STUDENT CHOICE

We know that students like structured assignments and clear expectations. As teachers, providing students with these things makes our lives easier as well—we know what we’re looking for and we’re familiar with the subject, so grading is a relatively simple task.

We can assign students a prompt that says, “Compare and contrast Ralph and Jack’s leadership in Lord of the Flies,” and expect subtly different papers, but there’s only so much students can do within this parameter. Furthermore, our teacher instinct will want to point out where student logic is flawed, or where they might be missing what we think is the most important and obvious piece of evidence in this argument. There are only so many ideas students can generate to answer a prompt like this, and teachers who know the book backwards and forwards know which ideas fly and which do not. This type of assignment is as structured as it gets, and yet it completely stifles any sort of student creativity.

So here’s the compromise between freedom and structure: providing students with the ability to choose what they want to write about within teacher-set boundaries. While I was student teaching in a seventh grade general English Language Arts class, students were given a research assignment. Each student had to identify a world issue, summarize the issue (including causes and who or what it affects), and propose a solution to the issue. The assignment instructions were clear; every student knew exactly what they needed to accomplish and understood how they would be assessed. Although the world issues were different, each student was asked to do the same task. This ensured that the assignment was fair (every student did the same amount of work) and it was easily gradable with a generalized rubric. However, because students could choose their topic, they had the opportunity to investigate something interesting and meaningful to them. Topics chosen ranged from endangered species to teen suicide.

Jessica Singer Early sums this up pretty well in her book Stirring Up Justice. She says, “The list of things I care about and want to see change goes on and on; however, this is my list, not my students’. I want my classes to have the opportunity to read, write, research, and present their own interests and causes” (Early 10). When students are given the option to investigate a topic they’re interested in, we don’t have to worry about stifling their ideas or assigning them a prompt that they loathe. Although students won’t turn in cookie-cutter papers, providing choice within specific parameters ensures that we can still grade the assignment easily and fairly. Furthermore, students will still know exactly what’s expected of them, but they’ll have the freedom to present more creative ideas.