8. Bombinate
Bombinate
[bahm-buh-nāt]To buzz; To drone; To hum
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| Your classroom is not the Grove of Athens or a comedy club (unless that's what your particular group of students agreed it should be) |
The flip side, the negative part: I drone sometimes in verbal language. I can't stop talking and I lose people or overwhelm them. I'm too much. I lost my students' attention so many times this way. I went on tangents. Sometimes kids encouraged me when I'd say "Let's get back to the topic at hand" and genuinely wanted to hear the stories. It was alway 3 or 4 nerds/artists/whatever in the room who wanted to hear stories related to the lesson, but other times the rest of the kids broke up into conversation amongst themselves that was either inspired by the tangents, making jokes out of it, or sometimes unrelated. Bombination is not the way to make an inclusive classroom, or for that matter an inclusive comedy show. That's how you bomb. I don't think it's an accident that we call it "bombing."
I knew I did this and I regretted it, yet I still asked students to do waayyyy too much written work for the time I allotted. I just wanted them to do it all even though they didn't have any time because I'd taken it up with my bombinating. I wanted them to come with me. But I really have to scaffold, engage, and gently push them along if they need it. Not force them. This is how I alienated so many students and overwhelmed them. I never failed any students unless they totally didn't try and stopped coming to class, but I should've done better by them and been more authentic about how I chose to assess their work. This is why the structure of schools is messed up. We are pressured from the top to collect data, we're judged if we don't have enough in the gradebook--enough data points, whatever. We're not showing growth. We're not doing right by our students. We're judged by those at the top, but worse, ourselves. All the while, we're not listened to, and we're not listening to our kids.
There were projects when to correct and counterbalance this tendency, I gave waayy too much time on a project and not enough support or inspiration to continue.
I want to find Destin Air right now and apologize to him. Mike Anderson, Kiernan Morman, Rainel Perez, Jesus Tadeo, Amara Sisavath, and so many others too! I love those kids! I should've let Destin propose a project and a timeline, let him sit in the corner and write his songs, his sludgy noise punk, then present it to his peers. And I should've done the same with every single one of them. Let them work on teams if they want. The possibilities were endless and so were their passions. They didn't wanted to debate whether we should've dropped the bomb on Japan. Well...I mean, they probably should, but I digress. Maybe they should get the basics of that in history class and then link it to their own personal project somehow. All the while, I should've been holding daily or every other daily standup, weekly talking circles community building, and assessing only by giving written feedback on their process and how they could better show up for themselves or eachother. And they give eachother feedback. If they're coming to class stoned too much and getting sloppy, let them call eachother out on it, don't punish them. Relate sloppy work to sloppy thinking and habits. Learning through experience.
They need to be pushed, yes, and data needs to be collected at points, sure, but really they also needed to play, explore, ask their own questions and pursue them. They also needed way more time outside whether it was sunny or not.
We can make all these things work together.
We can nail the art of the mini-lesson once we find out what skills students need to do their own explorations. We have knowledge to share, yes, and sometimes longer lectures are appropriate, but in the traumatized communities where we work sometimes, kids need a safe haven, a nest, and to be told they can do it. Especially when there aren't enough school counselors.
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