A Mountain of Tears

I have written previously about the wonderful online courses run by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) through Coursera and this week I got to put into practice some of the great lesson activities from their recent offering. Their Arts and Activity course focuses on implementing practical activities that get students to focus, reflect and create based on different art works. The course is based around practical activities that are used by the MoMA staff on a daily basis and it is nicely supplemented by readings on the theory of education and museums.

This week I have been focusing on writing descriptions with my ESL class. To begin the week I was reading about gaming and making learning more active. As such, I decided to take a normally boring activity of describing a scene or picture and turn it into a game. I got the students and we walked down to the shopping centre and I put a pair of students on each level. Each pair had to take 5 pictures of shops on their mobile phones and write a detailed description of one shop. Once we got back to the classroom, the pairs wrote out their description and then took turns trying to guess what the other pairs had described. I was impressed by the way that the groups tried to write more cryptic clues and the ways that they used smell, touch and colour to create a vivid picture of their chosen shop. I then finished the lesson by reflecting on the use of language and wrote some key vocabulary on the board.

Today, I decided to do the picture postcard activity from this week’s lecture. I started by putting up an image of Winter Moonlit Night (Wintermondnacht) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/ernst-ludwig-kirchner-winter-moonlit-night-wintermondnacht-1919-in-fall-1918) and playing some relaxing background music from YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_orGF2zM5o). I then got everyone to stand and did a guided imaginative tour of the painting. I asked the students to use each of their senses to imagine what it would be like to be in the scene and to visualise what they are seeing, hearing, and touching. I then got them to sit down and draw a small section of the work. I reiterated that I was not worried about the quality of the drawing but instead wanted them to observe the work closely while drawing. I then got them to write a letter to a friend or member of their family about their trip to this mountain.

One of the key parts of the success of the activity was the use of the music. It was relaxing and set a wonderful quite mood for the classroom. Moreover, it fitted perfectly with the work – more accident than good management – thus creating a harmony of visual and aural setting. Also, I actively participated in the process by vocalizing what I imagined during the initial stages then drawing and writing along with the students. While I did more around the class to see that everyone was on task, my earnest involvement encouraged the rest of them to stay on task.

After everyone had finished their letters, I got pairs to swap letters and give each other 2 pieces of positive feedback on the writing. We had an odd number so once again I involved myself and read a student’s letter. This was working so well I didn’t want to interrupt but I wanted to get some of the good ideas I was hearing into the public so I then asked if people would like to share what they liked about their partner’s letter. Each pair was able to share an emotion of way of writing that thy enjoyed and one of the students suggested everyone read their letter out aloud to the class. Since everyone was comfortable with this we started to read the letters aloud, with the music still going in the background.

This was where things got special. I was blown away by how touching and heartfelt the letters I heard being read. While many wrote to a parent about their trip, one wrote to an ex-boyfriend and another wrote a Murakami-esque piece to a long lost girlfriend he imagined as awaiting him atop the mountain. It was half way through this process that I noticed one of my students crying. It seems that the emotion of sharing the experience of being on an adventure but missing home and family at the same time had really touched her and brought back some sad memories. Moreover, the atmosphere in the class allowed her to feel that she could express these emotions and no one was judgemental or made fun of her crying.

By the time we had finished the room had a sad poignancy about it but everyone felt comfortable at the same time. We discussed the challenge of being away from home, as most of the young people in my class are experiencing, and the mixed emotions that come with this. They also asked me about the picture and if they could do this with other pieces of art. Interestingly, one of the students commented that doing the drawing helped him look closely at the work and the visualisation helped him to develop his writing.

Overall, this was one of those lessons that make me love my job. The people in that room today felt a special bond as they shared being on a scary but exciting journey. Some of us cried and all of us felt a little homesick but we all left feeling good about class. Thank you MoMA!

Too real?

How far do you go to make a learning experience real for students? What is the boundary between ethical and unethical behaviour? Is a great learning experience worth your career?

Ron Jones explored all of these questions in his real life experiement called The Third Wave. Captured vividly in the insightful documentary Lesson Plan (http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/lesson-plan/ZX6433A001S00), it outlines how his social experiment played out in his school, its long term impact on the students and its impact today.

The interesting thing for me was that it is one of the best examples of experiental education in the Dewey mould. That is, he was able to recreate the environment in which the Germans felt compelled to support Adolf Hitler and thus show his students how easy it is to become enthralled with a charasmatic dictator. Moreover, the students to this day can still vividly recall the experience and a handful have used the experience to encourage them to promote the lessons learnt in their own lives.

Unfortunately, the all encompassing experience Jones created was also harmful to many of the students. The documentary does not try to hide the fact that some of the students felt socially isolated and fearful because they did not go along with The Third Wave. Shockingly, a student reporter at the time reveals that he was physically intimidated by other students because he was going to report on the class in the school newspaper.

This raises the question: did the important life lessons he taught his students justify the social unrest and hurt that he caused?

From a professional stand point it cost Jones his job at the school and he never worked as a teacher again. Despite his popularity among the student population, he lost the support of the school board because of his experiment (which was approved and supported by the principal) and different teaching style. However, he was also able to gain a semblance of fame because of the event and thus he has had a book, play and tv show produced because of the experiment.

From a student welfare stand point it is not so clear. For the students that learnt important life lessons and gained insight into Nazi Germany the experience was invaluable and it could be argued that no amount of reading, documentaries or other content could replicate that learning experience. However, for students who were emotionally or socially ostracised this would have been painful and one of the students still feels aggrieved.

Finally, from a broader social perspective you could argue that he did society a favour. Like Zimbardo's famous prison experiment, which similarly crossed ethical and moral boundaries and was argued to have gone on too long, this proved to society that the evils of Nazi Germany were not an isolated incident and that we need to be vigilent against charasmatic leaders with immoral agendas. Moreover, like Zimbardo, his social experiment has proved to be an invaluable teaching tool and the book The Wave is an essential text in German schools.

As a teacher I am torn about the merits of Jones' actions. Part of me admires him for being different and challenging the system. Not just in this instance but in the rest of his brief teaching career, Jones was seen as a radical that used new, active and experimental teaching methods to teach his subjects. As such, he was a popular teacher and students were engaged in his classes. However, the extent to which he manipulated the students was dangerous and bordered on creating his own cult of personality. I wonder how much of it was a social experiment and how much was for his own ego? Moreover, no such experiment would ever get approval today and any school that dared risk such a class would probably find itself on the end of a law suit.

What can we make of Ron Jones' social experiment? I think it belonged to a time where schools were more willing to try new things without the fear of legal action and also where students were more likely to buy into the discipline and messages he was selling. I find it hard to imagine a class of students now being as disciplined and blindly following orders as those students in the 1960s. However, I think he is to be commended on trying to make the learning real for his students and embracing the teachable moment in order to show them how easily society can be lead astray.