Alright Stop! Collaborate and Listen!

In our last class we devised a lesson plan for a class, or series of classes, around the New York soda ban and examined how we could potentially incorporated into our individual disciples.  Breaking off by teaching fields left me in a precarious and unusual place as I was assigned to the History/Social Studies group rather than the Math group I had used to.  As an undergrad I developed a passion for and eventually majored in Comparative Religious Studies and in hopes of putting the degree to some use I am attempting to pursue a teaching ‘minor’ in History, but with that being said my focus and coursework has been on teaching math.  Consequently, I was left unprepared for a discussion on utilizing the soda ban in a history setting.  Whilst this focus on math may have put me behind the eight ball in comparison to my comrades it also gave me a different perspective on the ban.  My initial thought about how I would use the ban in a social studies setting was to utilize it as a gateway into a discussion on government and what my students think its purpose should be, is this sort of social legislation something we want our government to be doing?  What sort of government is ideal a small or big government?

As a group after a not-quite-heated but enthusiastic debate on the merits of the ban and our different interpretations on how to use it we settled on a classroom debate centered around its not only its merits, but its historical connections as well.  From here we then continued to repeatedly expand our lesson plan to incorporate more and more information and detail when it could conceivably be used in a history class.  After a lengthy discussion we eventually settled on using the ban when talking about the 1920s and 1930s as a way to discuss Prohibition and how it was not a historical blip or a unique occurrence, but rather part of a historical trend.  After introducing the topic of Prohibition and providing some background information we would then question the class something along the lines of: Do you think this sort of legislation could ever happen today or was this a one time occurrence?  After a brief period of class discussion/thoughts we would tell them about the proposed soda ban and end the class with a 5 minute YouTube video of Mayor Bloomberg defending the ban in a television interview.  On day two we would have a discussion about propaganda along with primary and secondary sources as we have the students compare side-by-side propaganda for and against Prohibition with the correlating propaganda for the soda ban.  During the second half of the class we would divide the class into groups of 5-6 students and assign them a role/perspective that will have a certain outlook on the ban, for instance construction works would likely be opposed to the ban as getting one large drink to last an entire day is easier than multiple small ones while another group might be Bloomberg’s health advisors.  The students would then in their groups begin researching their perspectives and how to defend their support or opposition to the ban.  Our librarian who guided our discussion suggested we have the librarian create some sort of document or webpage with a list of potential sources or sites for the students to utilize in their research so they would not be bogged down in the process.  Finally, on the third day we planned for each group to give a brief 2-3 sentence explanation of who they represent and their view of the ban.  After all the groups have shared they would be grouped by those for the ban and those against and a teacher guided debate would ensue.  As part of the evaluation of their understanding the groups would also have to write a short op-ed piece from the viewpoint of their assigned role utilizing the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and 2 additional sources.

The most enlightening and somewhat depressing part of developing a class plan as a group is that it forced me to realize that my default teaching method is a predominantly lecture-centric approach or a general discussion of topics.  Hopefully this unconscious trend toward lecturing will be altered before I begin teaching classes myself for while it might have been effective for me when I was a student many people find it boring and unengaging (an opinion with which I would generally agree).  The fact that our lesson plan turned out significantly better than what I probably would’ve planned had I been doing this project alone made crystal clear how effective collaboration can be, but it also left me a little unsettled as to how much weaker my solo lesson plan was.  I want to give my students the best classroom experience possible and this project illustrated that I still have a ways to go.  Fortunately, judging by some of the responses from my peers I was not the only one with this sentiment.

Smorgasbord Fun Fact: The only member of ZZ Top without a beard is Frank Beard!

Obligatory Title Citation: