Image: Meme featuring “Y U No” cartoon, stating “Students Y U NO DO MORE PROJECTS”
Article: It is in the interest of anyone invested in pedagogy to hear out new attempts to instill in students the ideas we want them to take with them through life. Speaking to fellow educators candidly, I found that most of them abhorred spending all their time grading papers — hundreds of them — on the same topic. Papers frequently rob them of sleep and sanity on a regular basis. We sat around the lounge brainstorming new ideas to both interest our students and allow for enough creativity to eliminate the monotony that drives us all steadily insane.
For now, here’s a short list of what we came up with.
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Journal: Today, I tried something new in my classroom. I finally got sick of reading essays of what everyone did over the summer so I finally made changes to the curriculum. Drawing from what I learned in college and high school, I reenacted writing warm ups where they pick two minutes of their week and write about it in as much detail as possible. I’m hoping to assess their creative writing ability as well as their levels of critical thinking and self-reflection. I’ve asked them to keep an online journal since it’s difficult to get them off their phones and we’re saving paper. Here’s hoping it works. Wish me luck.