#thinkrad

[punchingup101]

Rebranding a College English Class

By Kelechi Nwaozuzu, Romulus Khalil, Elizabeth Adams, Carlotta Bresciani, Isabel De Los Santos Ramirez, Dylan Brank, Laksh Makhija, Aditi Umapathy, Tianze Qiu, Noah Pearce

Language in Classrooms (Dylan & Jeffery): 

Things Fall Apart → Colonial History of English class

English taught in schools around the world as the “unifying language”/language of business

Why aren’t more languages accepted in the classroom/business setting?

Incorporation of dialects and sub-languages

English incorporated as an elective class rather than a core class

Teacher-Student Relationship (Romulus & Noah):

The teacher should be delegated to a minor role in the classroom.

Students should educate and lead themselves.

The teacher gives topics and resources; the students will take control from there.

If students are observed straying from the topic, teachers have the right to steer them back onto topic.

Assignment Structure (Aditi & Isabel):

There shall be no graded assignments.

The assignments should encourage a creative mentality and allow the students to express themselves freely. For example, students can write essays in their mother tongue or perform native dances.

Books and poems shall heavily include non-American authors and writers, allowing students to increase their global perspective. 

No strict guidelines shall be enforced on grammatical structure and “sophisticated” language. Colloquial language and slang shall be encouraged to increase language diversity and decrease cultural barriers associated with broken English. Advantages include increasing student interest and helping increase cultural awareness and sensitivity, which allows non-native speakers to connect with native speakers on a deeper level. 

Students shall be able to choose the books to read and movies to watch. This allows students to engage in their interests while being in a learning environment relating to classroom topics and themes.

Physical Appearance of Classroom (Carlotta & Elizabeth):

The seating should be non-traditional to encourage openness and communication. Example: Bean bags, conversion pit, couches, etc.

The teacher is not in the front of the room but is among the students to encourage more of a discussion rather than a lecture environment. 

Whenever the majority of students want the class to go outside it will be.

The classroom is student-decorated and decorated by student work.

Grading (Kelechi): 

Students should be penalized no more than 5 points on an assignment for grammatical errors. In a typical “English” class, more likely than not, there will be students who did not learn English as their first language. Thus, they are at a disadvantage grammatically, compared to other students who learned English as their primary language. Furthermore, the creativity of a student’s work should not be punished due to a few typos and misspellings.

Students must be given a chance to receive feedback on their work before being graded. Effective feedback improves students’ learning patterns and helps them connect their learning and practices with the grades they receive.

Reflection

In our Manifesto, we wrote a commandment style list of rules for our ideal college English class. These included but are not limited to sections about Language in the Classroom, Teacher-Student Relationships, Assignment Structure, Physical Appearance of Classroom, and Grading. Each section has rules to be followed which were thought of collaboratively between one or two of our group members (names follow each section). Our list of rules uses strong and demanding language that some might find as a challenge, which is what we hope to achieve since this is a Manifesto with the main goal being to articulate a radical change, to organize, to create a rallying cry and liberate.

This assignment was part of the wider aim of our English class to punch up against colonialism and the societal norms that have been set by Western colonizers decades ago. By changing the classroom environment, student empowerment is promoted creating a shift in power from the teacher to the students, colonialist ideals are no longer perpetuated by incorporating dialects and sub-languages and a more inclusive, open and communicative environment is created for critical thinking based learning. 

Most of our bullet points were biased to what we believe would be the ideal classroom environment that we would dream to learn in, especially in a course as flexible as a language arts class.

While everyone contributed their ideas and writing of the rules, the labor for the group was divided as such:

Rabble Rouser: Romulus

Representatives: Carlotta, Laksh

Research Team: Dylan, Jeffery, Isabel

Design Team: Noah, Aditi

Skeptic: Kelechi, Elizabeth

Sources

Language:

Things Fall Apart (Canvas)

https://hbr.org/2012/05/global-business-speaks-english 

Assignments:

https://theeducatorsroom.com/exploring-non-traditional-education-in-the-classroom/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/811692?seq=3 

https://global-lt.com/blog/understanding-the-impact-of-slang-on-language-learning 

Physical Appearance:

http://www.literacylovescompany.com/2017/07/flexible-seating-pros-and-cons.html4

https://pin.it/4GxRB2P34 

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/feb/11/schools-students-traditional-teaching

Grading: 

Eight Essential Principles for Improving Grading (ascd.org)

[kalikantzaros]

🌹Η γυναίκα που μπήκε σαν ασπίδα μπροστά για να προστατεύσει τον φοιτητή από τους μπάτσους που άγρια τον χτυπούσαν, η γυναίκα που έσκυψε πάνω του και του μιλούσε, που προσπάθησε να τον σώσει από τα χέρια τους, η γυναίκα που δεν κοίταξε τη δουλίτσα της, είναι σύμφωνα με τη σελίδα Τμήμα Θεάτρου ΑΠΘ: σε κοινή θέα η καθηγήτρια της Σχολής Θεάτρου του ΑΠΘ κυρία Ριτσάτου.

Γεια σου ρε δασκάλα, γεια σου καπετάνισσα. Οh captain! My captain!

Via @Gianna Kouka

#ThinkRadical #ThinkAlternative #ThinkProgressive

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