Yesterday
I and several of our students and colleagues presented at the Louisiana Council
of Teachers of English Conference in Natchitoches, Louisiana. It seemed as if
all of us presenters have bought into the idea that the more gimmicky our
session’s title, the more likely attendees would go to our sessions. Some
examples were “Let’s Talk,” “What’s on Your Reading List?” and “Visceral
Academic Vocabulary.” Mine was “Reel Teaching,” and in our session we examined
flipped teaching, blogging, creating digital book trailers, and teaching with
reality television pedagogy (one of my research areas).
One
of the more interesting ones was “Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.” In this
session, freshman compositions professors Mckinna and Riveria describe how they
reconstructed their freshman composition courses to get students to think about
themselves as zombies, warm bodies, and humans and how understanding these
three archetypes can help them improve their writing skills. They also tweaked
their writing assignments to include zombie-themed prompts and an analysis of
informational literature on surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.
I
love a good gimmick and often tell my students that gimmicks are a good way to
“trick your students into learning.” According to Merriam-Webster, a gimmick is
“a method or trick that is used to get
people's attention or to sell something.” And, the term doesn’t always have a
positive connotation. In fact, when I asked Emery just now what a gimmick was,
he said it was “a scam.”
But I use them all of
the time—remember Tech-free Thursdays? But, I completely understand the problems
with teaching and parenting with gimmicks—trends are often transitory, students
sometimes don’t find a teacher’s co-opting of their cultural artifacts cool,
and life isn’t going to supply you with endless gimmicks to get you to get a
job done. I wonder what lessons we are unintentionally teaching if we use
gimmicks? Who knows, they could inspire the next marketing genius.
Are you a fan of gimmicks?
No comments:
Post a Comment