The rhizomatic classroom requires a shift in teacher talk from telling to inquiring alongside students; from talking a lot and often to listening and conversing. Such shifts reveal the uncertainty present in dynamic learning. As Meg explained planning happens in conjunction with and response to what is happening in the classroom. There’s no Sunday planning for the week in the traditional sense. What happens on Monday will inform Tuesday and so on. As Meg said, it’s all about conversation. Perhaps what was most significant is how the rhizomatic classroom reveals the fallacy of content-driven teaching as the method that better ensures there are no wholes in students’ knowledge.
The students determine which concepts and skills connected to standards they will learn, how they will learn, which texts they will read/view/hear based in part on teacher-recommended author lists and informed by their interests and how they will represent their learning. In the rhizomatic classroom, thinking resembles the tangle of roots and shoots, both broken and whole. Problem framing and decision-making rest with all learners: teachers and students.