Ecstasy in the classroom?
Have you ever heard of “Flow?” I bet you have felt it before if you’ve never heard it before. It’s that feeling you get when you’re doing something you absolutely LOVE. You know it’s happening when you stop watching the clock…heck, you forget it’s even there. You get obsorbed into what you’re doing, or what you’re listening to, or watching.
Flow is
“… what the sailor holding a tight course feels when the wind whips through her hair….It is what a painter feels when the colors on the canvas begin to set up a magnetic tension with each other, and a new thing, a living form, takes shape….”(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
Flow is a condition of being totally engaged, involved in, and made happy by, a thing we’re involved in. That feeling, according to a recent Fast Company article, FLOW has primarily been involved with the entertainment and sports arenas. Thinkers are now trying to find ways to apply this concept in the office, that if workers were actually involved in projects where FLOW happens, they will produce better results, be less time concious, be more involved and passionate about their work etc. Lots of pro’s to creating a FLOW work environment.
But I ask, what about creating FLOW in the classroom? Specifically, creating FLOW in the ESL classroom? Would similar results occur? Would learning be more successful? Would students and teachers actually start enjoying classroom experiences? Would classroom addiction go up?
