Kinetic Classroom
by
Susan B. Apel

One student, the driver, is riding piggy-backed on another, who is a motorcycle. Careening around the classroom, they unfortunately collide with another motorcycle. Both drivers fall to the floor, while a fifth student, a police officer, gestures animatedly to the drivers.

One motorcycle continues to roll and eventually crashes to a stop in a corner. Several other students, bystanders all, shake their heads. One moves to drape an arm around a driver, while the others compete to tell the police officer who is at fault and why.

John Rassias, professor of French at Dartmouth College, leaps from his seat in the front row, and assuming the role of Fellini in this fantastical sequence, shouts, "Cut!" It is early in the morning, and it is a typical beginning of French class.

I became intimately familiar with the Rassias method when I enrolled in his French course. His teaching techniques are unique, and have been captured on film by television shows like Good Morning America (which filmed the above scenario) and 60 Minutes.

As I experienced the Rassias method, I became particularly intrigued with the use of physical movement in the classroom. Like Professor Rassias, I noticed how I, too, move around, gesture, use my hands while I speak to my students. The difference in our classrooms was that in his, students moved as well. The picture of my own classroom started to appear out of balance. Why was I in almost constant motion, while the students sat, and continued to sit, and sit some more for over an hour, their physical movements limited to a raised hand and moving lips?

Sitting, I have come to believe, and more importantly, having the expectation that one will not be called upon to do anything else, made it possible for students to disengage more easily. There is a quietness, a security of physical attachment to a desk that allows one's eyes to wander to the window. Most obvious is that a sitting student can sleep, physically or at least mentally; a moving student, or a potentially moving student, cannot.

I do not recommend that one's class be turned into an aerobics course. Too much, and non-purposeful, movement might cause its own set of problems. But now I try to structure interaction in the classroom that moves beyond the verbal. Previously, I have made use of buzz groups, breaking larger classes into smaller groups to discuss a particular point. Now I include an activity. For example, the last time I used buzz groups, I asked them to present their conclusions on a flip chart, which required them to physically gather around the paper and write.

Other examples are perhaps more novel. In past years, I have always begun my Family Law class by having students reflect, through a class discussion, on the meaning of family. Last year, I divided students into small groups, and asked each group to come to a consensus on one feature of the definition or function of family. Instead of orally reporting their discussion, they put together a short skit (one minute or less) exhibiting the characteristic upon which they had decided. As an example, one group of students stood up and demonstrated that they shared the same address. Another group explained pooled resources as a feature of family life by tossing their money into a pile and then withdrawing certain sums for various group expenses. Another showed the concept of nepotism by inventing a skit in which one individual was pressured by other family members to hire a relative. My favorite was a group of two whose presentation involved one standing up and nagging the other.

I've illustrated the need for the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act by having students physically grab and abduct baby dolls or stuffed animals from one another, running to various corners of the room that represented different jurisdictions. In another exercise, ten students role-played various pieces of marital property. They stood in the front of the room while other students physically moved them into varying configurations to demonstrate equal and equitable distributions.

Some of this is, of course, flash, a break from the ordinary that keeps students interested. But I think it is more than that. Watching movement itself is stimulating; moving oneself is even more so. However, even if only one or two students are moving in the room, it presents the possibility of movement to the remainder. Simply put, if one feels that one may be called upon momentarily to get up and do something, one's mental faculties cannot afford to slump. Additionally, movement seems to have created better memory. When I try to weave things together by referring to past classes, some students remember what one or the other said about whether it is equitable to split the shares of stock 50/50 or award them all to one party. More students remember the specter of a student, role-playing the stock, standing in front of the room while two of the students, one on each side in the roles as lawyers, make the "stock" the object in a physical tug-of-war.

For the unconvinced, a simple and low-risk experiment can begin by monitoring one's own movement in the classroom and then purposefully doing something else. Generally, I pace back and forth across the front of the room. Should I decide to move differently -- for example, stroll down the center aisle -- the student reaction is subtle but definitely detectable. Heads move in a different direction; depending on where they sit, students perceive me moving closer or farther away from them than is usual. Their postures change. Something unexpected has happened, which means that something else unexpected could happen, for which they don't want to be caught unaware.

A variation of this experiment is one that most teachers have already used. If your students normally sit while they speak in class, ask one to stand up, or to move and stand in the front of the room while speaking. Eyes turn to catch the movement and ears and minds open.

My teaching has been a torrent of words, sometimes written on handouts or on the blackboard, more often simply auditory, my own voice speaking to students as they listen and speak back to me, and sometimes to each other. I've experimented with many different forms of verbal communication, from free-flowing discussions to buzz groups to dyads and circles, all of which have contributed to my classrooms. Movement, as its own form of communication, or as an adjunct to words, or as a momentary respite from the speaking/listening barrage, offers unexplored but promising possibilities.