The role of an educator in the creation process in public schools is that of a facilitator. Their job is to introduce and provide opportunities for the creative process to take place.
The issues that Hobbs raises really will be a problem in today’s classroom. Students are no longer afraid of the teacher, or think that the teacher holds all wisdom. This isn’t to say that they’ll be disrespectful, but rather that their curiosity will overwhelm any timidity and any question or ideas they have will much more easily come to the surface. They have all sorts of knowledge that they never had before, and aren’t afraid to share it. I think I’ll address each of the issues Hobbs thought of individually.
“Students reproduce mass media and pop culture texts” – I know I’ve done things like this, mainly because I’m either lazy and don’t want to work too hard to come up with my own ideas, or I’ve worked with the genre/media a lot so my mind is already overwhelmed by what goes on in it. Ways to solve this might be to have brainstorming time where students can share their ideas, perhaps anonymously through a blog or throwing papers in the front of the room.
“Students challenge adult authority” – I think this will often be a problem, not necessarily because the students just want to challenge authority, but also because they have a wealth of knowledge and information at their fingertips and a new-found capacity to share and express that knowledge. I think this can be acknowledged by simply…. acknowledging the students’ expertise. I think simply saying “hey guys, I’m not the best at this, but here’s what we’re going to do” would help them to not reject you as a leader or facilitator.
“The major production goes unfinished” – Hobbs made it sound like the main problem with this was not necessarily that projects go unfinished, but when failure occurs teachers don’t have the courage to revamp and try again. Part of this is just shaking it off and going and doing it again. Another thought is to think over every detail possible before the students begin their project (either the first or subsequent times) so that as few things as possible go wrong. Learn from other people’s mistakes; ask other teachers (or even the students) if they’ve don’t projects similar to this before and what problems they encountered.
“Coordinating student collaboration” – Sometimes it might be necessary to assign students to the tasks that are not their favorite jobs. Another way to help would be the divide-and-conquer approach Hobbs talks about. This would require either you or the students to make a list of what needs to be done, start to finish, and then assigning each step to a group member. Another way to help is to require each student to be accountable not only for themselves, but for other members of the group. By this I mean that at the end of the project each student could fill out an evaluation on their peers with comments, jobs accomplished, and amount of workload done instead of a straight grade. I think these several things, along with cautions from the teacher can help the students to spread out the work load and not overburden any one student.
“Quality of work is superficial when style reigns over substance” – The best way I can think of to make sure this doesn’t happen is to have information and source checks early on in the project process so that the students are finding everything that they need to make the work of high quality. This way the students can make sure that they have everything they need to answered, they can come up with potential problems that may arise, and their argument or thought process can be more fully thought out. Then they can work on making it pretty.
“Celebrating completion leads to an absence of reflection nor critique” – I’ve found this a problem often with myself. I think there are two good ways to solve this problem. One is to assign the reflection as part of the assignment, perhaps due a few days after the rest of the assignment. This way the product has a few days to gel before there is another piece due. Another option (and I think I like this one better) is to have a discussion either the day after or a few days after the project is due in order to foster that reflection/critique.
Media creation doesn’t just stop with things that happened. It concerns things that are happening. News stories are a great way to use a variety of types of media (for news now comes in many forms – paper, internet article or video clip, or as part of a larger news show) and let the kids talk about what they think is important. It can also use (as the article about Katrina uses) different types of media to make us stop and rethink a certain subject. This use of combination media hits us in multiple ways instead of just one as we are used to. It’s more like a typical newscast that combines images, descriptions, video, and often witness interviews in order to tell a story.
2 comments:
One issue I find particularly interesting that Hobbes and then Heather talked about was the fact that “students challenge adult authority.” I agree with Heather that sometimes this attitude surfaces because students know much more about a subject or process than we give them credit for or they see through our lack of experience with something (this would probably be me and technology). I think that being transparent about your expertise or lack there of and their knowledge base is a good way to address this issue. But I wonder if there is a way to help alleviate the problem before it has a chance to really take root. I think that creating a classroom environment of cooperative, collaborative learning, where you are a guide/facilitator but everyone has a chance to be an expert or that everyone’s thoughts/opinions/know-how matter to the classroom, will level the playing field a bit. It will create a more open dialogue between students but also between teacher and student as they co-learn and sometimes even take turns facilitating. The teacher is not the fountain of knowledge, nor does she profess to be, especially in technological or some media things that students will have had more experience with than the teacher. This sort of environment is especially important to the creative process. The teacher is a guide, not a dictator or oracle. This allows student creativity to shine while also being directed in a constructive way, which will end up unleashing their creativity more. If you were to use the article about hurricane Katrina, a way you could have a cooperative learning environment is to have each student read the piece, discuss it and then come back to class the next time with an answering piece of media, as a way of gathering information. Then the class could create newspaper plays (like what was popular/legal in the early Soviet Union, which were meant just to present the facts in the newspaper for an illiterate audience) along side scenes of personal struggle that are reflected in the piece.
Another problem that is concerning, especially in a theatre classroom, is that creation is superficial and the way something is done means more than the depth of the subject matter. I think that fact or source checks are a good way to help make sure the substance of a media creation project are met. I wonder if you could take that further or make it a bit less formal by having this be something that happens in a daily reflection log/journal. As students research for a project, they jot down their sources or ideas in their notebook for a future reference as well as a way for you to check their understanding. Or maybe you can have a project where style reflects the substance. Which might end up being more effective anyway. I think this is the evident in a project like TIP scenes in 395/396. You perform a scene through a certain theory lens (for example feminism). The style and form of the scene reflects the substance of the feminist literary critique. You cannot do the performance without knowing the theory well, because at the end you have to justify your choices to your peers. What’s built in there is an accountability to others and having a grade that is tied up in the substance being directly linked to the style. The same could be done for a media project in a theatre classroom. You have to know a style and the ins-and-outs of the scene (or photograph or article etc) you’re project in based on before you can really begin.
Caitlin Cotten, Reading Response 6
The first thing I thought of when I read Heather’s post after the Hobbs chapter is how interesting it is that students today are not afraid of their teachers because we don’t want them to be. After 276, I always think about Green students and how they respond to teachers. They won’t put their trust in someone they don’t feel is adequate to teach. I hate to say it… but it’s almost like students are getting scarier and scarier because it seems like they’re too smart for us. We can’t just tell them to use their imagination and come up with some fantastic piece of artwork. They have so many different influences coming into their minds, we have to account for all the media inputs students have today.
“Students reproduce mass media and pop culture texts”—I really liked Heather’s idea of having a blog to create ideas. It’s so hard for me to break out of common ideas when I’m just thinking by myself in my head. By putting ideas out on paper, students can collaborate and come up with fun and interesting new ideas. I also think it would be fun to have random themes or ideas in a hat—like film noir, Spanish soap opera, or Greek tragedy—then apply them to things that you never would imagine they would belong with. A lot of times students have creative breakthroughs when they’re taken far outside the comfort zone of what they think is normal.
“Students challenge adult authority”—I loved Heather’s word “facilitator”. No one wants to be smacked into submission. If we’re trying to promote creativity, we’re not going to get anywhere by students feeling they can never say the right thing in front of the teacher who knows everything. I also liked what Hobbs said about adults being in denial that students aren’t cultured. A lot of our students will have life experiences that I cannot even fathom. By allowing the students to understand that teachers don’t know everything, they can feel comfortable enough to engage in conversation without feeling the need to show their own dominance.
“The major production goes unfinished” – Hobbs was kind of unclean on this one, but I think the general consensus on the topic can just be that without proper planning by teachers in their lesson plans, plans will quickly fail. Students need to be prepared up front with how much time a project can take before they dive in. Sometimes you’re going to fail, but planning is key in making it ever work.
“Coordinating student collaboration” – I’ve always thought it was really sad when people say they hate group projects. They’re too afraid to put their trust in other people because we’ve all been left in the dust before on projects that others don’t care about. I think it would be an interesting idea to actually teach students how to collaborate in a group—teach them how to break the work evenly and help them determine how to best function utilizing everyone’s strengths.
“Quality of work is superficial when style reigns over substance” – This is an especially easy thing to lose track of in theatre. Too many times we’re worried about the costumes or the accent and not about how an actor portrays the message to the audience. I think if students know that it doesn’t have to be pretty to get an A, or that the appearance is very little of the grade, they will more focus on the material. If you tell them upfront they can’t get away with getting an A through flashing lights, they won’t try to begin with.
“Celebrating completion leads to an absence of reflection nor critique” – The idea of a post mortem is crucial in every creative process. We can’t learn and grow if we don’t allow ourselves to reflect and see what decisions led to the success/failure of a project. Having a talkback after every performance/presentation/paper is crucial to help students understand that finishing and presenting the project is only half the battle in the creative learning process.
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