How We Think About Power

At the recommendation of one of my students, I decided, instead of requiring my students to read the same novel to conclude our time together in English class, that I would instead invite each of them to select their own "choice reading" book from a list I compiled in collaboration with our school librarian and the incredible support of the #NCTEvillage hashtag on Twitter.

The eleven books we ended up with were united by their connection to POWER as a literary theme.

On Wednesday of this week I decided to encourage the class (and their grandparents who happened to be on campus!) to lean into an opportunity to think laterally.

This was a different way of thinking for them, but it represents such an important skill in their lives. I asked them to take the scientific formula for power (one with which they were quite familiar from their work this month in Physics class) and ask, "is this formula the same for societal power?" Can we metaphorically think of the power that humans wield (political, social, familial, etc.) in such a simple output-based manner?

 

As always, my students took the bait and off they went. They didn't settle for "yes" and "no." 

Instead, I listened in awe as they discussed the nature of manipulation and circumstance and luck and birthright and inherited power and fear and mentorship and courage and relationships...none of those elements are evident in the formula above. But they also were able to acknowledge that if Archie (the newest royal baby at Buckingham Palace) was like a bouncy ball, his starting point was simply higher than others...that he was likely to bounce higher (i.e. have more power) than others because he needed less force...the gravity of circumstance would simply propel him by merely existing.

It was so neat to watch them all being lateral thinkers. They applied their scientific understanding and slid back and forth from the literal to the figurative, from the physical to the metaphorical...from the quantitative to the qualitative. 

I was proud of their thinking, sure. They are more than ready for the final exam, and they are more than ready for 9th grade. But the pride I saw in the eyes of their grandparents and special friends was even more exciting. They have the long view on their grandchildren's lives and they know that an ability to think so flexibly and to courageously take risks in the classroom will be skills that support their growth and achievement...because knowledge, after all, is power.