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Very rich discussion, as per Emily's and Brie's post conversation thoughts below.  Several things that struck me particularly included

• the importance in an emergent classroom of doing things in a way that offers potential engagements for everyone's interests and capabilities, not as an issue of "fairness" but rather as a necessity to get a good interactive mix of perspectives
• the importance in an emergent classroom of doing things in a way that offsets students' fears of contributing their own thoughts
• the importance in an emergent classroom, given the above, of setting a context in which the unconscious is free to express itself, and is open to being affected by its own expressions, those of other people, the conflcts that result, and the reflective considerations those in turn give rise to
• the notion of dealing with "discipline"/disinterest problems by finding ways to make the material engaging, rather than in ways that encourage a continuing reliance on respect for authority (doing what the teacher wants, what is needed to pass/get good grade/etc)
• the pervasiveness of an individualistic mentality in contemporary educational practice and assessment, the degree to which an emergent approach presents a serious challenge to that, and the existence of other models/programs that do so as well