Zoe's Media Literacy Blog

  Using GoogleSites to Expand the Community! When I think about myself as an educator, I think about the relationships I've built with young people. These relationships are our foundation, they have always been bigger than the space we are in, and I always ask myself why that is.What about these classes, that make us and allow us all to connect and grow in ways that we didn’t expect and always wish for. Why is this the first time I am feeling like this in school? I often go back to a particular story of my very first year of teaching. It was February and my second full week teaching my “own” classroom, covering someone else's maternity leave. Like most kids, and adults, they were  very curious about my ethnic background. I can see the Wonder in their eyes as they're about to ask “ Miss Zoe, what are you?” I replied proudly that I was black first always,  and I am half white. there's one child, Brooklyn, her eyes lit up so bright and I can already predict the word she wa...

       Who Can Stay Here? Grace Cornell Gonzalez starts with a chilling antedate of I.C.E. officers enacting scare tactics at the bilingual elementary school in East Oakland. She recalls "It was almost impossible to assuage that fear - to tell them that they were safe here and no none would take them away (especially because I didn't really know if that was true). Like many good teachers, Gonzalez decided to reflect the experiences of the youth in front of her. And like many other oppressed voices, the. history and experience of Immigrants were told to protect those in power, losing the voice of the oppressed.  She then research children's literature, focussing on the first grade, and found that most children's books on immigration could be categorized three times. Creating the image that US citizenship is equally available to all. Someone else’s  problem. Tackling the Subject. Example Titles: “A Very Important Day” by Maggie Rugg,  “ How Many Days to...

                 At the start of this past school year I was fortunate that BPS gave us access to a lot of digital recourses, and I didn't end up using or even looking at a lot of them. I wanted to take this opportunity to look at some of the other recourses that they provide us through our Clever app. I found the PBS Learning Media website, and made my tutorial  using that website. I have always loved pbs, so it definitely called to me.  (Watch the tutorial for reference)           This recourse can act as a learning platform and has the traditional features like hosting a class list, being able to organize and group assignments, assigning assignments directly to students, and easily connecting with Google Classroom (and similar platforms). All of these things make it convenient to use and easy to integrate into your current routine. If you wanted to use it as it's own platform I don't think you are ab...

 My Final Project     I believe young people learn when they are able to show up authentically to a space, have say in how and what they learn, and are empowered to take action in the community. I believe that the learning spaces i have co-created with the young people I serve reflect these values, but all of that goodness has always stayed within our classrooms. This past year really emphasized the need of parent involvement and support within our learning community as well as the desire of young people to have a digital platform.     This past year a few of my students were really into coding and the creation of their own technology toolkit. In that they made the country of Rasberya, where the path to citizenship depended on your relationship to anime and Takis. You could not like them, but you better keep that to yourself- a law created based off of our own community rule "you better not yuck someone else's yum".      Thinking ab...

  Curiosity Birthed a Learner      Watching Sugata Mitra's TedTalk I resonated with many of the sentiments he expressed, specifically regarding the way schools currently run. He spoke of the last standing empire in history, Great Britain, and how public education systems were created to create copies of each other to keep the systems running. You can see the same push to assimilation in the Native American boarding schools , which primarily took place from 1869-1960s, were designed to "Kill the Indian, Save the Man".  This same narrative is played out over and over again in schools all across this country, and all across the world.      Mitra pushes to use technology to spark the curiosity in children to motivate them to learn. He shines light on the importance of curiosity, which I was thinking is something we take away from young people. I have been reflecting on the language I hear when speaking to young people and the language I use....

"You are so different in person!" - Zoe Rogers welcoming in her 5th graders into the classroom in March! Wesch and Turkle both speak to the disconnections human beings are experiencing amongst each other in this modern world. Wesch refers to academic spaces, specifically higher education, and how there is a lack of communit and relationships wich leads to a lack of engagement from all memeers of the community. Turkle discusses how technological advancements and human beings' expodential depency on technology has led to our disconnect. Both educators/researchers speak to self awareness and understanding the needs of the individual and how those needs interact with the community around them. Wesch claim that authentic relationships are the bedrock of a learning environment and I would have to agree.In youth work we are more likely to dig deep with the youth we serve, but so often in academic spaces mastery of standards are prioritized above all els...