There are those TV commercials where, in a splash of plastic water, someone goes into another place. We should do that in our classes. We should break the plane. What does that mean?
It means that we should leave the safety of our position in front of the classroom and, in full CI stride, break through the plane that often separates us from our students. I learned that form Peter Nutting as he worked some CI in Maine last week.
Breaking the plane changes our students’ perception of us from one that is two dimensional to one that is three dimensional. If a child is drifting, when we suddenly appear in front of them, smiling at them with a reminder to follow our rules, or perhaps a loving tap-tap on their desk to tell them unequivocably to lift their head up off the desk (which poisons the lesson, bless their hearts), their perception of their own behavior in the class changes, changing their learning.
Breaking through the plane not only insures good classroom discipline, it also creates an interesting change in the dynamic of the CI. Suddenly the CI is not just in front of them – it has moved next to them, and even shows up behind them. All of a sudden their suggestion has not only been accepted into the CI by the teacher, but the teacher is there shaking their hand in congratulations of that event and in celebration of how smart they are. They have to respond. You can feel the difference when you do this.
Break the plane. Move around. Keep things interesting. Some of our students want to bring their talents at watching TV into the classroom. They want their experience to be in two dimensions so that they can avoid fully showing up for class in the visceral way that CI classes demand. When we break the plane, it is just another way of keeping that from happening, of making sure that our students show up for our classes as human beings, not as robotic TV watchers.