Banking on Participation

In Comm 1010, I don’t suppose there are many students who are experiencing systemic oppression as portrayed by Freire in his depictions of peasants in Latin America. There are, however, very many students who have been taught by the banking model throughout their entire time in public school. There are many first and second year college students who have not yet been exposed to transformational learning in an environment where they are expected to contribute and participate to the level they are in our classes.

As a teacher to these kids who may be new to this type of class structure and who also may be shy due to the transition into the whole new world that is college, I need to be appreciative and understanding to their situations and reservations. My first class is really engaged and I know that their natural sociability enables them to participate fully in class and group discussions. I can come to that class with activities that have little structure because they can take a little bit of instruction and run with it for a long time. They tend to get more out of activities and discussions and I can rely on them to speak up more about learning objectives and see the points behind things on their own. This class is a good class with which to start the day because they are energetic and I know that if I’m a little unprepared, they got me covered.

My second class is a little less engaged. It’s a toss up as to whether they will be into the activity that day or not, so I have to think a little more and prepare more structured activities and have more questions planned for them to answer. They will probably not connect the dots as quickly as my first class, so I need to ask simpler questions that lead them to the point in a slower manner. Additionally, activities in this class need to be more planned and have more follow up questions. Sometimes they may engage more and run with an activity, but I can’t count on that, so I need to be prepared for them to not care about what’s happening in class.

My third class is almost mute. I get a lot of blank stares and my questions are normally followed by long seconds of agonizing silence. I know that activities in this class cannot have any wiggle room for freedom. Their activities need precise, step-by-step instructions with very defined expectations. I need to explain these instructions in immense detail and give thorough examples – and I need to give several examples. I also know that activities will probably not take long as participation is low and they don’t like to talk to each other. With this in mind, I need to have several of these highly structured activities ready to go for each class. Additionally, class discussions need to have even more structured and simple questions that lead them to the answer in smaller steps.

There have been several days where I have done completely different activities in each class, depending on the class’s needs and how I expect them to respond to each activity. I actually enjoy shaking it up sometimes, as I can get tired of the same activity three times in a row. It also makes me be more creative as I have to come up with several activities that reach the same learning objective in different ways. All in all, these adjustments that I make to my discussions and activities for each of my classes shows that I’m centering what I do around my students. I realize that they all have something unique to bring to class time and I need to be attentive to who they are and what they need to learn, and adjust what I do as an instructor to fit their needs. This teaching method is the opposite of the banking model, as everything we do in class comes from the students, and this is one way how I am a #rowdyfarmer of student’s minds.