S120 and Piaget

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When I first walked into class, I could not help but wonder, ‘where are the strictly aligned desks and chairs?’ Colorful, decorative mobiles were hanging from the ceiling, the room was covered with inspirational posters, and sitting in sparsely separated round tables and movable desk chairs were the students themselves. As I walked in, a TA from AmeriCorp, Twyla, whom I honestly at first glance thought was a student herself, welcomed me. Then I saw, coming out from her office, Mrs. Battaglia. She met me with a warm smile.

Mrs. Battaglia showed me around the school, which was somewhat surreal because I had never been to an American high school before. She showed me the ‘Torch’ classroom, where students get help preparing for college admissions, homework help etc. She talked to me about how students at S120 are ‘bright students for whom the traditional classroom did not necessarily work.” This reminded me of when we talked about how harmful “standardization” could be when we do not consider the individual differences. I thought the mission of S120 was ideal in that the students are left up to their own discretion of how they would spend the time to do work.

When we came back to the class, I took a seat in a corner. Steve, a faculty at S120, approached me and introduced me to some ‘administrative details’  of S120. S120 from the onset seemed like more of a study hall to me, and Steve’s explanation corroborated this assumption. Some students were simply not doing their work, or frequently missing the deadline, which led them to obtain not-so-impressive grades and take what are called “recovery” classes which allow them to make up for missing grades. (I’m not exactly sure how it works) In any event, it was very clear that these students were not so much ‘bad students’ as they were perhaps, in need of a “little push.”

I was not so fortunate in getting to talk to any one student in particular, but from my little corner, I could observe that, if there was one thing stopping the students from focusing on their studies, it was their mobile devices. Yes, in this day and age, how would you stop a student from readily taking out their phones whenever they feel like it, especially after we’ve talked extensively about how teachers “shaming” their students is not the way to go either. However, I also could not stop myself from feeling a little sad that this was the reality that teachers of the 21st century must deal with on an everyday basis.

In terms of pedagogy, the faculty and TA at S120 tried hard to make sure that they provided the “little push” so that the students would actually sit down and do their work but also making sure they are not too forceful when doing so. It was frequent that for example, a faculty would ask “how are you doing, is everything going well?” to the students, and the students would reply in some way, and they would engage in a light conversation, which seemed to ease the students a little bit. It was notable that even when the students did not necessarily talk about something academic, the faculty listened attentively and did not cut the conversation short, which would have made the students feel unheard.

In terms of Piaget’s theory, high school students are expected to be in the formal operational stage, where they are able to think in abstraction, and perhaps, introspectively. The content material they are learning about, obviously, is made to stimulate their appropriate developmental stage, but moreover, in a free-flowing classroom such as S120, this ‘abstract thinking becomes more transparent, as the students are left up to their own agendas and plans for getting their work done. Most of the times, I was not able to observe extensive introspection or meta-cognition from the students, which as a side raises the question, is there a maturity jump from high school to college, or a sort of a ‘metacognitive level up’ that is only enabled as they mature into college or life beyond high school? Because in my own experience as a high schooler too, I don’t think I ever thought beyond ‘getting my homework done,’ which is a significantly passive stance towards achievement compared to the kind of thinking I have for my own future and goals now as a college student. In any case, there is no question about these students being ‘formal’ operational, since the very ownership of an iPad as their primary source of academic material could not be realized without the assumption of this very basic premise.

Additional notes about the class include the fact that very honestly because there is not a set curriculum to the class, there is no guarantee that a student would actually work on their homework during this period. They might not even ask any questions. They might not even take out their iPads (aka their textbook). They might take it out, but use it as a barrier to hide the fact that they are actually on their phones. And this was very much true during my first visit to this class. I was shocked in some way because this was not the kind of classroom environment I was expecting to see, but at the same time, I also realize that there are unique observations that could be made precisely due to the special nature of the class. I look forward to engaging in as much ‘tutoring’ as I can, while I am not setting too high an expectation for what I could contribute while I’m here.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Tonja Clay.

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