The best assignments are those that move students from where
they are to where they could or should be, but how does
the movement work? Is it akin to traveling on a road, making a series of stops,
or is it more a snowball effect, creating mass? Most teachers “get” that a
high-quality assignment incorporates critical thinking and standards, and that
rigor equates to challenge. However, we
sometimes get caught up in creating individual
challenging, rigorous lessons without determining how and where they impact the
whole.
If we consider every assignment as a singular event, we
create a linear experience. The assignment may be high-quality and may even be
rigorous, but if it’s developed with point
A to point B thinking, we are buying into the mile-long, inch-deep
approach.
However, if we consider each assignment as a connective
transition, we don’t move linearly; we create an expanding sphere of knowledge
and practice—a fusion of ideas that creates meaning for and from a larger
whole.
Consider the following assignment, which was part of a unit
on Evil, which was part of a year-long English curriculum designed to help students
contemplate the question “What makes us human?”
They read Shelley’s Frankenstein
and created collages representing their analyses of the symbolism in the novel.
Use of a non-text response to a print medium is challenging on many levels, and
I could have had them simply present their work and stopped there, assigning
them a grade, which would’ve been an “okay” assignment.
High quality? Sure, if
you consider the multitude of standards embraced by it. Rigorous? Yes, at least
according to what research has to say on this sort of thing.
However, by understanding the idea that an assignment is a
transition of thought, designed to expand
thinking in connection to the next assignment (or unit), we can craft more
in-depth, challenging coursework.
We created an art gallery and moved from picture to picture,
discussing the works, but the artists were not permitted to speak about their
own designs. They had to listen to how viewers interpreted their non-print
symbolism analyses; thus, the assignment garnered analysis on two levels: from
the spectator p.o.v. as well as self-reflective and evaluative levels (How well did I succeed in conveying the
meaning?).
Then the students presented their intended meanings. The
class took notes on the intentions, and wrote a rhetorical analysis. How and how well did the artist convey
his/her argument for the symbolism in Frankenstein?
So, for those keeping track: the students have analyzed for
their own purposes (creating the collage), analyzed another’s purpose,
evaluated, and self-evaluated. Here’s where we really make the biggest impact,
though.
While we’d been working on these collages in-class, the
students had read their next text: Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called ‘It’. We had
our standard discussion, ensuring comprehension and garnering reactions.
However, the students then had to select a poster (not their
own), originally designed for Frankenstein,
that they felt best represented an argument in It. They made extremely
powerful, emotional connections between Shelley and Pelzer, the Creature and
David as well as Victor and Catherine, which further deepened their understanding
of humanity.
To arrive at the sort of assignment that quickens the
intellect, teachers need to have the end in mind, but we also need to
understand that the end isn’t a destination.
It is a state of understanding that has been reached through a series of expanding,
spherical layers. The destination is already inside the student, and
purposefully layering assignments to help him/her attain a personal depth of understanding is what a truly
rigorous curriculum does.
Mindy
Keller-Kyriakides is the author of Transparent
Teaching of Adolescents: Defining the Ideal Class for Students and Teachers.
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