On the Spear of the Moment
Defaced image of ‘The Spear’ – controversial painting of President Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa
Creating Teachable Moments
Everyone is talking about it, it’s the latest piece of news, everyone is fascinated by the event
and wondering what is going to happen. Then, you walk into your classroom, with your
lesson plan, your photocopied assessment rubric and your PowerPoint presentation, ready
to teach. The gears inside the students’ brains crunch as they change into predetermined
content mode: this is what the curriculum says we have to learn, and nothing’s going to
change that.
The Spear painting was one of those moments. It occupied the news, emails, cartoons,
tweets and posts for the best part of two weeks (click here for BBC info). What did we do
with it? On the “Spear” of the moment, did we make a teachable moment of the content
with which so many students were already engaged? When the Twin Towers came crashing
down, when the Chilean Miners were rescued from their darkness, when ____________; did
we embrace real life and make a teachable moment of it?
Claire (2004) highlights the importance of children working in ‘real contexts’:
“If we want to empower children, and develop their sense of urgency, they need
opportunities to work with genuine situations and debate and influence genuine
issues.” (p.12)
Real context prevents citizenship from becoming little more than learned theories.
The Spear painting created much food for thought with my Grade 7s in our Thinking Skills
lesson. We looked at two things: Other People’s Views and Human Rights.
Edward de Bono’s CoRT tool, ‘OPV’ (Other People’s Views), assists students in broadening
their perceptions so they can see beyond the obvious and beyond their own point of view.
Using a Bubble Map for the cognitive process of describing, the children described the Spear
painting using a frame of reference around their map to indicate the viewpoint from which
they were analysing the painting. The view of the artist and art critics had them drawing
upon their knowledge and understanding of art as a subject, the view of Jacob Zuma,
Zuma’s children and the ANC, whilst overlapping in their content, each had nuances of their
own. The views of those fighting for Freedom of Expression presented them with a
challenge, but all the viewpoints they looked at were recorded on maps.
The most fascinating part of this activity was not even their outcomes. It was seeing the
depth of processing required for them to step into someone else’s shoes and not say how
they felt as that person, but how they viewed something from that person’s perspective.
This is a critical life skill, to see another person’s view, but how often do we take the time to
stop and really mediate children’s learning it.
There was much discussion surrounding the Freedom of Expression as it had presented
them with a real challenge to think from this angle. Multi-flow maps facilitated the
children’s thinking on what the effect would be of having no right to Freedom of Expression.
The outcomes showed increasing depth of thinking as they predicted both the positive and
negative effects of such a situation.
The study of Freedom of Expression led to a further discussion of Human Rights and their
importance in our lives. The Grade 7s wrote down 16 Human Rights on slips of paper and
were asked in groups to organise them into order of importance. “No, but your political
rights are more important than your access to court, because you need a good government
for courts to work,” and “…but if you don’t have equality, then you might not be able to get
a job to buy food to eat, so [equality] has to be more important than food and water,” were
indicators that the children were really thinking.
With our knowledge of Bloom’s Taxonomy, we aim to move our students from knowing and
understanding, through applying and synthesising to analysing, evaluating and creating
something new with their knowledge. The ordering of the Human Rights had caused them
to apply their knowledge and analyse the rights, but there was a higher level of thinking still
to be attained.
Every group, across the whole cohort, decided that the Right to Life was the most important
human right. Inevitably, their reasoning was that without life, none of the others mattered.
When asked what challenges people might face which would cause them to question the
Right to Life, the only response on their radar was capital punishment. When asked about
abortion and euthanasia, one could see their sense of certainty shifting. A curved ball had
just been thrown at them and they now had to figure out the implications of their previous
convictions.
The lights came on! They saw that their point of view was affecting their order of
importance of Human Rights. I provided for them a new frame of reference: Nolubabalo,
the South African woman imprisoned in China for drug smuggling, awaiting trial and
expecting the death penalty. I asked them now, to reshuffle their Human Rights into the
order of importance for her. Suddenly, access to courts was high on the agenda. They were
evaluating the situation and creating a new order of priority, taking another viewpoint into
account.
Less high profile, teachable moments, come in all shapes and sizes. In my Grade 5 form
class, a boy arrived at school without his pencil case, so I lent him a pencil for the day.
Within thirty minutes the pencil had been snapped in two. Two hours later, the remaining
half pencil was binned, as a boy ‘cleared up’. I asked the rhetorical question, “Goodness me,
what would it be like to be a pencil at StPeter’s Boys school?” What followed?... Circle maps
containing everything that could ever possibly happen to a pencil in a boys school (they had
no shortage of ideas!), flow maps sequencing their imaginary, “A Day in the life of a Pencil at
St Peter’s Boys School” and then stories which had the boys engaged in the way you dream
of your students’ writing.
This week, my “spear” of the moment, teachable moment, was created around the fire in
my kitchen. Entirely my fault. After a revision of combustion, and the class telling me I
needed to remove either the oxygen supply or the fuel, they worked out what I should have
done to extinguish my blazing frying pan. This context, however, gave the perfect
opportunity to describe a fire and model writing a non-rhyming free poem.
“Spear of the Moment” opportunities are endless. Use them to create teachable moments,
so that authentic learning occurs.
Katy Mthethwa
HOD Thinking Skills
St Peter’s School, Exeter, UK
References:
Claire, H. (ed) (2004) Teaching citizenship in primary schools. Exeter, Learning Matters Ltd
David Hyerle’s Thinking Maps: www.thinkingfoundation.org
Edward deBono’s CoRT tools