The things we build

Far too often, school exists as a fait accompli. A thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it. 

Students complete assignments assigned by teachers.

But what else in life operates in this way? We get to respond and engage with nearly everything else that comes our way and the learning we undertake in life is so often self-directed and driven by our own interests and engagement. 

So it was with this in mind that I approached this week's assignments for my students. 

Today I shared with them an idea I've had to create a "Periodic Table of Religion." They're in the midst of learning about the Periodic Table of Elements in Science, so I figured I'd tap into their expertise and gauge what a religious table might look like.

They quickly taught me about the characteristics of the elemental table ("What is its function?" I asked.)

Okay, I thought. So, then, how could we apply the functionality of this table to one about religion? How could it be useful to us? They quickly got to work brainstorming the types of information that could be valuable in a Periodic Table of Religion.

See, this is the thing. My students had a better list of ideas than I ever could have developed on my own. I had the idea, but instead of framing it as an assignment (fait accompli), I allowed my students to play a role in the vision. I can't wait to see what they do with it.

I've been thinking about how my students apply their own learning to the world around them lately. I've been considering what types of jobs they might someday have and how the ways they think (and are allowed to think) in school are preparing them. As such, three of my current students and I are writing an article about buildings. We're looking at a current building project on our campus (a new dining hall) and asking, "How is building a dining hall like writing an 8th grade essay?"

We understand the steps in crafting an essay:

1. Process
1. Choose a topic
2. Research
3. Outline
4. Rough Draft
5. Edit
6. Proofread
7. Final Draft
8. Revise (Revised final draft → the “polishing” stage)
9. Publish

When buildings are finished, they represent a fait accompli. Yet, in How Buildings Learn, author Stewart Brand notes,

Papers are constantly building and rebuilding until...well...they aren't. But the interpretations continue. As we read (and re-read!) our favorite books, don't we glean new meaning? Aren't poems and plays and speeches crystalline, as Brand suggests buildings can be in their uses and function?

So, I wonder, as I close in on my 30 minutes of reflection, how our learning might be like this. My students learned about the Periodic Table of Elements from their Science teacher...but how does that apply to the rest of their lives? How does it change the way they think about order and organization? How can the measuring of stuff be shifted and tilted and applied to something totally divergent?

Even though some assignments feel static (like my students' vocabulary quiz tomorrow), their use of the words is fluid, crystalline.

Their learning exists simultaneously in the past, present, and future tenses of their lives' stories.

Perhaps, then, building isn't the right way to think about my students...I am not building them, nor are they building themselves.

Our dining hall and our essays will one day be finished (or...abandoned?) and sent out into the world to be used and appreciated. But my students are building something that is both built and grown. It is both innate and extrinsic.