I hate classrooms.
This doesn’t mean you have to, but you do need to know your students might.
I get that they are a functional place to give groups of people information, and there have been times in my life that I’ve sat within them soaking up the good stuff.
But I’ve realised I don’t learn well like that. I felt restricted for a large part of my education and as I’ve aged, that feeling has deepened.
I could prod my brain around and ask why, but to be honest, I’m ok with it.
My neurodiversity harms no one.
In fact, it’s made me sensitive to positive and negative learning environments, which has allowed me to build a business liberating people’s English through alternatives to classroom learning.
From Across the Desk
I have spent a lot of time teaching in classrooms (language schools, universities and art schools) without quite feeling trapped, so I know it’s not the rooms themselves, but the sitting, the sense of curtailment – and the fidgeting movements around me.
You may not notice them, but they compete for my attention. (If someone is repeatedly clicking a pen, it takes over my focus, and I’ll half hear anything being said).
I hate the thought that my past student felt like this too, but I’m sure many did – especially the creatives dragged away from their studio practice to ‘learn English’.
And by the way, everything about that last sentence is wrong.
Up to 50% of art students self-identify as neurodivergent.
It’s just lazy imposing scholarly classes onto art students without caring to discover how they will learn best.
For many, that is not a classroom.
English at art school shouldn’t be taught as a separate subject.
Practice-based learning uncovers the emergent language THEY need. English should weave like threads through their studio space and work..
'English learning.’
No, English being.
The language of learning traps people in feeling unready, not yet a language user.
Art schools need to make spaces and real opportunities to use English as early career professionals and quit all language that connotes school.
Even for neurotypicals, classrooms aren’t great for language learning.
Here’s what I can see:
Language learning should be all about who you are becoming, not who you were.
You enter a classroom with your own hangups and memory of all the education you’ve had.
Classrooms inflate teachers and systems with authority they might not merit. Harmless (or handy for the weak) perhaps: but that power is drawn from your student's sense of self, autonomy and authority: the 3 attributes you most need to nurture and build in a second language.
Classrooms constrict. New language empowers.
Some potential power is sucked away by the context of a classroom.
Stop Learning, Start Being
Whether I’m teaching a holiday immersion course, or helping artists/art schools, I throw out 1000s of different opportunities to be you, in English.
Some will inspire you and thrill you: others will calm you.
Lots of the experiences are so new to you, you won’t really know who ‘you’ is in this particular context.
And while you are figuring that out, English is moving into your heart, to belong there.
You can learn words, grammar and sentences in a classroom, but you can’t do that.
Further Information
Learn more about being an English speaker in Scotland.
Discover our English Course for Artists, Designers & Makers.
Art schools: Find our No-Classroom English for Art Schools
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