Last term my daughter’s school celebrated the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, with a lantern festival – as they do every year. Each student made a lantern and the entire school community gathered on the green at the bottom of the school. The junior students walked in line, creating a spiral, holding their brightly lit lanterns while everyone sang. As the sun went down everyone made their way up the hill to the top of the school. The driveway was lined by the middle school children – each holding their creatively designed lanterns to show the way. At the top quad we all gathered around an unlit bonfire. A procession of senior students in their last year of school entered the quad and slowly circled the bonfire with fiery torches and ceremonially set it alight. In silence, the students and parents watch it burn for 10-15 mins, songs were sung, fire pois twirled and then we all walked back to our respective classrooms. The teacher tells a story followed by soup and bread rolls – provided by the parents. Finally, we all quietly leave and enjoy the peaceful walk back down the hill.
This is the sixth year we have participated in this beautiful festival and it struck me how many layers of development are evident and the rites of passage that encompass the evening.
Each classes lanterns get more and more sophisticated over the years to match the skill and maturation of the students, right through to the ultimate rite of lighting the bonfire. Our daughter could see how far she has come on her journey in school and see where she is heading.
By definition a rite of passage is “a ritual that makes a change in a person’s status.” My husband and I have developed these ‘Rites of Passage’ for our children at home. Rightly or wrongly we have chosen ages that we have believed our children are ready to step up, preparing them for adulthood. At 8 years old it is the rite to receive pocket money and at 10 to be told about the birds and bees. On their 11th birthday our children receive a cookbook and must cook a meal once a month for the family and each subsequent year a new recipe is added to the book. At 12 the parent controlled Facebook page is started and so on. Not only do our children look forward to the change in their status, they know that it cannot happen beforehand and learn to manage their impulsivity and delay gratification.
How do you show the students in your classroom they are improving, growing and developing. Do they see the journey ahead, what they are aspiring to be or do? Do they know the bigger goals and the differing expectations of them throughout the school?
Creating rituals and ceremonies are a powerful way to do this. Mini graduations from one class to the next, gaining a pen or sewing machine licence, being in a higher group for maths and reading and so on. In Germany students starting in Class 1 are presented to their teacher at a full school assembly and each child gives the teacher a flower. This ceremony is steeped with tradition and significance for not only the new students, but for the older students watching, it is a wonderful reflection time of how far they have progressed.
Canadian Educator, Lane Clark suggests teachers might create rites of passage for thinking. If your goal is to have your students working independently by the end of the term or year – do they know this? Can they see how close they are to gaining this status? Perhaps you use the ICT thinking strategy – Independent, Collaborative and Teacher group. When you set a task – students may either choose to work ICT, or they earn the rite. For example, everyone starts in the Teacher group when learning a new skill. When they have shown mastery within the group they ‘earn the rite” to work Collaboratively next time. When mastery is shown at the Collaborative level, students “earn the rite” to be an Independent learner. Of course this has a multi-level benefit – when your capable students are taken out of the Teacher group, the remaining students have to step up, plus it gives you, as the teacher, more time to work with these students. For this strategy to be effective, students need to be very clear on the steps to mastery with rigorous rubrics, matrices or criteria.
In what simple ways can you create rituals and rites of passage in your classroom?