Chance Module 1

These resources are for parents and teachers using Chance to improve young readers’ literacy and critical thinking skills. The strategies suggested for promoting relevant, experiential learning activities that improve skills and foster independent learning can be applied other texts and even to other disciplines in which a learning-centered rather than teaching-centered approach is desired. One purpose of this website and to a lesser extent of the novel itself is to explore how teachers can help promote their students’ intellectual and emotional development. The practical activity and discussion tips presented on this site rely on a particular understanding of the role of the teacher and the function of education, which will now be considered.

The ideas presented here have evolved primarily as a result of my career of more than three decades in the field of teaching English as a Second Language (ESL). While many language classes are still conducted in the age-old manner of teacher (or textbook) presenting information that students then memorize and practice, the field of language instruction has spawned some very different educational models. Some two hundred years ago, the Prussian linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt recognized that “a language cannot be taught; one can only create conditions for learning to take place.” In recent decades, the notion that the language teacher’s role is not to teach language has been bolstered by Stephen Krashen and other scholars who make the case that language is not so much learned as acquired and the teacher’s function is to facilitate acquisition. Innovative language-teaching methodologies developed by Caleb Gattegno, Georg Lozanov, Charles Curran and others stress the centrality of the learner, promote hands on learning activities and produce classes that look very different from conventional ones in which the teacher or the content is the central element and the student is a relatively passive recipient of dispensed information.

It took a considerable time for me to realize that much of what makes sense for the language class has a much wider applicability and that in virtually all academic contexts the teacher’s function should not be to teach but to facilitate learning. The difference between teaching and facilitating can be seen in the common experience of a parent helping a child learn to ride a bicycle. The parent can: provide a bicycle; find a good place to practice; demonstrate and model how to ride; encourage the child and give assurances of success; give tips and advice; suggest ways to correct problems; make the child feel safe and secure; try to catch the child and prevent spills; congratulate the child for attempts and successes. But the actual learning is done by the child. Through the child’s effort alone the jump is made from not being able to ride to being able to ride. Without the child’s effort and active participation in the learning process, nothing that a parent can do, however eager for the child’s success, would be sufficient. Learning, ultimately, can be done only by the learner. Perhaps, the most helpful things a parent can do is encourage the child and remove as many obstacles as possible to the child’s commitment to the task. The parent can facilitate learning, but not actually teach the skill of riding a bicycle.

Facilitating learning, to large extent, consists of developing conditions conducive to learning, encouraging and stimulating interest, bolstering confidence, minimizing obstacles, and providing guidance, materials and resources. These are exactly the kinds of things that psychologist Carl Rogers maintained were essential for learning. He asserted that all human beings have an innate propensity to learn, which it is the teacher’s responsibility to promote and not stifle. He also distinguished between assimilating factual knowledge which is quickly forgotten and what he called significant learning, which is relevant to the learner and produces transformation and growth. Education, for Rogers is learning how to learn and equipping students with the emotional and intellectual tools needed to become lifelong, independent learners.

In contrast to that conception of education, the focus of many academic classes is on teaching specific information or skills. Learning is equated with the accumulation of knowledge and educational systems revolve around the dispensing of information. Curricula are crammed with details of what should be taught and students are tested and graded on what they can regurgitate. This educational model, sometimes referred to as the empty vessel paradigm because the student is seen as an empty container waiting to be filled with knowledge dispensed by the teacher, views the learner as a passive or even reluctant participant in the learning process, who must be coerced or bribed into engaging in what is represented as the difficult and laborious drudgery of learning. This interpretation of education makes the teaching process unpleasant for both student and teacher and places emphasis on the transfer of information that lacks relevance for the learner and is soon forgotten. Even more seriously, it inhibits rather than promotes curiosity and often damages the learner’s self-esteem and capacity to learn.

How does all of this relate to the teaching ideas presented on this site? Let’s consider what we hope to accomplish when we use Chance (or any other novel or text) in the classroom. Is the objective to teach the contents of a book or to use the book to help students become better readers, develop their reading, language and critical thinking skills and foster a love of reading? As teachers, we should be trying, in the words of the old cliché, to teach how to fish instead of just providing a fish for a single meal. If, instead of using a class text as content to be taught and learned, we view it instead as a vehicle or tool for promoting interest in and love of reading – which in turn results in better reading and thinking skills – we can help our students achieve transformative, significant learning instead of mere factual learning.

Emerson’s maxim, “Skill to do comes of doing,” is true for reading and writing as well as skateboarding, playing piano, cooking, carpentry or any other skill. Therefore, the most important thing a language teacher can do is to get students involved in as much language use as possible and the most important thing a language arts teacher can do is to get students to read and write as much as possible. Since people engage in activities they like and avoid those they dislike, it seems clear that the language arts teacher’s greatest challenge is to get students to like to read and write. We must be clear about what we mean when we talk about somebody liking to do something. The activities that we like and consider fun are not necessarily those which are easy but those which may be be difficult and challenging but nevertheless afford satisfaction and fulfillment. A video-game player may spend an enormous amount of time trying to get to the next level, a model-builder may spend many painstaking hours trying to get a single detail right, and skier or hang-glider may risk bodily injury trying to perform new feats. We gladly spend time doing things that are rewarding to us. As an activity that opens worlds beyond one’s personal experience, reading is unparalleled in its capacity to be rewarding. As teachers, our goal is to make such skills as reading and writing enjoyable and rewarding for students so that they become a part of their lives.

The activity ideas presented on this site are intended to help teachers use Chance – or any other class text, be it Lord of the Flies or Of Mice and Men – in a way that promotes the broader goal of making reading a rewarding activity for students. The basic strategy for accomplishing that goal involves making the reading relevant to students by relating what they read to their own lives and to themselves as individuals. That means using the book to bring out questions, thoughts and ideas from the students’ minds rather than filling their minds with information from the outside. Let’s look briefly at how this works and how it compares with a more conventional treatment of a text.

Typically a teacher might ask students to recap plot elements, describe a character’s personality, explain the consequences of an action or maybe to keep a list of all the new vocabulary words encountered. All of these activities treat the text as the primary entity and the student as secondary. By contrast, the simple instructional idea being advocated here is to treat the student as primary and the text as merely a vehicle for evoking student reaction. So if a character in the text has a dream, it could be used as an opportunity for students to talk about some of the dreams they have had and their beliefs about what dreams mean. Not only discussions but role-plays and other activities that allow students to play an active rather than a passive role in the classroom can be used to explore the various elements of the text in ways that are meaningful to the students. The goal of this website is to help teachers come up with text-related activities that engage and involve students and in so doing produce experiences that make them better and more avid readers.

In an article entitled The Improvement of Medical Teaching published in 1912, C. M. Jackson advised, “Never tell a student anything he can observe for himself; never draw a conclusion or solve a problem which he can be led to reason out for himself, and never do anything for him that he can do for himself.” Encouraging students to discover and figure things out on their own is a good practice for just about any class in which the objective is for students to master new skills and not just parrot back information given to them. Discovery may perhaps be considered the active ingredient of experiential learning. What students discover for themselves they are more likely to remember than what is taught to them, so discovery is useful for producing desirable results. But its value is not limited to achieving specific learning objectives. That special aha! moment of discovery produces a dopamine high, a sense of satisfaction that fosters motivation for further learning and discovery. The best activities are those which afford students the greatest opportunities for making their own discoveries. When students raise their own questions, do their own and attempt to find answers and solutions, they accomplish incomparably more than being filled with information that they have not sought.