Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Promising Practices

My alarm clock was buzzing and I immediately groaned , today was the day . No
school, no work, and surely no homework, is usually my motto for the typical Saturday
morning. Obviously I was not thrilled about driving to RIC and spending more money on
gas to fill up my car. Also, I get very grumpy when I have to wake up on days that I
would like to catch up on some sleep. With all that said, I did wake up, drowsy and
annoyed , and made it to Donovan with time to spare.

The first presentation I attended was “Media Made Me Do It”, by Marco
McWilliams. I was glad that I happened to choose this presentation. The presenter
started off by showing how important television is in shaping the youth’s ideology. Some
very interesting facts were presented. Children 2-5 view 32 hours a week, by the time a
child reaches 18 years old they have seen 200,000 violent acts on television, and 45 % of
parents say that if they are busy they will make their kids watch the tube so they can get
done what they have to do. I have to say that these facts made me change my opinion on
media. The media is obviously very powerful because in some cases the television is
raising children. The presenter also showed some critical issues about the media. The
media just wants to gain profit and power and they treat the person as a product. The
media constructs a representation of the world that is false but this is what people
believe.

The presenter then went on to show some advertisements and magazine covers
that show misrepresentation of minorities and women. One that stays vivid in my mind
is Vogue Magazine. The cover was Lebron James in a very aggressive, ferocious stance.
A supermodel was in his arm looking very passive. This image was nearly identical to
an advertisement from a war. The argument was that Lebron was being portrayed as a gorilla
and the model as a helpless woman. The war advertisement was meant to destroy the
enemy, which was the gorilla. This shows that without even knowing it, the media
instills the wrong image in our mind. There was also some advertisements that clearly show disrespect to women.

I thought this presentation clearly made a great connection to Linda
Christensen’s, “Unlearning the Myths That Bind Us”. The media reinforces stereotypes
of minorities even if they do not know it. These representations become accepted is the
core connection. Another connection I could make was to Delpit. This also reinforced
the culture of power. The power people control what is going to be seen and put out in
the media.

The second workshop I presented was “Teaching The Muslim World.”
Unfortunately, this was a complete and utter waste of time. I honestly do not have
anything to say from what I learned because I did not learn anything. The presentation
consisted of the presenter showing website after website that supposedly showed us how
to teach the Muslim world. I could have stayed home and googled websites about the
Muslim world. I thought that they were going to teach us a little bit about
Muslim culture in general. Maybe some topics to stay away from or some topics that are
really great to teach about. Being an English major I was hopeful that he would show
some pieces of literature that could be stuidied in a diverse classroom.

Lastly, Dr. Tricia Rose was an amazing speaker. I was at first just blown away by
how articulate she is when she talks. I have actually read her book “Hip- Hop Wars” , so
I was very excited to hear what she had to say. I made the connection from what she was
saying to the piece by Johnson. The Pledge she did was awesome. The push for change
nearly mirrored the article by Johnson. Admitting the problem and wanting to be part of
the solution was a big part of Dr. Rose’s speech that I connected with. Another
important part I took from her speech was the student calling the computer “gay“. As a
teacher, it is your responsibility to make a moment out of certain things that occur in the
class. Dr. Rose could have ignored the comment but she made a moment when a
moment to teach presented itself. I thought things like this are important and this is what
makes a good teacher.

In conclusion, I feel like I am a better person for attending this conference. The
Curriculum Resource Fair also had some great textbooks that I could see myself using in
the future. The English texts were very diverse and presented a plethora of authors. I
learned some things on Saturday and hopefully I can teach about these things in the
future. The pictures from the media workshop helped me better understand this world we live
in. The media is amazingly powerful. This clip from Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine"
is amazingly true. Please Watch! It shows how the media creates a culture of fear and instills ideas about others. I thought this related to the Vogue cover.

2 comments:

  1. That Burger King advertisement shocked me. Media always finds ways to add hidden meanings, but that advertisement's "hidden" meaning is particularly obvious. Clearly, we know what the developers at the Burger King corporate office were thinking about at that meeting. I'm sure BK got some interesting response letters...

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  2. Great job making connections between this experience and our course texts and drawing on external links as well. I can tell you got a lot out of this day. I hope you will attend next year as well!!

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