Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to 1810, a podcast produced by the Lawrenceville School. In 18 minutes and 10 seconds, we explore the future of education with insights from bright minded individuals, inspiring new ways of thinking.
I'm Pierre Koistra. It's my privilege to serve as the Robert Sykes and Christina Sykes Dow Master Teaching Chair in Harkness Learning. And I'm joined today by a member of the class of 2026, Willem Anton. In this episode, Willem and I continue our conversation about Harkness as it extends into the co curricular realm.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: It takes a lot of practice to get something right in a choir, for example, and it's not something that maybe you get the first time, but maybe after a couple of attempts it's kind of in your ear and you never forget it. I found that a lot of the songs that I sing at our performances, I never forget.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: That's interesting.
What is it about those songs or what you've done with them that has such mnemonic power that embeds these things in your memory?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: I think it's because it's linked to an experience, right? Whenever you're singing a song, it's maybe linked to the guy next to me was singing it wrong. All those experiences make you think back to, my God, that part of the song they're singing exactly like I used to, right? Or I tend to listen to a lot of the songs that I perform on Apple Music. I'm oftentimes thinking about them and thinking about, wow, what are the decisions that we made that this particular chorus decided not to? Or did they decide to have the guys go first, the tenor basses instead of the soprano altos? These are all artistic choices that make it different, but they're kind of achieving the same goal with the song, for example, requiem by Foray, which is like a different way of thinking about death as kind of an absolution. And it kind of throws you around a bunch of different ways. But what I'm listening to in Apple music, they do it totally different than what we did. But I still remember it in the way that I sang it because it's linked to those experiences kind of semiotically.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: I love what you're saying about the power of experience. And I'm struck by how often when people look back on their schooling, they often talk in a kind of flat way about what happened in the classroom. And then they become very animated when they talk about what happened on the field or the court or in the pool or on the stage. And that to me is no mystery. It makes all the sense in the world I find here, I'm often engaged in follow up conversations with students about class because what we did is an experience is something in which the student is fully engrossed. If it's going well, the student has a huge stake in what's happening. And you were just talking about making artistic decisions about how to perform something like 4A's Requiem. When you are a member of a class that is taking on a big philosophical question or is wrestling with a really thorny scientific question or a mathematical problem, often you end up making what amount to artistic decisions, design decisions, engineering decisions. We could go at it this way, but we're going to go at it that way. And my experience is that it's that very active, critical process of decision making that renders the thing an experience that is all the easier to remember and that gives rise to more durable learning. But one of the things about Harkness that you and I were talking about before is having one's assertions challenged, one's hypotheses, even one's framing of a question. Ah, koi stra. I don't think that's the right way to word that.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Wouldn't it be nice if instead of how was, how was Anger's class? Yeah, it was good. Yeah, we talked about Macbeth. Wouldn't it be nice if, you know, you had a conversation with your buddy about your English class, like it was a sports game or oh my God, we were down by one goal. Or maybe, you know, an artistic thing like, oh my God, he started slipping up, he had to cough. Wouldn't that be nice if everybody had the same enthusiasm about the classroom? And to your point, about challenging other people's beliefs, I think that it's one of the most important parts of Harkness. But at the same time, there's a way that it can be manipulated that actually goes against Harkness. And what I'm talking about is that kind of Harkness discussion where there's somebody in that class who just disagrees for the sake of disagreeing. Like, I disagree with you. I think you're totally wrong about that. Okay, why? And then, you know, they go through why, why? Your point is garbage, but they don't kind of bring up something of their own. And in real life you will encounter people like that that no matter what, just have something sly to say about anything that you say. I think there's a fine line between the two. Some of the best Harkness discussions I've had have been, you know, again, playing devil's Advocate, you know, challenging something like putting it under the process of critical review. But you have to do it in the right way. As a English teacher, have you experienced these kinds of, you know, discussions?
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Of course I've had experience with that. In fact, I have experience with that every year. And there's a part of me that delights in recognizing, oh, we've got the inveterate Devil's advocate here. Right, We've got the. And by the way, I should say very quickly, I was that kid.
As a 14 and 15 year old, I engaged in a lot of sort of self protective and deflective sophistry. I wasn't nearly the diligent, let alone truly conscientious student that I should have been. I was often trying to put on an impression of learnedness rather than steeping myself in learning. And I definitely went, you were talking earlier about being the master of discussion. And I definitely entered the classroom in grades nine and ten thinking, I have to win class today.
So I would ask all kinds of questions, I would levy all kinds of challenges that would put other people's ideas sort of on the ropes.
But I didn't do it in the right way. I didn't understand that. The playing of devil's advocate is done best when somebody sees real value in the idea that somebody else is starting to promote, or at least to venture to offer it as a possibility, but also sees the potential for weakness. I think that devil's advocate is played best when it's played in a playful way and somebody says, ooh, Willem, that's really interesting, but I feel as though I can foresee some possible shortcomings in this dimension, in this wing of your idea. Is it okay if I ask you some questions that are intended not to explode the idea, but in fact to put those elements of it under pressure and see if we can clean them up a little bit.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Or perhaps, what if we could say this instead? Which kind of gets at what you were saying, but instead it prevents those shortcomings. Right.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: So I actually spend a lot of my time as a teacher pulling students aside and saying, look, you're trying to win the discussion, and as you do so, you're actually losing the interest and the confidence of your group. They're starting to feel as though you are a pest and you're getting in the way of our productivity. And I'm not saying this to make you feel bad. I'm saying this so that you can quickly pull yourself back into the community and become a real teammate and become a supporter of this collective enterprise.
[00:07:22] Speaker B: And it has has to do with the culture of the conversation. Because if you feel as though you say something, there are going to be a million people that are just saying, wow, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm going to put that through a million challenges. Nobody's going to say anything interesting. So you have to balance. Let's not let everything pass through like, let's not let something obvious take hold of the discussion, but also, let's not discourage the discourse.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Let's not discourage the discourse.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: I dropped a one liner there, didn't I?
[00:07:51] Speaker A: That's great, right? I think there's real wisdom there. What we want to do is encourage discourse, right? We want to give people the courage in the literal sense. Right, Courage. We want them to have heart and to try to forge through difficult moments when intellectually they're a little bit at sea. They're not confident that what they're venturing is going to work.
They're not confident that the question that they're asking is going to be well received by the group or the challenge that they're making is going to be understood as generous in intention. That's really great stuff.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: One of the things that we ought to talk about is that active participation isn't equally easy for all students. I definitely see that as a teacher. I know that for me, it was a lot of hard work to become adept at dialogical discourse, but it was certainly easier for me. I'm an extrovert. I'm a person for whom it is not only easier than it is for others, but it is deeply engaging, deeply gratifying to be immersed in collective experience.
I'm well aware that as a teacher, I have a lot of hard work to do to help the more introverted people in my classroom to join the fray, Particularly when we're talking about a plenary discussion where it's all 12 or 13 students engaged in a big exchange. So, of course, one of the things that I do is make sure that in virtually every class period, there are moments for pairs to confer more privately, for trios to check in with one another. What to you are some of the most valuable and useful ways of being invited by your teachers and by your classmates to make sure that everybody is in a classroom environment gets to be an active part of the team?
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Well, I think you started off with a great example, which is small groups. When you're in a language classroom, everybody's an introvert because nobody understands the language fluently certainly in the lower classes. Right. French one, French two, for example. And so when you enter those small groups, people become more confident because they know whatever they say isn't, you know, gonna be laughed at by the rest of the class, perhaps only laughed at by a couple of people. And so I think it's baby steps, really. You know, I was in Mr. Porter's class, and he, halfway through the term, he gave us these sheets of paper on which he had a percentage of our portion of the discourse and the average. Right. If everybody talked the exact same amount, we would all have 7%. And there were some people with 13%, there were some people with 2%. Right. And for those kids with 2%, it's not correct to immediately assume that they're not prepared. I think a better way to figure out would be whether or not they're following along with the conversation. Are they taking notes? Right. Are they laughing at the jokes, or are they kind of just being a part of the discussion, maybe without even offering up something new? You don't always have to change the topic of conversation.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Would you agree that that message.
Hey, that's fascinating. Could you keep going with that? Could actually cover a whole range of motives and potential outcomes. In other words, that it could be a comment offered by somebody who has a lot of political capital in the group, somebody in the class who's recognized by other members of the team as being very astute, very carefully and thoroughly prepared every day. Somebody who is really a generative presence.
And therefore, it could be seen as a genuine act of generosity. Hey, historically quieter person. I love where you're going with that. I would like to back off and yield time and attention to you, but it could also be a sort of coping mechanism for somebody who doesn't really want to engage. It could be purely cosmetic. I didn't do the prep. I don't have anything of real substance to say.
I would like to appear to be nice and generous here, and I'm hoping I can get away with that. Does that make sense?
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Yeah. But there's also the person in the classroom that has the most ability to speak on the topic, and that is the teacher. And what you're doing is trying to nudge people in the right direction. So sometimes that's also something that you do. I'm assuming that sometimes you're in the classroom thinking. I want you to expand on that a little bit. Person X.
Right.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: I definitely do that. I have to say, though, I'm well aware that often for an introvert who is new, particularly in this school environment, or maybe new in my classroom, that that can be a moment of crisis when they I perceive it as a low stakes moment, or at least that's my intention.
Can you speak to this point, this question, this idea for 15 seconds, 20 seconds? But they might be thinking, I've never really spoken in this class before, so this is a high stakes moment in which I have to deliver the goods.
Often I will make sure to do some work in advance. I'll pull them in for consultation. I'll ask if they can linger after class on a day when they've once again been very silent and say, hey, I see your eyes just lit up with energy. You are tracking everything that's going on in here. I've been looking at your notebook. It is full of remarkably perceptive takes on what other people are saying and on the reading itself. And your text is very well annotated. I know that you know a lot of what's going on.
Can we talk a little bit about why you're not yet entering the discussion in a really active way? And they'll often explain two or three things about their personality makeup and their personal history in school in general, or maybe it's just an English class. And then I'll say, well, I'm curious, like, what do you think we can do? And are there things in particular that I can do to help you to enter this space more comfortably? And often, as soon as we start having the discussion, I can see their body language relaxing, realizing, oh, this person wants to be an ally to me. And I will say to them something like, what I'm trying to do is offer you assessment feedback that isn't judgmental. I'm acknowledging that so far you've been quiet, but I'm not trying to suggest that there's something intrinsically problematic about you.
In fact, part of my job is to help tee you up for success. So how do we do that? And often the more that we talk, the more we're able to identify some simple tactics by which they can get more actively involved in what's going on. And with a lot of my classes, I try to set students up to play an explicit role as leader or co leader. And that's really helpful to students who realize, oh, this is a lot of hard work on the front end of class, but if I'm the person designing the questions, or if I'm the person, you know, the questions that are going to drive discussion, I've been able to construct my own script and then deliver it. And the More I do that, the more I grow in competence and confidence in the classroom, and then I can take off from there.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: I was just thinking, I think the size of Harkness table, right. Like having 12 or 13 kids around it, is a little bit different than Harkness in small groups because the fact that there are so many people there shrinks your piece of the pie to the point where when you say something, you have enough time to think about it yourself. Right. And the idea comes out a little bit more shaped than it would when you're having a conversation like this one with two people. Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: I would say that the larger discussion brings both challenges and benefits. It brings both burdens and various forms of relief. And I think the same thing is true of the duet. The trio. The quartet, yeah. There's an interesting way in which sometimes moving into a small group can make people think, ooh, these people are listening with hyperintensity, and they're right next to me.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: And I would actually be a little bit more comfortable being in the larger discussion. And my experience is that it matters a lot that we ask students, what are you experiencing? What's going well for you? What feels comfortable? And it's really important that we also just offer descriptive feedback, like what Mr. Porter was doing with percentages.
Hey, you were carrying 13% of the discussion. You were carrying 2%. 13%. You need to shrink 2%. You need to grow. Now let's talk about how to do that.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Right. And I feel like at the same time, when you're in that, you know, 10 to 4%, it's kind of like it's just a number. Right. It's not necessarily a call to action, but it's saying, okay, this is where you are. This isn't anything that's, like, supposed to make you, you know, worried at all. Obviously, if your number is zero or if your number is 50, then that's a problem. But it also brings about a little bit of motivation since you know, where 7% is. You kind of self regulate in the future. Yeah, I think that was a really good method. And if you're trying to encourage discussion, I think you have to acknowledge the fact that some people are more comfortable when they have ideas that are fully formed when they're in that 13, 12 person group. And some people would prefer to be in a smaller group. And those are the kinds of things that you have to weigh. And there's 100% a sense of pride in having that realization and really thinking about something. And that sense of pride that you also get through the hard work that you do, perhaps on the field or in the choir.
That's the kind of thing that, you know, invites that. Wow, that was just the most awesome thing. Let's. Let's talk about it. Yeah, I think that's something that Harkness has the capability of doing.
That's 1810 for today. Inspiring ideas from Lawrenceville to you. We look forward to our next exploration.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: 1810 is produced and edited by the Communications Department at the Lawrenceville School.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: If you have comments or questions about today's episode, please reach out to communicationrenceville.org we're always interested to hear your ideas. A transcript of today's episode is available at Elville 1810.
