Pedagogical justifications for deliberate chaos

By Jesper Trier Gissel

Most of my students are fresh out of high school and have decided to immerse themselves in non-formal education away from curriculums and grades in the near isolation of a Danish folk high school. Here learning is considered to take place both in class and outside of class. We con­stantly train our students’ social skills by considering every hour at the school (and even away from the school, while they are our students) as teaching, meaning that we strive to show them who they are as social beings and how to navigate in a democratic, free society. We do not just teach skill sets; we also focus on developing them as per­sons. Some students focus mainly on their subjects, oth­ers come for the social learning and experience. But for the vast majority, their personal growth as human beings are actually what makes the most important and lasting mark on their future lives.

This, I believe, is where we get the most concentrated concoction of formal teaching, informal togetherness, and everything in between.

Jesper Trier Gissel

I will here describe what we call the ‘Chaos Project’ which spans across three days and where all the students work together on the same project. This, I believe, is where we get the most concentrated concoction of formal teaching, informal togetherness, and everything in between. The car­dinal pedagogical driving force behind this project is learn­ing how to cooperate. Being able to contribute and simulta­neously allow room for others in group work is an essential skill in almost any future career, creative or otherwise.

Three days of horrible, glorious chaos

Approximately half way through their stay, all my school’s students meet on a Monday morning leading up to the Easter holiday. They all know from their calendar that the next three days read ‘Chaos Project’ instead of normal classes, but they do not know what it means.

I launch directly into a short, ridiculous story of “the earth in a not too distant future”, where two superheroes, Awesome Girl and Amazing Man, have almost successfully ridded the earth of crime. So, together with their technical support, Dr. X, whose job consists of supplying them with the special super powers they need for each job, they have decided to celebrate and have a small party. At this party, Dr. X gets really, really drunk and when he is almost out cold, the alarm sounds, and the two superheroes have to go on a mission. And with a drunken Dr. X they cannot be sure which superpowers they end up with or if they are even useful to their mission.

I now tell the students that on this night the alarm sounds three times from three different places round the globe. And it is their job to write and produce a play about how Awesome Girl and Amazing Man save the world in these three different places. The students are divided into three groups that each produce one third of the play with­out knowing what the other groups are doing. And on the following Wednesday at 10 a.m. they perform the play with each other as audience.

We are three teachers running the project, advising within each our area of expertise (music, acting, and writ­ing; tech. and multimedia; costumes and scenography) and conducting regular meetings with the groups during the project. They have two meetings with me a day on script writing, acting, and directing. And they also have one tech­nical meeting and one on dance, costumes, and scenogra­phy a day. At these meetings, we listen, guide, push, and sometimes even shut down ideas that are wrong or just bad for some reason. E.g. the urge to poke indelicate fun at someone tends to turn up. I had a situation where a group decided to parody one of our janitors who had been mak­ing himself unpopular with the students by policing them without it being his job. Their idea was of course an outlet for a sub-surface annoyance, and we talked about how this had come to be. And through this discussion it also dawned on them that perhaps it was their own lack of understanding of his job that often made them overstep his boundaries. As such, it often happens that the process makes hidden issues surface to be discussed and investigated from new angles.

I had a situation where a group decided to parody one of our janitors who had been mak­ing himself unpopular with the students by policing them without it being his job.

Jesper Trier Gissel

We also help set deadlines such as “at the next meet­ing, the script needs to be finished and I want a read-through”. And apart from that we, the teachers, are avail­able to help from morning to late night. We often claim to be just consulting, but our role is much more that of a teacher than it may sound. How much we interfere very much depends on the quality and progress of the groups.

Naturally, the boarding school framework is essen­tial for this to work. The students are at home and at school simultaneously, so during this project they are never really not working unless they are sleeping.

Bending the rules

During these three days, things are not as usual. We change the school’s physical and organisational frameworks, and even to some extent the rules of conduct. The classrooms are used differently, the students eat at different hours, there are no scheduled lessons, and when they show up for the introduction the lecture hall is already slowly trans­forming into a theatre etc.

One challenge here is that sometimes students end up breaking the rules because we have slurred some of their usual boundaries. One Tuesday I announced that they could have a beer (otherwise limited to weekends) in the evening that day, which made a girl go get beer for her group in the afternoon – i.e. earlier than allowed. It is interesting to observe how the freedom they feel sud­denly changes their view of rules in general. And this, of course, is also something we can observe and discuss with them. As a responsible teacher, it can be really provoking when you feel that letting go a little suddenly makes some students immediately test the limits, but it is also interest­ing to discuss where this urge comes from. Was it a small rebellion, basic urges, thoughtlessness etc.?

Challenging social constellations

At this point the students have been living together for approximately 12 weeks and have developed a certain weekly routine. Everything that was new and strange is now common, and they have formed small social circles within which they might easily move nearly unchallenged for the remaining 10 weeks. Therefore, we want to force them into new social constellations.

For us, it is important to show them that forming new groups does not mean tearing down the old ones. It is easy to imagine this process leaving some students feeling left out, but I honestly cannot think of a single situation where a student lost their sense of belonging. It may be challeng­ing for some not to have their group around them, but being busy together doing something difficult, creative, and fun leaves them little opportunity to miss anyone. And we never end up with a student body divided into new groups. It always results in a feeling of being one big group.

And we never end up with a student body divided into new groups. It always results in a feeling of being one big group.

Jesper Trier Gissel

We divide them into three groups with regards to their competences (all groups should have musicians, actors, writers etc.). Consequently, they are going to spend three intense days working very closely in a ‘new’ group. There will be stress, there will be conflicts, but there will also be a feeling of having accomplished something huge in a very short time. And by far the most groups also expe­rience that undefinable feeling of being ‘in tune’. Expe­riences like these tend to forge very strong connections between the students across their usual social circles. The danger is of course that the groups might end up bickering and fighting and, in effect, end up delivering a bad result. This is where we as teachers need to step in.

I have seen quite a few conflicts during these pro­jects, but in my experience, when these arise, it is always possible to unravel the conflict to a point where the stu­dents understand the reason why they are fighting. And getting through, admitting and forgiving that someone perhaps took too much control and did not allow the others to chip in, or that a communication failure made two frac­tions work in different directions, becomes a very strong learning experience of cooperation. In fact, the groups that really struggled in terms of cooperation but managed to get past it are often the ones that end up tying closer bonds to each other afterwards.

The project feeds off and expands their shared group language and (hi)story. Knowing that they are their own audience, they immediately tap into their already existing language where certain expressions mean something special to them only. These are always thrown around in the scripts in new and surprising ways, further substantiating their importance to the group’s identity. And naturally, the play itself becomes a source of new references and catchphrases which form the group’s language and shared history.

Getting to know your own values

Most importantly, three days of intense, fun, hard, creative, and stressful work generate a shared feeling of accomplish­ment – even across the groups because they had similar tasks. They now have an abundance of stories to tell each other about how they did things and where they failed. The project becomes part of their lives at the school, a shared history, which solidifies their social relations and under­standing of each other. It has helped them tune in to each other and taught them about the value of their own and others’ contributions. I have come to consider the project as a training ground where their sense of themselves as individuals and as a group takes a leap worth many weeks of ‘normal’ life.

This is felt throughout the rest of their stay, both inside and outside the classrooms. And their enhanced togetherness is felt directly in the lessons where the feel­ing of safety and comfort in themselves and each other makes them confident enough to speak their minds and make suggestions or come up with interesting new angles because they are not afraid to fail.