Campus Voices
Middle School
Because I grew up in academia during the bourgeoning of the Internet, technology has always been at the forefront of my teaching as well as in my life. Now that I am a thirtysomething, there is a significant age difference between me and my students, but I would like to think that I can still find a way to reach them in meaningful and reflective ways without sacrificing my integrity or that of my discipline.
In my work as a middle school English teacher, I have had the opportunity and support to research and experiment with methods of incorporating the technology that surrounds and sometimes consumes our students. In doing so, I have examined my own discipline through a technology lens, to revitalize our ideals and to generate a solution to the question lingering over pedagogy these days—how do we, as educators, address, acknowledge and embrace the ever-evolving idea of “literacy.” Literacy as we used to know it is changing, and our idea of it needs to be flexible and relevant; it is a fine balance for educators to negotiate. After a few years of work researching, testing and drafting, I have written a unit that effectively addresses the “literacy” discussion, as this project seamlessly incorporates an exciting technology project into our seventh grade curriculum.
In this unit, students are asked to re-envision the idea of “story” and the construction of meaning. The seventh grade curriculum revolves around the idea of “Portraits” in all senses; students study and deconstruct portraits of different media throughout the year to learn and master skills of observation, inference and analysis. The culmination of this exploration is “The Radio Essay,” a project that marries the traditional print story composition and workshop method with the versatility and creativity of a self-produced multimedia production.
As the culmination of the English curriculum this spring, “The Radio Essay” combines the autobiographical writing concepts of the Family Portrait Sketchbook and the creative memoir narratives of The House on Mango Street. To bridge the gap between those units, students will be exploring the genre of creative non-fiction through readings, recorded examples, and class discussions. Once students distinguish the difference between stories to be read and stories to be listened to, students will rewrite a Sketchbook piece or compose a totally new narrative to record as a three-to-five minute Radio Essay.
Once the piece is written, students rehearse and record their own piece. After they record, students will use GarageBand to edit their recording, to mix the story with sound effects and/or music, and then produce their digital narrative into an MP3 file or a Podcast. Students will be given class CDs, and later this spring we will publish the best three seventh-grade essays on the BB&N website.
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