My new instructional plan for the second semester is based on an idea that, in my view, soars in importance far above any other in CI instruction, that students must never be given the opportunity to behave in a CI classroom in a rude or antisocial way.
In the past, in my fervor to get as much CI instruction as possible going in my classroom, I very often opened up plenty of space during class for my students, either overtly or covertly, to a minor or sometimes major extent, to impose their will on the class proceedings.
It is the nature of CI instruction to depend for its success on open and good-willed back and forth participatory and reciprocal interaction between teacher and students. But this very open and good willed interaction by its nature tends to open up places for rudeness to happen in our CI classrooms, since kids in schools are rarely actually instructed in proper decorum. (Surly emotional distance is not proper decorum.)
We therefore need to change the CI instruction we do to include only CI activities that actively promote proper decorum in our classrooms. There is a difference. It’s not the quality of the CI in schools, but the extent to which the CI brings proper behavior into the classroom.
As stated in the first post in this series, CI can’t be presented in the form of a bullet train in a junk yard. The fact that the train is in a junk yard has to be addressed. And yes, many of our classrooms are junk yards (no blame, no insult, it has become that way so we need to accept that and move on). The train’s speed must be adjusted to its surroundings.
How to control general rudeness has been the topic of at least 1/3 of the posts here over recent years, so I know that I am not alone in trying to find a way this spring – when the problem is the worst – to serve up my students only CI that rests on a nice platter made of strong discipline. CI that invites chaos is what we want to get rid of here, and again, there is a difference.
Rudeness generated in the natural and innocent give and take of our storytelling classes is not a student’s right and must be eliminated. I hope that my new plan, the specifics of which I will present in my next post here tomorrow and are really nothing new to most of us who read here all the time, addresses and meets the problem vigorously.
