An Attempt to Disrupt Education (part 2)
This follows Part 1 that appears here: https://jesshmitchell.medium.com/an-attempt-to-disrupt-education-cc44e64bce7
All of the details mattered: the door I entered, the hoodie sweatshirt I was wearing, my nervousness, my first time on campus and in this room, that split second first impression — this is the context in which we all began something. There were slightly more than 20 of us.
The students weren’t quite sure what to make of it all. As we dove into a conversation about the way the classroom was structured, I could tell they were uneasy with this new perspective, and they seemed unsure what to do with it all. I could feel them loosening up though — realizing that this class was not going to be typical. I hadn’t even mentioned the syllabus yet! What was this sorcery?!
We wondered who decided how many students total could fit into the class (I thought it was the fire marshal). We wondered who decided how many chairs should be in the room (I thought someone in facilities or procurement decided). We wondered if the fire marshal and the facilities person spoke to each other — if they spoke to the instructors or the students (they had not). We wondered if they thought about pedagogy — about the ways we could learn before making these decisions.
Then it happened. I connected to one student in particular by asking everyone a seemingly simple question, “is anyone here left handed?” He smiled shyly, sensing where this question was going, and raised his hand. I asked the other students in the room to consider how they came into the room — how they chose where to sit. They didn’t put much conscious thought to where they sat. The left handed student did. He had a completely different experience. He had to decide whether or not to just “fit into” a righty desk (yep, they were directional), or if he would hunt and peck to find where the lefty desks were…
And who made the decision about how many lefty desks that room should have? And what did they base their decision on — data? a hunch? a budget? an average? And did they get it right or was there a moment upstream from “how many lefty desks do we need” that might have avoided all of that? What about wondering, within the planning of the learning space, if there was a desk that worked for everyone?
This was a 3 hour class that met once a week. We hadn’t gotten very far in our 3 hours of our first meeting, but we were doing something important. We were beginning our journey into inclusive design…
We were wondering together, and in doing so… we were creating the conditions for building a community of trust.
Continue to Part 3 https://jesshmitchell.medium.com/an-attempt-to-disrupt-education-6c743efb2df0
