Final Project: Podcast Link

 Here is the link to my podcast, where I detail my plan to implement a leadership/advocacy research project into the existing 6th grade ELA curriculum. 

    After listening to my podcast a few times, I realized I don't delve into the details of the project. The project will be a research project where the class will research a single social issue, and we will meet with a nonprofit that addresses that issue using Zoom. After, students will individually research a social issue and, through my facilitation, reach out to nonprofits and advocacy groups that address their researched issue.

I retrieved the audio clips from the following sites:

News audio

ISTE exemplar classroom

Final Narrative

My experiences

    After receiving a grand total of three Valentine’s Day Candy Grams during homeroom, I came home ecstatic. Fueled by highschool lovesick daydreaming, I went on autopilot while I unpacked my bookbag, put away my empty lunchbox, and prepared to half-ass my Algebra II homework.

    “I wonder who sent me a Candy Gram. Could it be a secret admission of love by Cole?” my overdramatic mind raced as I absentmindedly turned on the news channel. “Or maybe just a friendly gesture from Kiana? Or it could’ve been —”

    “At least 17 people killed in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida,” the news anchor cut off my meaningless thoughts as he divulged the details of the latest school shooting — the latest colloquial tragedy in this country. As I listened, breathless and shaking, the dreadful thought festered in my mind that my friends and I could experience the same thing tomorrow. Gunned down in the hallways. Gunned down under a system that favors the pockets of Wayne LaPierre and the NRA over the lives of children. 

    I realized then, eyes still locked on the suburban warzone on my TV screen, that neither the U.S. government nor the nonprofit industrial complex cared about my safety as a student. Of course, I didn’t have that kind of language, but through the use of technology and social media, I began to raise conscientiousness. Paulo Freire, a touchstone thinker of my identity as a teacher, explains that conscientization is the process through which people begin to critically understand their social reality under capitalism, bureaucracy, and imperialism. To know that the system elites will crush you — or at the very least, let you get gunned down in History class — to further their marginal gains. This was the moment I began to understand my place in capitalism as a student. As Parkland students flooded from the high school. As police sirens wailed, and as news vans descended on the shellshocked survivors. As political pundits bark stupid quips of “guns don’t kill people; people kill people!”. That’s when I knew I had to act. 

    Following the leadership of the Parkland survivors, my friends and I organized a protest at our school. We began texting, whipping up Canva designs at the speed of light, connecting with other organizers across the country, using technology to spread the message that students are exhausted by the U.S. government’s consistent devaluing of student life. As digital natives, we used technology to contact our representatives (something we had never done before), and we used social media to shame our Republican Senator for accepting thousands of dollars from the NRA.

    In the small conservative town of Batavia, Ohio, my friends and I used technology to build a network of protestors. We overcame the violently-white backlash from the community by using social media to connect with other like-minded activists. As the date of our protest inched nearer, we gave a heads-up to her office. 

    The principal barely let us sit down, before she spoke, “I want to be very clear with you all,” a note of condescension lined her voice, “I am strongly opposed to almost every aspect of your idea.” 

    I glanced at Madilyn sitting to my right. Her fingertips laced together in her lap. I’d known her my whole life; her posture screamed silently that anger simmered behind her cool gaze. Fury, too, bubbled up in me. Our principal — a figurehead of the institution — watched the same news broadcasts as us. How could she not be outraged? How could she not be steeped in anguish like the students who sat across from her in her cushy office? And most importantly: how could she not want to facilitate her students’ first foray in civic engagement?  

    “I understand you have a right to protest,” she continued, “but if you go through with this, then I have no option but to discipline you through in-school detention or suspension.” 

    "So clearly you don’t understand that we have a right to protest if you’re going to use the shred of institutional power you have to try to stop us." I thought to myself. 

    We did the only logical thing: we ignored her, and on March 14, 2018, thirty-seven of us joined thousands of students nationwide in walking out of schools — in demanding that the U.S. government hear our outrage at their complacency and tacit endorsement of violence in our schools.

    As stated earlier, this protest was my first formative experience with democracy, civic engagement, and civil disobedience. Because of it, I decided to pursue educational and professional paths in social justice, activism, and politics. The use of digital technology was crucial to our organizing efforts; the experience would not have been as effective if not for the connections forged through the use of social media and technology.

My beliefs and the problem

    As students of color with multiple marginalities, my students --- who are much younger than sixteen --- have already been exposed to the cruelties of an oppressive system. Some of my students don't hold a single dominant identity within Leslie Grinner's adapted S.C.W.A.A.M.P. model. Because of this, they have already had harmful interactions with the systems of capitalism and imperialism at such a young age. They deserve an outlet in which they can openly critique that system.

    Even now, my high school experience colors my beliefs and actions as a new teacher. I believe that all students are inherent and capable leaders, but they need formative experiences that instill confidence, conscience, and the desire to be advocates for themselves and their communities. I also believe that institutions are not suitable places for students to cultivate their leadership identities. A third belief of mine is that middle and elementary school students are less likely to have formative leadership opportunities than high schoolers. Why is that? Would I have formed my identity as an activist or advocate earlier in middle school if I was equipped with the right language, opportunities, and experiences? Why do we wait until high school to provide students with these kinds of opportunities? What does that tell us about how we view learning amongst middle and elementary schoolers? 

    These beliefs address the following problem: Education institutions dampen students leadership skills by implementing politically-apathetic curriculum and dissuading students from exercising their civil rights. Due to the absence of leadership opportunities within the curriculum and the lack of school funding, students must sacrifice classroom instruction if they want to develop their leadership skills. For example, a handful of civic leadership opportunities exist at my school — but every single one of them happens in an after-school program or  they conflict with instructional time. What does this say to the students who have to take care of their baby cousins after school? What’s the takeaway for students who don’t want to miss out on English class because it’s the only time they get to see their best friend? Why can’t we find a way to combine in-class instruction with leadership and advocacy skill-building? We know that students — especially students in Rhode Island — seek leadership and advocacy opportunities, so we should solve this problem by adopting a techno-constructivist view of teaching in order to connect younger students to their innate leadership capabilities.

My action

    Based on my beliefs, my final project is to develop an in-class project that allow my 6th grade ELA students to explore their leadership identities. I want to facilitate these experiences through the use of Zoom. Zoom can be a powerful tool used to connect my students to nonprofits and advocacy groups from across Providence — or even the globe! I plan on using technology to form seamless connections between my classroom, which is firmly situated in an oppressive system, and advocacy groups that seek to solve social issues by centering students in their activism.  I even have an exemplar model of how a teacher could use technology to provide their students with formative advocacy and global problem-solving experiences.

    My project has three parts:

    1) Students will attend in-class Zoom sessions with local nonprofits or environmental education groups. Students will reflect through writing on their experiences using technology to connect to global leaders. 

    I have begun to form relationships with local and national nonprofits already:

•     SafeBAE, a gender equity nonprofit that focuses on student safety, education, and engagement.
•     Save the Bay, an environmental advocacy group with the mission to protect wildlife in the Narragansett Bay.

    2) Students will then research a social issue that is important to them. This step demonstrates that younger students are attuned to the problems in their community, and they crave being able to critically and creatively address those problems. Students will be asked to reflect on what they believe about their communities, and what actions can be done to improve them. Through this research and writing, students will learn that advocacy is just one viable educational and professional path that they could pursue.

    3) Working together, we will use Zoom to connect to local nonprofits that align with the students’ beliefs and we will forge a deep and formative connection with the advocates and activists with whom my students share a community.

  Conclusion 

    In her books, Cultivating Genius and Unearthing Joy, Gholdy Muhammad argues that educators must not focus solely on their students' content knowledge; rather, they must target the holistic growth of their students. Muhammad argues that we fail students when we don't give them ample time to explore their joy, spirituality, or criticality. As stated before, my students are already intimately familiar with the social issues that affect their identities. By failing to provide them with leadership opportunitites where they get to explore the ways to address these problems, educators ignore their students' senses of self-efficacy and identity-development, and, in turn, miss out on crucial leadership development. Because of this, my final project centers the students' explorations of their innate leadership and advocacy capabilities.

Teaching "Rethinking Agatha Christie" by Sudie Hofmann

Why did I choose to teach this chapter?

    When I saw that Agatha Christie was mentioned in this text, I jumped on the opportunity to teach this chapter. This text discusses one of Christie's many offensive plays, Ten Little Indians. This play revolves around a group of strangers who are caught in a terrible storm in a shadowy estate on an isolated island. The play is tense and atmospheric, and also incredibly racist: on the mantle of the roaring fireplace are ten offensive Vaudevillian statues. Each statue falls as the characters are slowly dwindled down by a mysterious murderer. On top of this, the whole play is based off a racist 1849 song.

    I chose to teach this text because I actually performed this play in middle school. I played the part of the protagonist, Captain Philip Lombard. This character was responsible for the genocide of an East African tribe. Now I know what you're thinking. Yes, he was also the undeniable hero of the story. As explored by Hofmann, Lombard's backstory sheds light on Christie's implict --- and explicit --- biases. It also highlights the dominant ideologies and cultures in Great Britain during the 1930s.

What messages are found in Ten Little Indians?

    This chapter of Rethinking Popular Culture and Media discusses how this play is still produced across the nation. With each production, the perennial argument about cultural insensitivity follows. In these arguments, Hofmann sees the dominant ideologies of predominantly white communities who have no issue with producing the play, despite its racist origins and clear messages of genocide and anti-Semitism.  Hofmann is also met with apathy when they reach out to Christie's estate and the publishing company. Despite the publishers dragging their feet, they eventually changed the title and removed some of the offensive dialogue from the play. I believe this is actually harmful because it doesn't address the fraught and racist history of the play. If the play is based on a racist song from the 1849 and is riddled with offensive dialogue and themes, shouldn't the publisher put the text to rest? Erasing the racist themes with each new publishing cycle isn't a restorative approach to addressing the harmful history of the play.

What are Hofmann's final recommendations?

    Hofmann makes the following recommendations when dealing with problematic texts from the past:

• Address the offensive history of texts. Explore its themes of race, xenophobia, privilege, and power.
• If an educator teaches this play in schools, talk about genocide and racial tensions in the classroom.
• "Practice owning up to the racism inherent in many 'classic' works." (166).
• This is especially important because it connects back to our discussion around pleasure & critique. If for whatever reason you really enjoy Christie's work, you shouldn't be uncomfortable to critique it because we derive pleasure from acknowledging the offensive aspects of her work, and appreciating the non-problematic parts.
• Address the violence in the play, and determine whether it's appropriate for a school.
• When I did this play in middle school, there was no discussion about its racist history. We read from the 2004 edition --- the edition that Hofmann agrees is the least offensive. However, this edition still included clear displays of anti-Semitism. By failing to acknowledge the history of the play, my teachers missed out on an opportunity for critical discussions.

How to use Soundtrap

 We used Soundtrap in class on Thursday. In the past, video and sound production has been hell for me. However, I found Soundtrap pretty intuitive so here's a tutorial to do a few things on the website.

Making sense of it all

The first thing you see when you enter the Studio is a a panel of six squares that you can use to insert anything from your voice, sound effects, imported noises, and even music.

To add your own voice

1) To add speech, you will click on "Add Track". This button can be found on the left side column or in the second square in the middle of your screen.

2) After you click "Add track", you will select "Voice & Mic".

3) After clicking "Voice & Mic", click the red circle at the bottom of your screen. Then speak. 

4) When you're finished speaking, click the red circle again. After you stop the recording by clicking the red circle, your speech will populate the top of the screen. In my example, the recording pops up as a small red rectangle with rounded edges.  

5) If you're unsatisfied with the recording, right click the red rectangle with rounded edges and select delete.

To add piano music 

1) Similar to adding your voice, you can add music by selecting "Add Track". Again, this button can be found in the left column or in the middle of the screen.

2) After selecting "Add Track", select "Keys".

3) A keyboard will populate the bottom of your screen. 

4) To record your amazing piano recital, click the red circle at the bottom of the screen. Then play the piano!

5) After you stop the recording by clicking the red button, your touching piano piece will populate the screen. In my example, I played "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and it populated my screen as a red rectangle with rounded edges.

To fade in and fade out sounds

1) After inserting your voice or music using the previous tutorials, hover over the rectangle. Then select the "Edit" button that pops up in a black oval.

2) A dropdown menu will appear. Select fade in or fade out.

3) An opaque inverted triangle will appear at either end of your track to signify that it will fade out.

Final Project: Digital technology as a form of student leadership and global connection

Leadership in the classroom. Leadership in the school

    At Rhode Island College, I'm enrolled in the Individualized Masters Program meaning I get to design my own path of study. I have centered my studies on civics education and youth leadership in the public school system. Because of this, it was a logical decision to focus my final project on my students' leadership skills --- or lack thereof due to the school system through which they learn. 

    At Nathan Bishop Middle School, there are plenty of opportunities for my students to enhance their leadership skills. We have a robust partnership with Providence After School Alliance. This allows the students to stay after school and explore their interests while also developing as a leader. Save the Bay allows students to be environmental activists and advocates. We also have the Civics Education Club that takes eighth graders to D.C. during the school year. On top of these programs, our students have started their own clubs that excuse them from class to meet during the school day. 

    What stands out to you about these leadership opportunities? 

    Did you notice that all of these programs happen outside of the classroom? AfterZone happens after the school day. Sorry, I guess, to my students who have to take care of younger siblings or cousins after class. Well what about the Civics Education Club? This club is amazing but it literally takes students out of class for a whole week during exam season. In order to participate in the student-created clubs, students must leave the classroom and miss out on instruction. What does this tell us about how we view student learning and student leadership? Should we just accept that students with other responsibilities should miss out on formative experiences with leadership and advocacy? These questions demonstrate that the ways in which schools and curricula are set up pit leadership and learning against each other. It forces students to choose one over the other. Do students miss the lesson about persuasive writing in order to attend the Student Advocacy Group meeting in the cafeteria? How can a student be a great advocate if they don't have strong persuasive writing skills? Therein lies the contradiction and flaw of excluding leadership lessons in the curriculum.

    Think back to the leadership opportunities you enjoyed during your PreK-12 education. Were any of these experiences built into the curriculum, or did they happen outside of the classroom? If you did have in-class opportunities, did they happen during high school? Middle school? Elementary school? I would argue that high school curricula are more likely to include in-class leadership opportunities than middle or elementary schools. 

    Once the problem is stated, it's glaring! The explicit teaching of leadership and advocacy skills does not happen in the classroom --- and it's more likely to be missing from middle and elementary schools. My 6th grade ELA curriculum, for example, does not mention the word leadership once, despite claiming to be a culturally responsive curriculum. Because of that, we fail to reach potential leaders. By the time some students reach high school, they could have already become jaded by the oppressive education system. So much so that the sudden influx of leadership opportunities may not appeal to them. As educators, we must demonstrate the need to middle school curriculum developers that targeted leadership content is vital for our students' development.

Underlying belief, intended actions, and utilized technologies

    Being a technologically-fluent leader allows students to connect to other problem-solvers around the globe. Because of this, I ask the question: How can we incorporate more leadership and advocacy opportunities into middle school curricula? 

    My belief, here, is that all students are leaders and they need opportunities in the classroom to develop their leadership and advocacy skills. The action I want to take is to use Zoom to facilitate connections between my students and advocacy nonprofits during the school day. Using Zoom to connect to people and groups around the globe is a techno-constructivist form of teaching that centers the student and allows them to learn both content and leadership skills during classroom instruction. This has already been achieved in an elementary school classroom (see Section 1.7 of the ISTE Standards), and I believe the model in that class should be generalized to middle school rooms. 

  

Childhood in the Media

 What is my connection to Disney and childhood media culture?

  As a child, my older brother and I would spend every other weekend staying with my Nana. Every night, my Nana would turn on one of four movies to put us to sleep: Monsters Inc., Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Home Alone, and The Little Mermaid. For years, we would drift off to sleep listening to the banter between Mike and Sully or the clash of lightsabers or the tortured screams of Kevin McAllister's robber-victims or Ariel's songs. Upon reading Christensen's work, I began to question what ideologies were reinforced as we fell asleep to these movies? And how can we make those ideologies visible to us and to children who may be in similar situations --- dozing off to subliminal messages. 

  In chapter seven of Rethinking Popular Culture and Media, Christensen detailed how some of her students graded cartoons based on their hidden ideologies. Her students argued to the local PTA that Duck Tales taught students that money is the only thing of value in life, that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles endorsed violent conflict-resolution, and that Popeye reinforced harmful gender stereotypes. Now, Leonardo, the blue turtle, didn't sit down and explain to the audience that violence is always the correct solution. The ideologies were not made explicit, rather they were cultivated through what Christensen calls a "secret education" (175). 

  I think it would be valuable --- and maybe even fun --- to explore the "secret education" of the aforementioned sleepy-time movies that I grew to love as a kid a la Christensen's students:

Monsters Inc.: Although Monsters Inc. features a cast of diverse monsters with unique bodies,it still body shames some characters. Mike Wazowski is seen as inferior due to his shape. Roz the slug is viewed as unlikeable, and this characterization is deepened by her appearance as a slug.

Return of the Jedi: Much like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Return of the Jedi teaches kids that violence is the most effective solution. Also like Monsters Inc., this movie creates a connection between sluggish fatness and unlikeability. The main heroes are all thin and hot, while Jabba the Hutt is large and sleazy.  

Home Alone: Home Alone teaches kids to face their challenges head-on, with little regard tothe consequences and bodily harm that may befall you. That kid was almost murdered multiple times and he never asked his community for help! What does this movie teach kids about how they should act in dangerous situations?

The Little Mermaid:  Some may argue that Ariel gave up her voice for a man. I subscribe to the ideology that Ariel gave up her voice for the freedom of being on land --- and it was just an added bonus that a hot prince happened to be involved in her plans. Either way, the narrative is still problematic because it teaches little girls that you have to give something up in order to get what you want. The new movie connects to the reading because it features a Black actress playing a previously white role. It's great that more children movies are featuring dynamic BIPOC characters. However the reading argues that stories with more diverse characters still reinforce subliminal messages. For example, the Cindy Ellie story, a Black reimagining of Cinderella, still featured a main character who had the goal of "not working to end the plight of the homeless or teaching kids to read [but she did have the goal of getting a] new man" (182), the new Little Mermaid film --- while having a more diverse cast --- still perpetuates messages of giving something away in order to have what you want. 

 

What is my connection to the Barbie movie?

  When I saw the Barbie movie in theaters, I enjoyed it. I didn't experience a grand connection to the narrative or characters, but I appreciated the movie for being a vehicle to discuss the role that feminism plays in modern day. I would have appreciated the film more if it leaned further into its criticisms of white feminism --- rather than just making a few jokes about the very serious issue of whiteness co-opting intersectional feminism. I would have loved to see queer characters in the movie. I suppose that Weird Barbie and Alan are representative of the LGBTQ+ community, but explicit representation would have been nice to see. The exclusion of explicitly queer characters sheds light on the biases and ideologies of the people and groups who produced this film. 

Boyd versus Prensky

What do they think?

Marc Prensky

 
  In an attempt to celebrate the ingenuity and technological savvy of young people, MarcPrensky popularized the term "digital native" in 2001. To him, the term meant that the ways in which students of the digital era learn are drastically different than their parents. While their parents learned in the absence of technology, these new students have digital tools and literacies that help them form deep understandings of their surroundings. Furthermore, students develop these deep understandings naturally, as if it were their native language --- or so Prensky, and predecessors, believed (Boyd, 179). 

dana boyd

  In their work, Dana Boyd pushes back against this characterization by highlighting the misinformation that has spawned from the term "digital native". Boyd argues that this term distracts us from "understanding the challenges that youth face in a networked world" (176). I agree with Boyd's stance that, although born from good intentions, this moniker is harmful. It's yet another instance where adults characterize students in ways that ignore or discredit students' agencies.

What do I think?

  While reading through Boyd's piece, I made a personal connection to her work. As an MLL educator, the majority of students I teach come from Spanish-speaking households. Because of this, I and many other educators make harmful assumptions about the students' abilities. The first assumption is that we assume a student can live up to grade-level performance if we simply translate texts into Spanish or their native language. Much like how Prensky's term ignores the "huge variation in knowledge and experience [with technology]" (176), this assumption glosses over the fact that some students never learned grammar skills in their native language, so translating materials would only further add to the stress of being unable to participate fully in a learning community. The second assumption is that not all MLL students are Spanish-speaking. When educators assume MLL = Spanish, we damage the confidences, agencies, and cultural prides of students who speak Haitian-Creole or Tagalog or any of the other 92 languages in Providence Public School District. I shared that personal connection because it shows that in more ways than one, adults cast students in lights that entirely misrepresent what the youth need to learn and succeed in their lives. For that reason, I want to push back against the term "digital native".