How many times do you think the average classroom teacher hears their name in a day? Or how many questions they are asked?
When I was in elementary and high school I remember believing wholeheartedly that my teachers knew the answers to everything. I have this vivid (and embarrassing) memory from 20 years ago… I asked my eighth grade teacher about a bump that formed on my ear after I got it pierced, thinking she would know exactly what it was. She thought it would be funny to tell me about a made up ailment called “toboggana” and that I could lose the ear. I mulled this over at recess and decided that I would ask another teacher the same question. Little did I know, my grade 8 teacher had told her coworkers during the recess break about this prank she was playing on me, and the more adults I asked, the more they kept telling me it was this fictional condition.
I got home from school that day and jumped immediately on the internet to see if I could find anything about this strange “toboggana” online. Thankfully, my teacher had called my parents to let them know that this was happening and my mom was able to talk me off of the ledge. I was absolutely mortified, and one would think that this experience was the last time I was ever so gullible. Unfortunately, that would take another 10+ years to overcome.
This was a time when the internet was still in it’s early stages. YouTube wouldn’t exist for a another year, and you had to patiently wait for the dial-up internet to connect before downloading your free music on Napster to burn some CDs for your boombox.
That is my excuse for always believing everything I read online. When I was on the internet, it was such a new place… nobody really ever taught me to be critical of the things that I was reading online (or hearing on the news). I chose to take things at face value, and learned some hard lessons along the way. If only I had been more media literate.
This week, my wonderful classmates Kathleen and Kelsey presented insights on what media literacy is and why it’s more important now than ever before to teach to our students.
In Kathleen’s content catalyst video, she shares that “Media literacy is the ability to understand information that is presented to us and respond appropriately.” (FutureLearn, 2021)
Understanding information is something that only becomes more difficult the more that we see technology progress. We are surrounded by disinformation, misinformation, fake news, and media bias. It scares me to think of what my 13-year-old self would have thought and believed when consuming all of these through the media.
Kathleen and Kelsey both led wonderful group discussions that allowed me to reflect on just how important it is to teach media literacy to our students. In The Importance of Media Literacy: Navigating the Digital Information Landscape, Niall McNulty breaks media literacy down into different skills:
Access: The ability to obatin and use media in various formats.
Analysis: Deciphering and understanding the meanings behind media messages.
Evaluation: Critically assessing media content for quality and credibility.
Creating: The capability to produce media content responsibly.
Action: Engaging with media in a productive and socially responsible manner.
McNulty, 2021.
These are very similar to the 6 Central Skills of Critical Thinking that were brought up in the TedTalk that Kelsey shared:
Screenshot taken from “The Importance of Teaching Media Literacy Skills – Assiata Ayinla – TEDxDixwell”
Where do I even begin teaching this?? I’m not sure yet.
The big takeaway that Dean left me thinking about after this class is this…
when we are getting a million questions a day, it’s okay to just not know the answer. In a world where it seems that everyone has an opinion or takes a stance, it’s okay not to. We should be showing and not telling our students this. If someone asks for my opinion about a difficult topic, it’s fair for me to say, “I don’t know what I think, and you don’t have to, either.” Which leaves me to ask you this question… Why do we feel like we need to know the answers and that we need to have a stance? Has it always been this way?
Jenni, This post spoke to me. I have been in your shoes as a student but also in the shoes of your teacher. I know that as I become a more veteran teacher I am not as worried about knowing everything and being able to answer everything for my students instantly. I now will say to them “I am unsure about that. Give me some time and I will find out more about that.” This builds a relationship of trust between the students and myself. I also do this with my staff and families. I do it as sometimes I also need time to think this over and ensure that I am giving the best answer and not just an answer.
I think that part of this need to answer the questions is that our students want instant gratification, answers, responses, etc. They have become accustomed to asking a source and getting an answer within seconds. Many of them struggle with having to wait for an answer and by doing this we are teaching them a life skill of patience.
I don’t know that I’ve ever witnessed a prank on a student to the extent that the teachers had to phone the parents and give them a heads up. That story had me dying with laughter! Thanks for sharing it.
It is crazy to think about how trusting we all were when we first started on the internet. While we know better now, I’m sure we all still become victims of the various forms of misinformation once in a while. It really can feel overwhelming at times. We’re more connected to the outside world than ever before. We have access to every problem going on around the globe and more details on it than those who lived 70 years ago would get in their daily newspaper. I think that perhaps it was inherently human to want to have an opinion on everything going on when we had a much smaller view on the world, but nowadays Dean’s point is all the more true. Sometimes we just have to give ourselves a breather and stay on the sidelines.
I enjoyed reading your post, and thank you for sharing your own personal story that relates!
Dean’s message at the end was an important one, that we do not always have to have the answers. I know for me personally, when I first started teaching, I felt that pressure to always know the answers and felt like a failure if I wasn’t able to answer it, or wasn’t able to have a stance on a subject. As my experience grows (or maybe my unrealistic expectations of myself? or letting myself feel those unrealistic expectations of teachers from society?) I am finding myself saying more often to my students that I do not know the answers, or I am not sure of my opinion of that. I have been trying to incorporate some of the critical thinking skills into my daily teaching, usually at the beginning of the day with a discussion question, which I have found to really open the door to allowing students to share their opinions but also recognize they may not have an opinion. For example, a most recent debate we had was “Is a hotdog a sandwich?”