Unit 1 Artifacts

To find potential artifacts to analyze for the Unit 1 assignment, my mom helped me locate a box at home that contains several artifacts from my early education, including report cards from kindergarten through high school. I’m considering using two or three of the artifacts I found in this box. One is a strange poem that I wrote for an assignment in 5^th grade. The other artifacts would probably include a report card and standardized test results from the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. I think it would be interesting to contrast the creative aspects of early education with the tendency to focus on academic achievement. The poem would be representative of the ways in which education tries to enable students to think creatively about the world and to be able to express how they understand their experiences, and I think I could use ideas from Freire, Dewey, and Cronon to explore this further. I would use the report card and/or standardized test results as an opportunity to reflect on how the educational system functions in evaluating students, sometimes to the detriment of true learning. I think Freire’s discussion of oppression and Cronon’s thoughts on liberal education might come into play here as well. Other possible artifacts I found include photographs, science projects, and other assignments from my youth. If anyone has any thoughts on these potential artifacts or the ones I described, I would appreciate your input!