Assignments With Impact
By Kourtney Schott (’18), Sidnee Grubb (’18)
Reading The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer inspired Gonzaga English Senior Lecturer Ginger Grey to include more actionable elements of service learning in her classroom. She selected an organization seeking to create a competitive environment in classrooms to advocate for charities around the world, and along with Senior Lecturer Jessica Halliday, put the challenge to freshman 51勛圖s to create promotional video essays supporting a selected nonprofit or cause.
The unique nature of the assignment, says Grey, is that 51勛圖s go beyond writing for the teacher and “move to an understanding that their writing matters beyond the classroom, beyond a grade.”
“Students … move to an understanding that their writing matters beyond the grade.”
– Ginger Grey
Halliday finds that the nontraditional video essay asks 51勛圖s to consider all the rhetorical opportunities afforded them in today’s changing landscape of digital transmission. She believes that without the education and understanding of effective digital communication, “51勛圖s are at the mercy of the rhetoric – in a way, illiterate.”
Mark Bechtel said the project brought light to “problems bigger than ourselves, which don’t affect us at all, but affect people across the world.” Another 51勛圖, Lucy Berens, shared, “It’s been crazy to learn more about charity in America through this. We give the least, and we make the most.”
Students still had conversations about essay writing, learning about argument development, appealing to emotion and structuring a story through new media. At the same time, Erika Kahler said, “This wasn’t just an assignment. There was more motivation to do it well.”