Responsive Classroom Part 2

In an early post I wrote about my very positive reaction to Responsive Classroom and the ideas and training they provide.

For the most part I loved it, but there was one part I really struggled with.

Underlying their work is a key idea I'm not sure I can agree with. The idea that I heard (Of course what I heard and what they meant may be different!) was that 70% of a student's learning experiences should be interactive, and 30% solitary. That's 70% of their learning experiences talking with partners, groups, etc...

Our workshop leader did an excellent job of leading her workshop in the style she was talking about as any good workshop leader should do.

At the end of the first day I staggered home, collapsed into my comfy lazyboy and disappeared into a videogame, much to my wife's dismay.

The second day I didn't even make it to the end of the day. After lunch I was worn out.

The third and the fourth days were a brutal slog for me. I almost didn't show up on the fourth day at all. But I pushed on to the end. Let's not talk about what my wife had to deal with at home.

All that talking and engaging and discussing was too much for me.

I know that in my own classroom I am too far on the other end of the pendulum. This last year was particularly weak. I'd probably say that I had 10-20% interactive and the rest solitary. I recognize that I need to move that in the other direction.

The workshop leader also stated that they had research data to back up the 70/30 number. I don't doubt that they do. I would love to have the time to dig in to that research to see their research methods and structures, because this number does not ring true for me. I could neither learn well, or teach well in such a classroom. I know that my own bias is colouring my reaction, but I can't go along with this. I wonder if this is yet another pendulum swing in education. I'd like to see us take a middle ground.

I wonder if our society's need to celebrate the extrovert is at play here. Too often our society ignores the power of introverts. (Good TED talk here about that!)

I also wonder if these numbers are based on classroom learning. Is that what is best for classrooms? But what about the learning that we want our students to do when they are no longer in a classroom? What does lifelong learning look like?

More about that in Part 3.