The English classroom in a time of climate crisis

Part of a conversation in a separate blog with two colleagues, Mary and CeCe.

Photo by Chris LeBoutillier on Unsplash

I am trying to imagine what an English classroom might look like if it were better aligned with the needs of the times and the threat of global catastrophe. How might it play its part in the realignment of global thinking, or consciousness, necessary if we’re to save ourselves?

Paradoxically, saving ourselves probably means not doing something, rather than doing something. Not seeing ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, not seeing the world as existing as a resource. Having a sense that we are a part of things, not apart from things.

Letting go of the impossible goal of control.

Seeing our classroom as a place where all kinds of contingent factors are present, where what might happen in any one lesson is unpredictable and where the unpredictable is welcome. Where our teacherly preparation includes our love and knowledge of language, but also our willingness to be open to what emerges, to what our students bring, and to what emerges in the space of our lesson time.

Needless to say, almost of all of this is undermined by the concept and practice of outcomes.

What is it that we are fostering with such an open attitude? The creation of a space where something emergent or emerging is experienced. A sense that the world reveals itself in myriad ways, rather than is formed as a result of the imposition of human wills.

So CeCe brings in a poem. Her students bring in their moods and desires and unconscious impulses. And the room gives off its vapours and hints, as well as having some kind of effect through its physical layout and its relationship to the other buildings, and the noises and the weather. And then some kind of unpredictable alchemical process takes place which is new for everyone in the room. And the students leave, most or many of them, with a conscious or unconscious sense that they have taken part in something complex and rich, something that was the product of innumerable flows and factors that at times mixed creatively and at times just set off little shock waves that influenced what came after and at times existed unrelated to, and leaving unaffected, everything else. A world that all were a part of, much richer and less controlled and less narrow than a world directed by a teacher or constrained by an outcome (both of which are fantasies anyway).

They have taken part in something complex and rich. Which is what is required of human beings if we’re to switch from thinking ourselves as masters of the universe to being part of a complex web of animate and inanimate forces and beings.