The joy of seeing joy and student ownership in a classroom — it makes me smile thinking about this.
On our school visit to Boston Arts Academy last week, I was struck by how much ownership each person felt of this school. ‘This is my school’, ‘Thank you Dr Nathan for starting this school’, we heard these statements not just from one or two but almost every student and teacher that we met. I was surprised, pleasantly I should say. But as I registered this emotion, I also wondered why this was such a surprise. And I could see this surprise reflected on the faces of the graduate students standing next to me on this visit. Finding this sense of ownership and this sense of authentic joy in a school was sadly not something that most of us thought of as a given when visiting a school. Why is that? Why are these places of learning that are supposed to spark our curiosities and unleash our potential often so devoid of joy?
Much of our education was designed for an industrial age where the goal of education was to prepare cogs that could fit in a wheel and keep it rolling smoothly. It really wasn’t meant to be a place of joy — that could be something added on the top, but it was not part of the foundation. But when the roots are not strong, how can the tree grow? The seeds of joy and the seeds of ownership need to be planted intentionally in the foundation of the school. That’s what we saw at BAA. The founders did this intentionally, not by accident, but by design. I have visited this school thrice so far and every time I am struck by the feeling of joy that I sense. Students want to be in the school. They are proud of the work they are doing. They are engaged with the educators in their building (When I saw students meeting their teachers for Office Hours during their lunch break, I was a little surprised!). The teachers take pride in their work. There is a purpose and a goal to the things that are happening in the building. Sure it’s not all perfect, it can’t be. But the intention and continued effort is what makes this experience so joyful.
In our conversation with the teachers, this theme of joy came up in different ways. The idea of you should only do this if you feel called to this work and if you love young people came up. If you don’t, this probably will be painful for both you and those you work with. And it’s important for young people to be able to see and experience that you want to do this. Because they can sense when teachers are being real and when they’re not. It definitely felt like the teachers felt real to the students and they both felt joy in their relationship with each other.
And so this joy in schools can happen. But it needs intention and it needs to be part of the school’s vision and mission. More and more as I look at this work and do this work myself, I feel the importance of having the school’s mission and vision be a guiding star. Sometimes this mission is housed in a school’s founder or leader. But in those cases this mission also ends up leaving with this leader. For this mission to become a part of the school’s DNA, every person needs to live this mission every day. And for that to happen, everyone needs to have a voice in building this mission. That’s also where the sense of ownership stems from.
The smiles that I saw on all of my colleagues’ faces as they witnessed this joy in school tells me that this is something that we all hope to bring to schools in our community. And I hope that we can all work towards designing and building this shared mission with our communities.
