Friday, March 29, 2013

An Honest Discussion

(NOTE: This post evolved from a comment I made on Justin's post yesterday.)

Wednesday, in my class, as my students were supposed to be working on their projects, a discussion broke out. Initially, it was just one group, but it quickly became an entire class discussion, while I looked on in amazement. They were talking about the most recent all school assembly. A speaker had come to talk about bullying and self-harm. This quickly became a discussion about "actions, not words" and how we, as a school community, are so sheltered and "need a reality check" as one of my students put it.

"So many people tweeted about how 'ohhh this was so powerful and changed my life,'" said C, "but you know they are just going to go out and party and forget it in 2 or so weeks."

The rest of the class, to my amazement, agreed with her.

My students commented that this "random routine" doesn't allow for "real learning." (Their words, not mine.) "We need space to talk as a community. There is no school community here," said M.

I found this extremely powerful. For the first time, students were opening up to each other, in a student led discussion, while I, the teacher, looked on and simply listened.

"Can we please have a period like this every day?" asked A, who doesn't normally present as thoughtful, but contributed quite a bit to this discussion. "At the end, we really don't learn anything from taking notes and studying for tests and listening to lectures."

"I'm sorry we didn't get work done today," K apologized at the end of class.

I told her that if we had REALLY needed to get the work done by Friday, I would have stopped the discussion. I mean, it's not like I couldn't hear it. But this was clearly a discussion that needed to happen. And besides, it was as fascinating to me as it was to them!

When are we going to start listening to these discussions? When will there be time to have them? When can we break out of this "complacent routine" and actually start learning?

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