“Things That Have Worked for Me” are exactly that. This is going to be a short series of posts simply discussing activities, strategies, or materials that have worked for me in my teaching. Nothing here is exhaustingly researched beyond my own classroom experience (often exhausting enough!), nor subject to much more verification than some good days in the classroom. I’m presenting them in the hopes they might bring or spark some good days for you, too!
The Thing:
“News and Culture Journals”
The basics of the assignment are that students are, over the course of a semester, to find a number (five is usually good) of news stories or what I call “cultural artifacts” (songs, artworks, books, movies, TV shows, advertisements) that they believe illustrate or deal with a theme from our course (an example from one of my World Literature classes: the theme of “freedom”). The catch is that these events or items must come from the last five years. In other words, these should be happenings and products more or less of our time. Once they find the things, the students are to write up a one- to two-page analysis of each, explaining what it is, how they think it fits, and explaining any direct connections they see to actual class materials and subjects. Further specifics are infinitely variable – the assignment can be targeted to an area of the world or expanded to include many, genre quotas can be imposed (“at least two news stories” or “no more than three songs, please”) or not, and so on. Usually, I collect a sample one or two early in the semester to give feedback (someone is always out of time frame on something) and then require all of them at the end of the semester. The goal is an ongoing search.
Why It Works:
1 – Students own it.
My experience is that, once they get over a little fear of picking something “wrong” (and I am always very clear that they should ask when in doubt!), students like the freedom to choose. After all, here’s a chance to hit up their favorite news source or listen to their favorite music for class credit! In some cases, they get the good feeling of being able to teach their instructor about a show, a book, a band, and so on that he’s never heard of! In most cases, this leads to more enthusiastic engagement with the material on their part. On my part, I’m getting to see how they apply class-learned analysis skills to outside material. I’m also getting to know a little about their preferences and personalities along the way through what they choose to write about.
2 – It brings the outside in.
Making students look outside the assigned materials sends them the message that what we discuss in a course doesn’t just live inside classroom walls. The time frame restrictions also put the burden on them to decide what fits the theme – no “classics” allowed! Part of the design of the assignment is to let students make connections between what they’re studying and the “real world” – or, at the least, their worlds!
In the last few years, however, I have also seen this exercise become a sounding board for students’ concerns. Black Lives Matter protests, immigration battles, voting and gun rights, and COVID-19 restrictions all showed up again and again. On the one hand, these were what was making news. On the other hand, the analyses could become places where students worked out their thoughts about these things and took a stand on them in a safe forum (I graded depth of analysis, never the slant of it). Here again, they can connect class with what’s on their minds. I learned a lot about what matters to my students.
3 – It’s useful.
There are also many different ways these journals can be used. They can be a self-contained assignment. They can be used as a basis for a class discussion (“everyone bring one of your journals to class Friday”) or to stage in-class debates. They can be worked in to lectures (“Many of you have written about immigration concerns in your journals…well, that’s nothing new to American history…”). In some shorter-format classes (e.g., summer or winter terms), I’ve used them as extra credit. They are easily adaptable to online forum posting for virtual or hybrid courses. Of course, the content can also be mined for student aptitude and interests, and – because the assignment asks for ties to course materials and concepts – to see what in the course itself students have a good grasp of or interest in.
Not to mention: if it goes as it should, it’s useful to the students, too, by giving them some new lenses with which to read the news or watch their shows. It might just make them more critical readers and consumers…
Brantley Craig 