Week 2: Justifying film, television and media study in the classroom

There are approximately 25,000 students in the Madison Metropolitan School District in Madison, WI. There are four high schools in the Madison Metropolitan School District. Parents in the district have been fighting to keep TAG and advanced classes in the English curriculum at two area high schools, as the administration is trying to increase diversity in classrooms by eliminating tracked or leveled classes in English at those schools (and it is rumored that the same thing will occur at the other two schools, including the one where I teach). Since each high school has a different English curriculum, I will be focusing on the school where I teach.

I teach at James Madison Memorial High School in Madison, WI. It is a National School of Excellence that prides itself of it’s large amount of AP course offerings as well as the high number of National Merit Scholars and Semifinalists each year. There are approximately 2300 students at Memorial. The English department focuses on basic and advanced skills in reading and writing. Most courses are quite rigorous with a college prep curriculum. There are few electives in the English department; students are expected to take a year-long English class each year of high school. The year-long courses Memorial offers include English 9, Directed English 10, English 10, English 10 TAG, Directed English 11, English 11, English 11 AP (language), English 12 and English 12 AP (literature). There is the expectation that new teachers will teach what the veteran teachers teach. Although some material and activities vary from teacher to teacher, we are expected to use the same books and have similar focuses.

RATIONALE:

The Madison Metropolitan School District serves approximately 25,000 students in Madison, WI, a city known for it’s progressive nature. Madison needs to maintain it’s progressive reputation by continuing to be innovative with our English curriculum at Memorial High School. We need to keep our curriculum up-to-date and relevant to our students’ lives. While we are generally quite successful with the reading and writing skills we teach, we need to add media studies to our curriculum. There are a number of reasons why media studies needs to be an integral part of the English program at Memorial. The majority of our students are daily (if not hourly) consumers of the media. Students have cell phones, lap tops, ipods, personal computers and televisions. Students need skills to be literate as well as critical thinkers as they deal with the variety of media they use.

At the beginning of each year, I give my English 12 students an overview of what we will be doing over the course of the year. I include telling students some of the books we will be reading together as a class. By the time I get to Hamlet, students often roll their eyes, sigh or groan. However, when I tell students we will read Hamlet along with a CD, as well as view a film version and later a version from The Simpsons, I can see the relief it brings. By incorporating popular culture texts and film analyses in the English curriculum, we can build interest and enhance the overall experience for our students.By building on the activities and experiences students have outside of the classroom, students have reason to be more engaged in course material.

Some parents, and even teachers and administrators, may fear that the inclusion of media studies in our curriculum will somehow decrease the traditional focus of reading, writing and critical thinking in our courses. Including media studies in our classes will not reduce the quality of education students will receive. As a matter of fact, “When students are actively engaged in media literacy activities that include uses of reading and writing for definite purposes, those students can also improve in basic skills” (Beach. 2007). Also, by incorporating media studies in the English curriculum we can “…foster active, critical response to media as opposed to passive participation” (Beach, 2007). Our schools and community need to continue to encourage our youth to be active and critical thinkers; I believe these traits will inspire independent thought across all subject areas.

Lastly, one of the issues our district has been working on over the past few years is the achievement gap. All staff members have had many inservices in which we have been encouraged to have “Courageous Conversations” regarding race. We have struggled with how to approach these difficult and sensitive topics in our classrooms. I believe a way we can bring our students into this conversation is by discussing how the media contributes to our reality and also how the media perpetuates stereotypes. I believe it is our responsibility to teach students how our sense of reality and normalcy is established through the media. We need to show students how media forms reality, and help them see that “…media representations of gender, class and race… are social and cultural constructions that are shaped and influenced by media texts” (Beach, 2007). Perhaps by discussing how we see the media represent gender, class and race, we will be able to discuss how we deal with these representations, and the conflicts these representations bring, in our own lives.