Controlled Chaos?

I completely embrace the “controlled chaos” that is at the heart of this course. On an ideal day, if you walk past my room, you will hear a loud hum of conversation and will see students gesturing to each other, walking around to other tables, and writing on the board. They get off topic, and that’s ok. They have these incredible conversations that seem tangential, but end up leading back to the heart of the concept. Or they don’t lead back, but end up being really interesting in their own right. That’s an ideal day.

Then there are the not-so-ideal days. I have really been struggling with classroom management this semester. I have six groups of students, and three are functioning well. The other three are functioning at various levels of not great, with some of the group members working individually, and some not at all. I keep coming around and encouraging conversation, telling them they all need to be in the same place, and in one case trying to facilitate conflict management. But they’re fighting me every step of the way. Well, not fighting–they just ignore me. I threaten loss of participation points, give tips for working better as a group…nothing. Half the group gets done, the other half pretends to, and they all leave. They don’t check in with me–I just look up and they’re gone.

What is going on here? I’ve had a dud group here and there in the past, but this is really frustrating me. Clearly I have not made my expectations clear. Or I have, and they don’t care? I try to be easy-going to facilitate a conversational classroom, but apparently this semester that is backfiring. I’ll have to go in tomorrow with a new attitude, and set a more hard-working tone.

I love this course, and I love the group-based pedagogy. But I don’t want to act like things always go perfectly! I’ll keep you posted on my efforts.

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