A Quote
“If we don’t notice ‘stuff’ how can we change it? So the beginnning of change is noticing. It’s awareness …
… people absord what they hear, see, read, whatever Dr Google says, and apply that to their underlying unknowingness …
... I’m forever sleuthing for what Gary Ward suggests is the dark spaces, and we’re shining a light on the dark spaces. If you don’t know what is moving and what isn’t moving, how can you make any progress?”
Source: Helen Hall interview (approx 16:45 min)
A Thought
Emma couldn’t explain the poem she’d just written. To be fair, it was rather abstract and I was struggling too so I wasn’t surprised its meaning was eluding her. After all, English wasn’t her strongest subject. I knew she was more of a practical, deal-in-facts kinda girl who struggled with the deeper, abstract stuff the top English students revel in.
And then I handed her a ‘microphone’ and invited poet Emma to the stage. All of a sudden she was full of fluency and insight. She had wanted to explore the idea of time and how it connects with people and emotions, poet Emma said. The competing images (still away) in the first line mimicked time, which seems still but is always moving. With the passing of time, people’s emotions grow but love is the constant - it doesn’t rust. The poem ends harmoniously because she wanted to tell us that there is always a positive we can find, which is love. It’s always there - if we want to see it.
I’d never noticed this ability of Emma’s before; it was unknown to me. Knowing it changed how I saw her as a student of English.
But what if I’d never invited her into the fantasy? Poet Emma could do things that Emma couldn’t. Which one revealed her true capability?
This interaction threw me for a while. I couldn’t help wondering what else I had missed about students by treating learning seriously. I started to wonder how many false reads I had been getting about students. And then this made me think about the ethics of an assessment model that is rigidly formal with little room for fantasy.
How can we claim our judgements about a kid’s ability are valid if we haven’t created contexts where they have felt safe enough to show us the full picture of who they are?
An Action
Peel back your unknowns about your students
Invite students to enter fantasy realms, and shine a light on those ‘dark spaces’.