Imperfect

grant students' wishes

Matthew explained how he incorporates granting wishes into his teaching repertoire:

i’m trying a thing in class where i ask my students “what do you wish we would do in class today?” and trying to get them to vocalize the things they feel they need to understand the material.

part of the wish-granting thing is they will sometimes ask for off topic things, and i am trying to at least nominally respond to these to show them i am serious about taking what they say earnestly. this led, of course, to me dancing a jig during class.

His framework zooming in on orthogonal student learning reminds me of how Defender's hypothetical lesson plan, referenced in school your enthusiasm, attempts a similar feat:

if i were teaching a high school class we would simply do nothing other than curate your favorite things. doesn't matter if it's classic great work or tiktok

I can see how deeming students' wishes or favorite things as off topic gives rise to the classic safety warning, "objects in mirror are closer than they appear". Framing problems, solutions, and lessons through those apparent deviations can make the difference between understanding or a lack thereof. The practice can also encourage students to return to valuing their deep-seated interests. Somehow, embracing those only gets applauded before they become "distractions" during school. Compare both ends of that spectrum through my brief story from passion over policing:

On one hand, I remember a teacher forcing me to stop self-started creative work during school. It supposedly distracted from a lesson that I've long since forgotten.

On the other hand, I remember another teacher showcasing a different self-started creative work of mine to the class. I don't remember my work being remarkable. However, I carry that memory with me because of how charitable that teacher was to my creative deviance.

How well can facets of stand-up comedy - improvisation, bridging gaps, and repurposing what the audience has to say - work for engaging classroom instruction? Yet, teachers can only embrace modes like those so much given burdensome requisites from the state ruling over them, the institution they work within, and the people they interface. I have pondered how much the current educational model values students relative to those criteria:

How connected are those educational, data-driven standards to feelings of success within the children and students they intend to serve?

Could education be better served aiding students in finding passion and "purpose" over imposing them?

While Prasatt's Why be taught, when you can learn? vouches for Seth's discernment of teaching versus learning, teachers can still venture to make learning much more accessible for students by treating them more like people than pawns. Speaking of games, I suspect that Matthew making and teaching about them may make granting wishes easier. Even so, I think teachers of all disciplines can pull this off easier than expected with enough support.

Matthew told another story of how he took his students' wishes seriously:

a student wrote “watch anime” as a wish for something to do in class and i told them i’d put something on as background noise during our work time, but it would be old anime (i was thinking of some kind of showa stuff like mazinger z)

one student replied that the oldest anime he could think of was redline (the 2009 film)

another was fussing on his phone for a moment, then was like “okay, i have a REALLY old one i watched…”

before he showed me what was on his phone, i asked “…is it cowboy bebop?”

(it was.)

i have assigned both students anime homework.

and: we ended up watching the 1969 black and white version of dororo during our work session—right now that class is working on adapting card games they made earlier in the semester into bitsy games. i told them i had some much older silent anime on file, but i would spare them

While homework has many problems as hinted at in choice over coercion, at what level of interest affinity does homework become a net positive? A student wanting to watch anime in class likely watches anime voluntarily at home. At that point, is "anime homework" still homework or rather a vessel combining both topical lessons and intrigue?

Since students are often mandated to slave away after school, what they toil over may as well be both edifying and exciting. How can leveling the playing field like this throughout one's educational career benefit not only teaching performance, but success for everyone involved?

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