Students as Designers Part 5

In order to affect more students (outside of my classroom). I serve as a dept. chair and it has been a great opportunity for me to affect other teachers in my department who will in turn - affect many more students. In our curriculum meeting the other day - I discussed some of the drop in evaluations that I had done within each of the Marketing classes. Some were teacher centered and some were student-centered. We had a remarkable discussion on the concept of design. I talked with them about taking themselves out of the role of "teacher" and becoming more of a "designer". I gave them ideas of ways to take certain units and designing a curriculum and method of delivery that would cause students to be more engaged. A challenge that I gave them for the 4th quarter was for them to design a lesson that would require their students to actually be designers as well. The end of the year is challenging because high school students are already on summer break! So mentally, we need to step it up and make the classroom even more engaging. We are going to do a share session at our next meeting to see what they have come up with.....lets see if an itser can pay it forward:)

Students as Designers Part 4

We are covering the SELLING unit in my Fashion 1 classes. I am having the students be a designer of their very own accessory. They have to develop a concept, draw it and make it come to life. Once their very own design is created, they have to "sell" it to the class by describing the features and benefits. In years past, I have had students take a product out of their book bag to sell it, but I thought by having them serve as "designer" there would be a better understanding of the concept and they would take ownership throughout this activity. Hope it goes well:)