Change Is an Act of the Imagination

In her essay "Where Who We Are Matters", from the collection Art as Social Action, Chloe Bass considers the realities of her students:

      Students were late for or missed class consistently because of work, gaps in 
     childcare, and health issues...college is an obligation alongside a string of other 
     commitments and struggles.

This is also true for high school students. Education, then, becomes one of many obligations, whether it be reading the rest of the chapter in Kite Runner, or finishing a series of problems in Algebra.

I often become frustrated because I feel as though my students want to be entertained more than anything.  I blame devices that give them that little jolt of serotonin whenever a notification flashes across the screen. When I Google "issues in education 2019", one of the articles lists BOREDOM as the number one problem in education.  I resist that, and tell students who whine "this is boring" that boredom happens because of their own failure to bring their imaginations to bear on what we are doing.  I have a quote from Mary Oliver posted in my classroom, "The world offers itself to your imagination."

This implies that lack of engagement is due to their own laziness. But then I think about individual students and their stories and I understand things differently.  Students are late, or exhausted, or miss class consistently because of work, and learning challenges, and family responsibilities, and health (including mental health) issues. And there is the need to be social, to work through the problems and drama of their lives with friends.  As Devon Price states in the title of an article in Medium, "Laziness Does Not Exist: But unseen barriers do".  Humans are inherently curious.

 This is not to absolve students of responsibility for their schoolwork, but, rather, to consider how, together, we might restructure, redefine, reframe and refocus it.  We no longer exist in a factory world.  I have read this over and again my entire adult life.  We know that the top-down expert/ignorant model of education is outdated.  We discuss Freire and Bowles and Gintis with glee in teacher prep programs.  We attend workshops on Project Based Learning and Collaborative Strategic Reading. We build new, open spaces to facilitate exploratory group work and differentiation.  But what does a different way of learning together really look like?  Will it always be one fancy learning lab embedded in a building where the rest of the classrooms are 50 years old?  One student-led unit in an entire year of school?  How can I model for my students bringing MY imagination to bear on what we are doing? How can I use these baby-steps of change as a springboard for revitalizing and re-imagining my role as a teacher and the work I am lucky enough to share with students?

Like Bass, what I really want to know is if "teaching differently, both in terms of subject matter and style, [can] help us to live better outside of the realm of ... school." Can, and how can, my teaching be more socially engaged and engaging?  As Bass says, "To give them better tools for navigating that world, rather than simply the tools for succeeding at the business of school, feels essential."