My students are designing their own Civil Rights / Human Rights museum and memorial. For those who do not draw well, I offered the opportunity to create a collage instead. There is a writing component, a poster board and a website that they design. Before we begin, I feel that I have a sense of what work students will produce.

Yesterday, a girl put a rainbow on her collage. "Do you know what that stands for?" another girl asked. "Yeah," she answered. "But my older brother is gay and I want him to have the right to get married some day." The other girl responded with, "I think it's a sin." Her response was, "So is judging people." By the time I stepped in, I was able to remind students of respect.

Another group included a picture of an ultrasound on theirs. Taken back, a teacher who stopped by the classroom asked me how someone could possibly connect fetuses to human rights. The boys in the group were silent, so I responded for them "I realize it's a controversial issue. But if they believe life begins at that point, maybe they are saying that those without a voice should still have the right to live." The teacher walked away. I'm not sure if I should have let them stay silent, if my words prevented an opportunity for courage.

Today a girl hands me a picture of a black and white hand with the words "solidarity" at the bottom. "Do you know what solidarity means?" I attempt to answer it, but she interrupts me, "I'm not looking for a definition. I want to know if you know what it means to have solidarity with another race." I couldn't answer her. It made me think. I guess I forget that knowing a definition is not the same as knowing a word.

Just glancing at lesson plans, it would seem that teaching can be predictable. By writing objectives, we can find measurable outcomes for the students. What I have found is that learning is rarely measurable, much less predictable. No two students learn the same thing, in the same way. The collages are reminding me that all learning is at least a little bit post-modern.

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