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Students as Teachers

For the past two years, I had the privilege of sharing a course with intelligent, inventive, and diligent students. “Schools Across Borders, Schools Across Time”—very soon abbreviated and known for two years now as SABSAT— was initially a one-time experiment, a course designed to produce a student documentary on progressive and soka education. The goal was a brief film that would introduce an international conference on the work of four educators: Francis Parker, John Dewey, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, and Daisaku Ikeda. I had begun organizing this conference with Jason Goulah, a professor at De Paul University, in the winter of 2010, and as part of our planning, I had wondered aloud whether there would be a place in the conference for student work. Goulah thought it was a good idea, and I proposed an elective course for the fall semester of 2010. Eleven students carried out this experiment at the highest level. At the end of the semester, they produced and performed a Morning Exercise (MX; all-school presentation) on some of the things they had learned about their own school and the rich traditions of soka and progressive education. But the best was yet to come: after the course ended, the students continued to work on a documentary video and speaker introductions for the conference. Their documentary was the first event of the conference, and their introductions of the principal speakers showed a high level of awareness and considerable research skills. At our last class meeting, the students asked me to offer the course once again, and they even had an amazing conversation about whether it should be SABSAT II, in which they would reenroll. They decided instead that the course should be offered to new students. When I call this conversation “amazing,” I’m understating the rare sense of fulfillment their suggestion meant for me.