"Okay, guys..." I tell my team halfway through an excruciating defeat, " got any good ideas?"
"Coach, if we just hold onto the ball, they can't score," suggestions one player.
"We knew that, Mike, before the game started," I quip.
"How about we put our goalie out on attack ? He's a great athlete and we're down two attack men to injury," suggests another player, a substitute mid fielder.
"A good idea!" I retort. "But who will play in the goal ?"
"Me," responds the substitute mid fielder.
He turns out to be a natural in the nets. Our goalie, on the other hand, scores three goals, enough to stop the bleeding and restore some of our pride. We have a Pyrrhic victory to celebrate because of our ingenuity, flexibility, and willingness to explore possibilities.
Good teams may not always win, but after awhile, mostly due to chemistry, intuition, and feel, they do what they have to to keep competitive. Good teams know when to step up the pace of a game, when to down tempo, when to go for the juggler, and when to make individual adjustments. On good teams the coach merely suggests and the player merely reacts. Ultimately, it is a player's decision to respond. Players with pride in themselves and respect for their team usually respond.
Much of what transpires on an athletic field during a game is reactive. Generally, those who react best, win. Why should what we do within the walls of our schools be different?
Classrooms are our fields. Students are our players. Classes are our teams. Since well-scripted games are an impossible and egocentric assumption, then the same must hold true for the classroom. The ebb and flow of a common human experience is too strong a force for one person to reckon with. For this reason, teachers must embrace and nurture spontaneity in the classroom and react well to it.
Please do not muddle this notion with a lack of structure or discipline. Good teams are disciplined and there is an inherent structure that allows them the freedom to be spontaneous and reactive. Also, do not confuse this with teacher-centered spontaneity. Extemporaneous teacher digressions are antithetical to good classes. The more the coach talks, the less time his players have to practice, to explore, to learn from and about one another.
Since classes are living organisms, then teachers must be counted among the living. If teachers separate themselves from their students, then the theory of symbiosis is shot dead. Again, the structure for spontaneity is not in place.
So just how does classroom as living organism work?
Here's an example. In the first nine weeks of freshman English, I have simple objectives to meet. I want my students to be able write quality sentences and quality paragraphs. I want them to read critically, to comprehend, but not to get turned off by literature. I want them to learn and use roughly 100 new vocabulary words. This is the content.
At the same time, I'd like to foster within them a love of learning. I'd like to help them to become better listeners and speakers. I'd appreciate it if they managed their own time well. I'd attempt to show them that they exist within a context of others.
Pheew. I've got a beast of a literature curriculum to wrestle with down the line. Do I have time to be spontaneous, reactive, intuitive, and part of an organism ? Yes, but only if I value and embrace being all of the above and feel comfortable ditching content when spontaneity rears its head.
So the freshmen really seem to be missing the Lord of The Flies' thematic centerpiece, but Richard Wright's mammoth Black Boy has to be read and digested by Christmas. A student suggests testing out Golding's theory by letting the class loose for one week to wrestle with a project. I figure that nothing really can start and conclude in one week so I give them two. Bang. Spontaneity.
The class collectively reacted to our discomfort with the novel by attempting to experience its essence. Who can quibble with the suggestion ?
This evolved because these freshmen felt enough autonomy to recommend ditching the "syllabus." A class or a team is not vital unless it feels empowered to blow itself up and start over again. Unfortunately, many young adults aren't interested enough in their own learning to create these living educational organisms, but, be it just or unjust, teachers own the responsibility for sparking an interest. Being open-minded and attentive to the classroom "vibe" is a teacher's first step to embracing spontaneity, recognizing "teachable moments" is a second step. Finally, seeing yourself as just one part, and not the part, of the whole that is your class or your team is paramount to the success of a classroom that is living.