After three full Alfie Kohn-influenced classes, one of my few reluctant students announced at the end of class, “I like this class, now.” Some of the others giggled and knew he had erred by admitting that in front of me. I turned away from the small group of students who were Googling an article in Spanish and said, “Gosh, Arslan, you didn’t have to add the ‘now.’” Then I smiled and got back to work. The students seemed relieved that I didn’t take it badly. How could I? I feel the same way. Now I like the class, too (a lot more than before). Trying to build an authentic community where I’m not just manipulating kids into doing what I want them to do feels a lot better–it’s so much less pressure and resonates with how I treat the people I care about in genuine ways, not the forced ways of the controlling schoolmarm.
Yesterday I learned a lot from my students. We were discussing the differences in cultures about how much room there is for believing there are non-rational phenomena like ghosts and elves, for example. I don’t normally have these kinds of discussions, but we had an extra 90 minutes together (my school has a system where we build in an extra 90 minutes of instruction with each class every two weeks or so). We discussed elves and looked at their origins in history. Several students shared stories about how they had heard about and even seen supernatural creatures. Honestly, as an American teacher, it was hard for me to believe them. But I sensed the students weren’t just kicking their imaginations into gear but rather sharing things they wholeheartedly believed to be true. Then a student from Egypt wanted to know if we could look up genies on the Internet. It turns out that genies originate in the Middle East and Islam. I had no idea. I also learned that they are part of the Muslim creation story, much like angels and fallen angels fit into the Christian tradition. The other Muslim students were excited to be able to share this with the rest of the class, and I was thrilled to be learning something from them. A student from a French-speaking African country shared how genies in French are different, and I related that the concept of genies is more similar in the US (the idea of the genie in the bottle–that got some Christina Aguilera wannabes going). I was using an LCD projector and showing the class articles on the web about these topics. One of the students wanted me to Google images of genies. We couldn’t find any good ones in English, so we went to the Google site in Egypt. Suddenly the screen was transformed into right to left Arabic. The non-Arabic speaking students were surprised and curious, and the Arabic speaking students were excited to see their language in front of the others. Eventually we got a genie image for everyone to see.
There’s a lot more authentic interaction going on in my classroom. There are about 21 students in each of my classes, and we’re still navigating between the free-for-all discussions and students raising their hands. I get the feeling that they’re all a lot more open to hearing my ideas as well as their own (more importantly). Today students spent most of their class time working in small groups, and I sense that they’re getting better at working together all the way around. In my next post I’ll reflect on their projects–writing children’s books with themes of diversity and tolerance as part of a scholarship competition.
Originally written January 10, 2007
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