viz.

Well. So much for being technologically savvy. After telling my students that I couldn’t find her bio anywhere, they hopped on the computer and found it within seconds. “Uh, Mrs. Wagner? I googled Annie Leonard and found her bio, right here on the Story of Stuff site.” In my head I thanked my years of teaching experience for my ability to not know something in front of my class. But anyhow, let me describe this class to you because it really worked well.

As I wrote in the last post, I showed the Story of Stuff in my class because it’s an engaging video with some problems. When we got back to class this past Tuesday, I asked the class to recap the video and then to continue the discussion of its weaker points. The first part of the discussion was more on audience. Because, as they’d pointed out, the narrator’s tone of voice is a bit condescending to them, the students thought maybe the audience could be younger, maybe in middle or high school. But then the vocabulary she used and the nature of the topic led them to dismiss that as an audience. One student suggested that Leonard would want her audience to be those who can make a difference, and he believed that would be people with financial resources at their disposal. A debate ensued over whether those with the luxury of financial security really are the only ones who can create political and social change.

Then another student wondered whether Leonard had really argued a proposal or just a position in this video. Was her intention just education and awareness, or did she want us to do something? We watched the end again and found that she’d proposed that we “unite” and that to find other ways of making changes, we can “click around” on the Story of Stuff website. All proposals. This student agreed that there were proposals but held to his belief that Leonard’s political standpoint might be down the road of “ecosocialism” (a term he used that I haven’t heard before) or even violent revolution.

I asked the class to pair up and discuss how they were going to write a rhetorical analysis on the video, and all of them immediately got online and started looking around. Their level of engagement was higher than I’d seen for any subject. They were on a mission to find out what this woman was doing. In their searches, they found not only her bio, but Leonard’s list of proposals and a Daily Kos article reviewing the video. One of the students looking at her proposals was Mr. Ecosocialism, and he pointed out that two of them confirmed his suspicions about Leonard’s politics. The first was “7. Park your car and walk…and when necessary MARCH!” Yes, it sounds radical, but when reading the subsequent description, we found that she’s suggesting peaceful protests. So much for violent revolution. The second was “9. Recycle your trash…and, recycle your elected officials.” Well, maybe a little peaceful revolution is what she’s going for.

Thursday, the class turned in their rhetorical analyses, and to a person they said that two pages was too short. This, from students who normally were hitting just over a page long on their other ones. I wished I’d used the video earlier as they were just starting in the class. This generation is so visually oriented that it makes sense to use a visual text first. That way, they can draw on what they know already—what makes a good video, a good cartoon, a good internet site? They have something to say at the start, and then they can learn the technical rhetorical terms for their thoughts and ideas rather than assuming it’s all new information. Give them a reason or a connection to calling something “ethos” or “pathos” and its relevance might be just that clearer to them.