How I changed from being the center of attention!

To get to where I am now, was a long journey. But the short and sweet of it was I finally took the plunge and joined Twitter. I had always thought of myself as a good teacher. I mean, hey I work for a school that is well known for academics and the arts. Most of our students become valedictorians at area high schools. This past year, of the four main schools our students goto, we had three valedictorians. So needles to say my students are driven to succeed. When I got to my current job, Here is what a typical classroom would look like. All desks facing the front and the teacher is the center of the classroom, not the student. So when I was hired, I knew I was different than most teachers at my school. 
Upon arrival, I knew I had to change my physical setting. I moved my desks into a horse shoe with my projector and document camera in the center of them to get more of a group dynamic feeling in my room. Here is what my room looks today. 

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So when I got to my school, here is what my typical class would like. First, we would begin with going over the previous nights homework. Usually 3 questions that I thought were important to the lesson. After discussion, a quick warm-up question then off the races! I would then have my students get into groups and work on taking notes in class. Towards the end of class, last 10 min or so, we would go over the notes and move onto the next lesson, if time allowed. Not to shabby considering I only have 42 min four days a week and 35 the other. I would of course throw in the occasional primary source and project to keep class interesting. But the main problem was most of the attention of the class was on me, not the students. 

I needed to get my students more involved in their learning. So back to the original question, how do I do this? Like I said earlier, I joined Twitter and was going to different conferences learning about the latest and greatest teaching philosophies, ect. Then I heard about the Flipped Classroom on Twitter. So I started to join in on the conversations they were having and doing my own research and found that this methodology just might be in my wheel house.