Planning to Seem Unplanned

Besides the Fletcher’s Corny Dog stand, the “Birds of the World” show was my favorite part of the Texas State Fair. Alas, as of 2013, the bird show is no more, but I spent many a memorable hour sitting in the band shell and marveling as Groucho the parrot sang a pitchy rendition of “How Much is That Doggie in the Window;” laughing as the red-legged seriema, Sluggo, slammed a rubber lizard, Mr. Bill, repeatedly on a rock to demonstrate how these birds tenderize their dinner; and ducking when the Harris’s hawk grazed the heads of the audience in its beeline from the top of the Texas Star Ferris wheel to the treat-holding trainer below.

One of the best moments in the show was when they pulled a volunteer out of the audience and put her in the perfect position to get a photo of the 10-foot wingspan of a California condor as it soared toward her from the back of the amphitheater. Just as the enormous bird was approaching, another bird on the stage escaped its enclosure, causing confusion which ended in the volunteer’s falling backward into a pool of water, soaking her clothes and hair. Half of the audience howled with laughter while the other half grimaced in sympathy at this poor soul whose day and expensive camera were ruined by this soggy mishap.

The host of the show expressed sympathy through suppressed laughter as he called one of the trainers to take the volunteer backstage and get her cleaned up. The hapless volunteer later reappeared on the stage on the way back to her seat, only to be startled by a runaway bird who chased her back into hiding. By the end of the show, of course, the “volunteer” took a bow with the rest of the cast and then began drying her hair and clothes to get ready for the next show that day.       

This shtick was a part of the “Birds of the World” show for probably the last five years of its 15-year residency, and it never got old. Of course, after the first year, the rabid fans like me were in on the joke, but it was fun to watch the reactions of the audience and the feigned surprise of the host and other show personnel. They had obviously planned carefully to make this stunt look completely unplanned.

This moment of faux mayhem required a cast member in disguise who had to blend in as a convincing member of the audience and act realistically frightened, two trained birds behaving as instructed, a latch that appeared to malfunction on cue, the proper placement of a person by an onstage water feature, a crew who would respond to the “accident” as if it were truly unexpected, and a host who could all of this orchestrate this and look believably surprised and horrified without breaking character. Planning and preparation were crucial to pull this off.  

I feel like we can learn something about teaching from the bird show’s antics. The best teachers plan to make aspects of their class appear unplanned. There’s a difference between “unplanned” and “chaotic,” however. What I think we should aim for is a degree of spontaneity so we ensure that our instruction has a feeling of improvised curiosity.  

There’s a big difference, for instance, between saying to your class, “As I was reading this last night, I found this sentence that I thought was interesting; let’s look at it,” and handing out a worksheet of sentences for students analyze grammatically. It seems more spontaneous to say, “I wonder what would happen if we played around with the word order here,” than it does to display a PowerPoint slide with sentences to reword. Reading a text aloud yourself seems more authentic than listening to a recording of someone else reading. Asking students what they wondered as they were reading the article is more genuine than providing them with a pre-printed page of questions. Soliciting ideas from students and modeling the writing of a draft of a paper is more engaging than displaying an already-written essay on the screen, especially one written by some other teacher. The read-aloud poem you share with your students becomes more interesting when you say, “I found this poem I think is really great,” than when you introduce it by saying, “Turn to page 12 in your poetry packet, and let’s find today’s Poem of the Day.” And allowing students to share the words they found challenging in a reading assignment and then to decide which ones are useful enough to put on a class word wall will increase buy-in better than giving them a list of important vocabulary words to memorize because the word wall is their list, not yours.  

I remember chemistry labs in high school where we were simply following a series of instructions to reach a predetermined outcome. I recall many Q&A sessions in school where the teacher clearly knew all the right answers already and was waiting for someone to respond to her predetermined specifications so that she could feign excitement as she said, “Exactly right! That is the theme of the story!” Though I know they were abundant,  I don’t remember any worksheets. . . because no one remembers worksheets. Ditto for study questions. None of these things seemed at all spontaneous or interesting to me (the student) or to the teacher, who (as I saw it) must have the world’s most boring job.   

The most memorable moments in school—not coincidentally, also the ones where the most learning occurred and stuck—were the ones where the teacher exhibited curiosity along with us, where the outcome didn’t seem predestined, and where the classroom seemed like a community of learners and discoverers.

Spontaneous teaching like this takes preparation and planning. Even the most experienced teachers flop more often than they soar when they try to wing it. Plan your questions carefully. Rehearse your instructions and explanations. Carefully orchestrate your openings, transitions, segues, and conclusions. But do what you can to make all of these things seem fresh and alive to your students—as if you are experiencing fresh curiosity right along with them as they learn.

Introducing the phrase “I wonder. . .” into your lessons is one way to begin

That host of the bird show did the same soggy volunteer routine four times a day throughout the run of the State Fair year after year, and he never let it become stale. Each new audience experienced it as if it were an entirely unplanned accident, which is what made it so brilliant. In the same way, we can create these brilliant moments of spontaneity in our classrooms with careful planning and consideration for what the learning experience looks like through the eyes of the learners.