What do you want to do?

I started class last Tuesday by asking the 12th graders something I don't think they'd ever been asked before: "What do you guys want to do?"

I believe strongly in a student-centered classroom, although I'm fudging it a little bit since in a true student-centered class the students would help design the curriculum. We're stuck with the reading list that was chosen for us, and I admitted to them that I was out of ideas on how to make The Canterbury Tales more interesting and engaging. So I asked them "What do you guys want to do?"

It's easy to tell that they had never been asked this question before because they had given it no thought. They seemed sure that their job was to come to class, and that my job was to tell them what to do. A couple of them said that they just wanted to read the book and take a test, but that was completely out of the question. First of all, I'd feel lazy and uninteresting doing something like that to them. That's the sort of thing that made me hate English classes when I was in high school and I am not going to torture my students that way. And I didn't admit this to them, but it would also require me to read the book much more carefully to create a good test, and I was just barely keeping up with their reading and finding meaning to discuss only through the Spark Notes for the book.

After a week, they finally started to realize that choice is good, although it requires more effort on their part. I gave them two choices for their final assignment: one a creative work and the other a traditional research paper, for those that are less creative. The only complaint: the 10th grade had three choices for their final assignment.