I stand at the back of my class, watching my 12th grade Expository Writing and Reading students talk amongst themselves. An hour and half ago, they were out at a lagoon, slogging through muddy, rain-soaked trails and trudging through knee-high scrub brush to collect data on indigenous species. Now, they’re back in class. The activity with the Environmental Science teacher ran shorter than I’d expected, and I have no back-up activity planned for the extra time--no pipeline to funnel their adolescent energy--so most of them are starting to chat with each other or browse on their cell phones. I run through a list of activities in my brain, trying to pluck out one that I could use in this moment to make the time more valuable for them.
Academically speaking, these are good, solid students. I could probably give them any assignment, and the majority of them would jump eagerly into the task, engaging with the material without even a whisper of dissatisfaction. They would create some product that would fit the requirements of the assignment, and their work would be thorough, analytical, and well-composed. But would it be meaningful?
I think about Michael Wesch’s TEDx talk on helping students to be knowledge-able vs. simply knowledgeable. In the video, Wesch stresses that we must encourage students to come together to solve real problems using relevant technology. He provides examples of how people around the world have already harnessed technology to make real-world changes, citing how Greenpeace activists used a video to persuade Unilever (parent company for beauty product producer Dove) to sign a moratorium on rainforest deforestation for palm oil and how four Kenyans created a website during the Kenyan election crisis that allowed citizens with cell phones to report and alert others of critical information.
Wesch goes on to state that we must “convince our students to move beyond just seeking meaning and help them realize that meaning is not something you find, but it is ultimately something you create.”
I agree with Wesch on these points, and many others. The school site where I am working already utilizes a project-based learning approach that incorporates direct community involvement. The students participate in internships that they find and apply to on their own, and the research that they complete during their experience is almost entirely self-guided. I am excited that my students are working on real-world problems that they have identified, rather than having them work on hypothetical scenarios that I would have created, and I plan to use these approaches and activities in my future classes.
But even with all this effort, I still worry about these students. I wonder about what they will do when they are out of school. Will they follow through and do something meaningful in their own right? Will they use their academic skills to reach for something more than what is being asked of them? Technology-wise, they have the means to connect, organize, share, collect, collaborate, and publish--several important elements that Wesch identifies. But, as Wesch says, it is really hard to do all those things. How do we make sure every student is creating meaning for him/herself?
Back in the classroom, one of the teachers on my team remembers some announcements that she needs to make, so we begin to gather the students into rows, narrowly avoiding the crisis for the time being. As I rearrange chairs and direct students, I continue asking myself the questions above. But before I can come up with anything else, the day ends. The students pack up and go, leaving me to ponder these questions on my own for the rest of the afternoon.
M Wesch. (2010, October 12). TEDXKC-Michael Wesch- From Knowledgeable to Knowledge-Able [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeaAHv4UTI8