210. HOW WAS YOUR WEEKEND? - Radical Intentions Within the Seemingly Mundane

I’m sure many of my students think I’m mad. Or certainly that I like to waste time in my lessons. It has become a running joke with my sixth form classes that their first lesson of the week begins with my asking them how their weekends have been. Sometimes this check-in can take up to twenty minutes of the lesson, depending on how busy they’ve been. I share some stories of my own weekend too. With other classes, sometimes, instead of taking the register I am obliged to take at the start of each lesson in the regular name - saying their name and getting the formal response of “yes, sir!” or “here sir!” - I ask them to respond to a question about themselves. This might range from something simple, like “what is your favourite sandwich filling”, to the more profound. A few weeks ago I asked one Year 10 class “what’s the most life-changing piece of advice you’ve ever been given?” Another class were asked “if you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?” Again, depending on the question, and on the level of thought required for the response, the simple act of taking the register can take more than ten minutes.

Maybe I am mad?

Maybe I am wasting curriculum time?

But I don’t think so. Because there is a method behind the madness.

I have long been inspired by the teaching philosophies of bell hooks, and a core element to her ideas about both teaching to transgress and teaching community, is to “genuinely value everyone’s presence” in the classroom. to “have interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognising one another’s presence.”

As hooks says, “making the classroom a democratic setting where everybody feels a responsibility to contribute is a central goal of transformative pedagogy.” The drab tool of roll-call - reading out student names in alphabetical register order - can either be used as a turgid safeguarding routine, or we can make the most of the opportunity the turgid safeguarding routine affords. Every student is required to respond. So why not make the response worthwhile?

At this point seasoned teachers will be screaming at their screens: why not ask them subject-related questions? Why not force mass participation in something important?

I think getting to know my pupils as people is important. And ultimately leads to their becoming more willing participants in a democratic classroom and, as a result, better philosophers.

Philosophy teaching requires a lot of students. We ask them not only to learn and regurgitate the thinking of historical philosophers, but to do philosophy themselves. Reflecting on some of their most deeply held beliefs and assumptions and interrogating their own values and opinions. To do that well, they need to be willing to share that - quite intimate and private - part of themselves. To offer up their view of the world and be willing for that worldview to be scrutinised and kicked about by the rest of the room. So we start with questions in the register about favourite movies or take-away orders, we pepper it with a few deeper questions that require a little more thought, and after taking the time to get to know one another, and see that sharing personal opinions and engaging in good-spirited disagreement can be fun and non-threatening, we get to a much more open dialogue when it comes to the “important” philosophy.

But it’s not just a cynical ploy for better engagement with the “tough” stuff. Philosophy, at its heart, is about thinking about “the good life”. Every time a multitude of students share their ideas about things which are good or bad, ways to spend time, or examples of their day, they become participants in a discussion about the good life. When I ask students how they spent their weekend, we share notions of what to do with our free time. We discuss the very concept of “free” time, and the fact that our society divides our time between work and play in such a strangely compartmentalised way. We look in on ways that different families interact, and how different people hold different norms and assumptions about the world.

And I use the word “we” purposefully. How a weekend looks to my students has been very different depending on the school I am teaching in. Getting to know what ideas about the world aren’t present in the classroom can be just as powerful as talking about the ideas that are. Sharing some of my own self with my students can contribute to widening or challenging their existing conceptions, as well as reminding them that the truly democratic classroom is not just a place where a person in authority (a teacher) gets to demand people lower down in the hierarchy (their students) share pieces of themselves while they themselves remain aloof. If I am asking them to share their philosophical thinking with me, I need to share mine with them too. Likewise, if I ask you to tell me your favourite author, you better believe I’m going to tell you mine too (Stephen King).

It’s just something small. A few additional minutes here or there. But it helps build a community of learners which make students want to be there, know they are seen for who they are, not just as a name on the register, and transforms the relationship between teacher and student from one of top-down authoritarian hierarchy to one of more horizontal democracy. (And yes - students get to set the register question sometimes too).

Of course the biggest irony here is that much of my justification rests on hooks’ idea of democratising classrooms and undermining dominator culture, and for many professional teachers working in the UK today, that justification seems irrelevant to what is actually important in their classrooms. Democracy is not the objective. Passing exams is. I call this “ironic” because those same teachers - all of us - have to be seen to be “promoting fundamental British values” as part of our professional standards. Inspectors in both the state and independent sectors look to ensure that we do this. And one of those fundamental “British” values is democracy. Yet the democracy we must be seen to promote is the arguably performative, institutional democracy of the state election system, not a meaningful, authentic, democracy which permeates all aspects of our lives, including in the classroom.

Until students get a meaningful voice in what they are taught in schools, and how they will be taught it - and teachers get meaningful voice too in determining what happens in their classrooms and in their curricula - then schools will never be sites of authentic democracy. But in the meantime, in individual classrooms, the green shoots of authentic democracy might spring through the concrete of the school where teachers become brave enough to let go of their control and bring their students into the conversation around their education as engaged equals instead of merely as vessels waiting to have arbitrary information poured into so that they can pass a set of overly amplified and oppressive examinations.

Author: DaN McKee (he/him)

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