Salow- Week 4 Post

 While reading this week's article, I found myself thinking about how other people might perceive me based on their limited knowledge of what they see online or what they hear from other people. I do not actively post on any social media. The ironic part about that is my husband and I both made that decision based off of another person's social media post. We both saw a video that was a woman talking about how she had been targeted by criminals because she posted everything online and because neither myself or my husband were super attached to social media, we just decided to stop posting. That does not mean we don’t still have it. We both fall victim to the never-ending scroll, we just do not post ourselves, so I have been made fun of (light-heartedly) by a few of my friends who are very active that I am “old” because I do not participate in the way that is pretty normal for people my age. This is part of other people's perspective of me. 

I have noticed social media is formulated to show you videos that they think you will like or would be interested in. I started making a list on Amazon of things that we might get for our first baby, just found out I am pregnant. Then as soon as I go to Facebook, YouTube, or any other social media site they are throwing all of these videos about pregnancy at me! That is the algorithm that can be responsible for the echo chambers that are created by social media. They show you videos that are similar to ones that you have interacted with in the past. This type of media does not expose you to opposing views and leads to headstrong people about topics that they feel they are knowledgeable in just from watching videos on any social media site. There is so much information out there that is being thrown at anybody who accesses the internet that it can feel overwhelming. So people do not reach and go beyond that first video. Many do not go research for themselves, and those that do can still struggle because many people don’t know what sources are truthful and which ones are not. You can find a site to support any way of thinking, so this skill of being curious is absolutely necessary for our students to have, but we also have to show them how to use that curiosity in a positive and truthful way. 

Tunde Szecsi et al article Transforming Teacher Cultural Landscapes by Reflecting on Multicultural Literature discusses that ways to learn and show curiosity in a positive way are to reflect on readings before and after reading. It also lists elements of the transformative learning experience such as lasting impression, part of the person’s self-narrative, and behavioral impact. (Szecsi et al., 2010) It then goes on to talking about how “disorienting” or “shocking” the students can lead to critical reflections and lasting impressions. I have experimented with this a little in my class. We read the novel “The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963” in my class. It follows an African American family from Flint, Michigan that goes down to visit family in Birmingham, Alabama at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. I have used resources like videos and interviews of people who were in Birmingham at that time to show my students what was actually happening to people at that time. I have had to make sure that I am not crossing the line into inappropriate because they discuss in some detail the horrific things that they experienced. This was also a few days that my students left my class discussing with themselves why people did that and they had no idea things were like that. I would say it definitely shocked them. I think that a great way to make these resources more impactful would be not only to discuss them as a class, but have them reflect on their own before and after seeing the resources so they can physically see how the literature and other resources add to their knowledge and perspective. 

Szecsi, T., Spillman, C., Vazquez-Montilla, E., & Mayberry, S. (2010). Transforming teacher cultural landscapes by reflecting on multicultural literature. Multicultural Education, (Summer), 44-48.