Strategies and Activities
What makes students pay attention? I believe that students learn best when they are in charge of their own learning. Students remain more involved when they work together to find answers they relate to. I see the figure of the teacher as one who supervises and validates students' outcomes. My main goal is to foster curiosity in students by using a variety of methods that activate as many senses as possible.
Adolescents respond better than adults to pleasure and reward. The social media has built a commercial "empire" on those two concepts. Academically, I hope to exploit teen's "appetite" for anything promoting their sense of individual empowerment and interests they have outside of the school. I aim at integrating students' interests with academic knowledge. For example, I will explain the meaning and importance of rhetoric by analyzing how Tupac's lyrics about life have convinced so many teenagers to look up to him as a role model. (Appendix 1)
Neurologically, the brain releases dopamine, which is a chemical providing feelings of enjoyment. Medical research contends that it motivates a person to proactively perform certain activities connected to rewarding experiences. In other words, individual interest is characterized by the amount of familiarity and accessibility required by the subject. My plan links students' interests outside the classroom to the academic material they are required to master. I paired my content in the essay to Teachable Moments sections devised to present different themes about gender and presidential rhetoric. Historical events are to be linked to real life moral/practical situations. Students will prove their answers, solutions by working out questions from real life events. This is an example to clarify my approach.
In the first week of instructions about women's equal rights movement two questions will trigger students' involvement: can the individual keep all his values without compromising his/her real life objectives? Students will be given a real historical problem to solve. They first will work in groups to decide a set of values. Then, they will have to anticipate what situations in life might undermine which values might be dropped. Each group will have to explain their reasons by convincing other groups. Now that value system and rhetoric themes are introduced, students will compare their group work to explain reasons for Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson's contradictory rhetorical stand on women's equal rights.
Before students are asked to analyze the Constitutional powers assigned to the president, students will write and create their form of government. This class discussion will "slide" on the soundness/danger of a political system where the president enjoys growing power over the legislative branch. The duties of the three branches of government and the main phases of the presidency (constitutional, rhetorical, and imperial) will provide the background to explain how the individual values of the two presidents did not overlap their political decisions. (Appendix 2)
I consider this first five days of instructions important to teach students how to learn, how to respect their ideas to become aware of the importance of participating in society for the betterment of it as a whole. Within this logic, the Socratic method will be my main vehicle to involve all students' active participation. Like in the old Greek polis, students will verbalize the concept of the individual as crucial element to improve the quality of life of a community. Historical events and the analysis of the three branches of government will ground students' theories to reality.
Socratic method, group active collaboration, brainstorming or heuristic learning methodologies share the characteristic of being students' centered. Learning takes place by asking questions, challenging students' assumptions, and real life experiences.
In other words, students are actively involved because they are given the role of producing meaning. Teachers begin and finish the whole discovery process by stimulating the conversation, keeping students involved, and ensuring that students' outcome is correct.
Eleanor Roosevelt was an amazing woman involved in many different fields to help groups of people pursuing equality under the law. She fought against racism. She was also adamant about women's rights. What distinguished her from other women married to powerful politicians was her aggressive stand for women's equal rights. She is a shining example of how to find motivations to change people's lives. Students will have to confront one of the most popular trends among students: intellectual and academic laziness. This time, students will face the theme of motivation to change for social justice. For five days, students will be asked to verbalize, share, and write about their personal experiences. By reading excerpts from Eleanor Roosevelt's biography and the Great Gatsby students will be expected to analyze their positions in society, first. Then, students will be given five days to produce a five page comic strip addressing the following themes: 1. Eleanor Roosevelt and her influence on her husband. 2. Why most of the women in the Great Gatsby accepted male psychological and physical abuses.
3. The role of money to carve male and female roles in the novel. 4. What makes Jordan different from all the other female characters. 5. The importance and limitation of women's suffrage before and after 1920.
The last five days of lessons will begin with a system that compresses lots of information in a short amount of time to grab students' attention. (10 minutes on three consecutive days). Though impossible to absorb the enormous quantity of details, its intensity will eliminate distractions. This is the time where the teacher has control in the classroom and establishes the kind of atmosphere promoting a competitive focus that students will use to "ingurgitate" the information to store it at the subliminal level. This compression methodology will then leave space to activities aimed at working out the events since the 1950s.
The next step is to develop an environment around students reminiscent of their daily exposure to mass consumerism, as nowadays students for the most part lack motivations and academic interest. Academic material must be presented/introduced as a material for academic "consumption." For the last five days of the unit, students will work out solutions to explain what changes people's points of view/prejudices. Students will be taking notes about oral and power point presentations I will deliver for two consecutive days, 10 minutes each day. Within groups, students will discuss a set of questions to find answers explaining why and how change occurs through time. (Appendix 6) Students will use the remaining class time of each day to produce a five minute video on political and female leaders due on the following Monday. Homework will be used to consolidate classroom content and factual information such as uses of rhetoric, timeline of women's events from 1960 to 1972, and reasons why the ERA lost political and popular support. A series of in–class mini essays will conclude the unit. Students will explain the reasons and events that changed presidential rhetoric and popular perception about the role of women in society. (Appendix 7)
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