I do not enjoy teaching Economics. I didn't care for the subject when I took it in college, and I don't like the textbook (Economics: Principles in Action by O'Sullivan and Shefferin). It's difficult to read, difficult to understand and has, in light of the
current economic downturn, little real relevance. When the textbook was published in 2007, Vallejo's unemployment rate was around 5%; today it's more than 12%. High school students respond to "real world" facts and situations and learn in ways that are not possible when using a dusty, dry textbook.
The current advertising campaign by Levi Strauss & Co. that focuses on Braddock is providing the grist for teaching "real world" economics through something called "Project-Based Learning." In PBL, you use a project to make real the concepts you're trying to teach. It can be exciting, crazy-making, scary, and can blow up in your face if the project or how it's guided aren't carefully thought out. As a result, most teachers don't go for big, unwieldy projects. Most teachers also don't use PBL with their most difficult students, saving it for their "best and brightest," so they can have projects to brag about. This isn't going to be one of those projects. About 50% of my seniors are, to put it politely, credit-deficient. In other words, they may not graduate from high school in June because they've failed too many classes during the first three years of high school. They don't have the grades, they don't have a lot of the traditional skills teachers expect, and they don't have a lot of happiness. They live in a bankrupt town, attend school in a bankrupt district, and are the 48th and last graduating class: their high school is being closed at the end of the school year. A big project built around the similarities of Braddock, PA and Vallejo, CA, and what happens when a big corporation comes in and uses the town for advertising purposes might just be the tool for teaching the concepts of economics in a way that is meaningful to them.
We started on Monday, October 4, by brainstorming questions. For each class (there are 3) I hung up a large piece of butcher paper, put up an image of one of Levi's billboards
and asked, "What questions does this billboard, and another similar one in Oakland, raise?" I was peppered with questions. I didn't answer any of them, I just wrote them down on the butcher paper. When the questions started to slow, I showed The Ad. More questions, more writing them down. At the end of the day, I turned them into a master list of the questions, roughly grouped into four areas:
The Town
- Does Braddock exist?
- Who or what is "Braddock"?
- How is Braddock like Vallejo?
- Is Braddock broke?
- Is there a struggle in Braddock?
- Was Braddock an industrial town?
- What happened to Braddock?
- What's going on in Braddock to warrant the attention?
- Where is Braddock, PA?
- Why is Levi's in Braddock?
- Why is the town so empty?
- Are the people in the ad wearing Levi's?
- Do the people in the ad work for Levi Strauss & Co?
- What are the guys in the advertisement working on?
- What ethnicity are the guys in the advertisement?
- Who are the people in the commercial?
- Who are the people on the billboard?
- Why are the people sad?
- How do the advertisements relate to selling jeans?
- Is "things were broken" referring to the rivets in Levi's?
- Is the billboard some type of inside joke?
- Is the commercial a "mini-movie"?
- What is meant by "Go Forth"?
- What is the billboard about besides Levi's
- What is the commercial's message?
- What is the meaning of the narration/voiceover?
- What is the company advertising?
- What's with this campaign?
- Where are the jeans?
- Why does the billboard say "Braddock, PA"?
- Why is an advertisement featuring Braddock in Oakland (CA)?
- Is the advertisement to raise money for Braddock?
- Does money from the sale of Levi's go to help Braddock?
- Is Levi's doing a charity in Braddock?
- Is Levi's giving discounts to poor towns?
- Is Levi's lowering their prices?
- Is Levi's trying to sell jeans by suing sympathy?
- What is the connection between Levi's and Braddock?
- Why are Levi's supporting another state?
- Are we (who is "we") willing to fix Braddock?
- Does wearing Levi's expand your horizons?
- How can we help Braddock?
- Is everybody's work equally important?
- What does this have to do with Economics?
- What is a "frontier"?
- Why isn't Levi's helping Vallejo?
- Why should we care about Braddock?
- What can we learn from this to help Vallejo?
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