2013 VoyagerSopris Blog Contest Winner
By Alexandria Mooney
My English teacher roots are shining through with the alliteration in the title of this post! An authentic audience is something that I’ve found to be vitally important in teaching—and in getting high-quality work from students.
Some people may be asking, “What is an ‘authentic audience’?” In regard to education, an authentic audience is someone other than you; meaning, if a student writes an essay and you, the teacher, are the only one who reads it, that is not an authentic audience.
Take that same student-written essay: if it is posted on a classroom blog, or shared with parents and the community via an e-mail or newsletter, that is an authentic audience. People will read that essay out of interest and curiosity, not merely to grade it (as is usually the case when the intended audience is just the teacher).
The effects of having an authentic audience for your students are astounding. When students see their work “out there” rather than just piled on your desk for you to grade, they may become passionate about what they’re doing, knowing that the audience for their work is not just you. Project-based learning lends itself naturally to authentic audiences, but almost any assignment can have an authentic audience. The teacher’s role is to get that audience for the students.
This audience can be obtained in many ways. Social media lends itself perfectly to this: blogging about student projects; sharing projects via YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest; or connecting online with professionals in that field of study. If social media isn’t your cup of tea (or perhaps a strict social media policy may challenge some of these audience-achieving ways), look to your local community. Community members love to see and hear about what’s going on in their schools—reach out to them! Share students’ work with the community through a newsletter, e-mail, or invitation to your classroom. Even parents are an authentic audience—connect with them!
The most important part of an authentic audience is that students know from the beginning of the project or assignment whom their audience is going to be. When they realize that the teacher isn’t the only one seeing the project, they seem to take extra care and effort with what they produce because it will be out there (perhaps with their name attached) for others to see.
Several years ago I did this in my own classroom for the first time, and I was astounded with the results. My students worked tirelessly on a civics-based government-in-action project and did countless drafts of letters, commercials, and cartoons before they submitted their final product. When I asked them afterward why they all of a sudden seemed so intent on this project being “perfect,” they said, “Because you’re going to put it on your blog, YouTube channel, Twitter page, and mail the letters to our government leaders—and I don’t want my name on something that isn’t any good.”
I was shocked that such a result had come from simply telling them at the beginning that this project was going to be shared in public because it was all about our government in action. I felt that an action on my part was to put it out there for the public to hear and see what my eighth graders were saying. For this particular project the results of an authentic audience were incredible for my students; not only did they really produce excellent, high-quality work, but their efforts didn’t go unseen. Our local online newspaper contacted me to interview a few students about the projects posted on my blog, and another online news media site grabbed a student’s anti-discrimination commercial and shared it with an extensive fan base. All of this resulted from simply giving my students an audience beyond myself for their project.
Providing students with this authentic audience has profound effects both inside and out of the classroom. Students take pride in their product because they know it will be seen by the outside world. In turn, they develop habits that spill over into other content areas and behaviors. No longer are students doing an assignment just to get a grade; they’re doing it because it’s theirs, and the world will see it as a reflection of them.
Alexandria Mooney is a seventh/eighth grade social studies and technology teacher at Maplewood-Richmond Heights Middle School in St. Louis, Missouri. She has a bachelor’s in secondary education and history, and a master’s in educational technology. In 2012 she became a Google Certified Teacher. Visit her at: http://mooneyclasses.blogspot.com/
