Rhetoric Restoration

I'm currently involved in a junior symposium course called Prairie Restoration. It is an education, biology, and environmental course tied into one. During the semester, we are teaming up with a classroom of ninth graders at Harborside Academy to rebuild a section of prairie that was given to us. Initially, I was dreading this course because science is not my strong suit. However, the nature of the course is encouraging because not only are you yourself learning, you're given the opportunity to teach others.

A minor detail that was left out of our sllyabus was that the Harborside Academy is a charter school, and typically enrolls youth who have left public schools for social, academic, or behavioral issues. So, imagine our surprise when each of us was paired with a teenager who, for the most part, was not interested in what we had to do or say.

I knew that some form of rescue rhetoric was needed if I was going to get my student to pay attention to me at all. Shamelessly, I played on his emotions. Here I am, this young college girl paired up with a misbehaving teenage boy. I knew that if I expressed to him what would make me happy, that maybe he'd want to try to impress me and behave. It worked! Now, this may not work for each and every student pair, but I quickly found that the best way to get my student to listen was to make him feel like he was impressing me. As we buckled down and got into the lesson, he actually did start to impress me. Another form of rhetoric that I exercised was simple rhetorical questions. He knew that I knew the the right answers, so instead of trying to figure it out himself, he would just try to get me to answer. Instead of giving in, I turned it around and asked him a rhetorical question. Not only was he surprised that I could get around his question, he felt like I had challenged him, thus he tried even harder to impress me.

All in all, the few hours I had with my student went a lot better then expected. A few rhetorical tricks turned an unfocused teenage boy into a Prairie Restoration enthusiast.