ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Chuck Sandy

Setsuko Toyama

Curtis Kelly

Panelists: Marc | Chuck | Setsuko | Curtis
Date: April 2003

Topic: "How are you going to change your teaching this year?"

Chuck Sandy

My first act of revolution in an educational setting took place when I was a six-year-old kindergarten student and quite consciously decided not to follow the teacher's instructions. We'd been given a worksheet about barnyard animals and explicit directions to color the barn red, the donkey grey, and the chicken white. I was fine with the grey donkey, but the rest of it made no sense to me. I grew up in a house with a black barn across the street and had, as a pet, a chocolate brown chicken. What choice did I have? I colored the chicken brown and the barn black, and this simple act of rebellion cost me only a recess, which seemed a fine price to pay for autonomy and realism.

“Slowly, I began to learn the difference between being an agitator, and a rabble-rouser. I say slowly, for in fact, it's something I'm still trying to keep clear in my mind.”

By the time I got to second-grade, I'd had it with having to sit in assigned seats in the cafeteria. Given the heady political times, it seemed only right to organize a petition and get as many people as I could to sign it. "No more assigned seats!" we all chanted as I handed the petition to our teacher. The result was freedom of seating choice, which seemed a fine reward for my agitation and activism.

However, almost getting kicked out of the 4th grade for organizing my classmates in a rousing playground rendition of Country Joe and the Fish's infamous Woodstock "fish cheer" was, I thought, much too high a price to pay -- especially for something so silly. Slowly, I began to learn the difference between being an agitator, and a rabble-rouser. I say slowly, for in fact, it's something I'm still trying to keep clear in my mind.

As I've been going through a process of personal revolution and re-invention myself these past months, I've been thinking quite a lot about all this - which led me to read both Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of Freedom" and Mark A. Clarke's "A Place to Stand." My thoughts, this change, and these books have encouraged me this year to resolve to become more of an agitator and less of a rabble-rouser. My aim, as Clarke writes, is to "create disturbances and force wobbles in the system," without, as Friere warns, "losing the battle for change by causing the alienation or demoralization of anyone involved."

Wobbling the system and creating disturbances is a positive act, meant to stir things up in an effort to create conditions which encourage change in the direction we hope for. As Clarke points out, we cannot force anyone to change, but as teachers we can "manipulate variables in the learning environment and to observe the consequences of these manipulations." These manipulations of variables are wobbles, "actions which upset the habitual functioning of the system," and they range from simple acts -- like reordering the sequence of class events or rearranging the chairs and tables in the room -- to more complex acts -- like beginning each class with a personal anecdote simply because it's nice to do so or having students evaluate themselves and each other instead of relying solely on teacher feedback.

It's not possible to fully understand what the results of these wobbles will be until the wobbling has been done, but one can hypothesize. Putting the chairs and tables in a circle might help increase group solidarity. Beginning each class with a personal anecdote might encourage students to see the teacher as a person and fellow learner rather than as an authority figure. It's likely that having students evaluate themselves and their classmates might encourage both group solidarity and learner autonomy. It's these sorts of hypotheses which make wobbling different from rabble-rousing. The difference also lies in the knowledge than any wobble can be undone, should the effects turn out unhappily and before anyone becomes alienated or demoralized.

As a new teacher, I had a hard time admitting that I was wrong, and so was often more of a rabble-rouser than a wobbler. Loaded up with knowledge fresh from graduate school, I forced the Communicative approach, for example, on students and more or less made everyone color their chickens white and their barns red. Later, I did the same thing as a teacher-trainer, and still later as a program administrator. Do this and not that, I said. See things my way, my actions demonstrated. This is the way it's going to be, my classroom procedures dictated. This sort of stance, of course, is rabble-rousing at its worst, and any intended good is destroyed by such a posture. It took a long time for me to realize this and to understand that admitting my hypotheses and subsequent actions or manipulations were wrong is an act that encourages trust. Now, I'm learning to stand in front of a class (or group of teachers) and say with a laugh, "well that didn't work out like I thought it would. Let's try this instead" and noticing that my students (or colleagues) are more likely to come along with me as I wobble than when I rabble-rouse. Can you imagine the price I paid to learn that?

Still, wobbling and creating disturbances is not enough. I'm also learning both as a teacher and as a person that it's necessary for me to arrive at a definition of where I stand. When Freire writes, "I cannot be a teacher and be in favor of everyone and everything. I cannot be in favor merely of people, humanity, and vague phrases far from the concrete nature of educative practice," I realize that I must make clear to students, colleagues, and friends what it is that I do believe and how I feel about issues that are important to me. I realize it's not enough to simply be a humanist. I must choose which issues to focus on and become a person who lives and teaches as he believes.

The central belief I've arrived at and am choosing to focus on now is that all people are not only capable of learning but are also hungry for it. I'm not talking here about being hungry for knowledge, but rather hungry for the sort of learning that comes about when people are taken seriously and are shown that their ideas -- and by extension their lives -- have value. Therefore, my other resolution is to become someone who does much more than teach skills and transfer knowledge. My aim, as Friere writes, is "not to transfer knowledge, but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge" by spending more time working on group-solidarity and by being someone more open to listening carefully to what my students (and colleagues and friends) have to say - while also demonstrating and explaining what I believe to be true.

Still, I'm also beginning to understand that it's not enough to simply be an understanding person who creates a non-threatening environment for learning, I now think that Freire is right when he says, "the class (should be) a challenge and not simply a nest where people gather." I hope that by wobbling rather than rabble-rousing, by taking a stand instead of waffling, by listening carefully while also trying my best to explain my own thought-processes, and by acting as I believe both in and out of class I can create, as Friere encourages, "an environment of challenge (where) the students become tired but they do not go to sleep."

I'd pay a very high price for that.

Panelists: Marc | Chuck | Setsuko | Curtis

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Chuck Sandy, Chubu University

Co-author of two series from CUP, Passages and Connect

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