Friends, Factions, Fights: Classroom Feng Shui

 

We’re at our semester’s end recital—all my classes coming together to celebrate what they have learned—each student a sister or brother within a class, a cousin to each student in my mother classes.  Jane (an alias for anonymity) grabs her Judy Chicago inspired plate to present on an Emily Dickinson poem.  Her friend Jamie (alias) joins her to hold up the plate so that Jane can read from her book.  Jane looks up into the audience and shouts at George (alias), who shouts back.  Is this part of an act?  No.  What follows is a volley of invectives, criticism, blame—vituperative finger-pointing.  Jamie joins Jane and cheers her on—while their friend Joanne, sitting behind George, shouts and leans over intending to punch George.  Luckily, I put myself between them.  In turn, like a British reality show nanny, I put my hands on Jane’s, then George’s shoulders—repeating “I love you.  Calm down. Listen.”  Meanwhile, George is being cajoled by students around him to ease up.  At one point, while I’m calming George, his facial muscles relax, I see the fear and frustration in his eyes.  I know that he has been wronged.  Jane never relents, and leaves with Jamie and Joanne (who will not present on her spectacular plate) storm out.  That two students put this on Instagram shows how bizarre and invasive this episode was.  Neither my husband (who was present) nor I, in our 100 years of combined teaching experience have ever seen such an outburst.  I knew the source of the problem had something to do with them. But what had happened?

            In the past, I have much enjoyed and always encourage students to work together and create support groups.  I once had a trio, whom I affectionately called “my entourage,” who followed me in my courses as a group.  They collaborated on presentations and an occasional paper, and, like running partners, kept each other primed in friendly competition to outdo each other as students.  Some pairs of friends, whom I affectionately refer to in class as “our twins,” will get each other to class, keep notes if one is absent, and, again, support each other in completing readings and assignments.

            But this time, with the Triple Js, something went wrong—they reverted to young adolescent behavior.  I had had them individually in other classes, and even in this one in which they had enrolled together, they earned strong As.  George, also, had been in a class with me, and had gone from a shy student with earbuds, to somewhat of the class mascot.

The whole class had gone on a field trip for four days, and he had driven the long journey from New Jersey to Massachusetts and to every site on our tour. He was courteous, patient, fun. The Triple Js opted to lodge in an Air BnB, while the rest of us took rooms in a hotel where we could enjoy some time together, between historical sites, to play games, sing some karaoke, get to know each other better.

            In class, the Triple Js sat together—that’s not unusual—but soon I found that they had created a closed society and were fixed in creating an us-against-them phalanx.  They took to coming late, and complained that the seats they had originally commandeered had been taken by others.  They started to imagine that other students were talking about them—what my principal friend Milt called “the game of ‘he-looked-at-me.’”  Jane had been always early in my other class.  So it seemed, as they came together, that they had exchanged notes and primed themselves to not belong.  They gossiped about other students, and projected that the others gossiped about them.

            By the time of our recital, they were so enmeshed in their own balloon, that it had to blow.  Because they stormed out and they were unwilling to meet to resolve their differences with me as mediator, I knew that the problem was not George, nor the individual women.  It was a form of mob psychology.

            Similarly, I am finding that some pairs of “twin” friends, individually good students, become disengaged if they sit together.  Mary and Morgan, whom we nicknamed “M&M,” would sit in class mirroring each other—when one was examining her nails, so was the other.  When one pulled out a snack, they both partook.  They were either chatting or signaling each other when they were together, and neither participated—as if to do so were a betrayal of the other. When either Mary or Morgan was absent, the present twin became vocal and participated with enthusiasm.  When both returned, they were back in a cave of their own making.

            In the schools, teachers will separate disruptive students.  Since my experience with Triple J, and to be more democratic, I ask students to change their seats each time, and not to sit next to the same person for three sessions.  Assigned seating has been the favorite modus operandi in overloaded war zone classes that put student into straight rows and phalanxes. (See a recent post on that: Classroom Seating: War Zone or Campire.)  What happens is that students take up power zones and then don’t relinquish them.  They form cliques, as the Triple Js did.  When they came late to class, all the power zones had been taken by other students, so they felt especially vulnerable.  And they became significantly less the superstars I know them to be.

            According Feng Shui, the Chinese system of interior spaces based on human psychology, she who has the best line of sight—being able to see the door and survey the greater part of the class—has the power position.                 

                               

            Because there were three of them, the Triple Js had less choice of where to sit.  Because they came late, they tended to sit in the purple zone marked above, near the “escape hatch,” next to the classroom garbage can. Being in the most vulnerable position, they needed to further close ranks and tighten their us-against-them stance.

            Not surprisingly, the person next to George at the recital—a calming, powerful influence on him during the altercation—was the one who always sat in the green power zone in class.

Works Cited

Cover Art: https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-clique.htm

Feng Shui Line of Sight Art: http://www.fengshui-tips.org/feng-shui-home-office.html

Because I Can Teach Link: https://becauseicanteach.blogspot.com/2019/05/classroom-seating-war-or-campfire.html

Posted by Susanna Rich at 1:07 PM 

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