Authenticity of Audience
Exhibitions are worthwhile, but they certainly are not a silver bullet. To have the benefits noted above, exhibitions must be thoughtful woven in the culture of a school. Even well-done exhibitions raise lots of questions and wonderings that educators need to grapple with. For example, I mentioned above the power of audiences. Yet, not all audiences are created equal. For a recent exhibition I helped organize, the primary audience was parents. A few weeks before the exhibition, an 8th grade student, who was working on a superheroes of justice comic book project, said a few days before the exhibition:
Why does this matter anyways? Only our parents are going to see it.
A few other students mumbled in agreement. That student expressed a question that I saw as arise in several exhibitions this year: who is the audience? Ideally the most powerful audience is the one that is most authentic to the work. For example, for the comic book project we had planned to invite advocates from organizations related to the issues students were highlighting in their comic books. The goal was that those advocates would use the comic books in raising awareness about that particular issue. This would give the comic book an authentic purpose and an authentic audience. While a few experts who students invite did attend our exhibition, the audience was primarily parents. Expeditionary Learning uses a hierarchy of audiences that moves from teacher, to parents, to the school community, to a public audience beyond the school community, to people capable of critique and finally to be in service. One of the criteria they include in their handbook on designing projects is that the project has an authentic audience. In the Expeditionary Learning Core Practices resource it states:
Student products often meet an authentic need and have an audience and purpose beyond families or the classroom teacher (p. 25)
Having parents as an audience is certainly better than keeping the work only within in the classroom. Inviting parent to view their students work also strengthens connections between families and school. than simply the teacher and also having them as the audience for the exhibition, strengthens ties between families and schools. Yet, having parents as the sole audience can be limiting. For example, for our superheroes of justice comic, we could have engaged advocates from the start and asked they what they needed to be able to more effectively raise awareness about their issue. This would have given the work a more authentic purpose and that would have undoubtedly strengthened the students’ motivation. Ultimately I would argue the strongest projects and products are those which make a difference in the world. Easier said than done, but something to aspire to.
Celebrate or Critique
Exhibition is an exciting moment for teachers and students. After weeks or even months of work, they are showing their work to the world. Nothing is more personal than what we create and therefore presenting our work publically create vulnerability. In addition, exhibitions are normally times full of celebration and excitement. Teachers and students should feel proud of what they accomplished. Yet, within that celebration, for an exhibition to effectively push work towards excellence, there needs to be room for critique. At first it can feel difficult to have a critique lens during exhibition. After all, the work is “complete”; the project is done and may or may not be repeated.
Yet, if we don’t honestly examine our work, we can’t grow. What’s more, students know when their work doesn’t showcase their best work and we don’t do them any favors by only celebrating a product they know could be improved. When we value work and the people who create it, we owe them respectful critique that is kind, specific and helpful. We need to ask ourselves and our colleagues if the work meets the criteria that was set, where we can celebrate, where is there is room for growth, and what we might do differently next time. The critique in an exhibition should be transferable, meaning since the project is over any feedback students and teachers receive should be transferrable to their practice, to their next project. For example, for our superhero comic project, it might not be helpful to tell a student he should have consistently outlined all this drawings during an exhibition, but it is helpful to point out the idea of consistency and how it relates to craftsmanship and then give the outlining as a specific example.
Creating a space for reflection and critique during and after an exhibition is a key element in making that exhibition as powerful a tool as possible to deepen learning. In addition to ensuring students receive honest feedback, it’s also important to take time as a staff to reflect on the exhibition.
The Sizzle, the Steak, and the Sophistication
Exhibitions are both an opportunity to showcase the substance of student work and to do so in an engaging way. These two elements are sometimes described as “the sizzle” and “the steak.” As Patton (2014) describes,
Exhibitions are worthwhile, but they certainly are not a silver bullet. To have the benefits noted above, exhibitions must be thoughtful woven in the culture of a school. Even well-done exhibitions raise lots of questions and wonderings that educators need to grapple with. For example, I mentioned above the power of audiences. Yet, not all audiences are created equal. For a recent exhibition I helped organize, the primary audience was parents. A few weeks before the exhibition, an 8th grade student, who was working on a superheroes of justice comic book project, said a few days before the exhibition:
Why does this matter anyways? Only our parents are going to see it.
A few other students mumbled in agreement. That student expressed a question that I saw as arise in several exhibitions this year: who is the audience? Ideally the most powerful audience is the one that is most authentic to the work. For example, for the comic book project we had planned to invite advocates from organizations related to the issues students were highlighting in their comic books. The goal was that those advocates would use the comic books in raising awareness about that particular issue. This would give the comic book an authentic purpose and an authentic audience. While a few experts who students invite did attend our exhibition, the audience was primarily parents. Expeditionary Learning uses a hierarchy of audiences that moves from teacher, to parents, to the school community, to a public audience beyond the school community, to people capable of critique and finally to be in service. One of the criteria they include in their handbook on designing projects is that the project has an authentic audience. In the Expeditionary Learning Core Practices resource it states:
Student products often meet an authentic need and have an audience and purpose beyond families or the classroom teacher (p. 25)
Having parents as an audience is certainly better than keeping the work only within in the classroom. Inviting parent to view their students work also strengthens connections between families and school. than simply the teacher and also having them as the audience for the exhibition, strengthens ties between families and schools. Yet, having parents as the sole audience can be limiting. For example, for our superheroes of justice comic, we could have engaged advocates from the start and asked they what they needed to be able to more effectively raise awareness about their issue. This would have given the work a more authentic purpose and that would have undoubtedly strengthened the students’ motivation. Ultimately I would argue the strongest projects and products are those which make a difference in the world. Easier said than done, but something to aspire to.
Celebrate or Critique
Exhibition is an exciting moment for teachers and students. After weeks or even months of work, they are showing their work to the world. Nothing is more personal than what we create and therefore presenting our work publically create vulnerability. In addition, exhibitions are normally times full of celebration and excitement. Teachers and students should feel proud of what they accomplished. Yet, within that celebration, for an exhibition to effectively push work towards excellence, there needs to be room for critique. At first it can feel difficult to have a critique lens during exhibition. After all, the work is “complete”; the project is done and may or may not be repeated.
Yet, if we don’t honestly examine our work, we can’t grow. What’s more, students know when their work doesn’t showcase their best work and we don’t do them any favors by only celebrating a product they know could be improved. When we value work and the people who create it, we owe them respectful critique that is kind, specific and helpful. We need to ask ourselves and our colleagues if the work meets the criteria that was set, where we can celebrate, where is there is room for growth, and what we might do differently next time. The critique in an exhibition should be transferable, meaning since the project is over any feedback students and teachers receive should be transferrable to their practice, to their next project. For example, for our superhero comic project, it might not be helpful to tell a student he should have consistently outlined all this drawings during an exhibition, but it is helpful to point out the idea of consistency and how it relates to craftsmanship and then give the outlining as a specific example.
Creating a space for reflection and critique during and after an exhibition is a key element in making that exhibition as powerful a tool as possible to deepen learning. In addition to ensuring students receive honest feedback, it’s also important to take time as a staff to reflect on the exhibition.
The Sizzle, the Steak, and the Sophistication
Exhibitions are both an opportunity to showcase the substance of student work and to do so in an engaging way. These two elements are sometimes described as “the sizzle” and “the steak.” As Patton (2014) describes,
The "sizzle" normally refers to the look of an exhibition--particularly the transformation of classrooms into unrecognizable, magical-looking spaces--while the "steak" refers to the actual content of the exhibition--the way that learning is demonstrated through work.
Patton (2014), however, gives this dichotomy a helpful push:
"sizzle" and "steak" are generally described as different, even opposing qualities, but when you cook a steak, the "sizzle" is the sound of raw material being transformed into something digestible. So "sizzle" strikes me as a defining feature of beautiful work--information shaped by students into something that is both palatable and comprehensible to visitors who attend the exhibition.
Both substance and presentation are important elements to creating an effective exhibition. The work needs to matter, be of high quality and be display in a way that engages the audience so they care about it. Balancing presentation and substance, however, is not always easy. It can be tempting to emphasize the sizzle in an exhibition to engage your audience and sizzle, either too much or not enough, can distort how we interpret the steak. For example it’s possible to have a project where students were engaged in sophisticated thinking and complex analysis be exhibited in a way that doesn’t highlight its strengths. It’s also possible to have an exhibit focus too much on presentation and masks its lack of substance. An effective exhibition balances sizzle and steak so that the sizzle highlights the steak.
Beautiful Work and Personalization
We owe it to students to hold them to a high standard of work and we need to acknowledge that students bring different talents and passions to the work. These two ideas are both in tension with one another and support one another. When we recognize students talents and passions by personalizing their learning we can push them further than is possible in settings where everyone needs to create the exact same product. At the same time, personalizing learning means divergent outcomes in the work that’s created.
This does not necessarily mean allowing for radically different products. In fact, products does not seem like the best place to allow for student choice because when the goal is beautiful work, it’s important that project structure provides support for students around the final product. In projects where students could choose their final products, quality was not as high as projects where teachers taught students not only the content, but also how to create the final product. It does, however, mean that you might provide different scaffolds to different students and/or expect different levels of work from different students. All students should do their best and create beautiful work, but that might look different for different students.
Within this framework, it might be easy to slip into the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Because outcomes can be different for different students, inequitable outcomes are possible. For example, assumptions about students based on their skills, backgrounds, or previous performance might influence what educator expect of them. There’s no simple solution for this tension. Instead, I would suggest what is needed is an understanding of equity that is rooted in the idea of each student fulfilling his/her full potential. This understanding of equity is an interesting combination of two of the equity stances developed by the National School Reform Faculty: Equity as Personalized Opportunity and Equity as Equal Results. Equity as personalized opportunity means that education is designed to meet students’ unique needs. Equity as equalized results is simply that students perform in a way that meets a predetermined standard. These ideas are synthesized in Fuller’s (2010) idea of equity as “engaging in the practice of freedom.” Though engaging in the practice of freedom is a common goal for all students, an equal result, it is different for each student who may practice freedom differently.
Patton (2014), however, gives this dichotomy a helpful push:
"sizzle" and "steak" are generally described as different, even opposing qualities, but when you cook a steak, the "sizzle" is the sound of raw material being transformed into something digestible. So "sizzle" strikes me as a defining feature of beautiful work--information shaped by students into something that is both palatable and comprehensible to visitors who attend the exhibition.
Both substance and presentation are important elements to creating an effective exhibition. The work needs to matter, be of high quality and be display in a way that engages the audience so they care about it. Balancing presentation and substance, however, is not always easy. It can be tempting to emphasize the sizzle in an exhibition to engage your audience and sizzle, either too much or not enough, can distort how we interpret the steak. For example it’s possible to have a project where students were engaged in sophisticated thinking and complex analysis be exhibited in a way that doesn’t highlight its strengths. It’s also possible to have an exhibit focus too much on presentation and masks its lack of substance. An effective exhibition balances sizzle and steak so that the sizzle highlights the steak.
Beautiful Work and Personalization
We owe it to students to hold them to a high standard of work and we need to acknowledge that students bring different talents and passions to the work. These two ideas are both in tension with one another and support one another. When we recognize students talents and passions by personalizing their learning we can push them further than is possible in settings where everyone needs to create the exact same product. At the same time, personalizing learning means divergent outcomes in the work that’s created.
This does not necessarily mean allowing for radically different products. In fact, products does not seem like the best place to allow for student choice because when the goal is beautiful work, it’s important that project structure provides support for students around the final product. In projects where students could choose their final products, quality was not as high as projects where teachers taught students not only the content, but also how to create the final product. It does, however, mean that you might provide different scaffolds to different students and/or expect different levels of work from different students. All students should do their best and create beautiful work, but that might look different for different students.
Within this framework, it might be easy to slip into the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Because outcomes can be different for different students, inequitable outcomes are possible. For example, assumptions about students based on their skills, backgrounds, or previous performance might influence what educator expect of them. There’s no simple solution for this tension. Instead, I would suggest what is needed is an understanding of equity that is rooted in the idea of each student fulfilling his/her full potential. This understanding of equity is an interesting combination of two of the equity stances developed by the National School Reform Faculty: Equity as Personalized Opportunity and Equity as Equal Results. Equity as personalized opportunity means that education is designed to meet students’ unique needs. Equity as equalized results is simply that students perform in a way that meets a predetermined standard. These ideas are synthesized in Fuller’s (2010) idea of equity as “engaging in the practice of freedom.” Though engaging in the practice of freedom is a common goal for all students, an equal result, it is different for each student who may practice freedom differently.