A bit of a longer tale to tell you today, gentle reader, and I hope you find a chuckle and a reflection or two that you can use. This is the first year in more than 20 of being A Teacher that I have not had my own classroom. I have, during that time, taught every grade from k-12, and for the past half dozen or so taught at the post-secondary level as well. In the course on Learning Theory that I teach to masters’ students, one of the topics we discuss is Cognitive Dissonance. I had the opportunity to immerse myself in that phenomenon today, which encouraged some deep reflection.
My task was to facilitate a warm-up activity for a group of 30 or so teachers at a workshop. My only goal was to, by the end of the activity, creatively organize the group into 5 smaller groups. If that was my learning intention, then, I did not achieve it. You would be forgiven for thinking “But wait… that is a simple task… you could number them off, or let them chose, are just assign them a table, no?” and I guess I could have, but as I said to a loved one recently “You know I don’t do things by halves….”. If they wanted a warm up, they were getting a warm up.
The scenario. I researched (ok, Googled) “Team Building”, “Warm up meeting activities”, “Classroom sort games” and the ilk. Nothing really resonated with me, and we’ve (over)done 2 truths and a lie recently, although one of my truths always involves Sasquatches and pick-up lines, but you’ll have to get that story another day… Finally, I found an activity I liked, but decided to Modify it…. (*cue ominous music). In short (and PLEASE feel free to use this activity!) I selected song lyrics, 4 or 5 lines, from 6 popular songs, rather than the poetry that the original activity suggested. Happily I sliced my song lyrics into single lines, and when the time came, handed out bundles of mixed lyrics. My instructions were simple:
Please take a strip from the bundle.
You will need to find other people in the room who have the matching strips.
You will need to walk around and find them, and then when you have found your group, assemble your strips on the board.
Well…. in my head, that was enough instruction. In reality, bedlam erupted. We eventually got there, and all of the things that I wanted to happen did happen, but not at all in the manner I had anticipated.
As I stood back and watched the chaos, which included new teachers, seasoned teachers, my peers, my superior and HIS superior, I thought that while I would fine-tune the activity if I were to do it again, I also realized that THIS was what I loved about my particular teaching style. My favourite days in the classroom were ones where kids were engaging with other kids, problem solving and calling out successes and breaking into spontaneous play… and even though I had taken a big chance of failing, with Important Witnesses, I was reminded that I have no choice but to be true to my Teacher Spirit. One of the things I learned over the years, too, was that the colleagues I most valued and treasured working with were the ones who felt the same way about me that I did them– that we are complete opposites. My favourite and most successful years were the ones spent with job-share partners who were quiet, organized, thoughtful, and deeply connected to the learning goals and intentions. And there I stood in the middle of that room, as some people guarded information rather than share it, some people tried to problem solve with all the mismatched lyrics, and yet another commandeered all the strips that were given her group and ran to the board and started sticking them in place–competitiveness at its finest!–thinking how all of my teaching partners would have been so uncomfortable with this, and I was in my element. The moment I knew I had struck gold was when I heard a melodic version of “American Pie” (one of the song choices) being spontaneously, and joyously, sung aloud in order to get the lyrics in the proper order– at least, that was the reasoning….
My learners for this event were thrust into Cognitive Dissonance–they didn’t have a clear picture of what was expected, I was not clear, sequential, logical and emphatic. I simply threw some seemingly unrelated information at them, and told them to make sense of it and organize it.
At the end of it all…. isn’t that what learning is?