Conceptualizing Classrooms

First, I am finally getting back to this blog, after it has languished in dismal neglect for several months. Big thanks to Ann(e)?, who stopped me at the PCTR Rodeo Beach 20K last weekend to tell me a) she recognized me from my blog and that b) she really liked what I had written on here-- so much so that she had printed it out. Finding out that I had affected someone I never knew had heard of me was a good reminder to get to writing again, because we never, never know how our words or actions can touch someone else.

This post is probably the first of several on the theme of "Classroom Management." I was talking to one of my teachers a couple of months ago and she asked, "Why don't you write a book?" Admittedly, I have thought about this for quite some time, but in the fear of starting an overwhelming project, I think getting moving by starting to post again is a good first step.

Before I start sharing some perspectives on that catch-all, rather annoying phrase, I have been thinking about how we conceptualize a classroom first of all, and then how this impacts our vision of classroom management.

One of my interns said last week that he had given his students a list of what was going to be on the test, and how that had seemed, at first, like it was not being very teacher-like. He understood that letting students know what they were responsible for learning was actually a very intelligent idea, but it went against his ideas about teachers and how he remembered feeling like teachers tried to "trick" kids on tests. To me, this one incident completely sums up much of where I think we need to start when we talk about classrooms. In his experience (and I would guess he's not alone), there was a strong feeling of Teacher vs. Students. This perspective is rooted so deeply in our consciousness, I think we often take it for granted-- but what on earth is this saying about our vision of classrooms and the interactions that should be taking place?

One of my professors said last year that she hated the term "in the trenches," because it implied that schools are a battlefield, and if we conceptualize schools as battlegrounds, there have to be people on different sides, usually teachers on one side, students on the other. I can't think of a more damaging metaphor to operate from-- if I think of my students as "the other side," then any attempt to create happiness in my classroom seems ridiculous.

I mentioned Nel Noddings before, and I bring her up again, with her RADICAL notion that education have something to do with happiness. What if we thought of classrooms as happy places to be? What would a classroom be like that started from the supposition that learning and interacting with other human beings should be a joyful endeavor? Elementary classrooms often seem to have more of this joy--I don't know if it's because younger children have a natural buoyancy that the educational system has not yet squelched, or because the teachers are more pulled in by the charm of younger children than the occasional truculence of adolescents. Either way, I don't remember anyone in my teaching credential program suggesting that teaching and learning should be joyful and enjoyable.

If we start from a "classrooms can be joyful" starting ground, where do we go next?

Stripping classrooms from their monumental weight of tradition and history and biases about what they should be doing or are doing (a herculean task, I realize), we have a group of people that come together in a room every day. If you see people every day, you interact with them every day. Daily interactions breed relationships. Like families, these daily interactions can be sources of support and love, sources which push us to do better and to be better human beings, or they can be a reason that therapists have jobs, because the relationships are filled with hurt and pain. Most classrooms would fall somewhere in between those two extremes, I would argue: they are filled with relationships that are neither horribly damaging, nor lovingly supportive. Most classrooms are filled with relationships that are nearer a neutral ground, yet if we are trying to create classrooms filled with joyful learning, I would argue that our classroom relationships should be a source of joy and support.

To close, I share a story from one of my last years of teaching. At the end of the year, we took some time as a class to let people share if they needed to say anything to the group. One of my students stood up and said, "This class made me happy to come to school in the morning. Sometimes I would wake up and think that I didn't want to come to school, but then I would think about this class and the people in it, and I would get happy." What if every student felt this way about their class?