The Magic Zone

I’m looking for The Magic Zone—can you point me in the right direction? Will I know I’m there once I arrive? And if I do find it, how do I ensure I don’t wander off and get lost again?

Whenever I attempt to teach students a new concept, I aim to find this Magic Zone— Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development—the zone right above where they can reach but not too far beyond their grasp that they shut down. This zone is the magic of teaching. Unfortunately, much to my chagrin, I was not born a magical child—when I was eleven, no owl swooped by to deliver my acceptance into Hogwarts—so, navigating my classes to The Magic Zone has required a bit of finesse and a lot more time teaching in the affective domain.

I used to approach the teaching of critical thinking and logical reasoning with an emphasis, naturally, on the cognitive domain. After all, critical thinking is about using your brain, isn’t it?! I drew all these fairly lopsided concentric circles (ovals, really) and Venn Diagrams to visualize deductive arguments, specifically, categorical syllogisms, as I attempted to distinguish between distributed and undistributed terms. I lectured to the dry-erase board:

“Let S represent the Subject or Minor Term and P represent the Predicate or Major Term… blah blah blah… so that if you accept the assumption of the Major Premise that ‘All good citizens are nationalists,’ and if you accept the assumption of the Minor Premise that ‘All good citizens are progressives,’ then the conclusion ‘All progressives are nationalists’ would not logically follow because this deductive argument is invalid and commits a syllogistic fallacy, yes?”

I pivoted around, pointing to the circles, asking, “Yes? You see? Does that make sense?” Nope. Furrowed brows. Glazed eyes. The top of a student’s head, a deep snore, and a pool of spittle forming on the desk.

I had strayed from The Magic Zone, and we were lost. Psh, who am I kidding… I’m an English instructor—what do I know about teaching philosophy and logic? When I was an undergrad, I had to take Introduction to Logic as a Political Science major, and I remember feeling the same exact way as my students did when my professor drew all those circles on the chalkboard. I was also terribly distracted by the fact that he had two missing fingers on one hand, and I would sit in class imagining the different ways he had lost those fingers. Needless to say, I bombed my first test. Not sure how I squeaked through that semester… so, I empathize.

Anyhow, after my rather pedantic lesson on logical fallacies, one student approached me and was quite concerned. “I don’t know how to think critically,” he said. “I don’t get anything you went over today, and when we have class discussions, the other kids talk about all this deep stuff they get from the readings, but I don’t get any of that when I read.” He was one of the quieter students who never volunteered to speak. At that point in the quarter, he was also not passing the class.

I had to reevaluate. Sometimes, too much focus is placed on a student’s motivation to learn, but as instructors, we’re also involved in some form of attitude teaching. How could I encourage this student, draw him in? “Well, what do you think the novel is about, then?” I asked him. “I think the author’s trying to give us a different side of history, to tell us a story that hasn’t been told about his home country and this dictator.” None of the more vocal students had interpreted the text that way, so he was afraid his understanding of it was incorrect. I urged him to continue pursing that line of thought, to consider broadening his analysis of the novel beyond its fictive world and writing a research paper comparing and contrasting this real-life dictator to the author’s fictional portrayal. He was all pumped, and we met several times throughout the quarter to ensure his research was on track.

In the end, even though he didn’t receive the highest grade in the class—nor was he the strongest writer—he was, by far, the most improved. After the quarter was over, he wrote to me, saying:

“I enjoyed the books you choose for the class, especially Diaz’s book. Never in my life have I been much of a reader or at all until recently… Your class has also helped with my life outside the classroom. At work my boss said she has noticed an improvement in my writing… Hopefully one day I achieve my ultimate goal of becoming an educated person.”

Of course, I told him he was already an educated person.