The Pedagogical Problems with an Imaginary Classroom

My imaginary classroom doesn't need Stalinist propaganda posters like this one that reads, "Every farm hand, peasant and poor man should become a reader at the library."
In the imaginary classroom, constructivist theory would have us believe that education doesn’t need to be propagandized through transmissive means. This poster reads, “Every farm hand, peasant and poor man should become a reader at the library.” Image from here.

In my pre-service teacher preparation program we’re often asked to perform a task with our imaginary classroom in mind. The students we’re teaching don’t exist yet. The space we claim as our own doesn’t exist yet. The lessons we hope to impart are merely twinkles in our teacher eyes. Yet we have to take the practice of teaching, one currently steeped in the idea that lessons need to be engaging and applicable and serve our students needs, and apply it to a real that doesn’t seem applicable, which relies on us for engagement, and which I fear doesn’t serve my needs.

Yesterday in my English Methods and Materials class, we were asked to choose a constructivist practice we might want to use in the classroom and come up with a rationale and explanation for our students. Each group chose a different one: engaging in a dialogue with text, creating a culture of self-assessment, and using exploratory language.

Constructivism is a theory of learning that states meaning and knowledge are co-created through interacting with information in conversation, experiment and activity, often in group-based learning.

Transmission-based learning is a means of labeling the traditional classroom and criticising the structure of power that makes knowledge defined and static, to be transmitted from the teacher to the learner.

In every group, our first instinct was to come up with activities for our imaginary classroom that would help our students engage with the practice. As we sat there, excitedly building on our initial ideas, our professor came around to each group and joined into the discussion. She reminded us that the exercise wasn’t to come up with a routine or application for our imaginary classroom, but a reason. When that student in the back who resists and fights back against everything demands a reason, what do we say to them?

Needless to say, this stymied me.

I was that student. I sat in the back staring out the window, disengaged, but still able to raise my hand and ask the question you dread: Why are we doing this?

I was resistant to the structures of education because so much work seemed to be a waste of my time, grunt work. I was resistant because it didn’t seem relevant to my needs and interests nor fun. I was resistant because being resistant was more challenging than school.

In the imaginary classroom, our answers are functional and will sway the class. In reality, though, our answers must be catered to our actual students in our classroom. When a student resists, the odds our impassioned explanation and warrant sway them to action are slim to none. Every minute we spend arguing and rationalizing and explaining in hope of engaging that student is a minute away from the activity we actually want to be doing.

When I speak to science teachers, they spend a minimal amount of  time explaining the rationale before jumping into the activity; it’s a given that science classrooms are exploratory and constructivist. Experimentation is the mode of science and the crux of engagement.

Books, literature, math, and history don’t often have tactile sensations or explosion to draw in students. The constructivist method may be better for deeper understanding, but how good can it be when we need to lecture or explain in traditional transmissive modes to get kids to engage?

To my professor’s credit, she acknowledged the flaws inherent in designing for an imaginary classroom. We cannot tailor to individual needs without individuals. Adjusting to the active, current needs of students is impossible without active, current students. The resistance we get is our own.

It’s this last one that’s perhaps the most damning for me. As I sat there, contemplating the resistance, I knew there’d come a point where my teachers would have to move on because I would not give in. In my imaginary classroom, I was my problem student, and I wasn’t giving in. I wanted to react the same way as my teachers did: to hell with rationale and introduction; let the activity and action speak for itself.

This is an viable way to teach, but it will not serve every students’ needs. The rest of my class struggled with this too, wanting to focus on the means and exercises instead of the rationale. And where we struggled, wanting to dive into the means, I’ve since realized that the rationale isn’t really for the resisting student, but for all the others who listen when your troublemaker speaks up.

When I resist, it’s for my benefit, no one else’s. There’s no denying the rest of the class is an audience. The rationale my professor asked for didn’t need to be perfect because it can’t truly be meant for those that resist. Instead, it needs to be good enough that everyone listening, who just had their learning interrupted, is secure that they made the right choice.

If we want our imaginary classroom to truly embrace constructivist methods, we can’t let ourselves spend too much time resisting and seeking perfection.

Sentence Starters, Video Games, and Perspective

Elegy for a Dead World is a game in which players finish sentence starters to explore and write their own science fiction story. It can help students learn how to write and what sort of descriptions can forward a story in different ways.

Purpose:
This 25 minute lesson uses the game Elegy for a Dead World to help teach students how to write a story and what sort of perspective they can bring that will change a story.
(Estimated Running Time: 23-25 Minutes)

Objective:

Students will be able to write a short science fiction story using sentence starters and the game Elegy for a Dead World.

Materials:

Required materials are normal text, recommended but not required materials are italicized

Essential Question(s):

How do things change when we view or interact with them?

  • No matter how thoroughly we present information, people can take it different ways.
  • Writing is a selection process where we decide what details are most important.
  • If the goal of writing is to communicate, we need to be able to choose exactly what and how we wish to communicate our ideas.
  • The reader/viewer plays a part in what information is communicated.
  • We often cannot choose who views something or how.
  • When we are the reader, it’s important to recognize what the author/creator might have wanted and what perspective we bring to the reading that may change things.

Inquiry Exercise:

(5 Minutes)
Imagine you’re an alien from another world and you’ve come to earth for the very first time. You find yourself in your real bedroom and as you’re looking around you find an unfamiliar object. What do you find and what do you think it is? What is it really? Take three minutes to write about your object.

Introduction to New Material:

(1 Minute)
Today we’re going to be working on sentence starters and playing a game. Before we can play, though, I’m going to walk you through what sort of sentence starters to expect and we’ll try a few before you jump into the game.

Guided Practice:

(5 Minutes)
How would you finish this sentence? Display a sentence starter from Elegy for a Dead World.

Take a moment to finish it and then we’ll read a few and talk about what we like, what we don’t and why. Students should brainstorm their own end. Those that feel comfortable can share and we’ll discuss them with the following questions to give them an idea of how to finish a sentence:

  • Which ones did you really like? Why?
  • What do the good sentences have in common?
  • What do you think this person brought to this sentence?
  • What sentence surprised you most? Why?
  • What do you think could make this sentence stronger?
  • What more would you like to know about this sentence?

Individual Practice:

(10 Minutes)
Fire up Elegy for a Dead World and go to town. At the end, there’s an option to print your story. Normally, it would take at least a half-hour to play through this game and get a story, so, since this is a mini-lesson, we’ll take turns filling in the sentences. How we finish the sentences changes where the game goes, so when you have the chance to play on your own, consider what’s different each play through.

If you choose to extend this to a full lesson, have students play individually, discussing the differences in where the game goes. Additionally, collecting their stories at the end can give you a good idea of how they’re writing. Playing through again a few weeks down the line can give you a comparison for growth.

Assessment/Closing:

(2 Minutes)
Hopefully you’ve seen how our perspective can change the way we read and write things. Thinking about how visitors to our writing read things when we’re not clear, we can take this further and realize exactly how technology, imagery and iconography can change the meaning of our reading and writing.