Alien Pedagogy

Much of teaching involves manipulating behavior. This video on TED is worth checking out, though the best line may be:

Change comes from “making the invisible, visible.”

How do we make the consequences of student behavior visible?

Circle of Connections takes different aspects of your text and put them in a list. From there, students will draw a  circle of circles and then place each word in a circle, connecting them together with their thoughts. This activity was not effective when I started with nine circles, but what I did this week was more effective.

I started the class discussing “random” (the slang usage). We shared some “that was so random” moments (my random moment was the ending of Ong-Bak 2). From there we made a list of random words and then tried to explain how Romeo, fate, or tragedy could be connected to a watermelon, a computer, and “WHAT?”

The challenge: We made a list of Romeo and Juliet ideas, characters, and quotes. I drew three circles on the white board and asked if anyone could come up with three words that I couldn’t link together, which hooked the class while modeling how the activity is done.

The students then took up the challenge with three circles, then five, and finally nine.

I used this activity to help students collate and consolidate our ground work on Romeo and Juliet before moving on to essays, projects, and tests.

I was taught this activity back in university. Some readers may know it by another name, though Juliet would be quick to remind us that the activity’s more important than the name.

For a long time, I was reluctant to use the think-pair-share method. I thought students would immediately see through it as a way of making them feel comfortable enough to share their ideas.

But as the course goes on, students never do see through it and they do share their ideas.

I’ve asked students to give feedback in a variety of ways — guided writing, surveys, class discussion. This time, I invited students to write me a letter during class time. I asked them to follow the positive / needs improvement / interesting format that I often use when offering students feedback.

Students liked:

• Variety of activities
• Humor
• Redoing their work for full credit
• Challenging assignments
• Freedom to speak
• Positivity
• The classroom library
• Emailing questions
• Drawing activities
• Visual notes

Students disliked:

• The way groups are assigned in the honors course
• How short DEAR time lasts
• How tough the tests are
• Messy handwriting on the white board

Interesting Comments:

• “Sometimes you talk so loud my ears hurt.”
• “You always dress so neat and tidy.”
• “Sometimes I think about bananas in your class because I get hungry.”
• “Sometimes you remind me of he who must not be named!”

Shusterson’s Unwind is a young adult novel about a society that allows children to be “retroactively aborted” between the age of 13 and 18. These children are not killed, but unwound — a process in which every part of the child’s body is transferred to another person. Not dead — simply alive in a new form.

Unwind was lent to me by one of my former students and I’ve told all of my classes about this book. So far the enthusiasm has been pretty incredible. I’ll have to get funds to buy it for my library now.