A few years ago I had a student called Marcus (not his real name). Marcus was a student in my Kindergarten class, and he had come from a hugely challenging background. His mother fell pregnant with him in a refugee camp in Africa. A few months later his mother and her remaining family fled her home due to civil war – inhabitants of whole villages were being murdered by rebel soldiers. While they were fleeing the country, with Marcus still unborn, all of his aunties, cousins, uncles, brothers and sisters were murdered as they fled. Marcus and his mother miraculously survived and he was born a little while later. Marcus and his mother walked thousands of miles to safety and caught an illegal fishing boat to Australia to start a new life.
Understandably, Marcus was a challenging student. He could not socialise with any of the students, he would steal food from the canteen and belongings from people’s bags (mine included). However, considering the atrocities that he and his family had experienced, he was settling in remarkably well.
To be honest, I was a relatively new teacher at the time and I didn’t really know what to do with him. He was on countless behaviour plans, individual learning plans, reading plans, writing plans, eating plans, and the list went on. One day, when I was at my wit’s end, I decided to allow the students to have some quiet time and I put on some music – The Lion King’s Hakuna Matata to be precise. Marcus, upon hearing the music, put his pencil down, focused his attention on the music and began to dance – and did he dance! To the delight of his audience he twirled, jumped, shook, twisted and leapt in ways that were befitting of a Broadway production.
I am not claiming? that I was the one that ‘found’ his inner genius. By the precision and form that he displayed, he showed that it was something that he had loved for a long time. But that day, untapped potential was discovered in my class.
Classrooms are becoming more and more busy, more and more frantic and the curriculum is becoming more and more crowded. So how do you as a teacher create environments that untap your students’ potential?
Facilitate Play. Play, especially in the early years, is vital. It allows students to discover, challenge and interact with other students. Unfortunately subjects perceived as ‘non-essential’, such as the arts, are being squeezed out of the curriculum. If we ever get to the point that students cannot play, interact and problems solve in this way, it will be a tragedy.
Teacher across the curriculum. Why is it that we teach subjects in isolation? There is a fascinating movement of schools called A+ where teachers are encouraged to use such learning tools as thematic webbing (establishing connections between various subject areas) and the use of interdisciplinary thematic units – the curriculum is built around experiential learning.
Give students problems. Problem solving is a crucial skill that students need to learn. In a recent article I argued that we are preparing students for jobs that have not yet been created . The jobs of social media marketer, blogger, restaurant reviewer and a plethora of others were not even heard of 10 years ago. What we need, must, teach our students is a how to use a range of skills and how to solve problems across a range of contexts.
Do special inquiry projects. Have you ever been in a classroom where students are in control of their own learning? Where students can choose what and who they work with, they can choose and how they will investigate and present their information? It is a wonderful experience, an experience where, surprisingly, very few behaviour issues appear and student engagement is high.
Your classroom is a wonderful place. It is full of ideas that have not yet been perceived and concepts that have not yet formed. This year I would like to encourage you, as well as your students to take risks.
There is untapped potential lying just below the surface.