A place in the mess

What's the teacher's role when kids are in the 'messing about' stage of learning?

It’s tough, right. You’ve got a class full of busy kids, none of them really want you despite your attempts to help, and yet … You’ve got this feeling that it’s all a bit ‘light’.

Finding purpose

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. As educators, there’s a responsibility to make school more than a place where kids get to do things that are fun but don’t lead to deep thinking. It’s easy to yield to the urge to push them through this phase and into something more ‘purposeful’.

But the chance to mess about with things is crucial. It can lead kids to depth, but we need to give it time and acknowledge it as part of the learning process for it to do so.

Lost in the labyrinth

I remember watching a Year 11 student mess about with play dough for a week. She’d finished her novel and gone straight to it, and then lesson after lesson used it to make labyrinths. This was fine with me - Yay! Creativity in action! Look at her being agentic and playful!

But I was only fine with it for a bit. As you can imagine, as the week went on … Well, it was very hard to resist the urge to make her do something purposeful. I’m glad I resisted.

You see, as I watched her, I noticed that gradually the labyrinths got more and more complex. Then she started tracing them onto paper and giving them to classmates to solve.

The labyrinths were deliberately unsolvable. Kids got frustrated.

I asked her later on what was on her mind through the process. Initially, she’d made the labyrinths because they were a big feature of the book. And then she realised as she messed about with making them that the characters were stuck in a ‘labyrinth of suffering’. They couldn’t escape it, so she decided to see if she could make unsolvable labyrinths. She could, and started tracing them onto paper and giving them to others so she could watch them and see how they responded to being stuck. And then it dawned on her as one of her classmates tried to ‘bash’ their way through the wall: the characters were trapped in their suffering because they couldn’t turn around and forgive their mistakes.

Smata @smatalearning

"Are we satisfied if kids come out of school passive, docile, compliant, frightened of making mistakes, and needing to be constantly chivvied and directed?"

soundcloud.comGuy Claxton on learning to learnProfessor Guy Claxton is a hugely influential academic, thinker and author of over 30 books on learning, intelligence and creativity, including Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, Wise Up, What’s the point of

Name it, see it, and get meta on it

What if, instead of forcing purpose on the kids when they’re in the messing about stage, you adopted a purposeful approach? Try out these ideas:

Give kids the language of learning

• Part of being a purposeful learner is knowing where you’re at. So, tell them you think there are two stages of learning (‘messing about’ AND ‘honing in’), that both are worthy, and that you’ll ask them regularly what stage they’re in. Unpack the value of each stage, and what things might look and feel like. Give them the time they need to mess about if that’s where they’re at.

Observe and identify

• For kids in the messing about stage, instead of trying to help them and getting rebuffed, spend some time observing them. What does your expertise help you see they are actually exploring as they’re busy doing whatever it is they’re doing? What opportunities for enrichment does this open up? Is there anything you can add to the environment that will support those ideas?

Cue metacognition

• If you don’t already, include some reflective time, but take the burden of knowing what’s been learned off the kids who are still messing about. You’ve observed them, so tell them what you saw they were learning. Then ask them where they think things could go, the potential they see, and what they think they need.