Oh, boy. This is a tough one for me. I sometimes feel like there are two parts battling inside, one of whom would really prefer it if students were actually robots who operated on a very clear and safe schedule and the other who basically wants to dance in a puddle all day without rain boots. (Now that I think about it, these two characters aren’t so different than the ones Jill Bolte Taylor describes in her book Whole Brain Living. The first character is my left-brain analyst and the second my right-brain emotional part.)

When I was teaching at UNH I was much more comfortable with the linear, punctuality-and deadline-obsessed Boomer I’ve named David who craves structure and order and an almost shocking rigidity masked under a smile. The students knew what to do and when, and they could ask for all the extensions they want and (mostly) get them, at least until they couldn’t. I might be exaggerating a little bit– my class wasn’t the most rigid, certainly– but this part of myself could not list “flexible” on his resume. The idea of not having deadlines and routine and offering student choice makes his stomach hurt.

On the other hand, my puddle jumper hates all institutions and doesn’t really want to be “teaching” at all. She would go to the opposite end of Design Forward and have everyone chatting in a field after playing in a stream. Increasingly, the puddle jumper is winning and I’m teaching less and creating more, but I would be interested in seeing how she would set up a classroom. Invariably, she would need some of the structure and order of David in order to create coherence– an umbrella under which she could offer choice and agency and voice.

And maybe this is where I would start to help create balance: set clear expectations for multiple choices and options so that there is some safety in knowing what to do and when but still agency for students to pursue their own learning preferences and curiosity. Combining the strengths of my two characters isn’t impossible– and I think they would work better together– but it does take work since they don’t speak the same language. Also, it’s just so much easier to fall back into institutional rigidity. I haven’t had many examples of learning with flexibility and student choice so it all feels a little squeamy. I see it especially with my position now where I work with adults on technical trainings. I don’t have the opportunity to learn about the students long-term or set up a new environment within a tiny classroom ecosystem, and USNH Enterprise Technology & Services is more the “send them to a KB” type of folks. So while I would be curious about finding the balance and coherence with the two parts that are seemingly battling inside me, there are also external factors that seem to limit my choice and agency as I explore a more caring and equitable framework. A work in progress on many levels, for sure.