Best of the Week 2021-2022: Teaching to the Future

AP STUDENTS TAP INTO THEIR LINGUISTIC AND DESIGN CREATIVITY TO EXPRESS THEIR EDSMAN EXPERIENCE

Mark Urban's AP Language and Composition students were required in their "Untranslatable Edsman Experience" unit to examine their experiences that are uniquely Edwardian and name those experiences rooted in linguistic accuracy while utilizing graphic design principles to strengthen their awareness of visual literacy. With the guidance of Mason Feagan '13, who has returned to St. Ed's to help in the classroom during his student-teaching practicum experience as a graduate student in Education at Notre Dame College, students were tasked with an interdisciplinary project, combining literacy elements learned in the classroom with digital design fundamentals to visually convey their experiences.

"Mr. Feagan has taught lessons on morphology and etymology, helping students better understand how to create words that were untranslatable to the non-St. Edward community while also celebrating the importance of language while expressing unique St. Edward experiences precisely. We live in an age when conversational, casual tone is prevalent and widely accepted and words are accompanied by an image, advertisement, thumbnail, etc., so helping our students develop a rich and precise range of language and expression is imperative," says Mr. Urban. "This unit stems from the questions, 'How do we prepare Edsmen to use design awareness to maximize their rhetorical capacities?' It's important for students to have a wide vocabulary lexicon to pull from and an awareness of how we construct and use language to meet the needs of every day, whether it's motivating a teammate during a game, pitching an entrepreneurial proposal, or articulating a preferred camera angle in a Film class."