Visual Aids

This week, I gave my 7th grade English kidlets an assignment to outline and write a speech.

They were cool with that... until I told them that they would also be delivering those speeches in front of their peers later in the week.



They retaliated by filling my classroom with their very much required, and thus very much resented visual aids. It was a nonviolent form of protest, but it still managed to make their displeasure with the situation come through loud and clear. Gandhi and Rosa Parks would be so proud.

The speeches were an extension of a short story that we read in class last week called, "Zebra," by Chaim Potok. In the story, the main character takes a summer school class that changes his life for the better. The kidlet's assignment was to think up a summer school class that they would want to take, and then write a speech that would convince the school board to allow the class while also convincing other junior high kids to register for it. Part of the assignment was to bring some sort of visual aid to illustrate their topic.
The first question the kidlets had when I mentioned the "visual aid" part of the assignment was if pets would be appropriate visual aids. Having given this and various other speaking assignments over the past few years, I was prepared for that particular question. After having students bring horses, ducks, birds, turtles, and ferrets to class during my first year of teaching, I had quickly created a rule to deal with living, breathing visual aid situations. If it can sit in a box in the corner and not make any noise, the creature can stay in my room all day; but if it is big, loud, distracting and there is any chance, however small, that it might poop on my floor, a parent has to bring the creature to school right before the speech and then take it home right after.
Over the last two days, I listened to presentations plugging several pet-care summer school classes, along with two "How to be a good babysitter" summer school class proposals. And in keeping with the big, loud, distracting, and potential pooping rule, small children were not allowed to hang out in the corner of my classroom with the other crawling critters, despite their older siblings many assurances that they would be wearing diapers the whole time.

The visual aids didn't have to be alive. They also didn't have to be expensive or fancy. Kids who gave speeches on soccer-themed summer school classes brought shoes and/or balls. Shoes were also the visual aid of choice for one creative kidlet who proposed offering a class on how to run through the halls of the school without getting hurt.

Over the course of the speech delivery days, my classroom played host to bikes, skateboards, musical instruments, games, and toys of every variety. I would try to guess which class each kidlet was going to be pushing by looking at the visual aids they hauled in with them. Sometimes I was right, and sometimes I was very, very wrong. When one little guy lugged in a giant remote control car, I never dreamed I would be listening to a speech supporting a "how to hot wire a car" class. Even more surprising, in his two minute speech that covered the reasons for the class and the proposed curriculum, not once did he ever mention the stealing of cars. Not once in two minutes.
Because this is a red state, we had plenty of speeches on hunting classes, shooting classes, care of weapons classes, and the manufacture of small explosives classes. Of course, the kidlets couldn't bring those kinds of visual aids on the bus with them, so parents were once again recruited to bring all guns and swords into the school office before the speeches. Unfortunately, I forgot to let the office staff know that this was a speech week and therefore parents would be walking in with all manner of rifles, shotguns, and swords. Remind me to send some chocolates to the secretaries on Monday.

One kid was having a hard time coming up with a topic for his speech during our in-class work time. I told him that his speech would be easier for him to write if he chose a topic that he already knew something about. He said he didn't know about anything, so I asked him what he does after he gets home from school. "Eat sugar," was his reply. "So you could design a class about candy making or candy tasting or candy appreciation," I suggested. "I didn't mean I ate candy," the kidlet said,"I mean I eat sugar. Just plain sugar." After making a mental note to discuss that with his parents at conferences, I asked him more questions about his sugar consumption. He ended up giving designing a class that combined his love of sugar with dental hygiene. He got a 97%.

Some kids went with some "old school" visual aids. There were posters for sports-themed classes, drawings for art classes, and collages for classes about different celebrities.

One of my favorite hand-made visual aids was this duo of pictures drawn by one kidlet to illustrate the importance of his "snake handling" summer school class.

Some students chose to create their visual aids on the spot, utilizing my chalk board. They sketched and explained football plays, soccer defenses, and nuclear fuel cell reactor technology. One girl used the chalk to demonstrate why students needed to take her proposed cooking class. The stick figure on the right took her class, learned how to use the oven properly, and made a yummy treat. The stick figure on the left didn't take the class and accidentally lit their head on fire while trying to boil water.

We had two "extreme pogoing" summer school class presentations.

We also had a speech about a "sleeping" summer school class, wherein the student had arranged for one of his friends to act as a visual aid and demonstrate proper sleeping techniques. Genius.

Another of my favorite visual aids was a simple roll of toilet paper a student brought to illustrate his speech on offering a "toilet papering" summer school class. He did a great job making his case for offering such a class. He pointed out that the students would learn spacial reasoning skills, practice math skills in real world settings, and develop artistic abilities.

The speeches that were the most popular with the kids were those that involved edible visual aids. I was pretty found of the too beccause it meant that I didn't have to pack any grapes to school for two days, or break into my emergency stash of granola bars. As long as I reminded the kidlets to wash their hands between pet speeches and food speeches, I had plenty of cookies and brownies to sustain me.

I was in visual aid heaven...until one little girl broke out her visual aid: CUPCAKES.

I have been avoiding cupcakes all week, ever since making about twelve batches of cupcakes and eighteen batches of frosting for Elizabeth and Ratha's wedding last weekend.

Still sporting an open, oozing wound from my last interaction with cupcakes, I was somewhat reluctant to partake. My nearly-knuckle-less finger started to ache just looking at it.

I thought about ignoring it, but I couldn't have just left if sitting there untouched, right? I mean, what would it have done to that poor kid's self esteem to have her visual aid rejected by her teacher in front of her whole English class? That is the kind of trauma that a 'tween just doesn't come back from. But my love of visual aids (and chocolate) eventually overcame my newly developed fear of baked goods, and I scarfed the cupcake before settling in to listen to the next speech.

The things I do for the children.

I guess teaching really is a labor of love.