Who am I?: And Other Experimental Classroom Activities

Yesterday, I tried something new and it ended up failing miserably. I guess that’s one of the fun things about teaching: experimenting with new ideas. Sometimes they work; sometimes they don’t. And something those new ideas surprise you in ways you’d never expect.

But anyway, yesterday I wanted my students to write out a long skit. I broke the class into six sets of pairs, and each group wrote a very short section of the skit (I had written their section out on a piece of paper: “You are a bank robber. You suddenly regret your actions. Why? What do you do next?”) The scenes were supposed to flow together with a semi-coherence that could have been funny. But one group didn’t prepare anything. Another group couldn’t stop laughing. One group spoke too quietly.

I left class disappointed in my activity, so I set out to revise it. And in doing so, I came up with something completely different that turned out to be a huge success when I tried it out in class on Friday.

I wrote names of famous people in U.S. culture (not all from the U.S., though) on a piece of paper. I made sure they were people my students would know: Barack Obama, J.K. Rowling, Angelina Jolie, Steven Spielberg, Michael Jordan, Rihanna, etc. I tried to get people from many aspects of culture: music, movies, politics, literature, sports, etc.

Sadly, I couldn’t pick many people that I consider important: Jon Krakauer, Jane Goodall, Dave Bartholomae. As much as I would choose these people as important, my students certainly would not know who they are…unless they happen to appear on French radio. And last I heard, DB hasn’t recorded any pop songs. But who knows? It has been a while since I read CCCs.

On each piece of paper, I wrote basic information about that particular person. About Tiger Woods, I wrote “Professional golfer, born in California, married to Elin Nordegren.” For Hillary Clinton, I wrote “Politician, future Secretary of State under Barack Obama, former senator of New York, married to former president Bill Clinton.”

What I did was tape a person’s name to each student’s back. The other students would giggle when they saw that it was Britney Spears, or say “I have no idea who that is!” when one girl got Oprah Winfrey’s name. The students then mingled with their classmates, asking only “yes” or “no” questions about their character.

“Am I a woman?” They would ask. “Am I a singer? Do I sing rock music?”

“Am I an actor? Did I play in westerns? Do I direct movies now? Was ‘The Changeling’ an amazing movie?” (in other words, “Am I Sarah’s favorite actor?”)

“Am I a politician? Am I a man? Was I ever vice-president of the U.S.?”

What is important to note here is that they were speaking in English. Not French. By the end of class, two students had not figured out who they were (Sarah Palin and Eva Longoria Parker), so the whole class huddled around, sticking firm to the rule of only answering “yes” or “no” and not divulging any extra information.

The bell rung just as the two guessed who they were. And on their way out, one girl said, “C’est cool, ça” (that was cool)!

And I beamed.