Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Building a Community in the Classroom

Too often education is an experience suffered in isolation.  Sure, we complain with friends, we grumble at the dinner table, we criticize on social media sites, but the majority of our learning occurs in isolation.  Why should this be?  In some ways, it is an easier education because it doesn't require us to re-shape the conversations we are having with our peers.  Who wants to really talk about Huck Finn at the lunch table -- unless you're exchanging homework questions, that is!  And who wants to type out some thought they were having while reading Thoreau for the rest of the class to read and laugh at?  Learning is best suffered in isolation so no one knows how smart you are, how stupid you are, how mediocre you are.  

No one need know that you were actually interested in that discussion during class about population control or that you liked the poem on that site we looked at in class today. No one needs to know The Road really did scare you a bit because you aren't ready for the world to end or that you would trade places with Huck Finn in a moment if you could.  Why should you share your opinion on homelessness when you can't really do anything about it?  Who cares what you think about what it means to be an American anyway?

See, it is easy if we see education as just a mindless movement from class to class, a disinterested desire to graduate from high school because you want to go to a good college -- just don't ask me to learn anything of use while I get there!  But what happens if we challenge this notion?  What happens if we decide that education can be more than a 12 year prison sentence?  What happens if you decide that you want a better education for yourself?  One that engages you, one that you look forward to doing, one that you actually don't mind working hard to achieve?

Well, I think to get that education, you need to be a part of the whole process.  You need to be engaged in shaping what education looks like.  Of course, if your goal is to just make everything easier to get through so it looks like you've learned something useful then that doesn't work, right?  I mean, it would be counterproductive to create an education for yourself that was just an easier waste of your time, wouldn't it? Rolling a pebble up a mountain for six hours only for it to roll down the other side is just as much of a waste of time as rolling a boulder for the same outcome, isn't it?  You still could have been doing something better.

And I suppose that is what education comes down to: what could you be doing that is better?  If we are honest, and we evaluate and decide on what we think is important to know and what we want to know, then can't we create an education that is actually worth your time and effort?

In which case, what does that education look like? Or more specifically, for an English class -- which it is my pleasure to teach -- what would that education include?

How can you possibly answer this? you might be asking yourself.  And truthfully, you can't answer it.  Alone.  but together, in a community, you can answer this question and all questions.  It is in the community that decides to reach a goal that success can be achieved.  But you have to decide to be a part of the community. There is no passivity in being a community member.  You decide to join and you get a say in not only reaching the goal but determining what that goal is.  And how can any opportunity to choose the course of your life be a waste of time?  What could possibly be a better use of your time then deciding how you use your time?

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