Row, Row, Row Your Boat

There's a game I play with all my classes on our first day together. Half the class puts on blindfolds -- we'll call them the "students" -- and I give the other half -- the "teachers" -- a simple task to teach the "students" to do: Have them stand in a circle facing outwards, for example. Here's the hard part: The "teachers" are not allowed to talk to the "students."

It takes a while for the "students" to realize that they will have to do all the talking -- they can't just wait to be told what to do. Usually, they tell the "teachers" to clap hands once for yes, twice for no. Then, as in the game Twenty Questions, the "students" ask the "teachers" a series of questions to determine the nature of the task.

It seems impossible at first, and it may take 20 minutes to get the "students" to stand in that circle. But they are learning all the time. They learn, for example, that if more than one "student" asks a question at once, or more than one "teacher" answers, there's chaos.

But after they try it a few times, switching sides to get a better perspective, the results are amazing. I had one group of "teachers" who got the "students" to lie down in a circle on their backs, heads in the center, and bicycle-pedal their legs in the air while singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." It took them five minutes. When I asked that particular group what they learned from the game, one girl said, "I learned we can do anything!"

The game is a powerful metaphor for what happens in schools. Being a student is like wearing a blindfold. It makes you feel nervous and vulnerable. You worry that people are going to laugh at you, or play tricks on you. You instinctively get more cautious about speaking up. It makes you feel stupid.

It's easy for adults to forget how stupid we all felt in high school. As teachers, we are tempted to solve that problem by telling students what they need to know, or what we think they need to know. And that works, sort of. Some students dutifully write down what we say, study it, and repeat it on the quiz. Depending on how well they do this, we call them A, B, C or D students. The others, who can't or won't, are labeled failures.

But in the game I play with my classes, the "teachers" aren't allowed to tell the "students" what to do. The "students" have to take responsibility for their learning, and the only method is by asking questions. So the first lesson they learn is how to ask a good question. They soon realize that some questions can't be answered with yes or no. You need a third signal, which means "you're getting closer -- ask it a different way."

It doesn't always work. If the task is too complicated, the "students" may get tired and bored. If the answers are too often no, they go silent or rip off their blindfolds and quit. The "teachers" get frustrated as well -- what's the matter with these dummies? In that sense, too, the game is like what happens in schools. Too many students, frustrated by a system that just keeps saying no, give in to apathy or rage. Too many teachers, frustrated with kids who can't seem to learn, leave the profession.

But in the game, more often than not, somebody figures it out. Somebody asks the right question the right way, and bingo! The "students" are all down on the floor, legs pumping, singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," the "teachers" are laughing and cheering, and everybody feels like there's nothing they can't do.

If only the rest of the days in class were like that.