The Use of Fantasy to Resolve Resistance to Learning

Assigned to teach an eight week remedial writing skills course, I experienced feelings of dread over the possibility of finding myself saddled with a group of angry students out for revenge. At best, poorly skilled high school students might view such a course as a boring-but-safe rehash of grammar-cum-formula-writing on nonvital topics. As the school setting in which I worked was one that encouraged experimentation, I got a wild idea. How about making the course a simulated business? Each student could be an “employee” and, rather than class, we'd have “staff” meetings; the writing/learning tasks could evolve from this context. I wanted a business that would provide a range of gratifying “jobs.” The thought occurred to me, how about a resort hotel? The idea became a plan as I realized what it would communicate to the students, namely my acceptance and understanding of their emotional level, for remedial students seem invariably narcissistic and infantile in development, and the plan would encompass their need for fantasy, fun, and gratification with a gradual, titrated exposure to the frustrations of learning. I could be a good teacher without repeating stale and ineffectual methods with a resistant group. And I could have fun.

When class convened for the first meeting, I told the group of fifteen youngsters (fourteen of them black, residents of Harlem) of this plan and gave them their first assignment: to think of a name for the new corporation. After some debate over various suggestions generated