Playgrounds vs Games
Table of Contents
Something magical happened in class yesterday, so I thought I’d write a quick blog post about it.
I teach a “presentation skills” class to 3rd graders. There are only two students in the class and they have given presentations in English before. They are also very fluent in English. The class is a piece of cake for the students.
So, we “play” a lot.
The class is very dogme[1] in nature. Very emergent. We start talking, and see where things go. Topics cover things they are interested in, and I’m interested in - education, part-time jobs, English culture, our histories, the university, their lives, games, the connection between games and education…
I told them that I get excited for teaching without a safety net. Without knowing fully where it is going to go when I start. An approach of just seeing what happens, reacting and teaching in response to their needs. I also told them that at the same time I question myself – should I have a solid curriculum of goals for each class accumulating in a test that assesses their knowledge? Should I have something more… “traditional?”
Don’t get me wrong, the students ARE assessed based on their ability to give a presentation in English at three different times over the length of the course, and I do have teacher-fronted lessons on “how to present.” But, that’s just half of the class time. It doesn’t take 14 weeks to get these students presenting. So there is a lot of “down time” where we talk, and learn about each other. It’s wholesome. It’s great.
I had the opportunity to talk to students about my teaching philosophy.
I told them about how I like to think of the classroom and my courses as “playgrounds” where I set up the environment, the restrictions, and the goals, but let students play within that space.
I showed them two pictures:
[🛝 An adventure playground]
[🐍 Snakes and 🪜 ladders] (the board game)
I told them to consider the difference between the two pictures and how they might relate to teaching.
They told me that people have a choice in how they use the playground, but that they basically follow the rules in a game of snakes and ladders and head up the linear track. In sum, the level of freedom is different between
- a space designed for play (the playground)
- a rules based game
They could see what I meant by the metaphor, which made me really glad. They REALLY made me happy when they said that much prefer my way of teaching because it is more meaningful and not “fake.” I.e., in other classes, they feel like they are just going through routines, following orders. Read this, fill the gaps here, tell your partner X, etc… But in a class with more freedom, they are exploring topics which have relevance to their lives.
We also talked about this kind of teaching means that I have to be vulnerable as a teacher as I don’t know exactly what is going to happen, and I showed them the starting blurb I wrote for my SDGs English class:
We are going on a journey together. I do not know what you will do in this class. I have not prescribed any specific goals for you.
❗ But I will support you in your journeys. You are free to explore whatever you like.
❗ But you must show evidence of your growth and transformation. You may think I’m being lazy by not preparing any reading materials.
❗ But I’ve prepared a LOT of other things. And, I’ll be working hard to make sure your journey is as good as it can be.
I trust you, so please trust me.
All in all, I was really happy to talk about my teaching WITH students, and see how they feel about it. It made me want to hunker down and write MORE about the connection between pedagogy and creating playgrounds. And you know what, I might just start writing more, now!
For those not familiar, Dogme ELT, also known as Dogme language teaching or simply Dogme, is a minimalist and conversation-driven, materials lite approach to teaching English. It was inspired by the Dogme 95 movement in filmmaking, which aimed to strip away unnecessary elements and focus on the essential aspects of storytelling. It initially proposed by Scott Thornbury and Luke Meddings in 2000 as a reaction to what they perceived as an overreliance on coursebooks and an excessive focus on materials in language teaching. The approach advocates for a more organic and learner-centered classroom environment, where the teacher takes on the role of a facilitator rather than a transmitter of knowledge. ↩︎