Reading Response 1

I think that the CPMLE standards fit perfectly into the common core for English Education. Granted, some of the specific aspects of the core don’t match up entirely, the major themes of both sets of standards work in tandem to reach the same goal, which is to help students learn how to think about and digest a text; whether students are looking at a written text, a commercial, some sort of online media or anything else that could be considered a text, our goal as Educators should be to help our students learn how to think, not what to think. They should be able to learn skills that they can use outside of our specific classroom that will help them to be successful. I think that the CPMLE standards complement the English core standards because they point teachers in a direction that allows them to create a space for students where they learn to think critically and analytically. The first CPMLE standard says that, “Media Literacy Education requires active inquiry and critical thinking about the messages we receive and create.” This standard pairs perfectly with many of the standards from the English common core for grades 6-12, and more specifically one which says that students should be able to, “read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.” Notice that students in English classes aren’t only supposed to learn about literature; rather they need to comprehend a variety of different texts that are oriented towards a menagerie of different purposes.
The best example of this that I can think of was a lesson that my high school English teacher taught in the twelfth grade. One day we spent the entire class period watching commercials from the previous year’s super bowl. As a precursor to this we talked about the advertising industry and how expensive it was to purchase air time for these commercials as well as to produce them. While we watched the commercials we dissected them and discussed each one. We asked questions like: What was the goal of the advertisement? What artistic choices were made? Why did _____ happen? What does that specific thing do in the advertisement? In retrospect this lesson has played a pretty big impact in my life. My teacher had the foresight to teach us how to analyze and interpret a type of text that would (and did even then) have a huge impact on our lives. To this day I look at advertisements differently because I know how to interpret their appeals in an educated way. In other words, I can think critically about what they say and do. This week our class read in Seeing & Writing this that the average person in America witnesses something like two thousand commercial appeals each day. Although my high school English teacher was probably balked at when she told her colleagues that her students would be reviewing super bowl commercials in class, what she realized was that using super bowl commercials allowed her to teach us tools of interpretation and analyzing that we could use to assess other commercial appeals as well as many other types of texts. After all, a book or an art piece or a photograph, are all examples of texts that usually carry a message or point, just like a Super bowl commercial does. Perhaps this explanation is too convoluted, but what I mean to say is that English class or Theatre class or whatever doesn’t always have to focus on the obvious curriculum. Media is such a huge part of our lives and using it as a means to help students understand difficult concepts can be a lifesaver. I know that in my experience it was much easier to analyze a 30 second commercial and learn the concepts I needed to learn before I jumped into Dostoyevsky and some of the other difficult texts we looked at over the course of that year. I think if we use the CPMLE standards to complement the concepts we need to teach for our subject areas, we can find a happy medium between both sets of criteria. In the process, we’ll be able to help students use media in positive, powerful ways that help them to shape their lives and experiences in meaningful ways.
Another thing that I found interesting when I compared the two sets of standards is that on the front page of the English common core it says that they include standards for, “literacy in … technical subjects.” As an increasingly technical society I think it’s interesting that the creators of the common core took that into consideration and realized that today being literate means more than just being able to pick up a book and read, it also involves an individual’s ability to glean meaning from a variety of sources and formats I think that there has to be a balance in the classroom, one that allows students to learn about new types of media as well as the more traditional types of curriculum. In real life, students will depend on their ability to understand a news article or a memo just as much as a YouTube video or a novel. Using the CPMLE standards in tandem with the English common core standards will guide teachers through that process and will allow them to prepare their students for a variety of situations in the future.

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Although this doesn’t have to do with the CPMLE or common core, I thought this video about using video games in a positive, productive way was really interesting so I thought I’d post a link in case you’re interested:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html