Conversations

Yesterday morning, my students and I had a conversation about gaming.  Yes, that really happened.  We talked about game design, rules of games, games we played, how we liked them, and why.  In case you haven't guessed, I LOVE game design and gaming.  But the cool part for me is that I didn't even initiate the discussion.  M was just wondering about how to get past something in Bioshock....and she asked J...and off went the conversation.  

The students needed to get work done on a project, but they were able to get done what they needed to get done and have an interesting and much needed conversation.  They were tired--it is, after all, the end of the year--but somehow, we still managed to both get our work done and have some fun.  

Making connections with students is important.  Through those "random, disruptive conversations," you learn, if you listen to them and take time to think about them, what makes students tick.  Especially now, at a time when EVERYTHING is either a "review packet" or "just one more thing before the final," these conversations are SO important.  For one thing, they relieve some tension.  For another, they show that I the teacher respect them the students.  For another, they show that they the students respect me the teacher enough to HAVE that conversation, while getting their work done at the same time.  And they even asked my opinion.  For the first few minutes, I had just been listening.  

So, I take these conversations and listen to them.  I mull them around in my head and get ideas from them--ideas for games for use both in and out of class, for class activities, for ways to engage those students who need it, and even get the whole class engaged in an activity.  So, why is it that we squash them?

Because we have "so much to cover," or "if The Powers That Be walk in and we aren't 'learning'."  But I find that we all learn more from the conversations.

How do we demonstrate to both the Powers That Be and to our fellow teachers that these conversations are both useful and necessary for real learning?