Statement of Purpose

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

Sam: The official title of this professional development session was “The Journalism-Type Classroom,” an awkward last-minute phrase I came up with when I heard the school was still looking for teacher-led PD sessions.

The morning before the first session, I retitled it “The Journalism-Inspired Classroom.” I teach math, not journalism, but I figured journalism, at least at Curtis, had the more established “brand” when it came to decentralized, tech-driven classroom management.

I wrote up a brief essay, Why journalism as a classroom model?, to explain the choice of title and my own professional link to journalism. During the first meeting, Cadence, the co-facilitator who does teach journalism, lamented that I switched away from “The Post-Modern Classroom,” a title I’d used when suggesting our initial collaboration.

Eventually, we gravitated to “The Chaotic Classroom,” sort of a joking reference to a comment I made after doing a prep period in Cadence’s room while one of her freshman groups was working on a podcast project.

“So what do you think?” asked Cadence afterward.

“A little chaotic,” I said. “At least to a math teacher’s eyes.”

“Good chaos, though,” added Cadence.

This became the theme of our first meeting: How does a teacher trying to take advantage of all the new technology available in the classroom distinguish between the “good chaos” -- i.e. 30+ students working at different speeds and in different styles but generally towards a common objective -- and “bad chaos” -- 30+ students interpreting the lack of an immediate grade and a dominating “teacher voice” as a sudden signal to go full on apeshit? 

Having encountered the latter outcome more than a few times in our teaching careers, all teachers sitting in on the first meeting agreed that it was this fear of “bad chaos” that was stifling our attempt to court “good chaos.”

"Learning to let go is a big part of it," said Cadence.

Admittedly, not every teacher is in a career stage or work situation where courting chaos, even on the smallest of scales is the best idea. Some might even argue that the typical public school classroom needs *less* chaos, not more.

I think almost all teachers, however, will acknowledge that the forces of time and technology are working against those trying to maintain tight control of the classroom environment. I also think that many would acknowledge that chaos has its beneficial uses, especially in situations where creativity of thought is the ultimate end goal. Indeed, in mathematics, we have an entire field of study, “chaos theory,” which puts forward the notion that just as predictable patterns can lead to unpredictable outcomes, so too can unpredictable patterns lead to predictable outcomes.

So, it was in this spirit of “chaos” that we decided to investigate our own best practices as veteran teachers and look for ways to make the “chaotic classroom” model a little more “viral” within the Curtis H.S. instructional culture.