Small Strokes Big Oaks

I have spent some time recently working in collaboration with several people who are not teachers to develop activities, projects, assignments, and unit plans for my classes.  These experiences are both essential to good curriculum planning and so frustrating that I’d rather just do it myself and not recieve any feedback at all.

By working with people who are not teachers to plan curriculum, I feel privileged to know two things: 1) How to work together to create dynamic activities that I might not have otherwise been pushed to create or implement, and 2) How little people outside of schools know about what happens inside of school. 

Take this situation for example: I plan a whole four-day long lesson about commercials and persuasive techniques (primarily logos, ethos, and pathos) culminating in a project where students create their own commercials using a specific persuasive technique and present them to the class.  The lesson includes teacher-directed and student-directed discussion, reading material, analysis of actual commercials (perfect for the week after the Super Bowl), a project prompt, and a whole day to discuss the student-created commercials after they are presented.  The idea behind this project is for students to be able to identify persuasive techniques used in advertisements, use the techniques themselves, then deconstruct the process of persuading others, and therefore become more educated consumers.

I think it sounded like a pretty good project, but when I handed the assignment to a person in the advertising field a few weeks ago, he looked at the one handout I had for the kids – the project prompt for creating their own commercials (because the rest of the mini-unit is discussion based, not handout related) – and told me I’d be better served to have the students go home, watch commercials, and write a paper deconstructing them.  He said that the students would not learn anything about analysis or consumerism from creating their own commercials; rather, I’d be reinforcing that these commercials are powerful, not that the students should take power over commercials.

Um, really?  It seems he missed the whole point of discussion and deconstruction that was to happen after the students created their commercials.

Here’s the thing.  I’m a high school teacher.  Most people, especially those who went on to post-secondary education and then into the work force, don’t remember how their teachers taught them things in high school at all.  Ideally, they’ll remember what they learned, but they certainly won’t remember “Gee, that teacher really spent some time talking to us and asking us questions about how we can have power over commercials and billboards.”  What they do remember are their 300-person lecture classes in college in which their teachers lectured, provided them with a paper prompt, asked the students to self-teach and create a paper, and the class was over.

In a university setting, that might work.  In a high school?  Not so much. 

Assignments in high schools cannot exist in a vacuum.  I cannot hand my students a set of notes on persuasive tactics and have them go make a commercial without any further instruction or discussion.  They’ll be able to make that commercial, sure, but they won’t just magically understand the point I’m trying to make.  That’s where the actual teaching comes in.  This may come as a surprise to some non-teachers out there, but we don’t just get assignments from books, make copies, hand them out, and grade them.  We actually discuss things with our students, ask them questions, check for understanding.  That’s teaching, folks.  That’s just what we do.  Assignments aren’t the end-all, be-all of assessments.  Most of the time they’re a vehicle to larger discussion.

Now, will every student understand that by making a commercial I’m giving them power over the commercial?  No.  Will every student understand it after we discuss it in class?  No.  Will students have a better chance of understanding  this concept by writing a paper on their own with no guidance?  Well, if that’s the case, why don’t we have a robot do my job, because there’s no need for me to teach at all!

I’m just saying, please respect the actual teaching that goes on in high schools.  We are more than just our assignments, and our assignments do not exist in a vacuum.