In my last blog, I highlighted the Hardy Holiday Expo. It was an incredible event that was student-led and showcased the students' beautiful work. Three other schools held school-wide expos in December: Georgie Tyler Middle School, Smithfield High School and Windsor High School. All the events provided an opportunity for students to display and discuss their work with a audience beyond their classroom. Making student work public is a very important component of project based learning. Below is an excerpt from the book, An Ethic of Excellence, by Ron Berger that
explains why showcasing student work with a wider audience is significant. At the end of the blog, I have a link to a brief video with highlights from the four school-wide expos. I am very proud of the students, the teachers and administrators who coordinated these outstanding events. If you haven't been to an expo yet, please monitor the website calendar for dates, times and locations of future events. I hope to see you there.
I had no audience
while doing my work when I was a student and no sense that my work meant
something to someone. Actually, I did
have a singular audience: my teacher. I
turned in my work to a teacher who returned it with a grade, occasionally a
comment. The importance of the work
seemed to singular: pleasing, or at least satisfying, the teacher. The larger world had no interest in or
knowledge of my work. My friends didn’t
care about the quality of my work or even whether it was done. My family cared simply that the grades on my
report card be good. The work I did was
really a private affair.
There were rare
occasions when my work was public and these moments carried an entirely
different sense of pressure and importance.
Many decades later I still remember the times I worried about doing a
good job: the time in second grade when I was chosen to paint a fish on the
class ocean mural; the time in fourth grade when my friend and I sang a short
solo in a Christmas concert; the times I was at bat in Little League baseball
games; the times in high school I wrote articles for the school newspaper,
played in soccer games, or acted in school plays. There was a reason to worry
about quality in these settings: The world, or at least my world, was watching
me. People cared about how well I did. I didn’t want to let them down.
Every final draft my
students complete is done for an outside audience. It may be for a small
audience of Kindergarten children or for a national audience on educational
television. Either way, my role as
teacher is not as the sole judge of their work but rather similar to that of a
sports coach or a play director: I am helping them to get their work ready for
the public eye. There is a reason to do the work well and it’s not just because
the teacher wants it that way.
