I have just finished teaching ‘Rhetoric Skills: Theory and Practice’. It’s the first time I have taught the semester-long course for first-year BA and preservice teachers and retraining students studying towards their teaching certificate in EFL. Due to the college closure and three periods of lockdown during the semester, I taught the course online. I have already written about my informal meetings with some of the students here. The cohort made up of 42 students was heterogeneous and included students from many Israeli cultural groups. Meeting with Jewish students, both religious and secular, Christians and Muslims from a broad geographical radius in the north of Israel, made the experience richer and more stimulating. I taught the course entirely in English, as all the students are studying to be English teachers. The English language, a common target and vehicle for communication, brought us together and blurred the differences between us. English endowed a sense of equal opportunity, which unfortunately isn’t always present enough in a Hebrew college of higher education where many Arabic-speaking students study in their second or third language.
I want to focus today on a study unit in which student choice was of paramount significance.
After learning about rhetoric, its background and importance, and a unit on public speaking skills (which included this terrific video), I asked students to prepare and present a short speech. I spent ages trying to decide what the speech topic should be and how the students should present their ideas in the COVID19 reality of online learning.
Choice of topic: Choose a subject close to your heart
I decided to take a step back and to let the students take the stage. I asked the students to choose their own topic for their speech and urged them to select an issue close to their hearts. I explained that I wanted them to talk about something that they don’t need to research, a topic important in their everyday lives. I wanted them to focus on their rhetoric skills and concentrate on the presentation techniques we had spoken about. I wasn’t interested in hearing 42 speeches on the same topic; I wanted to listen to the students, feel them, and the backgrounds they were bringing to the class. I hoped to put each student’s uniqueness centre stage.
Choice of aim: Do you want to inform us, change our opinion or make us change our behaviour?
I also required the students to choose their aim for the speech. Initially, I thought that preparing an argumentative or persuasive speech should be expected, but again, I decided to step back and let the students, their topics and their inclinations lead. I had no idea what would emerge and how.
Some of the students found it challenging to find an appropriate topic. Some of them (especially some of the younger students coming right out of high school), were bewildered by my request and were unused to making decisions about academic tasks. Some of the students felt that they didn’t have anything interesting to tell, and others had something to share but didn’t feel it would capture the audience’s attention. Many of these students attended our informal Zoom sessions to think through their choice with me.
Choice of digital platform: Do you want to feel the audience while you are speaking?
I offered an additional choice to present their speech live in a synchronous Zoom session or record their talk on the Flipgrid platform they already knew. There were advantages and disadvantages involved in both options, and some of the students discussed them with me. After they had decided on the platform, I allowed them to choose the date they preferred for giving their speech.
I asked the students to inform me in a Google Form of their chosen topic, their preferred platform for presentation and their preferred date. The range of topics amazed me, and I began to envisage the presentations. Some of the speech titles on the list disclosed the subject or the speaker’s aim: ‘Building your own computer’, ‘How to make the world a better place in four simple steps’ or ‘The benefits of learning online and why it should be kept in the long-run (even after Covid-19)’. Other topics were more abstract or obscure: ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, ‘Cool Like Chris’, or ‘Dream Check’. Some of the titles appeared informative: ‘Printed Meat’, ‘What is unschooling?’, ‘Chocolate’, and ‘Languages’ but some, in fact, were persuasive presentations.
What struck me most, when reading the list, and then again when I listened to the speakers, was the students’ willingness, to open up their hearts and share their personal lives, even though they had never met each other face-to-face. Speeches like ‘My experience with the hijab (scarf)’, ‘How Videogames Influenced My Life’, ‘Being an adopted child’, ‘My experience with Covid-19’, ‘My Experience with Bullying’ and ‘My grandfather as an inspiration’ were all deeply personal and exposing. Many of these talks brought tears to our eyes. I was deeply aware that a rich atmosphere of support and community was developing, despite the physical distance and the myriad of differences between us.
Without inviting student choice, those special moments of intent listening, empathy, identification with others from other religious, linguistic and cultural groups would probably never have emerged. Student choice allowed these students to bring themselves, their lives and their communities to the forefront of our academic engagement. Student choice provided a learning experience far beyond anything I had imagined.
