Immediately, I knew that I was going to enjoy Chapter 6 by Strong. While the Darth Vader analogy wavered on the side of exaggeration and hyperbole, it made me think: If the education system has been flawed for so long and little has been done to make a nationwide change in the system, is there a proverbial Darth Vader out there? Regardless of whether there is or not, the time has come to rally all of the Han Solo’s and Luke Skywalker’s of the world and start a “teaching-method rebellion.” Traditional and conventional teaching methods and styles have been missing the mark for most students for some time now and a change must be made.
“Assignments by Design” seems to be the Millennium Falcon,
or the “air-CRAFT” (another horrific pun, excuse me) to this educational
rebellion. To be honest, while reading some of this material I thought to
myself, “well, duh.” I thought everyone knew things like, “choose topics with a
purpose—choose topics that make the students pull from their own
experiences—try to give students a choice in their writing assignments.” I thought that anything less was an insult to my students. But,
the harsh reality is, however, we have all had at least ONE teacher who never
even considered a single “design principle.” To have it all laid out in writing
makes assignments by design seem so obvious, but really it’s genius.
Teachers who neglect to utilize assignment by design are
serving a huge disadvantage to their students. As educators we need to guide
students in the direction we want them to go in. It sounds manipulative, but
we’re the teachers, they depend on us to ask thought provoking questions. It is
not our job to ask a questions of them that simply require them to regurgitate
the information they learned in a lecture. We need to be asking questions and
getting them to write in a way so that allows them to apply what they have
already learned so that they can reach their own conclusions. This is how you provoke thought and develop a thirst for learning. STUDENTS FORMING THEIR OWN OPINION?! Taking a personal stance and caring about the this is how you
provoke thought and develop a thirst for learning. School is about teaching students how to think so that they can form their own opinions once they reach "the real world," not cramming their brains with facts so that they can pass the next state exam.
Assignment by design most closely resembles my experience
with AP United States History in my Junior year of high school. While the
course required a tremendous amount of independent study and outside of class reading, the instruction time
was invaluable. Commonly, we would practice writing for the AP exam and to do
this we would write mock DBQs (Document Based Questions). As a student I enjoyed these
questions very much. Typically a writing prompt/question in a history class
falls along the lines of what Strong depicted to sound like, “describe the
political, social, and economical climate of EXAMPLE A.” Questions lacking
depth. APUSH gave a refreshing twist to essay writing. In a well thought out
question/prompt, we were asked to use our prior knowledge of historical events,
people, and concepts and to use the provided historical documents as
evidence in our responses. They were timed as well, and I loved that. Writing
is one of my passions, so to do it well and to do it quickly was always a
challenge that gave me a certain rush. I’m a geek. Anyway – the design of these
particular questions kept me interested in history class that year. The effect
of this teaching method would have been tenfold, however, none of my other
classes followed this design. When so many courses require you to think in such
a linear way, it is hard to adapt your way of thinking for one single subject.
Don’t get me wrong, it was still impactful, even out of a vacuum. I just feel
that if every class strived to teach assignments by design, then our students
will become for stimulated and they will be encouraged to think on higher levels.
I’ve always thought that the purpose of education was to inspire thinking among
students. A student is only willing to
learn new things if they possess the proper tools. Motivation and stimulation
to encourage thinking.
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