I just completed my 4th iteration of giving a ton of power to teenagers through Democracy and seeing what shakes out. The end result?

Rats.

You see, one of my first ideas as a 1st year teacher was that I didn’t want it to be a class that identified itself as ‘Coomber’s Class’. I wanted them to be united and a team, but, more, I didn’t want it to pivot on me. A class name seemed like an important first step towards building a solid community and I also wanted to demonstrate the powers of democratic ideals to my students.

My first year trying it was a bit of a disaster. I, naively, insisted that we discuss the topic until we’d found unanimity. I truly believed (or at least really wanted), us to be able to reason and distill and debate our class name until we’d found a compromise which worked for everyone. Naturally, we ended up discussing the topic to death until the majority of the class was disillusioned by the entire idea of a class name. Golden Taquitos almost won out, but I had a small, fierce minority of students(Strawberries) who refused to yield to popular pressure. I admire that minority’s resolve, but they definitely showed me that unanimity might be a bit of a stretch for a group as diverse and large as a middle school classroom. Alas, we spent the year without a name.

My 2nd year went fairly better. I no longer insisted on a unanimous vote, and I happened to inherit two large groups of friends who were quite vocal about their respective ideas of “Knights” and “Galaxy” respectively. We ended up with compromise of “Galaxy Knights” which left neither side particularly happy, but that I kind of enjoyed because of its weirdness.

My 3rd year was a loop, so I had a lot of ex-Galaxy Knights. This is where the commitment to democracy really paid dividends. Students had much richer discussions this time around, but also campaigned a lot more heavily than I preferred. I’m always worried that a quiet minority will get trampled by the will of the group (although maybe that’s another lesson about democracy?) if I don’t moderate the discussion well. I personally led a coalition for the name “Legends”, which I think would be an awesome name as a teacher who specializes in history. It could be: “The Year of Legends”, or “The Legendary Year”. I could start each email with “Hey Legends” / “My Legendary Students”… The Legends movement lost by a single vote to the name Wildcats. I usually insist that the votes are either blind (meaning the students have to close their eyes and vote) or through ballots because I don’t want students to feel pressured not to vote their conscience by their peers. This final vote was through ballots, and the dramatic counting at the end is something I’ll always remember.

Secretly, I was a little pleased that my side lost because I worry that students won’t identify with the name if it’s something I’ve ‘bequeathed’ upon them. I want it to be student imagined, student argued-for, and student chosen. Wildcats turned out to be quite a name, and it inspired my TED style talk / Song, so it really worked out in the end.

Enter: Year Four. This year.

This year, I had the process well-refined. I first explained to students the importance of picking a good name. It should be something to define us, but also something for us to aspire to be. I insisted that if we chose a name of something honorable or clever, we’d be more likely to be honorable or clever throughout the year. I gave them examples of professional teams and high-school mascot names, and even provided a list of five suggestions of my own devising.

I then had students brainstorm as many names as they could without discussing it with a partner. A key focus point for me this year was to not give students a chance to pressure their close friends into voting for their name. I wanted it to be raw and based just on what each individual wanted. I didn’t need any cliques amplifying the voice of one popular kid.

After each student brainstormed all of their names, they had to choose their best idea and submit it through ballot.

I then wrote all 30ish balloted ideas on the board for the students to see. Again, they had some time to quietly consider each of the names. I read each name out-loud, but didn’t otherwise comment or attempt to bias any choice.

Each student then listed their top 3 ideas. I warned them that it didn’t matter which name got first place yet, because we were just reducing the board down to the top 4 ideas, then we’d actually debate their merits.

The top 4 using this method left us with: The Main Rats, The Yellow Submarine, Yeet Nation, and Coomber’s Cucumbers.

We then made a circle, and I explained the rules: when you received the talking piece, you could promote 1 or 2 of the names, but I did not want to hear any negative attacks on a name you didn’t want. I wanted everyone to respect the different opinions of other students in the class. I insisted on speaking last, and vocalized that it was because I really did not want to bias the class, and I worried that if I went first, some students would follow me just because I was the teacher.

It was something to the effect of: “I hope there comes a time in your life when you’re not afraid to raise your hand and vote against something even if you’re in the minority. It takes courage, and I want you to be the sort of person who can stand up for what you believe in, even if an authority figure, like myself, is trying to persuade you of something else… but until then, the best way I can protect everyone’s true voice is to keep using ballots and let you guys share first.”

Each student shared their ideas for which of the 2 names were best. I noticed a pattern of either a student generally wanted: The Main Rats / Yellow Submarine, or they wanted Yeet Nation/Coomber’s Cucumbers. I’m not sure why those names tended to go together. Most students simply said they wanted 1 or 2 names in particular because they were ‘cool’ or ‘funny’, but I definitely had a few students who gave reasoned arguments for their chosen name.

To be honest, I was worried about Yeet Nation because I felt like it was a name that students would no longer find cool part way through the year- Yeet is already a dying meme.

On the other hand, Coomber’s Cucumbers, while a funny pun, still felt like the class was defining itself too much through me. For these reasons, I decided to advocate for The Main Rats and Yellow Submarine.

I told the class that Yellow Submarine was my first choice because it would ultimately be a Beatles theme, and that actually gave us a lot of things to play with. Beatles could be interpreted a lot of different ways, and they’d have different songs for us to explore through art throughout the year. We could pull from really any of their albums for our class T-shirts / Class Colors / Class Song.

On the other hand, my second choice was for The Main Rats. I noted to the class that I appreciated that “Main” was the adjective used. I’m not sure what the writer’s original intention was (possibly it was an attempt to be ‘random’ or a misspelling of Maine), but I felt that we could interpret it was being the thing that comes first. As the Main Rats, our team would be the primary thing that we focused on. We’d also have agency through being the ‘main character’ in our stories. Rats is far from the ideal animal, but I do know that they’re fairly smart on the scale of animals. They’re not like, pig/ dolphin smart, but they’re definitely intelligent. Also, I think I’ve also seen a lot of pirate rats (as in Pi-rat) in pop-culture and I didn’t hate the idea of a mathematical pirate theme.

We threw in our ballots and ended up with a 35% Main Rats, 35% Yeet Nation, 15% Yellow Submarine, 15% Cucumbers tie. (Something like that…)

Down to two, and neither ones of which were particularly socially acceptable…

Well, we were in the endgame, so what else could I do?

I made a quick Google Forms and again had each kid vote.

It was really, really close.

---

By a tight margin of 2 votes, “The Main Rats” won.

So that’s who we’re going to be this year.

It’s a far cry from Wildcats, but I appreciate that the students will know that their voice matters in our classroom. Even if it means things don’t go exactly the way I wanted, I’ll always have their back if I can. I know a few students chose not to vote in the big “35% tie” above, so it also taught some students the lessons of “EVERY VOTE COUNTS”. That’s the sort of life-focused learning that I hope the students got from this experience. Maybe some students will learn empathy for an otherwise marginalized animal as well?

Regardless, maybe it’s a lesson for me too. When you give the power of real democracy to a bunch of 7th graders, sometimes you get a lot more mischief than you hoped for.

Here’s a few rat facts to close with:

• In Chinese Culture, people born in the year of the rat are believed to be industrious, thrifty, diligent, and positive. 

• According to onekindplanet.org:
  • Rats take care of injured and sick rats in their group.
  • Without companionship rats tend to become lonely and depressed.
  • Rats have excellent memories. Once they learn a navigation route, they won’t forget it.
• According to Petco.com:
  • Rats are highly intelligent, affectionate and loving mammals.
  • They are very loyal.
  • Rats are extremely clean pets.
  • With proper socialization, rats are one of the most social and trainable companion animals.

Finally, my favorite fact is that a group of rats isn’t called a ‘swarm or a pack’, but instead: a mischief. Maybe this name will portend fun, clever things in the future of our classroom.