More Pesky Pedagogy

Le Templar, Loved Him
Tracy Collins?...gave out candy, so Loved Him

The difference between the two? Something else I learned about Pedagogy. I had always heard of an "awareness of audience," and as an English teacher I believe in it wholeheartedly. My famous line is always, "If you're writing to the principal about why smoking should not be allowed on school property you wouldn't write it the same way as if you were talking to your 8-year-old little brother about why he shouldn't pick up the nasty habit!"

And I always knew that as a teacher I needed to be aware of my students so that my teaching is student centered and the students inform my decisions about the curriculum, not the other way around.

Then I sat in Tracy Collins' presentation and totally understood why audience is so important. He assumed so much about what we knew, he used many words, phrases and references that I did not understand. So much so that I could not ask him to clarify because he would have had to clarify his entire presentation; now I understand how the kids feel. I always get frustrated with them and say "if you didn't understand, you should have asked!" Well, maybe they don't ask because they don't know where to start.

Other than a woman with a dead husband, and a child without parents, what else is a widow and an orphan, anyway?

The bigger issue; journalism. Awareness of audience is so important there because if you create a paper that your audience cannot or will not accept, you might as well save your money and time and not write anything at all. You can't write one of those crazy Spanish papers (like the ones my dad reads) with the graphic shootings and car accidents on the front cover and then try to sell it to a prominent, right wing community because they won't have it.

So awareness of audience is a broad brush stroke; we have to know it when we teach, teach it to our kids, and think about it when we make decisions on what we write and how we write it in journalism.

Melissa Cordova
Eli Whitney Technical High School
New Haven, Conn.