(If you haven’t read part one, about establishing purpose, consider starting there.)

After providing solid advice on how to approach a gathering’s “why,” Parker offers guidance on designing the core of the experience and facilitating it effectively. The core of that advice: “Don’t be chill!”

A ubiquitous strain of twenty-first-century culture is infecting our gatherings: being chill. The desire to host while being noninvasive.

The idea that taking a mellow approach serves guests best makes a certain sort of sense. We lead hectic and mediated lives, and gatherings offer us a rare (in some cases, technology-free) opportunity to relax, to navigate social situations under our own steam, to let our guard down, to speak with whom we wish. There’s no need for a nosy Mrs. Dalloway-type host to flit about asking personal questions, encouraging guests to share their deepest fears, or making forced introductions among those who’d be much happier just catching up with people they already know. Indeed, so the thinking goes, if instead the host just chills out, this mood will infect all guests and the gathering will unfold beautifully.

What’s the issue with being chill, then? 

Parker explains simply and beautifully:

Behind the ethic of chill hosting lies a simple fallacy: Hosts assume that leaving guests alone means that the guests will be left alone, when in fact they will be left to one another.

But wait, don’t guests who show up to a gathering want to be left to one another? Isn’t that why they came? She goes on:

Many hosts I work with seem to imagine that by refusing to exert any power in their gathering, they create a power-free gathering. What they fail to realize is that this pulling-back, far from purging a gathering of power, creates a vacuum that others can fill. Those others are likely to exercise power in a manner inconsistent with your gathering’s purpose, and exercise it over people who signed up to be at your—the host’s—mercy, but definitely didn’t sign up to be at the mercy of your drunk uncle.

The Chill Teacher

A chill teacher does not have a seating chart. A chill teacher does not think deliberately about structures for learning, like protocols for discussions, for these are too confining and artificial. In chill teachers’ classrooms, students’ attention is requested but not required; students are invited to participate but participation is not compulsory.

Chill teacher’s classrooms sometimes resemble productive environments. The teacher talks with students about the academic material, some students offer ideas, at times even passionately. There seems to be some mutual respect. (I’ve often heard teens remark that they like a teacher because: “He’s chill.”) The teacher seems relaxed and in control.

But it doesn’t take long to determine that beneath the sheen of chill, there are problems. Unsurprisingly, those students most gifted in verbal dexterity guide conversations, those with higher status (a status often rooted in deeper societal and institutional patterns and pathologies) dominate activities. Quieter students, and those of lower status, tune out. The opportunity for a rich variety of voices, for productive group work, for authentic mutual respect built on learning and growth fades, replaced with negativity, misbehavior, and favoritism.

After weeks and months of this, the chill teacher then resorts to the only strategy he believes he has to drive student learning: weaponizing grades. Battle lines are drawn and students and teachers become part of one big, unhappy family. And the teacher wonders: “Why? I was chill!”

Generous Authority

Parker insists that hosts must shape and actively facilitate the gathering:

It isn’t enough just to set a purpose, direction, and ground rules. All these things require enforcement. And if you don’t enforce them, others will step in and enforce their own purposes, directions, and ground rules.

How do you enforce them? By inhabiting a certain way of being Parker calls generous authority:

A gathering run on generous authority is run with a strong, confident hand, but it is run selflessly, for the sake of others. Generous authority is imposing in a way that serves your guests.

Generous authority is the wedding planner who seats feuding family members at different tables, the meeting facilitator who ensures every attendee has the opportunity to share an idea, the cousin who rescues the sister-in-law from the drunk uncle by insisting it’s time for water balloon toss.

This isn’t always easy to do. People groan when you ask them to do slightly uncomfortable things, like share ideas with colleagues they don’t know, or leave the cozy conversational confines of their two closest friends.

But, Parker writes:

Sometimes generous authority demands a willingness to be disliked in order to make your guests have the best experience of your gathering.

Structures for Generous Authority

Balancing voice and choice with the enforcement of ground rules to create the best environment for learning is difficult, but I’ve seen great teachers manage to do it by being relentless about striking that balance.

The demeanor of generous authority varies widely. Some great teachers are bubbly and warm, others are gruff and eccentric. My experience suggests the demeanor is something each teacher works out according to her or his personality, and what resonates when watching others teach.

But a common thread among all types is that great teachers exert generous authority by deploying structures that force all students to be active learners. These structures, enforced with fidelity, enable them to be sure that every day:

• Every student gets to share an idea out loud. Frequent pair-shares and trio-talks, for example, where students process and share ideas in small groups. They give precise instructions for these discussions, such as, “The scientist with the darkest color eyes will talk first, and each scientist will get thirty seconds to share.” They circulate the room during these discussions, listening in to assess learning and harvest the best ideas, highlighting ones that might most intrigue the group.
• Students feel that the work they do is valued. They capture thinking on classroom walls, and praise ideas by referring to purpose, as in: “I see Jonah underlining Pyruvate, a very strange word we’re going to need to know in order to solve this mystery about the citric acid cycle. Thank you, Jonah!” 
• The mode of exchange is varied, to tap into learners with different strengths and styles. Discussion protocols, Socratic seminars, chalk talks, etc. all guided by norms that are reinforced regularly and adjusted as needed, serve to 1) frequently change student groupings to mitigate difficult partnerships and challenge comfortable ones, and 2) provide multiple avenues for student expression.

These structures simultaneously drive learning and, because they force active participation from all, consistently reinforce the idea that the teacher’s not enforcing arbitrary rules, but creating the ideal environment for learning.

In the short run, it’s probably easier to be chill, and to give no more thought to your class than what content you’d like to discuss.

But in the long run, for teachers and for hosts, being less chill and more deliberate about how those in your charge interact, and relentlessly enforcing the generous authority of your design, is more likely to light the proper path.

_______________________________________________________

Extras:

At the beach, I was able to finish two fine, very un-beach-like books:

• When Breath Becomes Air: Extraordinarily gifted neurosurgeon writes about the last years of his life as he battles cancer. Uplifting, and deeply sad.
• Never Let Me Go: Ishiguro does it again; an allegorical tale with deep resonance. This review captures my take on the book, but man it has a lot of spoilers. Is that legal for book reviews, with no warning?

I’m watching The Last Czar, but in Portuguese, so the accuracy of my early 20th century Russian history is not to be trusted.

The photo is from Parque Burle Marx (no relation).