Traditional, Progressive Or Both?

A few years ago, I read a post by one of my students on a social networking site, telling his classmates how he met me in a student press congress in Aklan.

He was my freshman student at the Philippine Science High School or PSHS, the state-subsidized high school where Science- and Mathematics-gifted students were taught and trained to pursue science courses when they step onto college. More or less inspired by the Dewey school of thought, this school is programmed to supply the nation’s body of scientists.

In the post, he said he was surprised to see me and went on to say he could not forget their classes with me a few years earlier. In particular, he recalled how their English class was conducted—how, for example, I’d ask them to get “one loose sheet” (of pad paper) to start each lesson or how I’d also tell them to skip one line as they wrote on it.

He also commented on how I would write my full name on the handouts and/or periodic tests I gave them. (At the time, our periodic exams were made by individual teachers following only one syllabus).

He also recalled how I awarded them certificates for their individual achievements in Homeroom (I was their class adviser, too.). For instance, I gave one of their classmates “Best in Journal Writing” while another was awarded for her congeniality, and so on.

Did he hate doing those things? Did they hate me for those things?

Did I “run their class like a slave plantation,” where they were just “told to do or accomplish something”? Was that how I made him or them feel? Probably. Probably not.

Did I make them feel the way Charles Darwin or Winston Churchill did in their Latin classes? He must have wondered about the purpose of making them do it again and again. So did I ever tell them why they needed to do it? Probably. I must have implied its importance to them. But did I help him process or understand it? Should I have?

I did them because I thought they were the right thing to do.

Being enrolled in the country’s premiere science high school, my student must have been swamped and exhausted by their biology, chemistry and physics classes that observed methods, procedures and all that. So did he expect something else from his English class—that it would do away with the methodical ways of doing things? Maybe. But whatever I did, I am certain that I didn’t want to make them feel like the prisoners in Fresnes.

Reading his post only made me recall how I was aware and overly particular of my routines as a teacher. It reminded me of the consistency I wanted to cultivate in them, which surely formed part of an honestly traditional approach.

Years later, I would begin to appreciate the post because more than anything, it made one thing clear to me—that along with those instructional routines, I did not only promote order in class but also sought to “cultivate their individuality”.

I must have replicated the traditional discourse I inherited—what my teachers did in their time some ten or twenty years back. I even used the same phrases my teachers used in our own high school—even adopting their mannerisms in instructing students in class. Of course, I knew some of my teacher’s pet words back in those days. And they never left my memory—they became my very own.

I virtually echoed my teachers in my own classrooms at the time. I could say I learned so much from the organization and the routine of it all—I am sure not all of my students appreciated it; but I’m glad that that’s what my student also remembered.

In their class activities and projects, I started with calling the roll, prayer, and so on—order and routine—yes, consistency—but I also made sure I allowed them to express themselves in the form of learning outcomes and assessments.

While their armchairs were all lined up separately—that is, six rows by five columns—yes, 30 of them—I made sure I broke them into groups during seatwork, quizzes, and projects. Every now and then, I would ask them to work with a partner or in threes or more to finish a group essay.

I must have also allowed the architectonic dimension—the configuration of the learning space—to work for them. So, say, in a session, armchairs would be uprooted from their usual spots—and lifted (usually dragged) to groups of three or four.

            Once they did that, I’d feel relieved because by then, when the noise and the chatter already began, I knew that they wouldn’t feel isolated anymore. I knew that doing things in groups would help them work better.

But then again, I’d direct them to focus on their task. Giving them discussion questions, I’d ask them to churn out ideas and insights from each other and come up with collective answers to the questions.

In these instances, I loved how the routine is made to work constantly with “deviations from sameness”—by reaching out to their individualities. How the structure of groups allowed them to open their minds to free expression—and how the same let them work as a group so their minds were drawn to cohere to one idea or statement.

Did I succeed in trying to make them more reflective persons? Maybe. Were the ten-or-so essays plus their quarterly projects they themselves helped choose or determine for the whole year make them more introspective? Maybe. Across the lessons, I would also ask for individual output—but these were also shared to the class in the sense that I wanted to always affirm them.

I remember how they also performed well in grammar exercises but also remember how I looked forward to reading their essays and reflections. Following a syllabus, I chose to have fewer grammar exercises and made sure they rather devoted more hours to finishing their “Book of Myself” scrapbooks which they submitted at the end of the first quarter.

In all these, I think that the traditional and the didactic was pervasive in my classes, from the instructional routine—I regularly telling them to observe the order and the specifics of a particular output—to the tests or assessments—how their individual ideas should be made to cohere to a more sensible whole. But the same can be said about how I chose to be progressive—which was expressed in the routine group work where each of the student’s interests and personalities was given space and expressed so that it stood out.

I must have—in the ideas of Rousseau—let my scholars “reason” for themselves. After all, I only literally “put the problems before them and let them solve it themselves”. I gave them guide questions and it was up to them to draw their own papers, presentations and/or any other output. I relished how such progressive approach drew their varied and exciting output, performances, or participation.

Reflecting on my student’s sentiment, I rather chose to think that that was not everything in my class. What he wrote was probably only what made some impressions upon him.

If it were so, then were these the only things he learned from that class? What did he really learn from it?

Did I only help build a social architecture of sameness or did I, too, help produce creative thinkers and introspective individuals?

The said routines may have been a form of “forcing something on them”—or at least some of them—but I also remember, in various instances I “let them do what they want to do in their own time at their own pace”.

I am sure at one time or another I had also been more agreeable in their class or lenient in their participation or their submissions—probably to the extent that A.S. Neill of Summerhill may even be smiling at me.