All for the lack of tuppence, patiently, cautiously, trustingly invested

On Saturday, we had an English tutorial for Grade 1-3 teachers. We planned carefully for a very long time, creating a flowline that included not just the actual lesson that would be taught to children but also several opportunities for reflection. The last hour of the workshop was intended to take the form of a planning session, so teachers could practice what they had just been exposed to. It turns out, after a year and a half of training, the teachers were unable to define objectives for a lesson, much less connect objectives with activities and opportunities for practice which might then be assessed. Furthermore, today when I walked into a school to co-plan with some teachers, they kept asking me if their plans were "correct" so that they could copy their "rough work" into their "fair copies". They seemed shocked when I told them that they were the authorities on their own classrooms and I could merely suggest options but that they had to determine what would work based on their unique classroom dynamics.

Is this obsession with the "right" answer so ingrained that we forget that there is so much to be gained from arriving at a relevant if unconventional answer? We are so scared to construct conclusions from available facts if it is not sanctioned by a higher authority that we prefer to try to apply a prepackaged solution, even if it does not fit! When does this happen to us?

Contrast this "right answer" attitude with that of a six-year old, the son of one of the teachers' attending the Saturday tutorial, who entertained himself with nothing but some shoes and scraps of plywood while waiting for his mother. He spent two full hours tessellating pairs of shoes trying to recreate the pattern on his pants. He then proceeded to build a two dimensional house using scraps of plywood. He was fully engaged in his play, exploring some very important concepts while all creating his very own learning environment. This same child will have spent the last two days in a stuffy classroom with more children than can comfortably breathe. He will have been given heinous textbooks with the most boring lessons. He will be docked points for answers not reflected in his books, never mind if he arrived at them logically and methodically. Notes, that he will have to memorize and reproduce, will be dictated and he will never once be allowed to question any part of the process. Is his environment slowly stifling his creativity? I'd say so! In two years time, this innovative young man might be one of any number of squibs, stuck in a classroom struggling with the concept of place value.