David Theune was our first guest speaker of the semester in EDUC 504 and he was such an inspiring and motivational speaker! David is an English/Drama teacher that connects his students with "authentic audiences."
He provides provides different audiences through the use of community and technology.
The first audience he discussed was parents. Although parents are typically very involved in elementary school, a lack of parent participation occurs in high school. David invites parents into the classroom and involves them in different activities such as listening to student read essays and helping build up students by providing feedback. Although he does state that many parents may not be able to come, providing the opportunity opens doors and provides an audience for students beyond the teacher. This started to make me think about how I could get parents involved in my future chemistry classroom. Although I think chemistry is something that many parents may find intimidating, I think it would be great to open up science into the community and have students present their work, such as lab reports or projects. As a student being able to explain and communicate science to a lay audience is a powerful and meaningful endeavor.
To provide an even broader audience David presents his student work to the world through the internet. He has his students create digital personal narratives that his students share through YouTube. Although this is an incredibly personal and intimidating feat students rarely turn down the opportunity to share their work, however, they are provided the opportunity to opt out of sharing their work publicly. I think that creating a public space for your classroom to share their work is very cool. I have the idea for a project in which students complete a research project on a scientist that they can relate to and then they have to adopt their scientists character and present a digital narrative from the perspective of their scientist. This is a more involved project, but I could also utilize this online sharing for student work about developing different lab procedures or reporting out and explaining results.
David also provides an opportunity to bring in local non-profits and organizations into the classroom. He has students write persuasive essays after completing research then students vote on the best essay and the winner gets to give money to the organization that they supported in their essay. In this way students contribute to their community and see that they can impact the world. There are many different organizations, such as environmental agencies, that I could incorporate into my future lessons. When students are learning about solubility for example, we could extend what is learned in the classroom and learn about different compounds that find our way into local waterways and perhaps even learn about waste water treatment plants.
David even suggests to have students teach younger students in the district. Doing this you can have students plan what they are going to teach and then execute it by visiting other classrooms. This is a low-tech way to provide audience to the classroom. This could be difficult with some chemistry topics as they may be abstract for younger students, but perhaps that would provide some challenge to the high school students and try to get them to truly explain their thought process.
The final audience that David suggests is through streaming your classroom with peers in other chemistry classrooms. He suggests http://www.ustream.tv/ as an avenue for streaming the classroom. This even provides an opportunity for parents who are unavailable to come into school to view student work.
Overall, I thought that David Theune's presentation was very informational and motivational. I left class feeling PUMPED UP about including audience into my classroom. Even though he suggested many different projects that have worked in his ELA classroom, his ideas inspired me to start thinking about how to incorporate his practices into my own teaching. Although this presentation happened at the end of a very long day, I left the School of Ed feeling ready for the next opportunity I may have to utilize any one of these great ideas.
If you are interested in learning more about David Theune below are the links for his twitter feed and blog.
Twitter https://twitter.com/DavidTheune
Kaitlynn,
ReplyDeleteIm glad to hear that after David Theune's presentation you felt more inspired about including audience into your classroom. I feel as if the feeling has been mutual with the different speakers that have come and presented in that they have very unique ways of going about education. I thought it was pretty awesome that Theune would actually have non-profits and organizations come into the classroom to give money to them in the end. Talk about really incorporating the students background into learning. The fact that he also has younger students teaching show how he really wants students to have a mastery of what it is they are learning. All in all a great presentation by a great teacher that I help I can aspire to be one day.
Thanks for sharing!
Ms Kaitlynn, Your post brought be back to the presentation of David Theune's pedagogy though audience participation. I loved your detailed descriptions and your excitement. This is why I felt like I was back in class with him and you. I really appreciated your self-reflection and your ideas for incorporating an audience into your chemistry class. I completely agree that we should open our science room doors wide open. What a great way for students to A. engage with their community, B. thoroughly learn the material they are presenting on and C. make connections between their science content and their own lives or community. Thank you for bring up this great point and stirring up the creative juices for us science folk!
ReplyDeleteHi Kaitlynn!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why...but I think I read this earlier this semester and never commented on it, which must mean I basically just read it for fun! Anyways, I really enjoyed this presentation as well, because of the way it touched on some very fundamental ideas about education, like meeting the needs of your students. This need could be considered having a reason for performing well, or making an effort, which is met by providing these various audiences! I really appreciate that you listed out each of these and commented on them, because I think this is now a great resource for us, just in case we want to do something similar in the future.
I'm wondering which idea you found most interesting! I really liked the idea of having a younger audience, because that kind of interaction between varying levels of students can be very rich and mean a lot to each person involved.
Thanks for an exciting and useful post!
Jeni