more broadly about life and philosophical matters. It’s no surprise that Hickey was LI’s “Teacher of the Year” for 2024 or that he was picked by last year’s senior class to be the faculty speaker at Baccalaureate.

The seed for this new direction was planted a couple of years ago. “I had a class of ten students. It was a talented group, everyone worked hard, and nearly everyone earned a five [the highest score possible on the AP exam]. But afterward it just felt like something was missing. We were so focused on the test itself, the end result. I wondered if that deeper love for math that had brought students to this point was getting pushed aside in the process. It made me think about what I was doing. Maybe there was a better way.”

So starting last year, Hickey began to experiment. It was a small class of three students, but all highly capable. “It wasn’t so much that the AP exam wasn’t a priority, but I made it clear that it was of secondary importance. They came in loving math, and I wanted to help them to love it even more.”

His goal was to empower his students. Part of the change involved what was taught—or rather what was learned. 

“Students earned more say in how the ship was being steered. At certain points, I gave them a choice about which topics they wanted to study and even which assignments they wanted to tackle. We made sure to do the essentials, but there were points where we could go in different directions, and I let them choose based on what excited them the most. We actually ended up studying topics that went beyond the exam a couple times.”

Due dates were also flexible. “I would propose deadlines, and we would have a conversation about what they felt was reasonable given their overall workload. At times we made adjustments.” 

Hickey said the class embraced a variation of a famous line from Homer where Odysseus says, “There’s a time for making speeches and a time for going to bed.” 

“One of the students made a little sign that we hung in the classroom—’There’s a time for doing AP homework, and a time for going to bed.’”

The flexibility went both ways, however. Sometimes, Hickey would offer additional assignments. Honesty was key. 

“I made it clear to them that it was okay if they wanted a score of two on the exam and still take the course because they loved the subject. It’s a really difficult exam. But I also made it clear that if they wanted to score a five then this is what they would need to do, that these were the kind of assignments they would need to complete. Fortunately, they were all in.”

“Flipping the classroom” not only involved giving the students more agency over the curriculum, it also involved a few shifts in pedagogy. “We tried some new things,” Hickey says. “We did ‘relay problems’ where I made up a series of difficult problems, put them up on the board, and they each had 60 seconds to work on a problem before moving on to the next one. It required them to be very clear in their work so the next person could follow their process and pick up where they left off.”