Inspiration

INSPIRATION BEHIND THE PROJECT

The first time I taught a unit on teaching tolerance was in 2007 during my student teaching.  From time to time after that and through many other teaching experiences, I was able to come across a wide range of wonderful texts that can be used cross-curricularly with the social studies department during their holocaust unit.  Two years ago, my teaching teammate and I created a balanced month-long unit that allowed students to read a novel about the holocaust and make connections to it with what they were learning about in history class. The result of this was incredible, and the students were visually and verbally making connections during discussions between material taught in both classrooms (there’s really nothing as marvelous as seeing a student have that “ah-ha moment” light bulb go off after they make the connection of “that’s just like what we’re talking about in social studies!” etc. and etc.).  Still, I felt that during that time we had only scratched the surface of what knowledge the students could have be gained, interpreted, analyzed, and researched upon.  It is with this in mind that I realized that next time I could try doing a unit that shows that the students are really capable of so much more than just making verbal connections in the classroom between materials from language arts and social studies.

So much of what goes into the makings of a junior high teacher’s lesson planning has to do with the answer to this question: “What are my students going to be able to get out of this that will prepare them for high school and a life-time of independent learning?”  What I did not want to do was merely present them a text, lecture each day about the reading, tell the students how to read the story, track students through daily entrance questions, and remain quiz/final test oriented for formative and summative assessment.  All of this would ensure that the work would remain “locked away” inside of the classroom – the precise thing that a unit that teaches students about tolerance and man’s inhumanity to man would not benefit from.

Erica Roberts, the former technology teacher at our school, and I used to meet every now and then to talk about the new wave of teaching that incorporates students to use web 2.0 technologies (like blogging, glogster, and Google Docs) to enhance their learning experience.  We already use a social media outlet called Edmodo, and the use of this has completely changed the level of interaction between teachers and students both in and outside of the classroom.  It’s something that standard class discussion and email never allowed us to do before.  It creates a space for students to interact more with one another and gain ownership for their own learning outside of the classroom.

A format for discussion in my literature classes that pops up every now and then revolves around the Socratic Seminar method where students drive the conversation over a piece of reading themselves and the teacher steps back to facilitate the conversation as needed.  My students frequently ask, “when are we sitting in a circle again to do that ‘discussion-thing’?” and I laugh because it surprises me to see how much they love this style of discussion.  The main part of this is that the teacher takes a back seat to the learning and instead watches the learning take place between student interactions.  The first few times we attempted this in class, I jumped in to curve the discussion in an angle I wanted it to go; however, as of late the students become frustrated at me for intervening (well, mostly they get a kick out of the fact that it’s hard for me to remain the quiet observer and not contribute to their discussion/learning process – I want to be involved so badly!).  I enjoy seeing my students create outstanding responses and make connections to literature in a way that gives them ownership for their own learning.

It was after Erica showed me a blog from another teacher-friend of her’s, Christian Long, that my “ah-ha” moment finally kicked in.  Christian Long teaches high school English, and he created a blog space via the website WordPress.com that allowed his students to showcase their learning online about Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. What I witnessed was something truly amazing, and the way that he turned Alice over to the students was inspiring.  The material his students presented went further than merely talking about the book and making connections between classes – instead, they branched out and gathered media clips from news/other websites, YouTube, and interpreted artwork/photos that connected to what they were learning. In a nutshell, they were able to find their own voice, style, and tone through blogging.  I’ve adapted the structure of his format (including the vision, expectation, rules, grading, blog formats, etc.) to fit for my group of 8^th graders.  I am completely thankful for the impressive and thorough foundation that Mr. Long and his inquisitive group of students have laid out for other teachers to gain inspiration from.

If you’d like to view the website that started it all, it can be found at http://aliceproject.wordpress.com

-- Miss Tesmer