This is a paradigm shift for my role as the teacher, one that I touched on in my post about how education needs to change. Rather than seeing myself as the content provider, I can best serve as a facilitator for students to learn the information on their own and connect them to resources they might not think of or be able to access on their own. Thus, instead of trying to learn all this information on my own and creating presentations that will hopefully interest my students, I'm going to let them do all of it for me.
Is this an easy way out that reduces my work load? Maybe.
Will they learn the information on a deeper level and with more engagement? Probably.
For instance, one day we will focus on sports. Rather than creating a slide show that lists off information about the sports of Latin America, I'll simply create a short list of the sports I've identified that I'd like my students to learn about and find a few things to print off about each one. In the process of doing so, I'll get a basic understanding of each sport. During class, I will announce the topic (Latin American Sports) and the basic objectives that I want students to learn about (where is it played, who plays it, how is it played, popularity, famous players, etc.) and have stations set up for each sport that includes the information I printed off. Students will go to the stations and begin learning about the sport using the information provided and anything else they can find using their electronic devices. During the first half of class, students will prepare presentations to teach the rest of the class about their sport. In addition to telling the class what they learned and possibly doing a demonstration, students will also be able to email me anything they found online that they'd like to share, like a picture or video, and pull it up on my computer during their presentation.
I'm excited about the collaborative learning experiences doing these mini-projects on "my" time. (Though students can use each other as resources during 20 Time, I want them to work individually on their projects so that working with a friend doesn't prevent them from pursuing what they really want to do. Thus each student will need to do their own project this summer and I will only allow students work in groups in special circumstances this fall, such as needed to work in a group of two because they want to learn and perform a social dance). Part of that is logistics - I have labs reserved for the Genius hour days, but it would be impossible to get one every day. However, by working in groups, it's likely at least one person will have a device with internet access (I made a BIG, BOLD heading at the top of my syllabus telling students to bring their devices EVERY DAY!!!). In addition, because students are focused on a single topic, they can build on each others' ideas and come up with something that they wouldn't have come up with on their own. Moreover, they can motivate each other to keep working and do something great!
In addition to planning lessons like these, I'm also going to take advantage of resources I have access to in order to share Latino Culture with my students, such as members of the community and the Modern Languages lab. I plan on showing 3-4 Latino movies that focus on various themes which I will pre-teach beforehand and then discuss afterwards. We're also taking a field trip to a local empanada shop run by an Argentine and Mexican couple. A representative from the Hispanic Cultural center is going to come and do a Q&A session. While I can't teach these things to my students on my own the way I'd like to, I do have the power to connect my students to these resources where they will be able to learn about Latino culture on a much more engaging, hands-on, and deeper level.
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