CONSTRUCTING A CULTURE OF "RAFTING"

 

Respectful

Accountable

Forward

Thoughtful

 

The story of the 12x16 raft.

In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the young narrator Huck  discovers that the river--that great archetypal image of freedom and journey--liberates him from the constraints of the land, or, more specifically, the people on the land, namely his abusive father, his strict aunt, and community after community of deception, hypocrisy, and chaos.  Early on in the story, Huck fakes his own death and runs away.  Also running away, from a far greater constraint, is the slave named Jim.  Their lives intersect, converge, smack directly into each other on the banks of the Mississippi, where they find a small raft on the banks of the Mississippi.

12 feet by 16 feet--the dimensions of the raft--is, well, no yacht.  Twain's two unlikely companions find themselves face to face with their Other: one is a boy, the other a grown man; one is a white American citizen, the other an African; one has grown up with strict religiosity, the other with folk superstition; one is a "body" (as in "somebody," or someone with personhood) and the other is, as Huck reminds Jim over and over again, just the n-word.

However, both have been abused by the system, both are runaways, both criminals, and both have a similar purpose: liberation.  

What we love about this raft is that on it, two very different people create their own world.  They construct knowledge by arguing and solving problems, taking risks and failing.  They learn about each other and synthesize, make sense of, their similar situations.  They think--a lot! (half the time Huck is lying naked under the stars, thinking things over, and for Jim, he's listening to hair balls or wondering out loud)--and then turn that thinking into action.  Their raft experience demands inclusivity, adaptability, and co-creation.  

Eventually, it's Huck who needs to change the most, and transform he does.  Huck decides that if being on the 12x16 raft with Jim is going to get him sent to hell, then, as he puts it, "All right then, I'll go to hell."  He undoes his learned racism and undergoes a paradigm shift.

That, for us, is 192 square feet of change--for Huck, for Jim, for our classrooms.  This kind of mind-change happens, then, when both students  

 

• respectful to each other, the authors and texts, the classroom, and, most of all, to their own work;

• accountable for the work they've accomplished and for the work they haven't, taking ownership over their own learning with integrity and being able to measure (or "account for") their own growth;

• forward, as in moving their own learning as well as their raft-mates' learning forward, recognizing those things that don't move the raft forward and instead get it stuck on the shore or, worse yet, headed toward a waterfall; and

• thoughtful in all that they read, write, say, and do.

 

Will it be easy?  No.  Will it take time to learn how to "raft" well, especially together?  Yes.  Will we fail at times?  Yes!  Will we grow from the experience?

 

Yes?