I’m thinking about the fall – I know, I know, it’s only July 10th, it’s too early, but what can I say? – and what I want my classroom to look like.  It will be my 9th year at my current school, and my tenth year of full-time teaching overall.  But I think I need to make some changes.

When asked – I don’t remember where – about what kind of classroom would be ideal for me, as a learner, I started to think about the difference between that ideal classroom and what mine is like.  I think that I achieve that ideal, sometimes.  But that’s not good enough.

So I’m imagining myself as a 7th grader again and thinking about what kind of classroom would work best for me.  What kind of environment would help me learn the most?

1. If the teacher is going to talk, make it brief – less than 10 minutes or so – make it interesting – stories, visuals, some kind of hook – and make it important.  Try to bring up something that is both new to me and important to the subject.  Or give me a new spin on something I already know.
2. Let me learn on my own.  Give me a task that is interesting to me, connected to the subject, and that includes a chance for some kind of creativity or play.  I want to engage with a topic and do something fun with it.  I want to master something and show that mastery through some kind of humorous output.  I can make creative connections to other things we’ve learned or other classes, and I can dazzle my peers – or so I think I can – with an opportunity to present ideas.  (Perhaps this is wishful thinking from grad school.  I wasn’t often given opportunities like this in my ultra-traditional junior high, but I think I would have enjoyed them at the time.  I certainly enjoyed them in various grad school settings, when they were available.)
3. Let me work by myself sometimes.  I’m mostly an introvert, and I like to write through my thinking.  I don’t do that well when I’m working in a group.  But I also learn a lot from groups – though I often won’t work in a group unless someone forces me to.  So mix it up.
4. Challenge me, and expect me to handle it.  Give me questions that matter, that aren’t already answered easily with Siri or a simple google search.  Let me believe that my efforts might be worth something outside of the classroom.  (I loved the “game of school,” and I played it well.  That’s one of the reasons that I wanted to teach.  Unfortunately, that’s not an effective way to teach most students anymore, if it ever was.)
5. Tell me when I’m doing something well, and when I’m not doing something well, help me see it and do it better next time, without making me feel like a failure.  My classic example of “bad failure” is physical education.  I don’t think my middle-school gym teachers actively encouraged this kind of thinking, but it was easy for us – my middle-school peers and myself – to believe that some people were just “good at sports,” and some people were not.  I still remember the trauma of the “pull up test.”  Our gym – like most – had a pull-up bar on the wall, and our gym teacher wanted us to do as many pull-ups as we could.  Boys were given a different goal than girls.  That’s a good thing, right?  So, a boy was chosen to model a pull-up.  The teacher chose one of the best athletes in the class, a 7th grader with big muscles, to show the boys how to do a pull-up.  He did well, and the whole class was in awe of his pull-ups.  (He did 10 or 11 – which is a lot.)  Then, the gym teacher wanted someone to model how to do a girl’s pull-up, where the girl just holds her chin up near the bar, and the challenge is to hold your head up as long as you can.  Guess who was chosen to model a girl’s pull-up?  Me.  I held my chin up near the bar for ten or fifteen seconds – I don’t remember exactly – but I was horrified that the teacher had chosen me to be a “model girl.”  What the heck was he thinking?  Maybe he chose me because he thought I could handle it.  Maybe he was just clueless.  Maybe he was more worried about having the whole class stare at a girl than a boy.  I don’t know.  As far as I remember, I was lucky enough to avoid being teased for that.  I had some athletic prowess in other areas – I was one of the best rope-climbers in the class, for example – but it was clear to me at the time (in the way that things can seem clear to a pre-adolescent) that I would never be seen as an athlete, no matter how hard I worked at something.

I think the key idea is that I can learn more from myself than any teacher, if I’m given a chance.  I can probably learn more from a teacher about learning, and I can learn more if a teacher gives me a chance.

(A note on the picture – it’s from an early English pamphlet by Thomas Hariot about Virginia, and the idealized pictures of American Indians helped lure many people to Jamestown.)