Dark Classroom Ship's Code: 5 Commitments of a Motley Crew
- darkclassroom
- Mar 24, 2025
- 9 min read
Updated: Nov 2, 2025
Question: How do pirates live peacably and still affect change?
Signing on to a pirate crew wasn’t always by choice, but, as is the way of the hydrarchy described in The Learning Mutineers post, it was always an issue of survival. Once aboard, survival was only assured through a crew's commitments to one another. Their shipboard articles, or ship's code.
Even though life was wearying and back-breaking, pirates would defend to the death the ship-shape "found homes" they built for themselves. They were unerringly proactive with their accessibility because limited access for any one of them meant end of life for all. So, in each their own, relying on one another, lifelong learning, and crew mentality were their weapons to do more than just survive. They had to defy normal to thrive.
Discover the reasons behind the code, including Dark Classroom Ship's Code consisting of the five commitments every crew member must make.
The Crew Mentality Based on Physical Reality
The body is always the first, last, and most important teacher.
On a pirate ship, even something as simple as raising the sails required every crew member to play their part. The physical act of hauling ropes and adjusting rigging was grueling, but sailors had a powerful tool: sea shanties. These rhythmic work songs synchronized movement, built morale, and ensured that the crew pulled together at the right time. Without this coordination, the sails wouldn’t rise, and the ship wouldn’t move. In this coordination, which married sound, voice, and movement, they internalized not only the actions, but also the chorus made from their community.
One of the most famous shanties, Haul on the Bowline, was used to help sailors heave that sail in unison.
For all the work they put in, pirates remembered what they were hauling for. Signing on to a ship, whether by choice or not, meant signing a Ship's Code, which would provide the foundation for the work they would complete together. In the same way, a Dark Classroom Motley Crew must find its rhythm, working in sync with shared values, to build something meaningful and move learning forward.
Agents of Their Own Design
Additionally, every crew recognized the agency and voice of each member. As Bartholomew Roberts' ship's code Article 1 states: "Every man shall have an equal vote in affairs of the moment."
Equal vote: A statement of agency to affect change. No one, including the captain, is any more important than another or a sole authority. Of the moment: A crew remains high-context. If their quality of life is at stake, they may act on it.
A Dark Classroom Motley Crew also relies on its code and a rhythm to keep the learning experience afloat. As the various crews congregate in learning, whether in the learning environment or in shaping it, each has a vote and each has a stake in their well-being.
Dark Classroom Ship's Code: 5 Commitments
Article 1. Model a Growth Mindset
As we know, the single most important enemy to a pirate is the hypocrite. As a growth-mindset is the very framework of learning, anything less is the enemy.
In education, the tell-tale marker couldn't possibly be more obvious: "We've always done it that way." Whether spoken, written, or simply a cultural norm established by critical dispersion, the crew's response must be: "Hoist the red! Pirates, to arms!"* Such a proud assertion of tradition for tradition's sake, a smug complacency with normal, is the target on the educational hypocrite's back.
A pirate crew couldn’t afford members who refused to adapt, and the same is true here. To experience any willful act against growth mindset among a crew is to witness certain death. The crew must model the mind they’re trying to guide, or they cannot ask it of any colleague or learner in their care. Every crew member must be willing to learn, make mistakes, improve, and pivot when needed.
The last article of the first iteration of this code, written as the final chapter of my dissertation (Greathouse, 2013), states: "Article 6. Mark the mistakes, and make them mean." The entire work concludes on this vow:
If I am a true educational sailing master, then I will learn from the opportunity of a mistake, and my beliefs about education values making it a safe place to make mistakes so that learners can exhibit adaptability, make different choices, or seek restitution. Failure is an option, and restitution is the most obvious and authentic form of assessment for one’s learning. For this reason, I promise to risk mistakes, but I also promise to make them mean. As a piratical pedagogue, I am dedicated to continual learning, as stormy and uncomfortable as those seas can be. These articles remain a living document that may prove themselves obsolete, but Article 6 is why I will always embrace life on this sea: education is my last haven to chance the inevitable mistakes that make us mean. If there is to be any “true” piracy at all in this pedagogy, then that piracy is found in this vow: Make no mistake, my crewmates and I are mean enough to mean success.
Learning experience design, development, and delivery is an ever-evolving field, and those who embrace change will stay seaworthy. I vow.
Article 2. Improve Immediate Quality of Life for the Crew and Learner
A good crew doesn’t just look out for themselves: they make life better for those around them immediately. In learning experience design, development, and delivery, this means considering both the learner experience and the well-being of fellow crew members.
Small actions, like checking on everyone's well-being at the beginning of a studio, segues into an awareness of learners' workload. This can translate into evaluating workload and cognitive load for learners during the design process.
Acknowledging that someone just ran from one meeting into ours, and encouraging the space to stretch and breathe for a few minutes, builds a body safety that translates into an emotional and mental one. No one should have to ask for a bio break - or feel they can't.
A crew can adjust and decide to have meetings that don't start at the half hours, but perhaps at the 10 mark or the 40 mark, completely aware the State of Normal just doesn't. This often conditions crew members to take this practice forward and control more of their time blocking. Their calendars start to reflect buffers to protect their holistic spaces. Do this among a crew, and it becomes a consideration that translates into learners' well-being. (Future posts cover these strategies in depth)
Actions that defy the State of Normal are the humanity-builders that break its machine. These are methods of rapport that foster trust, vulnerability, accountability, and open communication.
Article 3. Attend Regular, Structured Co-Work Studios
It's all hands on deck in learning experience design, development, and delivery. Since resources were often limited for a pirate crew, it was always in their best interest to take advantage of the tailwind to fill their sails. The sails they had to hoist together.
Pirate crews worked together daily to keep their ship running. They never knew when a tailwind might arrive, but a Dark Classroom Motley Crew has the power to make their own tailwinds consistently. Studios are synchronous gatherings with the tools and resources for collaboration, accountability, and progress on shared tasks. This isn’t about endless meetings. It’s about the economy of work and time afforded by structured, effective presence, sharing the tools and resources at hand.
The experience is also based on a theory of body-doubling, which has evolved from an accessible strategy that supports neurodiversity (Eagle, Baltaxe-Admony, Ringland, 2023).
These regular co-work studios go one step further as models of the flipped classroom experience. Again, if this is a practice that piratical pedagogues work into their courses, then this is a point of modeling the framework. Just as we demand of learners, the crew's commitment is to show up prepared with completed action items, which are sent as a checklist for everyone to see following each studio. Then, with our tools and our trades at the ready, crewmates share space to make adjustments, tackle next tasks, and instantly co-create.
Article 4. Over-Communicate in the Crew’s Preferred Channels
The adage is "loose lips sink ships," but not in a hydrarchy: A silent crew is a sinking crew.
Pirates used highly specialized signals, calls, and shanties to communicate. Language reflected the hydrarchy because it enveloped a sailor living on the sea with four inches of tar, iron, and timber between them and certain death. A Dark Classroom Motley Crew must do the same, whether it’s Slack, email, or another platform, over-communicating ensures nothing falls through the cracks.
Crews do not assume that everyone communicates the same way. It was the same for pirates who often altered or added verses even to the most well-known shanties to reflect their ships' peculiarities and personalities. So, for every motley crew, context tells a lot and allows for structuring work styles flexibly. Begin with establishing boundaries and articulating working needs.
No one voice is more important than another, and the crew can decide a shared way of moving forward. This is how crews work with accessibility. For example, decide on channels to use for types of communications, e.g. MSTeams channels for quick questions, encouragement, and SOS communication; email for action items and studio recaps; GoogleDocs or Sharepoint for social authoring. Express needs for focused or do-not-disturb times and professional boundaries for turnaround times.
This is all essential in order to adhere to the fifth article.
Article 5. Maintain Accountability, Quality, and Deadline Dedication
A pirate ship functioned because every crew member was accountable for their role. The same applies here. Haul on the bowline. Lift your weight. Commit to high-quality work, honor deadlines, and take responsibility for your contributions both during studios and between them. If someone slacks, the whole ship suffers. Consider a dead-line as the death's head pursuing the journey. Do not cross it.
As with all true democracies, the crew decides the consequences.
Marooning is an Option
A pirate crew’s democracy, forged on seas that can turn deadly in an instant, demands ruthless self-preservation. Marooning, or casting a crew member ashore without resources, is mentioned twice in Roberts’ articles. If someone failed to pull their weight or defied the ship’s code, the crew had the collective power to cut them loose.
Yes, marooning is an option for a Dark Classroom Motley Crew, including those formed by learners themselves. If a member refuses to invest in or practice the crew’s commitments, then their support must be put to port.
I’ve worked with educational institutions at all levels, including seven universities and global committees spanning five continents. More often than not, consequences are not a part of their Normal. If they were, tenure wouldn’t exist. Even contractual accountabilities, like faculty commitments in course design, often end in payouts for poor quality rather than penalties.
Educators hold prestige in the State of Normal, but that prestige is eroding. According to a 2023 Gallup poll, faith in the ROI of a college education is plummeting, dragging those internally validated reputations down with it (Brenan, 2025). Yet institutions rarely hold their own to a ship’s code. They fear that one person is too important to lose, especially when the instructor is cast as hero-authority instead of learner-educator.
I’ve been an instructor for 25 years, and I’ve defied the caste many times because I know my enemy. I know it because I served it. I was forged by it, and I perpatuated it for a very, very long time. I have been my own and my learners' enemy. The State of Normal doesn’t like crew-mentality. At the same time, it coerces students into it through forced and ill-structured group work. A hypocrisy of critical dispersion.
Normal wounds its subjects, especially instructional designers, technologists, and support staff, by ignoring the agony it inflicts on the majority. Privileging an instructor undermines their colleagues’ quality of life, increases stress, and skews performance evaluations. It disrespects those who value quality learning experiences for themselves, not just their students. We can't say it's the instructor's fault, until they understand their service to the trauma machine and then choose to ignore it.
For those undervalued by Normal, being invited into a true crew is an act of liberation. As Missina Mintner, a librarian at the University of Texas Arlington, put it:
I can't even express how beneficial it has been as a librarian to look and see what goes into course making besides the four classes that I've taken.
This kind of buy-in, this commitment to the crew-mentality, is why Dark Classroom allows crews to oust anyone who would sink the ship. Without remorse.
Our Seas Embolden Expertise and Undermine the Expert
A Motley Crew isn’t really a collection of experts: it’s a living, breathing collaboration of learner-educators that thrives on forward momentum on an ever-changing sea. Ultimately, our work undermines the idea of expertise, or the idea that there is ever an end-all-be-all of learning. Piratical Pedagogues are only as much of an expert as the last voyage we've sailed with the recognition of our mates who journey with us.
There are plenty of wounded learner-educators who want to sign on to these crews as piratical pedagogues. Are you one of them?
*Read why we hoist the red flag in Welcome Aboard the Dark Classroom: The War Against Critical Dispersion
On Deck
Committed to the Code, Part 1.
Through examples, explore what working in the dyads, triads, and quads of an LED motley crew looks like
Keep a weather eye
Committed to the Code, Part 2: Motley Crew in Action will go further to explore design from concept to course.
References
Brenan, B. M. (2025, February 26). Americans’ confidence in higher education down sharply. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx
Eagle, T., Baltaxe-Admony, L.B., & Ringland, K.E. (2023). Proposing Body Doubling as a Contin6um of Space/Time and Mutuality: An Investigation with Neurodivergent Participants. Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility.
Greathouse, S.E. (2013). Piratical pedagogy: A Code of conduct. In Romancing the tides: A theory of the literary pirate in children's literature (Chapter 6, pp.227-265) [Doctoral dissertation, Illinois State University].
"Haul On The Bowline." YouTube, uploaded by Epitaph, 27 Oct. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxIuEGVzRQ.
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