Class after lunch, there’s lots of energy. Plus these folks are seniors, they have a certain swagger and assurance that comes with being in your final semester of high school.
John finds me a seat next to a workbench, shoving chisels and tools and papers and a computer far enough out of the way to give me a little space. I take a seat on a worn stool. The plastic cushion is slippery and I have to push a bit with my feet to keep from sliding off.
John introduces me, then reminds the students what they’ll be doing. As far as I understand, they are all preparing a dish, stuff they are going to be able to eat later. It might be nutritious, it might not, the point is being able to describe what they are serving. The intro is over fast and half the class leaves (going to get ingredients, I discover later) and some of the other students go out into the courtyard after John opens up the large glass garage door. This is an advantage of teaching in San Diego, for sure. Even in February …
While the students are getting their ingredients, John’s teaching partner, Pat, introduces himself. A hallmark of High Tech High is collaborative teaching, bringing together subjects cross-disciplinarily. This class is environmental society and humanities, science and being human. He’s a friendly guy, Pat, the type of teacher you’d meet and think: “I want to be in his class.” He and John collaborate a lot.
Students arrive back to the class in groups. Some girls are fixing an Italian dish, it looks like mozzarella cheese and tomatoes with basil. They prep with toothpicks, making a display on a plate. I’m not sure what their explanation will be, what the lesson to be learned is, but I know that the student washing blueberries behind me in the sink is focused on antioxidants, he just told the girls that.
A fresh breeze is drifting through the room, the walls are full of tools and past projects. The students are working in clumps, at least the ones that are still in the room. John takes care of whatever needs taking care of as he moves between the groups, swapping a few words here, a few words there. This is the kind of teaching that you can do if you aren’t worried that you are supposed to look like you are teaching. The kind of teaching that is measured by whether or not the students are learning, whether or not the students are in charge, creative, self-directed, collaborative.
A couple of students pull a Lazy Susan out of a box, a round piece of wood on ball bearings that you can put in the middle of the table to serve appetizers. One of them says that “this is for the charcuterie, pronounced like you do in American English, full of R and something like Char-COO-deree. It’s a word borrowed from French, that I first learned in French, so the English pronunciation really catches my attention. We talk about this, the students are really friendly, and during the conversation a student from a different class wanders in and gives the student I’m talking to a hug. She says “I’m not here for any reason, just to say hi. I better leave before John gets mad.” I’m pretty sure John has seen this interaction from across the room. And I’m pretty sure that John’s emotion would be anything but mad. More like proud, in that way fathers feel when their children are getting along, when love and kindness are on display.
More students appear with more food. I think I’m seeing a trend that the girls are putting in more effort than the boys, but I should hold that thought until I see the final products. It’s just that a couple of the boys said that the food they are serving is popcorn, and they had a bag of Smartfood popcorn and some cups to put it in, another boy mentioned nachos, and then of course the blueberry guy from earlier.
The looseness of this class. I know not everyone would love it. I do. There are times when students are sitting, but not often. You wouldn’t be able to say from minute to minute if they are working individually, in pairs, or in groups, because the configurations are constantly shifting as they move around. The charcuterie group is cutting cheese and getting crackers ready. One of them asks if she can have a different role. The students work that out. They add in thinly sliced meats with an eye for aesthetics.
But the looseness. We replicated this for a few years, at my school, at least at certain times of the school day, in certain ways, in an experimental middle school. We kept it going for a while in a school within a school at the high school, with student projects led by students, time to work, time to learn how to work. I defended the looseness up and down, forward and backwards, left and right. If we want students to develop the ability to self-organize, plan, collaborate, and so on, we have to let them actually experience all that. We have to back off all the teaching and focus on the learning. Ultimately, I mostly lost, the programs melted back into traditional structures. But parts do remain, and the next person who shakes things up, and the next person after that, may have an easier time of it.
I feel a great sense of belonging when some boys return with their food contribution, which they bought at Vons Supermarket. I just chanced upon Vons an hour ago for my lunch. I’m an insider! I know this place! (At least a little, not bad for my first day here, I guess.) And in fact, the insider feeling in this class is exactly the vibe I’ve been feeling, between and among these students and their teacher. It’s this vibe that brought in the student from another class, just to say hi. It’s the familiarity with which the students and John interact, the maturity to work together, to figure out who is doing what, to respectfully share this space.
I was here in this classroom five years ago and I remember that what I’m feeling right now is what I felt back then, too. Connectedness, being seen and heard. Being yourself, with others. It’s a very nice thought to think that for all that time, since then and until now, this classroom has been creating this sense of togetherness.
The popcorn group is talking about carbohydrates. Another group mentions natural sugars. The class is environmental science and humanities. The room is a makerspace. The feel is summer camp. And I can’t wait to see their final products, to hear their presentations. To taste more of this, figuratively and literally, to run across many more classrooms that look and feel just like this one.