Controlled Burn > Controlled Chaos

Nowadays, a good learning environment is often described as one of “controlled chaos”. Visitors to classrooms expect to see students in motion: active and engaged. The room should be loud. The learning should look messy. The instructor should be everywhere all at once. Keynote speakers and presenters at conferences have sermonized from the lectern about these words and told educators how to “curate”, “construct” or “design and plan” this vaunted “controlled chaos.” 

The problem is the word chaos. Chaos is a mess. Chaos is frightening. People don’t want chaos. It’s the antithesis of control. How on earth is a lesson plan and slide deck going to be able to “curate” chaos? How can we “design and plan” standardized yet chaotic assessments? How can we “construct” a welcoming learning environment rife with uncertainty and mayhem? Imagine the dynamic, authentic, varied, differentiated, controlled chaos classroom through another metaphor: a controlled burn instead of controlled chaos.

In a controlled burn there is designing and planning and curating, but there is space for the moment to be. It’s a space for reality. A controlled burn is an attempt to use fire to both destroy and create. A chaotic thing - fire - in a dynamic environment - the forest - elements shift in each and every moment. These realities determine what the forest rangers and firefighters will do to keep the burn going. That’s the goal. To keep the fire going to accomplish the greater goal - create space for the new. As the facilitator, leader, coach, teacher, or whatever, educators are forest rangers and firefighters. There’s the education and skill acquired from training and the benefit of the experience that results from fighting fires year over year and growing through past successes and failures. The forest is the space that education inhabits. The goal is to clean out the old growth and trees to allow space for the new, for the forest to grow and thrive. In this way, the forest is also the individuals with whom we work as guides, facilitators, mentors, teachers, and yes, sometimes firefighters and forest rangers.

How do successful controlled burns happen? Read the wind, taste the air, put your hands in the dirt and see how it feels. Respond to the context and the moment, listen to the echo from the data from weeks ago, and the lesson first taught decades ago. But live in the now. Respond to what is seen and understood currently; there’s a fire! Planning and preparation are supports that facilitate the ability to change on the fly with success. Good preparation enables the ability to reflect, fail forward, and change when needed - especially when the wind shifts, the fire jumps the highway, and a few houses burn down. 

So fail forward, own the mistake, and move on with the knowledge of what happened and why it went bad. We are people who are dealing with other people. We cannot have chaos because it breeds more chaos. We have to have control with the ability to adapt, especially because the conversations, lessons, policies, discipline, or assessments of the past might not work in the future, for the future. With a controlled burn, we can plan for the best, while still leaving room change and growth for all of us.