Teacher to teacher
Your students a great resource
Oct 15, 2009 4:58 PM
In the dizzying discussion about teacher resources — from educational software to Smartboards — it is too easy to forget about the most abundant, ever-present resource in our classrooms: our young people.
As a rookie teacher in a high-need school last year, I had few in-class resources to work with besides my students. They gave me critical feedback and encouragement, and they were nearly perfect barometers of the strength of the learning environment. (With time, you learn to read the barometer better!)
This fall I’ve begun tapping this crucial resource in a whole new way: Let the students inject their strengths as life narrators into my digital art class. Each student becomes a storyteller, and the focus shifts from laborious Photoshop or PowerPoint tutorials to how can I tell the story of my life outside school using technology? (See below for the answer.)
Digital Expression begins each day with a DO NOW assignment delivered to the students via their e-mail in-boxes. Last year we used individual Gmail accounts, but this year I brought my school Google Apps Education Edition. This free service offers, in addition to basic Gmail-like e-mail, a host of other free and premium collaboration tools like Video, Google Docs and Calendaring, all within our school’s Web domain.
Some of the many benefits of e-mail communication are that students keep a digital record of all of their received and submitted assignments to refer back to, practice important e-mail etiquette routines and learn to organize their time and work digitally.
Within the structure of this work environment, it is easy for the collaboration process to unfold as we dive into three-week “benchmark projects.” Students work individually or in their color-coded work groups (which also have group e-mail addresses for cross-group collaboration) to develop their projects as I give short tutorials (“mini-lessons”) on applications (MS Paint, Photoshop, Keynote, GarageBand and iMovie) and work individually with students and groups. Students are responsible for using their class time to the maximum as they are graded daily on participation, and the projects are designed to have “check-in” points every two to three days. Small steps are always better than open-ended mega-projects!
Most importantly, while the tools and processes are teacher-provided, the content to be sculpted and manipulated is entirely student-generated. This mimics how real artists work: we all use similar tools — instruments, brushes, or vocal cords — but the medium in which we construct our creations, the raw material, is self-selected.
As the students sculpt original beats, photo slideshows and short films, they are constantly receiving feedback from me. But more importantly, they are using techniques in constructive criticism (“warm” and “cool” feedback) to give each other useful and appropriate suggestions for improvement. This, along with frequent modeling of previous student work and constant encouragement, creates a firm but inviting structure within which digital art can happen on a daily basis.
So they will soon be taking home disposable cameras to capture the people, places and moments that fill their days. As these junior photographers capture moments in time, they’ll caption them with their thoughts and feelings in that moment on little “Handy Dandy Notebooks” they’ve been practicing with for about a week. In class they’ll later digitize all of this material and insert it as they build Keynote photo slideshows around “A Day in the Life.” As they work, I will use my master screen — a 35-inch flat-screen monitor connected to my laptop computer — to guide them through confusing tools and editing tasks.
I use the Each-One-Teach-One philosophy. Peers are each other’s first lifeline and then the teacher. This way I can more effectively triage important confusions and frustrations and encourage a student-centered, rather than teacher-centered, work environment.
Is all of this too ambitious for a mixed-age, transfer high school classroom for formerly truant students? My experience has answered with a resounding “no!” Break large projects down into approachable and attainable chunks. Offer students nearly constant feedback and opportunities to demonstrate mastery. Give young people space to approach the project, make it their own, and own it. And — above all — remind them and yourself that the best resource in any classroom is the bubbling vat of knowledge, experience, enthusiasm and sheer tenacity called Your Students.
Justin Wedes is a science and technology teacher at South Brooklyn Community HS in Red Hook, Brooklyn. His students will present “A Day in the Life” at the Apple Store, SoHo, on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 5 p.m.
