Learning Outcome 7: Apply a variety of teaching strategies to develop a positive learning environment where all students are encouraged to achieve their highest potential
A traditional model of teaching places all of the action on the teacher’s shoulders, and lets the students become passive learners. This, in my mind, leaves students at a disadvantage. They become complacent in their intellectual journeys and settle for less than they are fully capable of. When students become active in their learning process, they want to reach new levels and become master learners of their own domain.
One way I got students interested in what we were doing in the classroom was by bringing in things that interested them- a seemingly obvious task to do, but one that is not done enough in my mind. In my 11th grade class this meant bringing in song lyrics to help place emphasis on poetry speaking out about something in the society that it was created in. We had been focusing on poets and poetry from the Harlem Renaissance, and what that movement meant for African Americans in the urban north. We had done in depth analysis of works from Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Jean Toomer, so students had the skills to analyze poetic language to garner theme and meaning. When I brought in the lyrics to rap artist Nas’s song “I Can” that was when the real magic happened. Students were familiar with this song and were excited to work with it. They were able to easily break down the language of the lyrics to get to the core of the song. Students were broken into groups to take one “stanza” of the lyrics and determine the social context of it. In each group students were asked to determine what the message of the stanza was, what it was referring to and how it connected to the lyrics as a whole. When students reported out, they were able to express what their group had found. They wanted to figure out what the other groups discovered. After this class period, students were able to see the connections in the poems to the social context and they wanted to learn more. Through this activity, students were able to discover that the language the poet uses can be accessible to all that listen, while at the same time carrying a powerful message. The language in the song often aired on the side of slang and vernacular language, and because of this they were able to connect to the meaning. This song focused on issues of drug abuse, physical abuse and the effects of both on an individual. These were topics that connected to the society that these students lived in, if not their own personal experience. Because they saw the impact of the language on the meaning and how it connected to the society, students were able to create pathways of understanding to help them analyse so much more than just poetry.
A similar situation happened with my 8th graders. They were challenged to create a poetry portfolio. In class we worked through several terms and skills that are huge in poetic language. They were asked to rise to the challenge of poetry that they were given to analyze and learn from. When faced with this project they were asked to express their understandings of poetry through works that they found and that they created. Students were resistant at first, but they want to express themselves- and it’s a beautiful thing to see when they do.