Compliance and Ownership

Image by Humphrey Bolton

Last September, I decided that my class was going to embark on a full-fledged, studio approach to the year.  Students would self-select topics and papers that they would develop over the course of the year, and my role would be to mediate and conference with the students over the course of the year, effectively providing an individualized experience for every child.

            I knew that for many of the students, this would be a sea-change.  There were exiting a class that was far more rigid in it’s methodologies, one that prided whole-class direct instruction and specified intense rubric-based papers for all kids.  I spent the first few weeks laying the groundwork for the class, explaining the importance of being self-motivated, an interested person in our world.  We did a few preliminary papers to illustrate the process, and then began to open everything up.

            My struggling writers took to it immediately.  They found themselves writing more, finding ways to get deeper into their topics, and were proud to share the work that they were creating.  I was proud of myself. I was seeing a change in my struggling students.

            About a month into the second semester, I was walking with one of my students down the hall.  John (we’ll call him) was an average to high-functioning student, who had been rewarded highly for his compliance throughout his school life. 

He turned to me and asked, “Mr. D, this is fun and all, but when are we gonna learn something?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, now very interested in the response.

“Well, last year, we used to have vocab tests and reading quizzes, and we would learn little tricks?”

“Tricks?”

“Yeah, she would show us how to use a thesaurus to…”

“Okay, hold on,” I interrupted. “What have we done this year?”

The conversation went on, and I tried to explain to him how much individual attention he had received to that point in the year.  He conceded that he knew that his writing had improved, and that he had read more on his own that year than he had in the entire year previous.  Despite all of this however, he still couldn’t shake the idea that something was off.

The conversation floored me for a few reasons.  First, I realized that I may have not adequately explained myself to the kids in terms of why we were doing what we were doing.  Secondly, I was shocked that John had been so CONDITIONED to what he considered “school”.

Regardless of what they are exposed to, CHILDREN ARE LEARNING.  We would do well to understand that, and it’s implications.  If we provide students with experiences that are simply a measure of their ability to recall, or to get things done for the sake of doing them, we will create a class of student’s that excel at simply doing what they are told.

John was being given a chance to truly take control of his own learning, and without more help to understand why that was a good thing, he was reverting to the only thing he felt comfortable with: Compliance.

We must teach our students that they need to become comfortable being uncomfortable.  They need to live within the mindset that there are few absolutes, and that being there is ok.  When we narrowly define progress through a curriculum, we narrow our students’ ability to roll with the punches, we destroy their natural ability to be adaptive.

This year, I am spending much more time extolling the rationale for why we are taking a turn away from traditional methods.  My students need to know not only why they deserve to have ownership of their education, but why they should demand it.

A few questions to close as always:

1.                     How can we increase individualized experiences for students in the face of public scrutiny over narrow measures?

2.                     What positive effect will tying student achievement on standardized tests have on best practices in classrooms?

3.                     How can we approach the institutional changes necessary to allow more progressive methodologies across our classrooms?