Show'n'tell or when a sailboat becomes a submarine

This post was inspired by a very special Show’n’Tell session where cap’n Becca Young steered us all to safety in the nicest way possible.

The most unpredictable thing about this Show'n Tell was probably Becca showing us a tennis racquet which was actually a murderous instrument for killing mosquitoes rather than a piece of sports equipment. Ingenious.   The other thing was the seemingly unrelated questions that one of the girls kept asking at inappropriate moments. Inappropriate in the sense that perhaps somebody was already speaking on a completely different subject so what she was actually doing was interrupting. Rude.  And then not really waiting for an answer before veering off on to another subject.  Inattentive too.  Good questions though. The type of questions you might encourage a student to ask during a GTKY session.  What’s your favourite..?  Do you like ..?

And to be honest, the Show’n Tell wasn’t looking to have much showing and telling (apart from Becca’s racquet of course), not because the objects themselves weren’t valuable and interesting but because, after their initial presentation, there seemed to be nowhere to go. The multicultural element was lacking so the question “Would you like to ask Mona a question about her tapestry/photo/ornament etc?” was met with a resounding silence.  What was there to ask?  The two volunteers in the Zoom room could have steered the questions in the direction they would have liked them to go but what would any of us have gained from that?

Instead, something far more interesting happened.  Back to our rude, inattentive and possibly struggling student.  It turned out that her interventions took us to a different place, a better place. We all started to listen - properly.  Her questions demanded an answer - a real answer, an answer to the things she really wanted to know, not the things prescribed by a well-known formula.  And because she wanted to know them, she piqued our interest.  The questions were familiar but they talked about real things, things that the girls might talk about in any old conversation, not just a session focused on developing English language skills.  And then something even better happened, another girl said “Well, now you’ve asked loads of questions, I want to ask some too.”

Did all of this happen without any intervention on the part of the volunteers? No, of course not.  At the beginning of the session, we’d set off in a sailboat which requires a particular kind of knowledge but quite early on, the girls had decided it wasn’t a sailboat at all, it was a submarine.  A vessel which requires an altogether different set of skills.  So we decided to lower the sails and hoist the periscope.  

Nobody talked about that decision, and the students were sailing the submarine but sometimes, when we could see that they might be about to take the wrong course i.e. one which could potentially shut down communication, a very skilful and subtle bit of support was offered.  The focus was on turn-taking, listening and responding appropriately and spontaneously and extending the topic to encompass other themes, things which we’d all do well to remember.  As always in the best sessions, the volunteers were reminded of crucial elements too - remembering to be okay with silence, waiting, trusting the students to help each other and work out the misunderstandings and even occasionally to shut each other up. 

Which was how we ended up forming a football team called Palestine Girl Power and designing the strip for it. And laughing a lot. And agreeing that even if not everybody wanted to play, you could always be a coach or a spectator. And so our student, who had appeared to be rude and inattentive (when she was neither of those things), had simply redesigned a vessel that wasn’t fit for purpose, and helped us all to get on board the new one!