“How do you solve a problem like Maria?”

I am socially awkward. I know this. I have a million thoughts in my head but when I go to express them, they come out wrong or backwards or overly excited and by the time I am done speaking, I have wide eyes looking back at me, trying to figure out where I started from and where I went.

That’s how I feel like these readings are at times. They begin simple enough then before I know it I am running down a rabbit hole with a candelabra in one hand and a shoe, which I realize is not mine, in the other. It all seemed to make sense at the time as I was running through the Wonderland of thought, but as I get to the end and look through the looking glass, I see me as confused as the faces that are looking back at me. They too wonder, “Why the shoe?”

I honestly don’t know.

In high school I was the one looking out the window or studying or daydreaming about posters on the wall. I was always deep in thought but never really on the same page as others. The teacher would talk but as he stood there lecturing, nothing but tangent questions would come to mind. It never seemed fitting for the subject but seemed necessary for me to ask because I wanted to know. I was usually greeted with the same annoyance as June had towards Maria.

Was I a Maria? Am I still now?

Probably. But maybe I am not the only one.

In the many, many (way too many) years I have been in school or been teaching, at some point, everyone has been a Maria. Trust me. You have been that scattered-thinking student wanting so badly to express your excitement and your thoughts but all the things you wanted to say fell flat on the desk in front of you. Most likely keeping you from ever wanting to participate publicly again.

But why? What makes us lean towards this boisterous, excited, questioning student who seems to be all over the place holding a shoe in one hand, but instead of the candelabra, you now have a cat. It doesn’t make sense to the rest of those trying to listen to your thoughts as you struggle to explain the shoe and the cat (which also isn’t yours) that seemed to make so much sense before you had to express it out loud. That thing where your thoughts are doing just great, but you’re words are blowing it.

“How is it that annoying conversational style can become a measure of intellectual ability?”

I must sound like an idiot most times. I swear I am not. Or at least I don’t think I am until I open my mouth to speak. I believe at some point I have had to apologize personally to a teacher for being “that student”. The one who took the conversation off-topic and into some other “wonderland”…as in ”I wonder what in the world she is talking about”.

“Perhaps Maria…was accustomed to speaking up with her own opinion, which she expected to be acknowledged by her teachers and to be of some import of the lesson.” “…Maria’s conversational patterns more closely resembled the talk allowed in classrooms geared to the honors student”. (317)

Maria, despite her inability to follow the IRE structure, was just not used to being in such a restricted learning situation. Her instinct was to converse and express her questions and concerns. I wonder now did my professors find me “low level”, “absent minded” and “air headed” because I could not possibly say the words that swirled my head and instead babbled on for what probably seemed like endless minutes?

As a teacher and fellow student I can pick out students like this (like me) easily. The ones that annoy all of us because they dominate the conversation or ask questions that are off topic, or so it seems to us because the reality is, that student just thinks different and is trying to explain that shoe and that cat so that you will be able to see where they are coming from and how they got there.

So, then, as the readings teach us, let’s ask some question in regards to that. How do we not stifle a questioning student, but stay on track and give others an opportunity to participate?

“That is an excellent question, but I want to stay on track and come back to that. Write that question down as we might actually get to it and if not, that would be an excellent point you can research at home and we can cover it in the beginning of class tomorrow”.

The student now has a chance to teach and learn at the same time, but also show their point was well stated and worth looking into. When a student feels heard and appreciated for their willingness to open up and look outside the box, it gives them the power to take learning into their own hands as well and in finding those answers, they may even find the actual answer they were looking for from the beginning before their mind went off on a tangent. They now have a better understanding.

Maria was also opening the door to many different opportunities for June to go beyond the “ratings” of a music video and even maybe touch on the “censorship” aspect which was a great point for Maria to bring up, though her “scattered-thinking” made her seem distracted and not paying attention when in reality, she was ahead of the class and looking at a problem that really does hit home for many artists and anyone voicing an opinion, “censorship”. Which, in a sense, wasn’t Maria experiencing that exact thing?

Boom.
As I am seeing with upper division courses, we are given this chance to talk it out…think out loud. It leaves us open to feeling awkward, with responses like wide eyes and perturbed teachers, but isn’t that the process of learning. Putting the idea out there and seeing where it goes? Why does it seem that process is left solely for the upper division classes (correct me if I am wrong) and not utilized more in “remedial” classes or classes where to talk it out would create a far better result than being “stifled” by responding with the “correct” answer and being “evaluated” rather than given the opportunity to think it out because you never know…someone else might have gone down that exact rabbit hole and they too are holding the shoe and that cat that isn’t theirs and feeling glad someone else was willing to hold them up for others to see in hopes maybe they had a better way of explaining it.

 

-Kyleen