Narrative

Growing up, I never realized that my life was being silently influenced by media and technology. Like most young girls, I played with Barbies, American Girls Dolls, and was quite the Disney movie fan. After reading Christensen’s, “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us,” I now am seeing life through a new lens. Both, as an educator who works with today’s youth/teens, and in my very own social life. Christensen questions the effects of movies (Disney), cartoons, television, and music have on children and teens.

She believes that many Disney movies are based on princesses that are based on our society’s viewpoint of “perfection.” Disney movies set the ideal of what women should look like. They also embed in children’s minds that they need to find a “prince” in order to be happy. As I sit here writing this narrative paper, I’m still pondering if my life choices have actually been my very “own” choices. This is because I have in fact always put a lot of pressure on myself to strive for perfection. I also wonder, did media affect my career and marriage decisions too? As a young girl, what did I enjoy so much from playing teacher Barbie, and teacher with my American Girl Dolls? Did media spark my love for education, or was it my very own passion? Did I find love because I too felt like I needed a “prince” to save me? Christensen’s ideas about media and technology are ones that I plan to closely analyze this school year with my students. Yes, I did say students, because I became a teacher and had a beautiful wedding. Just as I dreamed of growing up.

As a teacher, I have many important beliefs that I genuinely believe in. From my own experiences as a student, I was able to take more risks with teachers I felt supported by. Like Michael Wesch believes, “Learning should be hands on and guided by interest, collaborative, supportive.” What I embrace about Wesch is that he puts the student first. He finds connections with his students, to make them feel part of the learning environment, and this leads to real learning. Therefore, my focus on my project and one of my top beliefs as an educator is to strive to maintain active parental communication. That is not just when a student has a bad day, but even to celebrate their small victories. I believe that parental communication is important regardless of what age/grade level a student is. I feel that in order for students to learn they need to feel supported. With establishing further communication methods with families, it supports students further. Students will receive support in their learning from myself along with their guardians. By putting forth further efforts to communicate, I believe that it will send an overall message of “support.”

Therefore, I believe parent communication is a critical part in student learning.However, as a sixth grade English teacher in the middle school setting, I have noticed many discrepancies in relation to parent teacher communication. In the past few years, I have found that some parents/families want consistent updates, while others believe that it’s time to start allowing their child to become more independent. With technically being an “Elementary” teacher, I have a hard time allowing students to become entirely independent, especially during the awkward transition to middle school. For the past few years, I implemented a ClassDojo communication system. I found this system to be only somewhat effective. Not due to the program itself, but because of the age/grade level of my students. Again, being in the middle school, the students never brought the sign up paper home, or parents did not attend conferences, or even open house in order to receive the information that they needed to sign up. At this point in their schooling, my students knew not to bring the sign up sheet home to their families, even with the added incentives and rewards. Thus, I only had about 60 percent of parent/guardian participation in using Class Dojo.

As each school year passes, I try to reflect and improve upon my teaching practices. After deep reflection, I have decided to enhance my parental communication strategies. For this upcoming school year, I have decided to implement two new systems of parent communication in place of ClassDojo. As Danah Boyd believes, learning is a lifelong process. Boyd specifically states that ,“Teens may develop an intuitive sense for how to navigate social interactions online through casual engagement and experience, but this does not translate to an understanding of why 198 literacy search queries return some content before others. Nor does experience with social media push young people to learn how to build their own systems, versus simply using a social media platform.” (Boyd.197) This quote inspires my project, because although I do know how to navigate technology programs well, but I often am not pushed further to produce and build. Therefore, to better enhance parent communication, this school year I will create a class webpage through educatorpages.com, and I will actively update parents/guardians of things happening in the school/classroom through Remind. Through these tools I will be “creating” and “producing” more.

On my Educator page website, I will have the following information that we be continuously updated; contact information, grading policies, homework, reminders, and writing resources. This website, will allow both students and families to access this at any time if they need assistance with assignments. In the “homework” tab, I will post the weekly homework assignment, so parents, guardians and students will have access to this information. In the “reminders” section of the website, I will post any important dates, or information that parents/students will need to know about. The Remind app, will also serve as a reminder tool for families just in case a parent does not actively check the website. In Remind, I will also send out reminders of homework assignments, projects, or special dates etc. However, I will be frequently sending Reminds out with reference to my website.

Using my new outlook inspired by Boyd in combination with my new parental communication strategies, I hope to make a shift in Scott Noon’s “4 Tier Model of Teacher Training in Technology.” Currently, I find that I am in between being a “techno traditionalist” and a “techno constructivist.” However, I am aiming to become a “Technoconstructivist.” This project alone, will not constitute me entirely as “techno constructivist, but I believe it will assist me in making more risks technologically in the classroom. I typically am resistant to trying new programs, but with time and experimentation I feel that I will transform entirely to a techno constructivist. I do use GoogleClassroom as the main source for students to access assignments, and content material, but I would like to encourage myself to add more means of technology that would bring me to be a “techno constructivist.

This idea brings me to Marc Prensky’s theory of “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” If I had to label myself as one, it would have to be a Digital Native. I pondered thoughts of comparing one to the other, but the following quote has helped me to identify myself as a Digital Native. Prensky states, “Today‟s students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age.” As he mentions here, I did grow up with all of the mentioned items of technology. I also considered his specifics of “today's students K through college.” At the time, this article was published in 2001, which would have made me 11 years old. Having been brought up with technology at my finger tips, I do expect the internet to process at a “twitch speed,” and I'm also drawn to images over text. Although, it’s hard to identify as a digital native, I can see Prensky’s thought of this being an advantage. However, with technology continuously changing, I currently do not feel like a “Digital Native.” I feel that I am continuously attempting to learn new programs to stay up to date with the “21st century” learning. Thus, it brings me back to Boyd and the idea of myself being a lifelong learner. The date of this article being published has a lot to do with my viewpoint/doubt on being a “Digital Native.”

Now that I have considered many of concepts from “Digital Media Literacy”, I am brought back to my initial thought regarding Christensen. Did media spark my love for education, or was it my very own passion? At the beginning of this narrative, I questioned the source of my career or “dream.” However, this morning a spark came to my mind. It was not the media’s influence. It was Ms. Hennessey. Ms. Hennessey was my second grade teacher. She modeled teaching and learning as “fun.” She created an environment in which every student felt cared about. She was supportive and made learning engaging.

Overall, regardless of whether or not media influenced/inspired my interest in teaching, to me it becomes irrelevant when you love going to work everyday. I will not ever be the ideal perfect, which is portrayed in the media, nor will I ever be the perfect teacher. However, I do know that I will forever continue to seek professional development to keep up with the latest teaching trends. In addition, I will always continuously support my students. Which is why I wanted to so badly wanted to be like Ms. Hennessey. I believe that’s my ideal perfect.


My Educator Website

Pecha Kucha

Final Project Self Rubric