Picture this- it is late May in a typical suburban high school. A teacher decides that this is the best time for his Senior English classes to begin their "research paper," and has signed them up for an entire week in the library. He rationalizes the timing, because he really just has them gathering a few facts about the year they were born. Now we could have a discussion about all of the things are wrong with this logic and easily scrutinize the pedagogy of this assignment, in fact I tried. But the fact is, the situation was real and I was faced with a week of dis-engaged seniors who were not being challenged to think, let alone research...
I had seen these students every year since ninth grade for some sort of research project, so I knew they already had the basic skills they would need for their research (although one could easily argue that the only skills needed were copy & paste). Most of the students in this particular group were not college-bound and the few that were would be going to the local community college. The teacher had clearly set low expectations and my guess is he thought I would follow suit. But because I value equity and believe that the information fluency skills I teach are valuable for life, I didn't compromise my objectives.
My basic goal for my seniors was always to prepare them for finding useful articles in a college-level database. I would teach them how to find scholarly journals, to search specific periodicals and to find articles written by a particular author. I told them how this was useful not only for college -level research papers, but for their lives. My standard example was if they needed to look up something a doctor had told them or if they wanted to research a company they were applying to a job for. Did they need to know this for this ridiculously easy assignment- no- but they needed to know it for their real lives. I told them to at least give it a try while they were still in high school, so that I would be around to help them if they had questions.
I had a good rapport with my students so they listened respectfully that first day. And on day two, they confidently went to the computers to copy, paste and be done. The real reason they wanted to be in the library was the air conditioning. But one student, a young man I had seen but never spoken with came to sit down at my desk. I would later find out his name was Chuck.
He came over and said "I looked at that thing you told us about." Great! What were you looking for? Chuck went on to tell me that a friend had invited him to this meeting about an "entrepreneurial opportunity" and he wasn't sure. He said he thinks it was a pyramid scheme and that even though his parents think he should do it, he wanted to look into it more and speak to me. I told him I was proud that he was being a critical thinker and carefully balanced the tightrope of not inserting my own opinion in the matter. Chuck told me about some tapes he had been given and that he was researching the name of the guy who put them out and he found some mixed reviews. The period ended and he thanked me for listening.
Every day for the rest of the week Chuck came and sat at my desk for a good portion of the period to tell me about what he was thinking in relation to the math behind the "opportunity" and what that would really mean to him. It was a privilege that he trusted me to work this out beside him and I did my best to listen and respect his learning process.
A few weeks later I saw his class in the computer lab (still working on the same project) and stopped in to ask him what he had decided to do. He told me that he felt that it was not a good option for him but that his brother decided to do it. He thanked me for listening. I don't know if Chuck actually did his assignment, but I do know that he learned everything I could have hoped and I considered this to be one of my greatest accomplishments for the year.
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