Critical Approaches to Media in Urban English Language Arts Teacher Development
“In combating against mainstream views of students as deficits, nonlearners, or illiterates, critical English educators should create spaces in teacher education programs for preservice teachers to conduct ethnographies of literacy (Barton, 2000; Moll, 2000) aimed at unpacking the multiple ways that young people use texts in their nonschool lives. Critical teachers of English can then strive to make meaningful connections between home and community literatcies and the types of textual interactions they wish to promote within their classrooms. Teachers will hopefully be challenged by their investigations to promote new literacies in their curricula as legitimate modes of expression and inquiry and not just as bridges to more ‘academic’ way of reading and writing texts.” – Morrell
Reflection: Pop culture is believed as one of the most familiar cultures to all the students, no matter cultural background they come from. In language education, one of the best way to teach is to make meaningful connection between the academic knowledge and students’ personal lives, experience, or culture. There are many ways to impart knowledge. Why don’t we change our traditional “academic” way of teaching that students might be bored with to the new and trendy way of teaching that students are interested in? People’s interest in knowing something can be influenced by the way they are told the thing. The same as students’ interest in learning. They might be enthusiastic in learning if the lesson is about something they are familiar with. On the contrary, they might not want to learn if the class is boring. Therefore, including media and community literacies in our curricula and classroom gives students familiarity and intimacy so as to stimulate students’ enthusiasm to learning academic knowledge.