Pg. 169 Motivations
1.
To promote creativity and self-expression.
2.
To increase student motivation and engagement in
the classroom.
3.
To
strengthen students’ ability to resist the negative messages present in mass
media, digital media, and popular culture about violence, materialism,
stereotypes, and sexuality.
4.
To help students use their own voices for
advocacy and social change.
5.
To modernize the curriculum and make it more
relevant to students.
Quote #1
“When teachers use mass media, digital media, and popular
culture to address social, political, and cultural issues, students develop the
capacity to make sense of and critically analyze the world around them” (p.
168, Hobbs).
I find this absolutely true!
After creating my PSA for this class, I showed it to all of my classes
one day last week and it inspired great discussions. My students are 6-8th grade, but
regardless of the age range, discussions and ideas were profound and
unique. My PSA cautions people of
overusing technology and making it too important in our lives, while real
relationships fall by the wayside.
Students of all ages have seen social media addiction occur either in
their immediate families or in those of their peers. Watching my PSA brought the subject to the
forefront of their minds and many stated, “they had never thought of it this
way before.” Many students were going to
mention this in their families in the hope of spending more quality time
together and making sure they don’t break laws by being on their phones while
driving, which many students admit their parents actively do. This hit home to my age-group of students and
if I made ½ of them think more seriously about the time they spend online, then
I accomplished spreading awareness and a need for concern. The more I learn about digital media and
storytelling, the more I want to utilize these tools in my classroom. It is a fun way to identify with the topics
of discussion and “own” your opinion and creative freedom. It is perfect for ART!
Quote #2
“In building coalitions, it is important to respect and
honor our varying priorities and find partners who can both support and
challenge us” (Hobbs, p. 169).
There are 2 art teachers at my school. My last colleague in the department left this
past summer to go work in Marion county, at a school 2 blocks from her
house. I didn’t blame her for wanting
the job that saves her from driving a half hour every morning and afternoon,
but I was apprehensive over who would replace her as my departmental
cohort. I had no reason to fret because
the gal who replaced her is much easier to work with, is very easy-going and
supportive. We both want to utilize
technology more in our classrooms, so decided to devote a large portion of our
budget this year to buying a department set of ipad mini’s to assist us with
integrating technology in our lessons and providing easy resource venues for
our students. We are VERY fortunate to
have this allowance of budget and I fought hard to get these devices approved
and the money allocated. We are
extremely excited to get our 14-ipad minis to share and are over the moon happy
to have our students start utilizing them. We have not had the order filled yet, but it
is going through the proper channels towards completion. I feel so very fortunate that my colleague is
motivated in the same way I am for advancement of skills and technology integration
in our lessons. We are on the same page
for the long term and I can see our collaboration growing more impressive
through the years. We have varying skill sets with technology and
I feel that it will be a dynamic pairing of attributes for our students to benefit
from. I am thankful in this month of
holiday cheer for Michelle and can’t wait to see where these ipads take our
instruction! We have lots to look
forward to, and we hope Christmas will come early for us ;)
Quote #3
“School leaders can inspire educators by helping teachers
make large and small steps toward embracing new ideas and instructional
practices” (Hobbs, p. 170).
In order to push through my application for ipad minis for
my department (referenced above in my response to quote #2), I had to gain
support and approval from my school Principal.
Luckily, she is very motivated to integrate technology into daily
instruction, so the support was quickly and happily given. It helped that money was put aside by me from
last year, in order to fund our order completely, but I am sure she would have
helped in any way she was able to make this dream a reality. I know my department will implement the
devices into our instruction immediately, and I am sure my Principal will
request we share our tools and knowledge with other faculty members considering
fundraising for their own class sets of ipads.
We will definitely share our motivation and experience once these
devices have been received. We won’t be
able to contain our excitement I’m sure!!! I am very blessed to have such a
cooperative and dedicated Principal who supports new ideas and tools for instruction advancement. I know without her approval, we would not
have been able to order our ipads. It’s
a win, win for me and my students!
References
Laura, i think it's fabulous that you had the opportunity to share your PSA with your classes! Brilliant! I am also glad that they found it relevant and that you were able to create a place for them to speak freely about their concerns. I would have never thought about showing some of my work to (future) students...of course, my PSA is for a more select audience lol
ReplyDeleteGreat top five! I really enjoyed the second quote you had up there. During my student teaching I was lucky enough to have a collaborative class with another students teacher that I knew. This made teaching the class a great experience because of how well we meshed the content together. Working together with other teachers is one my favorite parts of teaching.
ReplyDeleteYour top #1 motivation. I feel is really important. As educators we need to encourage that students use creativity and self -expression. If we encourage this, our students will use the creativity and self-expression in class more than they would have if we never encouraged it. I think this is very important that way our students are able to freely express what they want in class without criticism.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting that many of us used many of the same items in our top 5 list, though your care for modernizing the curriculum differs from my own (while I think it is relevant, it isn't on the forefront of my mind as I am not a school teacher). I think what they shows is that we all feel that there is a need to be filled by media and media literacy in education, and that is the ability to bring connect the classroom to what the students are seeing, experiencing, and living in our everyday culture outside of the classroom. One we create that bridge, promoting self expression, media literacy, and student advocacy will be simple steps away.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you shared your experience of presenting your students with your PSA. I'm curious if a lot of students in the classroom have already thought about serious topics like online bullying or digital media presence, but when someone that they look up to like a teacher make a point of it, the "click" is made and students truly examine the issue seriously. I'm guilty of underestimating student critical thinking at times, I'll admit. I believe that a lot of kids can take a short lesson, like the presentation of a psa, and carry those themes into a much greater lesson on their own.
Congratulations on the ipads by the way! I can tell you are excited, and your passion is wonderful.