Traction (lesson 4)

The LessonThe goal of today’s lesson was to get the girls to start looking at media with a critical eye. This was going to be done by looking at multiple PSAs and responding to questions and having a discussion. Now you might recall that this was supposed to happen last week, but there were a whole host of issues that you can read about here.This week we dug right in by asking them to look at a PSA with us. In an effort to model more, we had built in a completed version of the graphic organizer that I had created to get the girls to apply their thinking to the activity. My co-teacher led this part of the activity, having the girls read the different parts out loud. Now I’m not a fan of graphic organizers, maybe it’s just the phrase and it’s overuse in education circles! However, I realized in an earlier class, that asking the girls to write things down resulted in kicking off the thinking process. (I was further motivated to do this given our struggles with scaffolding discussions).Once we had gone through the model, we put up a new print ad on teen pregnancy that had the same questions. The idea behind this was to show the differences between how a print-ad had to be structured to be effective versus a video ad. Since we had looked at video PSA on teen pregnancy the week prior, we kept on this topic. It took some time, but the girls started to think about the ad and towards the end, I even heard things like “oh, yeah they used language like ‘be a kid… forever.” It was amazing to see them make the connections!Then, we did this activity two more times with two videos. The first was again on teen pregnancy and the second was on cyber bullying. The teen pregnancy ad that we found used humor as a way to get the message across in comparison to the previous one which was more morose and dramatic. The girls found this video particularly funny but were also able to take away the message. A strategy that worked for us while they did some thinking about the videos was to stop and conference with them in small groups or individually. I was asking questions like, “I agree that this ad is to stop teens from getting pregnant but why was it effective? How was it different from the one we watched last week?” Pushing them to explain their thinking and get beyond answer-getting was I think the most important work we did during this activity.We then watched the third video on cyberbullying. This one was definitely a shocking video that based on the conversation after, hit a nerve with the girls, in a good way! Before we launched into the discussion, what we did was to break the girls up into their project groups for the rest of the term. Then, we asked them to discuss their responses to questions with one another. We didn’t scaffold for group discussion, so our strategy was to use conferencing with groups to hear their feedback.Some of the girls couldn’t believe that in this particular ad, that the girl who was being verbally attacked and didn’t stand up for herself. They were like “she should have had a chance to fight back or respond to those things.” It was so exhilarating to see them talking and reacting!Then, we asked the girls to start thinking about topics they wanted to work on for their Print/Video PSAs. We actually got to the friendship circle this time and then dismissed on time.At the end, despite the girls still having enough energy to move mountains, we got through a chunk of what we wanted to do, but more importantly we were able to have a larger discussion which helped them to see the connections to the work we want to do with them in the next 6 weeks.Thoughts/ObservationsThroughout this activity, one thing that was really surprising to me was that the kids keep thinking I’m looking for a right answer. They have this tendency to ask me for a new paper because they messed up or wrote the wrong answer. They always seem concerned about responding “incorrectly” even though I kept saying, I was more interested in their thinking. There was also a lot of “answer-getting” where one girl would listen to my conversation with another student and write down the ‘right’ phrase. However, we still got them at least thinking and talking. Upon closer observation and further reflection on the questions themselves, I think I would have adjusted the PSA reflection template to have the question “who do you think is the intended audience? Why?”This was the best day by far, but it was still massively chaotic. We had one student (one I’ve mentioned before) walking out of class every 5 minutes, tons of requests to use the bathroom (which I now know is code for moving around school to see what other kids are doing) and the other co-teacher kept having to have conversations with a couple girls to keep them focused. I also had one student who despite multiple requests didn’t really feel the need to stop using her laptop to shop for UGG boots. However, what I thought we did well was to keep the class moving and kept the majority of the girls focused and part of the conversation.Moment of ZenIf you’re a Jon Stewart fan, this was my moment of Zen: The lead teacher for the program came into our room while we debriefed after class and said by the way X student came up to me and said “Ms. J, I love my apprenticeship now!” This girl, who is a smart, (sometimes sassy) 8th grader, got placed here because she had done another apprenticeship twice and the teachers wanted her to do something different. She’s expressed her lack of interest in the media apprenticeship and I’ve asked her to bear with me and tried to give her opportunities, but to hear that she might actually like what we’re doing was a true moment of joy!