Learning Alongside Students

 I have had the privilege of being able to teach two groups of students in the past year, one in Grade 2 and the other Grade 4, in a private institution. I consider this to be a rare opportunity, because most schools have specific mandates and strict rules about what is covered in the syllabus. While I too am subject to expectations from the students and parents, I have been much more free to improvise as well: sacrificing the content I would ideally like to teach in favor of seeing what connects students the most, while allowing them to practice expressing themselves in written and spoken forms.
   I would have to say that when I first started working in this school, I was expecting that I was solely in charge of the learning experience, while the students were meant to contain what I disseminated. Of course, this is a classic approach to education, but it ignores the reality that teachers have very little control over just what exactly is being learned much less taught in the classrooms. There is a certain degree of "observer effect" here, wherein the teacher's observation of a student's progress influences them to work harder (or resist) rather than finding motivation in the work itself. Thus, overall, there will always be at least a little bit of uncertainty with regards to what the students are learning, since they may only be acting out of a need to perform in limited situations, rather than making the information theirs which they continue to use and reflect upon even after the class.
   I have digressed a lot here, but the point is: I have recently changed my orientation to suggest that while the "authoritative" model of teaching certainly works as far as the curriculum design goes (designing the syllabus, thinking through the lesson plan, etc.), but it hardly works in face to face situations where students' behavior is often far from predictable. In this case, I can't just hide inside my Power Point! I need to be able to flex out of that presentation and into the worlds of the learners in that moment, whether through connecting the lesson with something familiar that they know, or diverting the discussion to a game language generating exercise.
   I have found that when it comes to the latter approach of improvising based on the student's energies, I would have to say that the ideal attitude is one of learning alongside students, or even being a fellow learner in their midst. There is nothing more deadening than teaching a subject where one feels that everything about it has already been explored, and there are simply no further questions to elaborate within its framework. Such a belief leads to teachers' zoning out or even looking for "stock answers" to questions rather than seeing the possibilities hidden in the learning itself. In addition, such a stance allows me to explore and show my natural curiosity, but not with any intention of using curiosity as another veiled form of authority. It is rather a curiosity that comes from being in a certain zone with things and alighting on the questions that naturally come to mind.