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Activities & Lessons
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Social Justice & Student Voice
Teachers
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30 minutes.
Human Restoration Project CC-BY-SA
May 2023
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This teacher-focused activity centers on judgment through semiotics: study of signs and symbols and how they convey meaning in various contexts, including language, art, culture, and communication.
Semiotics refers to the way we create, interpret, and understand meaning.
We’re interpreting signs, which include everything from literal physical signs and marketing campaigns to one’s facial expression or clothing. Our social, cultural, and political backgrounds inform how we judge and discern the information of signs. This lesson analyzes how students could interpret teacher signs through the language they communicate day-to-day.
Wow, I really like your outfit today!
It’s often hard to tell what exactly this statement means. Depending on how our day is going, what we know about the person saying it, and where we’re at, this could mean...
• Wow, I really like your outfit today! -> Fact: You have a really awesome outfit.
• Wow, I really like your outfit today! -> As Value: Your outfit suits you.
• Wow, I really like your outfit today! -> Ironic: Your outfit looks awful.
• Wow, I really like your outfit today! -> Lie: It really isn’t an awesome outfit.
In the same way, the signs teachers communicate to students are interpreted in many different ways. And oftentimes, these signs make students feel worse about themselves. They feel judged, demeaned, or hurt by how teachers perceive them, even if a teacher has good intentions.
In the following images, we’re presenting common signs that students receive on a daily basis. For each, determine:
• Imagine yourself as a student, what is your first impression of this sign? What does it make you think?
• Imagine yourself as a different student, what’s another way this could be interpreted?
• Imagine yourself as the person who created the sign. What were they trying to communicate?
• How could the sign (or policy) be changed or altered so that more people interpret it in a positive way?
Each is an example from publicly available sources, redacted and slightly modified to protect teacher identities.
