CI 5472 Post 1 - Teaching Media Literacy: beginnig to reflect on my student teaching experience(s)

Before you continue with the remainder of my blog entry, please take a moment to view the above video clip (don’t worry, it’s only 43 seconds long). This is a video clip from the hit adult cartoon show “Family Guy” that I used during part of my introduction to a 4 week long media studies unit that I recently undertook during my student teaching experience with my seniors at Simley High School. As Professor Beach states in chapter one of A Web-Linked Guide to Resources and Activities, the enduring understanding that I wished my students to discover during this unit was that the mass media frequently “ignores or misrepresents unique features of local cultural practices” (4). Furthermore, it was my goal to provide my students with a tool set enabling them to “critique these media representations as reflecting the invisible norms of White, middle-class American culture” (Beach 5).

In order to begin to get our thinking in the direction of isolating and identifying stereotypes (my design was that we would start with lower-level stereotype identification, moving along to higher level analyzing once adequate scaffolding was provided), I used the above video clip to demonstrate the idea that stereotypes of all kinds are engrained in the language we use and every day, seemingly meaningless interactions that we have with one another (a simple trip to the grocery store, for example). As for my choice of this particular text, I decided to use this particular snippet for the following reasons. First, I felt that it would be a show culturally relevant to my students and therefore hopefully engaging and motivating to watch. Second, I felt as though we could blame the potential racism on the fictional main character(s) (Peter Griffin, his talking dog Brian, his evil baby Stewie, and so on) vs. ourselves / each other (For example, I envisioned a particular teacher – student exchange to be something like “What stereotypes does Peter Griffin have during this video? How can we tell?” Third, I decided to use this clip because I initially considered it a relatively harmless / funny / non-threatening way to begin to discuss stereotypes and uncover the underlying assumptions forming them. Furthermore, I used this clip, as well as later addition clips from “Family Guy,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “South Park,” and so on to discuss in which mediums stereotypes are most powerful / reside most / do the most damage and so on in.

Before going into the unit, especially with these particular comedy texts, I knew that I was in for a great challenge; I knew that it was going to be very difficult to get my students to move beyond laughing about it, to seriously analyzing it. Also, simply given the nature of the unit and the fact that both of my senior classes were predominantly white, middle class males, I knew that I would face the opposition as described by Professor Beach as he refers to the Eden Prairie board member: “One of the potential fears… in a largely white Midwestern suburb… might be that newer media texts may challenge these norms through portrayals of the increasing diversity in American culture” (5). Dovetailing on Professor Beach’s words, I knew that there would be “interesting” reactions in reaction to the cognitive dissonance caused by the disruption of these norms. THE MAIN POINT that I wish to make and explore with the remainder of this blog entry is this: although I indeed anticipated these challenges, I had NO IDEA that my class would get stuck on laughing / have displays of often extreme aggression / reluctance to participate throughout this unit. Instead of moving past this expected stage of discomfort in the unit, we seemed to get hopelessly stuck on laughing about / getting angry with our discussion vs. critical analysis of the norms underlying the stereotypes observable in these particular pieces of the media. For example, after viewing the above clip, and EVER DAY afterward, not a day went by without a particular student interrupting the class and laughing hysterically by yelling “bobady, bobady boopadie” (imitating the family guy clip).

Although I don’t have the “answers” right now and never necessarily will, it is my goal to use my experience in this class to reflect on this, and similar experiences, with teaching with the media so far to explore the following questions:

-Why did students react the ways they did to the particular texts that I chose?
-Where the reactions I experienced "typical"?
-Where these reactions reductive or productive to the enduring understanding trying to be reached?
-How can I teach media texts to promote productive activities and conversations?
-What types of activities promote productive activities and conversations?
-And perhaps most important to me, although the current theory argues that we should “build upon students’ active use of the media,” how do we turn what they typically use for horseplay / humor / amusement / fun / NOT SCHOOL into something academic / productive / useful in the school vs. "bedroom" setting?

After describing the reaction that many students had to the rather “ tame” previous clip from “Family Guy,” imagine the reactions that they had to the clip bellow. Please take the time to at least view a few portions of this collection of mini-clips from the cartoon showcasing various stereotypes:



After viewing this collection of clips, students appeared to be genuinely angry and hurt after viewing and discussing these videos. Also, students appeared EXTREMELY reluctant to engage in even the identification of potential stereotypes going on in the clips. Although I initially spent upwards of 30 minutes on day one discussing that it’s ok to laugh, but we have to be adult and move on, and that in no way is this unit meant to “blame / attack anyone,” students reacted very negatively to the particular texts that I chose throughout this unit; texts that I thought would have been ideal. I thought that these texts would have stimulated an incredibly rich discussion, but instead the opposite occurred and students fell silent.

Perhaps one large problem with my unit was that students did not have enough “distance” as Professor Beach describes between them and the understandings we were striving toward: “I have found that students are more open to discussing and delving into critical issues of the world if we (1) look at parallel situations in history and (2) use drama as opposed to group discussion. It seems that this gives students the distance they need to critically examine their world… When students assumed these roles, we made it clear they were presenting the opinions of another person and not their own” (5-6). Although I felt as though I provided this “distance” by framing discussion around identifying what the fictional characters were doing / saying, this clearly was not enough.

In closing, throughout this course it is my goal to continue to reflect on these experiences to help me explore the above questions, as well as to continue to explore what effective media instruction might “look like” in the classroom.

Thank you for reading my first entry, and I look forward to working with you all!