Category Archives: Urban Adolescents

Systematic limbo

“Although the U.S. Justice Department under President Obama has investigated and pushed reforms of police departments in nearly two dozen cities, those reforms have been rolled back by the Trump administration” (Goodman, 2018, p.40).

From the launch of the War on Drugs during Nixon’s presidency, which was greatly expanded during Reagan’s and Clinton’s, has played a role in the deterioration of the conditions in inner-city communities. In seeming attempts to lower crime rates and weaken the drug economy, the reflection of the outcome points more towards families becoming disconnected from their homes and schools and/or incarcerated. Continue reading Systematic limbo

Social Media in a Foreign Language Classroom

            Building media literacy in a classroom starts with the teacher. Before considering the pros and cons, the teacher needs to get to know the outlets available in technology and media to select which one they’d use for students to be able to relate and connect to. I want to focus on social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram because they share similar features. It’s a popular outlet that students and adults are familiar with. As adults, we use social media to network, create an image for ourselves, to update our friends on our current events, and to get our point across using nothing other than memes. With that said, I think students can also use these social apps in the same way but with the objective of learning a second language, we just need to make that clear to them and monitor their use of it. Some of the pros I foresee with using social media in a foreign language classroom is that students will be exposed to real comments, tweets, and posts in the target language, they can find new ways to express themselves, and it could motivate them to participate or keep them interested in the lesson since they can connect to a device or app that they may already use. A con I think educators may encounter, if they use this approach, is if the social apps will be used negatively, as in, will this be an open opportunity for a student to get bullied? This thought came up because one of the biggest topics concerning social media is cyberbullying. As educators we need to remind students that they are given the privilege to use social  media apps in class, but if used inappropriately that privilege will get taken away. We want to model media literacy as something fun and useful, so we must model a kind ethical use of social media: what is and is not allowed.

            I would use all three social apps because they all share similar tools. First, they all have a language setting, so you can ask the students to change the language of the app to the target language. It’s a way for students to get used to the language, it may become second nature to them knowing how to navigate the app. The apps also share the translation tool, you can encourage students to read comments on a post, and if they’re not sure of a few words they can click the translate button. A downside to this is that it may become tiresome monitoring each student to make sure they’re not using that tool every second. Another way to implement social media in the classroom is using the target language for a specific purpose, we can do this through hashtags. For example, let’s say your objective for students is to be able to express their feelings or opinions on brands that aren’t animal cruelty free. They can look up the hashtag “#AnimalCruelty #AnimalCreultyFree” and see what posts come up and analyze how people write about that topic. A con to this is that we need to monitor what hashtags students look up, they should stay on task and not consider this activity as free time.

            Lastly, students can use the apps to communicate with each other using memes! I love this part because I truly believe we practice this every day. For example, instead of having a conversation through tweets, texts, comments, or posts, what we do is communicate through memes (images with a funny/clever caption). When I say that I mean send a different meme back and forth with someone. This definitely needs to be monitored because a meme conversation has to make sense like an oral conversation, we need to make sure students don’t send random memes to each other just because it’s funny, it should relate to the same topic. Although I find using social media apps in the classroom as an effective learning process and convenient, since most of us have it downloaded in our devices, educators must get to know the privacy settings, always keep the objective clear, and monitor the students.

MVP #7 – Standardization and NCLB

“If the current trends persist, we will soon be able to describe the middle school curriculum as a collection of test-driven content and skills isolated in separate subject classes and superficially covered by teachers using standardized methods and materials. It is time for middle school educators and policy makers to raise some serious questions about the kind of curriculum that seems to be emerging from the standardization movement” (Brown, 196).

This passage stood out to me because it speaks to some of my fears for students of today and the future, many of which come from the effects of No Child Left Behind. Public school requirements for standardization and emphasis on testing are causing students stress and ruining their willingness to be creative and engaged. The cycle of memorizing information to spit back out for a test and then moving on and forgetting about it is not productive for a student’s growth or development, nor is it productive for society. There are so many different ways for children to learn and grow which, of course, do not all line up with one another, and one of the goals of education should be to help students figure out ways to open their minds as unique individuals. I wonder to what extent these public school standards may change in the future, and how I’ll be able to use whatever power or control I have to get around the increasing standardization.

Media & Technology Critique: YouTube

YouTube has been a popular modality in the classroom for much of my academic life. Particularly through my study of history, I find YouTube very helpful. Throughout my history classes from middle school through to college so far, I’ve gotten so much out of watching and listening to former presidents speak, for example. When I started learning about the Cold War in eighth grade, the subject came to life for me, as I was being shown some of Reagan’s famous speeches or interactions with Gorbachev. My teacher was also able to show us music from the 60s-80s protesting the Cold War. YouTube is very convenient for both students and teachers. Teachers no longer have to rent or buy a specific film, video or CD in advance, and students with Internet have full access to anything the teacher shows in class. With that being said, not all students have Internet access at home and many who do have to share with multiple people. This puts many students at an unfair disadvantage from the start.

Another positive use of YouTube in an adolescent classroom would be for research. When I had to do research projects or papers throughout high school, we typically had to find written primary source documents from databases approved by the school. Though written documents are one important form of a historical source, videos can be helpful and fun as well. During my first semester of college, I wrote a research paper and gave a presentation about United States public schools and No Child Left Behind. I was excited to be able to use a video of an Obama speech. I would have loved to have had that opportunity from my teachers in middle and high school, because it brings a little more life to topics or assignments that kids may find boring.

A feature I love on YouTube is the ability to play a video in different speeds: 0.25x, 0.5x, 0.75x, normal, 1.25x, 1.5x, and 2x. For students viewing an educational video at home, they can view it in whatever speed they’re most comfortable with. This feature can be helpful for students who speak English as a second language or learn at a different speed than others. There is also a feature to view closed captioning on a video, though there’s still much room for improvement from YouTube.

One issue, however, with using YouTube to learn is that it can be easy to lose focus. Whether I’m using the site for study or leisure, YouTube’s column of recommended videos on the right side of the screen sends me down a “rabbit hole” of videos, sometimes for hours. I’ll start out with one topic or focus and end up watching something completely unrelated to the original focus. This could hurt kids who may already have difficulty staying focused.

Although YouTube can also be used for students to post videos of presentations or projects, an obvious issue with that would be adolescents’ self-consciousness, low self esteem, or bullying. When I was in sixth grade ten years ago, everyone in the class was assigned to create their own civilization and talk about it in a video. I used quick cuts to create and act as two characters: an interviewer and interviewee. Though I enjoyed making the video for myself, I ended up feeling self conscious about my changing appearance and social awkwardness in front of the camera. In hindsight, I’m glad that that video was made on a DVD that only I had, rather than being on YouTube where students could easily download it. With all the cyber bullying that goes on through social media these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if kids would download someone’s YouTube video to make fun them. A possible solution would be for students to post their YouTube videos as private, so only the teacher would be able to view it and show it to the class. However, even when a YouTube video is set to private or unlisted, a tech-savvy person would probably be able to find it.

Ss Self-Concept

“Tracks can create a self-fulfilling prophesy of behavior in students and play an important role in defining the type of person that they believe themselves to be.” (Ansalone, 2010, p. 12

Tracking or differentiating is assumed to have either a positive or negative affect on a student’s self-concept. Basically, if Ss with a low track are put together in the same classroom it impacts their self-esteem and increases motivation. But, if Ss are in a heterogeneous classroom, low and high track, it has a negative impact on their ability to participate and their attitude in general. It also invites the opportunity for Ss to make comparisons within their classroom, like who’s bright or slow. I’ve seen this first hand at my student placement.

First, at my placement there’s no differentiation for ESL Ss (consider viewing them as Ss with a “low track”) because my CT says that by the end of the year “they’ll get it”, in other words, they’re given the same instruction as everyone else in the hopes of them understanding. I’m the only one that is practicing how to differentiate for the ESL Ss that need it because they really do need it! In my ESL seminars all we talk about is differentiating because not all ESL Ss are the same, it is essential to practice differentiating in our field, so that’s why I try to implement it at my placement. When the students that don’t need help with instructions witness what I do for the ESL Ss they always, and I mean ALWAYS, make side comments about it, like: “That’s easy”, “How do you not know this?”, “Don’t help them, they’re not going to understand”, and “WOW! You’re always asking for help!” I always tell them to mind their business, but I also don’t see it affecting the ESL Ss. I do see the comparisons taking place by the “high track” students, but I don’t see it affecting negatively the ESL Ss self-concept. I wonder if they’re just ignoring it or don’t know how to express that is hurts their feelings when their classmates make those comments? I don’t know if it’s my place to pull the ESL Ss aside and ask how they feel about it?