Only six weeks had passed since the start of this school year, and I was already feeling exhausted. On a Friday during one of those long, exhausting days, two birds flew into my classroom. It was comical and absurd — for sixty minutes, I watched my high schoolers run around the room, trying to catch these birds. I had to run after my students a couple of times when I saw them doing crazy things like standing on desks and chairs and window sills trying to catch them.
Managing the situation was so tiring that I gave my following period a free day. I thought they’d go on their phones and check out; instead, I watched them play the same clapping games I played in my childhood. I watched them stare out windows, get work done for other classes and make phone calls with family members. Even though I wasn’t providing direct instruction and students weren’t working to achieve that day’s content objective, I felt like I was watching learning happen all around me. It was a pleasant surprise after such a stressful situation.
In an effort to make sense of what I saw that day, I looked up the definition of play and learning. According to the Oxford Dictionary, play is defined as “engaging in activity for enjoyment rather than for serious or practical purposes.” Learning, on the other hand, is defined as “the acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being taught.” As I reflected on both definitions, I realized that the unseriousness we associate with playfulness is at the core of why it’s a shunned approach to education.
Due to the rigidity of curriculum, standardized tests and the controlling nature of compulsory education, playfulness and unstructured time are seen as detrimental to a student’s learning. But what is learning and why is play seen as so antithetical to teaching? What if we centered playfulness and unstructured time in our classrooms, even when it has nothing to do with the curriculum? Part of learning is acquiring knowledge through experience. If play is an experience it, too, can result in the acquisition of knowledge.
Cultivating Trust in Service of Learning
Unstructured time and playfulness create a sense of trust and freedom between the student and the teacher in a classroom. Giving students the space to do what they need gives them the power as human beings to decide how to use their time. As a high school teacher, this is especially important as many of my students are nearing adulthood. We need to have faith that our students are growing into responsible people, and with that comes opportunities to decide how to use their time, just like adults.
In the past, I’ve hesitated to provide that space as a teacher of color under the pressure of curricular expectations. Since giving my students space to decide how to use that free period, I have watched them respect the classroom agreements much more readily. In that period specifically, I rarely have to break up an argument or redirect a student. It has been weeks since I gave that free period, and I see such a high level of buy-in. I can push students to be their best selves, and I believe that moral support is landing better because I show students that I do trust them, and in turn, they can trust me.
This trust also results in the lowering of the affective filter. The affective filter is a metaphor for a student’s sense of self as a learner. It is usually used in the context of language acquisition for multilingual learners but it serves a purpose for any teacher trying to create a safe space in her classroom. A high affective filter means students are resistant to academic risk-taking because they do not see themselves as strong learners. A lowered affective filter is one in which students feel safe enough to take academic risks and make mistakes.
To lower the affective filter, a teacher must instill a growth mindset in her students and create a safe classroom where students know that mistakes are met with celebration. If a student doesn’t trust their teacher, they won’t feel safe taking these risks. And if they don’t take academic risks, a student may not reach their full learning potential.
Let Your Students Surprise You
As I write this, I recognize that unstructured classrooms are probably every teacher’s nightmare. But I am not saying that this should be every day. Knowledge is not just about content, but about getting to know other human beings. When my students started playing card games with each other, it wasn’t just a group of students who already knew each other — students from across the room gathered to join in. I watched them laugh and jump excitedly with each move from one of their peers. I saw learning in that moment as they recognized how their peers engaged with UNO and shifted their own strategies. The next week, once we resumed class, the students in that period were ready to learn.
Schooling is already compulsory. Not every second of the day needs to be spent telling students how to be, move and act. Sometimes, it pays off to trust them to decide how to use their time. What they’ll remember the most will be those moments where they continued building community with their classmates. While the fear of neglecting academic content is real, retaining information when anxious or unsafe is impossible.
As teachers, we can learn a lot about our students when we just let them be. I saw students be young, playful and present people in a way I did not expect. I was pleasantly surprised that they enjoyed just being with their friends and did not default to their phones to pass the time. It gave me hope for a future where screens are not the overwhelming approach to socialization for young people.
Why not give them more opportunities to enjoy each other’s company in the classroom? With everything so focused on gaining academic language, following a curriculum and building cognitive endurance, I now realize that it’s okay to let go of all that every once in a while. Those two birds that flew into my classroom taught me an important lesson: to let my students surprise me with who they already are.
