The most important things that happen in my classroom have nothing to do with the syllabus.
My classroom is a social learning space: if I was just going to talk all the time I might as well record videos of myself and call it a day. But that’s not how learning happens. Students participate in discussion, and ask questions that prompt much more interesting and relevant explorations than I could have planned for. Even more importantly, my classroom is a place where students collaborate with one another, trying things out, interrogating what’s working and why, and pushing each other’s ideas to mutual benefit.
I care much more about how students think and how they approach their work than just what they’re able to produce. I’ll ask questions about how they approached a problem, what they found challenging, how they would evaluate something, what they would do differently next time. Reflective habits are difficult to build and practice on our own: with other people around us, they are simply conversation.
In my classes I always ask students to do more heavy lifting than I do. I’m a tad lazy, yes, but really that’s my way of putting learners in the mode of actively learning through practice, articulation, reflection, and feedback. If they wanted something passive they have YouTube. Learning why and how, for yourself, is central to my classroom. I challenge and push students outside their comfort zone so they can achieve more than they might on their own.
My students form bonds. True, they have to do a lot of that work themselves, but I create space and trust and a sense of safety to support and facilitate students getting to know and trust each other. This goes well beyond class: many of my students remain go-to colleagues and even friends long after our time together.
In my classroom, feedback is essential, and not just from me. I ask students to share work, ask for, give, and receive feedback like it’s oxygen. In live sessions, async on Discord, as often as possible. Because feedback helps them sharpen their own work, but considering others’ work and giving them feedback builds thinking and skills in an even more important way. Practicing recognition of what’s working and not, and why, and articulating those thoughts—that’s how students build better judgement, taste, discernment, whatever you’d like to call it, that they can bring into their own work.
But most importantly, my classroom is the kind of social space that feels like a community: a shared environment of belonging that can’t be replicated or simulated or automated. It’s a place where we all care about each other as humans first, and about our work, second. It’s a place where we can feel safe and grounded.
Because it’s when we feel safe that we can play and try out new ideas. It’s when we feel grounded that we can make connections between what we’re learning and how we might apply it to what we do. And it’s when we feel part of something bigger than ourselves that important work becomes possible.