Understanding them in this way really opened my heart and caused me to pause when, in the midst of telling the class what our testing schedule would be for the week, one of the students suddenly shouted, followed by several others.
Student 1: Why do I have to take this stupid test?
Student 2: Yeah, give us one good reason.
Student 3: It’s to show who’s smart and who’s stupid.
Student 4: Yeah, well, the ones who made up this test are the stupid ones.
Teacher (listening to their feelings and needs): Are you feeling irritated because you’d like clarity about how you would benefit from taking the test?
Student 1: Yeah, why do we have to take them? We know what the results are going to be. It’s a stupid waste of time.
Teacher (reflecting his needs): I guess you’d like to know the reasons behind people asking you to do things?
Student 5: Not “ask” us to do. Make us do.
Teacher (hearing more feelings and needs): So you’re angry, too, because you’d like to choose what you do here, and not be forced to do things.
Student 5: Yeah, here and everywhere else. What do we get to choose? We don’t even get to wear the clothes we want to school.
Teacher (in a tone of voice that expresses inquiry): You’re fed up with all the things that adults decide for you? You’d like more choice?
Student 5: It’s stupid to even talk about it. There’s nothing we can do.
Teacher (continuing to guess feelings and needs): It sounds like you’re feeling pretty discouraged about even getting heard by adults?
Student 5: Yeah. Why waste my breath?
Teacher: So you feel hopeless and, I’m guessing, real sad when your need for understanding isn’t being met?
Student 5: (Silently, he lowers his head, his eyes filling with tears.)
Everyone was quiet for a few minutes. There was a noticeable shift in the energy of the class, from tense and angry to soft and sad. I’m sure it was because I just listened to them—with no resistance, argument, or pat answer. Then the first student who had spoken, asked his question again.
Student 1: So why do we have to take these tests? Do you know?
Teacher: The truth is, I don’t really know why you have to take them. I’ve been told some reasons for the test, but I’m not as clear about them as I’d like to be, so I’d rather not talk more about it right now. I promise you that I will look into the reasons for these tests and get back to you. I want you to know why it is you are being asked to do things. I really want to be clear why I am asking you to do things. I also feel sad because autonomy is very precious to me and I want you to have more choice in your lives. I’d like to do something about that. So I appreciate very much that you opened up this discussion today and shared your needs and the feelings connected with them.
Following this exchange, I said to my students, “Obviously, there are a lot of painful feelings associated with taking these tests. There’s also a lack of clarity about their purpose. I want to continue to address your needs and the confusion and other feelings connected to them. Is anyone doubting my desire to do this?”
When no one spoke up, I continued: “In the meantime, to make things easiest for all of us right now, I’d like to begin and complete this round of testing that has already been scheduled. Is there anyone who would not be willing to go along with me on this?” I remember I felt so astonished and grateful to see that no one was unwilling to take the dreaded tests that day.
Now, of course, I see that my students were always telling me how they feel. I was the one who acted differently that day, by taking the time to hear what they were saying, and by being willing to honestly express my feelings and needs to them.
I really got the power of NVC in education that day.
CHAPTER 5
Creating An
Interdependent
Learning Community
Secular Ethics
Students receive powerful learning experiences from the ways their classrooms and schools are organized. The organization of classrooms and schools can support the learning necessary for students to develop and maintain either structures that support interdependence or structures that support competition and Domination.
Life-Enriching Education structures the school as a community where each student is equally concerned about contributing to other students’ reaching their learning objectives as they are about reaching their own. Not only does such a learning community provide learning which will be helpful to students as adults in creating and maintaining Life-Enriching family, work, and government organizations, but it also facilitates the development of what the Dalai Lama refers to as ‘secular ethics’:
Along with education, which generally deals only with academic accomplishments, we need to develop more altruism and sense of caring and responsibility for others in the minds of the younger generation studying in various educational institutions. This can be done without necessarily involving religion. One could therefore call this ‘secular ethics,’ as it in fact consists of basic human qualities such as kindness, compassion, sincerity, and honesty.
Most of us would agree with the Dalai Lama that we need to support the younger generation in the development of more altruism and sense of caring and responsibility for others. Yet we are living in a culture that supports competing to see who comes out on top in an unfair competition in which the privileged are almost guaranteed to win. Our schools reflect this clearly. As I indicated in the previous chapter, the students who get the highest grades are not necessarily the ones who have learned the most. They are the ones who had already learned what was being presented before it was presented because their family’s economic situation provided a head start for them in learning the things that are studied in schools.
So I’d like to see the competitive classroom transformed into a learning community in which all members are concerned not only about their own learning but equally for the learning of everyone else.
Developing an Interdependent Learning Community
Schools and classrooms where interdependent learning communities are thriving usually encourage students who have reached certain objectives, to assist others wishing to reach these objectives. Having students teach one another contributes to the development of an interdependent learning community. Once students have reached certain learning objectives, they are then in a position to support the learning of other students.
This can take many forms. To begin with, it can take a tutorial form where students who have already developed a skill can teach it to others. There is ample evidence that students can teach one another as effectively as trained teachers can teach them. This is certainly not a new concept to those who work in a country school setting, in Montessori schools, or in other multi-age classrooms. In such settings where a wide age range of students might be found grouped together in one class, it has been commonplace to have students teaching one another.
When I observed such a classroom in an NVC-based school in Israel recently, I noticed a boy being instructed by a girl who looked to be about his age. As I watched, I saw that while he was working on some problems she had given him, she turned to her right to receive some instruction in a different subject offered by another, older student. All the students in the class were involved in this giving and receiving of instruction except for four who were working with the teacher. They were students with special learning needs. The teacher had the time to address their needs because the other students were actively learning without her having to be involved.
By allowing for learning experiences in the classroom in which students can be engaged by working alone or with one another the teacher then is free to trouble-shoot. Trouble-shooting might involve private instruction, or it might mean sitting and talking to students who appear to need to talk with someone on a particular day more than they need to work on a specific learning task. Trouble-shooting might also involve interacting with students who are not learning effec
tively in order to determine what their needs are.
I have heard some teachers worry about having students teach one another because they fear that this is unfair to the student who has to do the teaching. But most teachers agree that no one learns more about a subject than the person teaching it, and that the child who teaches stands to benefit as much as the one being taught. Teachers who practice this in the classroom have told me that the students doing the teaching gained considerably in their awareness of the learning process and this appeared to facilitate their own learning.
The Teacher as Travel Agent
I have also heard teachers express the concern that assigning one child as a teacher of another could actually increase competitiveness, lead to just another kind of one-upmanship. But in a classroom where everyone has a different set of learning objectives, where there is no established hierarchy of achievement, it is quite possible for a student to be capable of teaching in one area but in need of instruction in another, and comfortably both offering and asking for help.
Maybe it’s because I travel so much, and I have a lot of contact with travel agents, but in such a classroom, I like to think of the teacher as the travel agent and the students as the travelers. A travel agent doesn’t tell me where to go. But sometimes, if I tell him my needs, he might recommend some places that I haven’t thought of, and that I don’t know about. So the teacher, like the travel agent, might offer some suggestions, might strongly encourage, but would never tell the students where to go. Meanwhile, one student-traveler might tell another about a wonderful place where he has been, and get that student excited about going there.
Another thing I like about the travel agent image is that the travel agent doesn’t go on the trip with the client, so the trip doesn’t depend on the travel agent’s availability. In the Israeli school described above, during a specific period each day the students pick their own teachers, and 60 percent pick other students.
Studies in the United States show that a child who has just learned a skill can be a better teacher of that skill with other children, than a trained teacher. And why should that be surprising? The children speak the same language, they know one another, they feel safe with one another, and the experience of learning the skill for the first time is still fresh. So if a friend knows how to ride a bike, he can teach another friend how to ride a bike. Or if a friend knows how to add up arithmetic problems, she can show another friend how to do that.
And the travel agent doesn’t expect all clients, even those who have the same objectives, to reach their destination at the same time, or to get there the same way. If somebody doesn’t have much money, maybe he can go by train. Another might go by plane, and so on. The teacher can adjust the trip to fit the traveler. So if the student is having trouble with reading comprehension, until he gets that, she teaches him differently. If one of his objectives is to learn about something he has seen in a science book, she asks a student who can read to read to him, rather than making him learning dependent on a skill he does not yet have.
So the travel agent doesn’t tell you where to go, and doesn’t go with you. But she assists you, offers some alternatives, and shows how these alternatives might be Life-Enriching.
Materials That Allow Students to Learn by Themselves
After the teacher and student have mutually established learning objectives, the teacher then works with students to obtain the information and materials they need to successfully fulfill the objectives. Ideally, the materials may be such that students often can use them by themselves. This involves the teacher identifying the prerequisite competencies or concepts that constitute readiness on the part of students to start working toward their objectives.
Next the teacher and students work together to identify and define the contributing concepts, the instructional activities, the target date, and the vocabulary the learner needs in order to reach the objectives. The teacher would then arrange these elements in the sequential order that best serves the student’s progress toward the objective. Each element would be fully stated in a form that tells students exactly what they must know or do and indicates the materials and learning experiences required for its mastery.
These “trip packs,” using the travel agent image again, would be made available to the students, preferably without dependence on the teacher’s initiation, and with a set of instructions telling the students how to use them. Teachers can prepare their own custom or special purpose learning units, and, of course, they can also use commercially produced materials. For the teacher with money budgeted for materials, there is now a plethora of such materials from which to choose. Or with assistance from students, volunteers, and parents, materials can be constructed so that students’ learning is not always dependent on the teacher’s availability.
Utilization of Students and Parents in Providing Materials
Students and their parents are resources that can be called upon for help in preparing materials. Not only can students and parents save the teacher time and effort, but also in the process they can benefit from the experience.
In the seventh-grade classroom of a friend of mine, the students liked working with a commercially prepared reading kit. However, there was only one kit for the entire class. Therefore my friend suggested that the class make several kits of their own following the design of the commercially prepared kit, by using articles found in magazines. Enthusiastically, several of the students began working on this project. Initially my friend was concerned because the students constructing the kits were using articles that he anticipated would be too difficult for them to read. For example, they were selecting articles of personal interest on subjects such as drugs and many of these articles were culled from journals that supposedly were beyond the reading levels of the students. However, to the surprise of my friend, the students not only used these self-made kits to improve their reading but preferred them to the one commercially prepared kit.
I was once asked to attend a parent-teacher event for my youngest son’s kindergarten class. The advertised purpose of the meeting was to acquaint the parents with the program. When we arrived, we were told that parents and students learn best by doing. Therefore, rather than have the parents passively listen to the teachers tell us about the program, we were told that we would be given an opportunity to learn about the program by making materials for it. The teachers had assembled a lot of raw materials (none of which were expensive) such as old magazines, glue, paint, colored cardboard, scissors, etc. The teacher then gave instructions for the construction of certain learning materials. As the teacher gave the instructions, the use that would be made of these materials was described.
I was put to work on a detail making sets of concept cards. I was to look through magazines, find four pictures that went together (for example, pictures of four different types of vehicles—car, plane, boat, train) and one that did not go with this set (for example, a picture of an orange). These pictures were each to be pasted onto a 3 X 5 index card. The back of the card of the one that did not belong with the others (the orange in the example given) was to be colored red.
We were told that sets such as these would be used to help our children learn different concepts. The students would be given the sets of cards, would place the one in each set that did not belong on top, and then check to see if they were correct by seeing if the one on top had a red back. In this way we learned actively about the program and the teacher was able to capitalize on this voluntary labor to amass a large store of materials in a relatively short time.
Volunteer Tutoring Services
By volunteer services, I have in mind primarily the use of parents, grandparents, and other neighborhood personnel as supporters in the learning community. These people, I believe, could be of considerable help in reaching students who are not able to learn through procedures outlined previously. I know of one residential treatment center for “emotionally disturbed” children that uses elderly citizens as tutors.
The exp
erience to date has been rewarding for both young and old. The principal of the school reported to me that often elders have the patience that so many of these young persons require, and also have the time to devote to them.
The Geographical Community as Learning Resource
Another source that can be drawn upon to support the learning community is the geographical area in which the school is located. I observed a good example of how geographical community resources can be involved in teaching students in the Parkway Program in Philadelphia. In this program the “school” is viewed as the city itself. Courses can be held anywhere in the community where significant learning might go on. Thus students might go to the zoo for courses, or to the art museum, local industries, etc.
These resources were contacted by the school authorities to determine their willingness to provide personal supervision, resources, and facilities, and were viewed as partners in the educational process, not mere locations for enjoyable but isolated field trips.
The Travel Agent in Action
In the previous chapter, I described a first-grade classroom in Montana and outlined the process the teacher follows to establish mutual objectives with each student. I left the description at the point at which a few students have indicated to the teacher that they would like to learn six consonant sounds.
I would now like to describe what happens from that point because I think it will demonstrate some of the suggestions made in this chapter.
Upon arriving at the objective of learning six consonant sounds with the students, the teacher has several options open.
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