Finding a Classroom Practice that Flows

When I started teaching, I was committed, perhaps foolishly to a completely democratic classroom environment, one where students exercised a nearly complete freedom of choice with very little restriction. I believed--once again, perhaps foolishly--that students could and would make the best and most appropriate choices regarding their own learning.

I was simultaneously completely right and completely wrong. 8th grade students and younger are completely capable of directing their own learning, in theory. In practice, in the particular context where I was teaching, this was not possible without guidance. What I had not considered was the fact that, for the past six to eight years, these students had rarely, if ever, been afforded the opportunity to exercise the freedom of choice I wanted to give them. They weren't used to doing that at school. They were accustomed to being told what to do, how to do it, and when to have it done. When I set them loose, this type of freedom in a classroom was so absolutely foreign to them that they simply reveled in the freedom, completely devoid of focus.

For the next several posts (or the next several dozen), I want to explore my own thinking about the balance between freedom and structure in the classroom. Although I am approaching this from the perspective of an art teacher, I suspect the issues I would raise are not exclusive to the teaching of visual art alone or even the Arts in general. I would claim that these issues are at play in every subject, in every classroom regardless of grade level.

I hope you will read and, more importantly, respond.