It had only been six weeks since the start of this school year and I was already feeling exhausted. One Friday, during one of those long, tiring days, two birds flew into my classroom. It was comical and absurd: for sixty minutes I watched my high school students run around the room trying to catch these birds. I had to run after my students a couple of times when I saw them doing crazy things like standing on desks, chairs, and window sills trying to catch them.
Handling the situation was so exhausting that I gave my next period a day off. I thought they would use their phones and check; Instead, I watched them play the same clapping games that I played in my childhood. I watched them look out the windows, do work for other classes, and make phone calls with family members. Even though I wasn't providing direct instruction and students weren't working toward that day's content goal, I felt like I was observing the learning around me. It was a pleasant surprise after such a stressful situation.
In an effort to make sense of what I saw that day, I looked up the definition of play and learning. According to the Oxford Dictionary, play is defined as “engaging in an activity for enjoyment and not for serious or practical purposes.” Learning, on the other hand, is defined as “the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or teaching.” As I reflected on both definitions, I realized that the lack of seriousness we associate with joy is the main reason it is a rejected educational approach.
Due to the rigidity of the curriculum, standardized testing, and the controlling nature of compulsory education, play and unstructured time are considered detrimental to student learning. But what is learning and why is play considered so antithetical to teaching? What if we focused fun and unstructured time in our classrooms, even when it had nothing to do with the curriculum? Part of learning is acquiring knowledge through experience. If the game is an experience, it can also result in the acquisition of knowledge.
Cultivate confidence in the service of learning
Unstructured time and joy create a sense of trust and freedom between student and teacher in the classroom. Giving students the space to do what they need gives them the power, as human beings, to decide how to use their time. As a high school teacher, this is especially important as many of my students approach adulthood. We need to have faith that our students are becoming responsible people and with that comes opportunities to decide how to use their time, just like adults.
In the past, I have hesitated to provide that space as a teacher of color under the pressure of curricular expectations. Since I gave my students space to decide how to use that free period, I have watched them respect the classroom agreements much more easily. Specifically in that period, I rarely have to interrupt a discussion or redirect a student. It's been weeks since I gave that free period, and I see such a high level of buys. I can push students to be the best they can be and I think the moral support is coming through better because I show them that I trust them and in turn they can trust me.
This trust also results in the lowering of the affective filter. He The affective filter is a metaphor. for the student's sense of self as a learner. It is generally used in the context of language acquisition for multilingual learners, but it has a purpose for any teacher trying to create a safe space in their classroom. A high affective filter means that students are reluctant to take academic risks because they do not see themselves as good students. A reduced affective filter is one in which students feel safe enough to take academic risks and make mistakes.
To lower the affective filter, a teacher must instill a growth mindset on your students and create a safe classroom where students know that mistakes are met with celebration. If a student does not trust their teacher, they will not feel safe taking these risks. And if they don't take academic risks, a student may not reach their full learning potential.
Let your students surprise you
As I write this, I recognize that unstructured classrooms are probably every teacher's nightmare. But I'm not saying this should be every day. Knowledge is not just about content, but about knowing other human beings. When my students started playing card games with each other, it wasn't just a group of students who already knew each other: students from across the room gathered to join in. I saw them laugh and jump excitedly with each movement of one of their colleagues. I saw a learning in that moment when they recognized how their peers engaged with the UN and changed their own strategies. The following week, once we resumed classes, the students in that period were ready to learn.
Schooling is now mandatory. It is not necessary to spend every second of the day telling students how to be, move, and act. Sometimes it pays to trust them to decide how to spend your time. What they will remember most will be those moments in which they continued to build community with their peers. While the fear of neglecting academic content is real, withholding information when anxious or uncertain It's impossible.
As teachers, we can learn a lot about our students when we simply leave them alone. I saw the students be young, playful, and present in a way I didn't expect. I was pleasantly surprised that they enjoyed just being with their friends and didn't use their phones to pass the time. It gave me hope for a future where screens are not the overwhelming method of socialization for young people.
Why not give them more opportunities to enjoy the company of others in the classroom? With everything so focused on acquiring academic language, following a curriculum, and developing cognitive stamina, I now realize that it's okay to let all that go from time to time. Those two birds that flew into my classroom taught me an important lesson: let my students surprise me with who they already are.
