The Passionate Classroom
I had an amazing experience thismorning. I arrived to class, and began setting out our "un-course" material for the session. (In this class we’ve been going bookless for the last few months. Instead we’ve been working with material that my student has identified as being important and interesting to him.)
A few moments later my student arrived. We engaged in some easy small talk: the family, how his week has been, any plans for the weekend etc., and then he said:
"Today I’m not feeling very talkative."
Hmm. Ok. I took that as a cue to just dive into the course material. We could read and maybe get into pronunciation work, or so I thought.
"Ahh, no. Not today. I’d rather listen to you for a bit, if you don’t mind" he said.
This weekend I’m going to a wedding, so we got talking about that. The conversation took off from there.
I can’t remember the exact pathway our conversation took, but it went EVERYWHERE. We delved into issues of destiny, purpose, why we’re here anyway, God, faith, athiesim, the intelligent design behind the universe and our bodies, God again, faith again, personal purpose, and finally we ended on family, love, and on adoption. (I know, it makes me dizzy to just writing it all down.) Turns out my student adopted one of his kids.
Wow!
The story was amazing. It was heartfelt, and revealed a new tender side to my student that I had never seen before. (He’s a company director.)
What really floored me was an instant transformation. One moment he was talking about how proud he was of his family, specifically, of his adopted daughter, and the next moment he was in tears.
I blinked. Double take. Yep. This guy was crying! The conversation went full circle, and touched again on destiny and purpose. He couldn’t imagine not having this girl, who is now 26 years old. He couldn’t imagine anyone not being able to love and care for her. Most of all, he was so impressed with how well she turned out: from an unwanted baby to business administrator and responsible family member.
This was no ordinary class. There was deep connection. There was emotional engagement. It was really student centered.
It wasn’t grammar centered. It wasn’t course book centered. It wasn’t a "production." It was real. My student was real. The language he worked with was real.
He ran into trouble a few times, encountering new grammar structures. We quickly teased it out, and moved on.
Made me think of a great post by AJ over at
Effortless Language Acquisition: Covert Operations
Amen to that!Student-centered, in my mind, refers to a process in which the students are encouraged to experiment, probe, choose, and make discoveries… in which the language has context and deep meaning for them.
Aaron… Wow! What an amazing experience.
It really shows thw power of slowing down sometimes… loosening up on the teacher as performer role. I find that difficult to do at times also. Ill go into class charged up about the days lesson… so that when I chit-chat at the beginning of class I sometimes rush through it to get to the “real lesson”.
But as youve shown, sometimes the most meaningful classes emerge from listening… and letting the students lead.
This week I had a similar (though not as powerful) experience. I asked a discussion question to introduce a lesson. Id meant it to be a quick intro.. but for some reason it clicked with the students. They got into a deep discussion which, like the conversation you outlined… went off into unexpected directions.
We ended up in a very emotional discussion about the work/employment system in America (layoffs, free agent mentality, etc.)… a subject I never imagined they would be interested in.. much less so emotional about.
Thanks for the great reminder of what student-centered really means! I look forward to hearing more about your classes!
Comment by AJ Hoge — March 18, 2006 @ 1:45 pm