"Hey teachers! Leave us kids alone!!" - Pink Floyd

As a teenager I really liked this message: “Hey Teachers. Leave us kids alone. We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. You’re just another brick in the wall?” I was sure then that the message of “the wall” was to rebel because teachers could never understand us and they are already a lost cause. I thought we were all part of an evil machine grinding out thought control curriculum for the man. That's the conclusion any teenager would have looking up with counting the dots on the ceiling panel in detention. To me at sixteen years old, school was the oppressor that kills creativity and I was not going to be another brick in the wall. Yet the shear monotony of school became my driving force of a passion to find something new and alive. There was no internet so kids met together after school and rode skateboards. We played “music” together in our friends’ basement. We weren’t gonna take it. If the neighbors called the police when we were too loud we would apologize and then play a little louder. Every once and awhile we would found a “gig” in a church basement or a coffee house. We were rebels without a clue.

Now after twenty years of teaching this quote has a completely new meaning. “Hey teachers! Leave us kids alone!” Today it means that kids learn best when they are left alone. A teacher is necessary to provide support and new challenges but a good part of the time students need to be left alone. I can see my fourth students today working out problems by themselves. I don’t put pressure on them to be quiet. I encourage them to help each other out. All the students are at different levels so I have projects set up that students will like doing. When they are finished they help their friends and move up to the next level. When they look bored and worn out I take them outside and give them a ball. When we come back we write about what happens. We still follow the same curriculum as the man but the bricks are changing colors. Each brick is individual shinning not for their own achievements but shines by using what their strengths to help others.

This was not my approach to education at first. I wanted my students to be quiet. I wanted to explain everything to students first so that they wouldn’t need to ask questions. I wanted to finish class right on time so students can get on with their next subject. This method of teaching eventually led me to have laryngitis. Looking at the front of the classroom these students looked like idealistic students who all answered together. But there were always three or four students who never got what was going on. In class they gave the right answers with all the rest of the parrots but after assessment I find they didn’t get it. They were just playing school. I was playing teacher and this was not going to work. The turning point was my laryngitis. I couldn’t speak anymore in class. Little by little I gave the classroom back to the students and little by little they became the owners of their learning. I gave the students projects at their own levels and allowed students to work out problems and allowed them to totally mess things up until they came crying to me saying I blew it. Then I will show them a few points and they got it right. The next time they don’t feel so scared to fail. When there is conflict they deal with it on their own level. We write journals and talk about it after class. Kids are free to express themselves in the classroom. Sure there are rues but the kids are making the rules. There is a curriculum and learning targets and projects but more students are talking about the curriculum than I talk. I say only what our objects are today and students start or they start asking questions. Sometimes they solve the problem in pairs and other times in a group. Through teaching I am beginning to remember my life as a student. I listened to so many lectures as a student. At the time of the lecture it seemed like I understood everything but as soon as I got home I couldn’t do anything with it. It was because I was also just following as a parrot. I wasn’t participating. So in my classroom we turned this around. We practice the problems in the classroom with friends in a low pressure environment. Our home work is not to work problems but to apply the problems we worked in class to something we can find in our life that day and write one sentence about what we will do in the next class.

As a teacher I cannot just shrug off Pink Floyd saying, “those are rebellious kids”. Also I cannot just sit back and judge other teachers who become “another brick in the wall”. I have a duty to my students to make education a platform for creativity instead of killing creativity. I can’t do this on my own but need help from parents who understand. Because of parent cooperation I am free to teach class in a way that students are learning. There are many other influences on the machine that come from the state and corporations but they are out of my control. The thing that I can do is listen to students who when they say: “Hey Teachers. Leave us kids alone?” Then ask just one beautiful question, “Why?”

pic source
pic source
The last picture is from my classroom.

Love,

365GROOVY
@mineopoly