When I am asked to create something in class, I expect to be able to really create. I would want freedom to choose, but I would want structure behind the assignment as well. In order for a project to be fun for me in an educational setting, I would want it to have a definite purpose and be tied in some way to the subject area. There have been a couple times that I have been given a project to do in a classroom without much of a purpose behind it. I remember it bothering me every time it happened. When I asked my teacher in one instance what the purpose was of the assignment, the teacher seemed shocked, as if he was surprised that I would be the one (out of all the other students) to ask such an impertinent question. However, from my point of view, it was a completely valid question. I did not want to put my effort into making something with no purpose if I had other things I could be spending my time doing.
This experience has shaped my view of what a teacher’s role should be in the creation process within the school. The educator should present a definite plan for a project with sure expectations, should create this plan based on a learning objective for the subject area, give freedom of choice to the students (be that in choosing between certain topical material or choosing mediums with which to present the material), and continue to be a resource to the students throughout the project. As a theatre and English teacher, being this type of educator is extremely important for my career, as I will be facilitating a lot of creation in my classroom.
Some of the things that Hobbs brings up as challenges are good points. One of them she mentions is the fact that grading tends to be skewed to the more visually fantastic. I have observed this before. I have never liked it, because I was from a family that did not invest in the latest technology, and our high school was relatively cheap in their resources as well, so I never did have a fantastically brilliant layout to my technological projects. I may be a facilitator of creativity, but I am an educator first. My way of looking at this problem is simply to look past the layouts and at the content. I do this as a student critiquing my peers’ work already. The challenges I am actually more concerned about (and have thought about many times) are those that involve the students using “inappropriate content” in their projects. This is a tricky subject for us theatre teachers because theatre is a reflection and study of life. If the students’ lives have awful stuff in it, then it is only expected that they would wish to voice those things. I suppose the way to make sure this is kept in check in order for me to keep my job is to create, from the very beginning, a classroom in which the students know that what they have to say is extremely important, but that the content must be tactful. I mean this in the sense that a play that a student writes may have characters that drink or do drugs, but the moral or point of the play should never be in advocacy of that behavior. I still have to work on how exactly I can go about making sure this happens, but I really think it is reliant on my classroom’s rules and policies. If there is a mutual respect between my students and me, I am hoping that this will not be too much of an issue.
I really did enjoy the series by Martin Parr from Seeing and Writing. The idea of taking pictures of others taking typical pictures makes me laugh. The perspective is new and refreshing. I might show this to my students before asking them to do something creative.
2 comments:
Lela, I completely agree with you about wanting freedom for creativity and structure. It is really difficult for me, as a student, when my teachers assign a project and they are either so rigid about their requirements or they are so laid back that it is hard for me to feel positively about the project. I think that they best way to deal with assigning big projects is to break it down into smaller steps and have several deadlines for smaller tasks instead of assigning one big project and expecting students to finish all the components by one day. The multiple deadlines method not only helps students to stay organized, but it can help to mediate some of the problems that Hobbs addresses. For example, if a student is focusing on style over content, you would be able to set them straight if you have a deadline where students turn in a portion of their project and then another deadline where they turn in the completed project. I think it will also help with the problem that you mentioned, which is that when teachers see a visually stunning finished project they are less likely to notice the quality of the content. Having multiple deadlines gives the teacher multiple opportunities to recognize whether the content is valuable or not and it helps them to see whether students really did the research and analysis required to complete a good project (whatever the project might be).
As far as the difficulties you mentioned about what students might bring up or write about in a theater class, I think that a good way to avoid any miscommunications is to have class rules and always have your students write with some sort of prompt in mind. In addition, you should use the plays you read in your theater class to help inform your students about what works and what doesn’t in any performance. This can help them to see that if their play has some bad content in it (drugs, alcohol, violence etc.) those aspects of the play should serve some sort of larger purpose in the story. For example, no one cares if a character is an alcoholic or a drug user or a violent person, unless it is important to the story arc. In addition, you can help them to see how those negative elements in a character are generally balanced out by some good characteristics too. I think you are also right about mutual respect between you and your students – if they trust you to be professional and intelligent, they will strive to live up to that attitude as well. Also, if you build up an atmosphere of positive learning and growth in your classroom, I think students will reflect that positivity in their own creative work. Ultimately, you can’t control everything your students do and say and write, but you can have an idea of what you will do with students who don’t follow the assignment guidelines or write, talk or act out inappropriate material. Make your students aware of what your expectations are and if they cross the line, know ahead of time what you are going to do.
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I think this is similar to what Hobbs was saying about teachers giving up on projects because they were too difficult or took up too much time, which I have seen happen a lot before. If we don’t know ahead of time how we will manage our students and guide them through the process of the unit or project, there is no hope for our students to succeed, even with the greatest project. One of the things I loved the most about my high school English teacher (and something I plan to make a big part of my own pedagogy) was that she was always so incredibly organized all of the time. I think that this makes a huge difference for students because they tend to emulate the attitude of the teacher. Thus, a prepared, organized teacher is more likely to have successful students. I think that Hobbs definitely advocates an immense amount of preparation. I plan to go back to the readings we did this week and use his list of challenges to vet my own unit plans in the future so that I can see if I have thought through some of the major contingencies of any successful project/unit/assignment.
I agree about the Seeing and Writing section – it was interesting to see sort of a set of people engaging in meta-cognition about taking photographs (whether it was visual or verbal). I think an interesting assignment would be to read and look at these sections of Seeing and Writing with your class and then have them take photos, write about their own photo, thinking about taking pictures of the typical and then have them write about a picture they took of someone else taking a photo or posing for a photo. This could be a really fun assignment as students explore what is typical to different groups of people and how normalcy can be made interesting. It can also bring up the ethical points of photo journalism that are mentioned in Seeing and Writing (I think it was the Sontag article). As you mentioned, I think it’s a great idea to get students thinking about the creative process as you lead them into a project that requires them to be creative. Good luck implementing this stuff in your future classroom! You have some great ideas and thoughts!
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