Let Them Be

We all give assignments like this...

"Pretend you are a reporter..."

"Pretend you are a director..."

"Pretend you are a speech writer..."

Our intentions are good.  We want students to imagine themselves to be someone real.  We want them to feel a sense of purpose and to tackle an assignment the way a professional might.  Most of our students dutifully play along and fulfill the requirements to get the grade.

[SLA]ng's Winter 2013 Edition

But...we can do better.  With the world at their fingertips (because they have a keyboard underneath them), we should ask students to be reporters, directors and speech writers.  If we want them to take work seriously, we must give them serious work.  In Meenoo Rami's talk to the CEL Convention in Boston this past November, she encouraged us to give students a real purpose and a wide audience.  She shared an example from her own classroom from last winter.  Her students wanted to make a magazine.  So Ms. Rami taught them how.  Her students didn't pretend to create a magazine; they created an online magazine in which students were writers, editors, photographers and more.  They had an audience (their entire school and anyone else who clicked the link...including an entire audience of CEL attendees).  She gave them voice.  She showed them that language is a powerful tool.

Last year I taught course called "Literature and the Law" during which we did a short Hitchcock film unit to study how suspense and foreshadowing is portrayed on screen (contrasting with texts).  At the end of the unit, I invited students to adapt a favorite film or story into a Hitchcock style film of their own.  Interestingly, the students who chose this option tended to be my "disenchanted" students.  I worried they would come apart at the seams, not realizing all it took to make a five minute film.  I was absolutely wrong.  They were doing something, producing something real.  At the end of the process in which they had to write, plan, collaborate, communicate, edit and more, they had a product in which they took great pride.  They uploaded them onto YouTube.  Here is just one example made by two of my twelfth grade students who adapted a scene from Law Abiding Citizen.  They directed, produced and starred in their film, and the results were rather astounding.  If you are familiar with Hitchcock's style, take a look at their version and see what you think.  Fair warning  - they curse.      

Screen shot from students' version of Law Abiding Citizen

Do you think they understand how to build suspense on film?  Did they understand how Hitchcock used these tools?  Did I need them to pretend they were directors,  producers, or actors to complete the assignment?  No.  I invited them to be directors, producers and actors.  They were empowered to produce something authentic and for an audience as wide as they wished it to be.  Each student who chose this assignment did an outstanding job, earning some of their highest marks of the year.  And yet it was the assignment in which I had the fewest "How much is this part worth?" and "How many points off if I don't do this on time?" and "What is the point of this?"  They were all in.  They were making a film.  The points were an afterthought.

We need to give students more opportunities in ELA classes to be.  Our role as educators is to help them with the skills and the research they need to be successful as they work in these roles.  We need to help them find their audience and their voice so they no longer need to pretend to be someone.  We can show them they already are.  We need to let them be.