Cabin Time day.
Greetings,
I had my “first” encounter with students today in Peacebloom School*. Yes, I had encounters with students before, thus it really isn’t my “first”, but it was the first time with students from this school, and under the tutelage of Miss Silverleaf*.
Today was a relatively unusual day, as it was “Cabin Time” day. The usual schedule was modified and classes shortened to provide forty minutes for students to talk amongst themselves about the problems facing the school. Minutes would be taken by the student facilitators, which would then be brought to the student council, which would then attempt to work with the administration to bring about a resolution.
Although I thought this was a reasonable idea to begin with, I noticed that the youngest members of the group, the freshmen, did not participate. I asked Miss Silverleaf afterward why she thought that was and, simply, her response was that they were not used to this sort of open dialogue, and do not know how to make this sort of thing work for them. This rang true to me, as I don’t think the freshmen were used to this, indeed, I was not expecting this sort of equalized dialogue that was used, at least in the High School level, however, I do not think the topics discussed were geared towards them either, especially regarding how things ‘used to be’ and how they changed, in the students opinion, for the worse.
This is, however, an interesting tool that I might be able to utilize in some way. Directly giving the students direct power to talk about changes that can happen in the school is healthy. More directly, I can use this in my classroom, for example, if something drastic happened in my school or in the world. This would allow me to still give facts that are known, and allow the students to form their own opinions on what it is that should be done next and help students with higher forms of thinking and expressing themselves. The biggest flaw that I can see in this sort of activity would be the large amount of student participation that would be required for this to be a success.
*Pseudonyms, of course, are used.
