During my third period class today my 9th graders were yelling at screaming.....
They got so loud that the principal came down to my room to check that everything was under control.
Ten minutes later one of the hallway staff also appeared at my door to make sure that everything was ok.
Each time these people peeked into my room today, they saw 32 9th graders yelling and screaming at each other.
They also saw a smiling teacher.
Today was day three of a Constitutional Convention simulation in my Government class. Each day we have used James Madison's diary to guide our debates, focusing on the major issues that divided the delegates in Philadelphia in 1787. The debates have gotten progressively better, with today's debate on representation in Congress being the absolute best. After a not so exciting beginning to the debate, in which almost every student thought each state should have the same number of votes (sounds like "socialism" to me) I pulled a student aside and asked him to make the case for "big" states. What followed was a twenty minute, student led debate over not only how states should be represented in Congress, but the legitimacy of counting slaves towards population. I did jump in twice to share the voice of the Southern slave owner in order to shake the hornet's nest even more but the large majority of this debate was student run. While this did lead to the class being loud, and even a little chaotic, it allowed my students to cover the content I wanted them to cover on their own terms.
I had an absolutely amazing experience with my student's today because of two realizations that I have come to over the past few years: 1)it's great when students are running the class instead of the teacher and 2)yelling and screaming kids are not always a bad thing. I truly believe that one of the biggest problems in classrooms is that there are too many teachers who either don't agree with these beliefs or are too scared to try. Don't get me wrong, there's a time for a teacher to be in the front of the room and for students to be silent, but it doesn't have to always be that way; in fact it should never always be that way. Student-centered learning empowers students in their educational experience while also increasing teacher/student relationship and decreasing teacher work load (if that doesn't sell teachers on it, I don't know what will!) Additionally, when you're teaching adolescent students, taking advantage of their desire to talk and argue with each other makes classroom management that much easier.
During my third period class today my 9th graders were yelling at screaming.... and it was great. It was great because instead talking and yelling about Call of Duty or the fight that almost happened in the hallway, they were talking and yelling about the issues surrounding the creation of our Constitution.
As a teacher, I couldn't ask for anything more.
