Aggie Ebrahimi
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Implementing Student-Centered Inquiry
On Friday February 20, I wrote about how I wanted to experiment with a new method of teaching (new for me), that I wanted to move away from teacher-centered inquiry to a student-centered model. Today, Monday February 23, I had an opportunity to experiment with that new approach and it worked splendidly! I had a wonderful time and felt like an actual educator. I felt like I wasn't there to impart information, to "give" the students knowledge, but to provide students some of the tools or language they might need in order to discover their own knowledge.
Specifically, I taught/presented on "Media Represenations of Iran and Iranian Culture." To do so, I used an investigatory model. First, we began by exploring what the students already "knew" or believed about Iran - what do we associate with Iran? What terms come to mind when we think of Iran? Some responses we came up with were - the veil, Ahmadenijad, oil, nuclear weapons, and others of the like, though one student did happen to know that Iran has one of the largest populations of young people in the world (proportionally, that is: nearly 60 % of Iran's 70 million people are under the age of 30).
We moved from there to talk about HOW we come to know these things. Of course, we all guess that it is from the media, but what media forms specifically? Here, we watched a CNN clip, footage of the Columbia University president introducing President Ahmadenijad during his visit a couple of years ago, and the opening scene of the film Syriana. We moved from there to a discussion of what was missing from these accounts, which helped open up the question of whether culture can ever be captured. Even if we had a representation of "Iran" created by eveyr single person in the world, would we have "captured' Iran and its culture? What does "culture" even mean? How can we, as media makers, be forward moving in our representational models?
I think that what helped me the most in organizing this presentation were the following two conversations:
1) Speaking with Renee (which I discussed in my last post) about student-centered inquiry, about modeling for them the process of investigation in the classroom rather than my prior model which was to provide them enough information to entice them about all that they could potentially learn upon investigation). Watching Renee in action, as well as the Roberts elementary school teachers, has also helped me a great deal. A GREAT deal. Renee has a way of working with students and adults that is completely open but also intentional...Really helpful to see this acted out since no explanation can do it justice.
2) Speaking with my friend Laura Deutch about project planning. She talked to me one day about how effective project planning and evaluation would include: 1) Declaring your focus, 2) setting goals, 3) setting learning objectives, and 4) evaluating whether those objectives were met. And so for this presentation, I did just that. Set some goals, decided what I wanted the students and myself to walk away with, and then tried to ask questions that would bring us to that learning and it actually worked! I mean, I felt so much more organized in the classroom, so much more focused, so much less flustered or chaotic or pressed for time.
My only regret was that I felt like my evaluation strategy was not as effective as I wanted it to be...But now I know for next time. I also hope that i can continue to build on this learning and continue to grow as a media literacy educator. I hope to be able to apply this learning in new contexts and to new topics.
What I Learned Today at Roberts
Another fabulous day at Roberts! I absolutely love going to this school, working with the teachers and students. I am always impressed with how happy everyone seems to be, or more appropriately, how much of a sense of family they've built among themselves.
So many exciting events and conversations took place today, but I will list the ones that stood out most, or at least the first few I can name without boring my audience:
1) Media specialist Maggie Caverly introduced our team to a new concept in children's biographies: story-based biographies. These are books intended for children (but enjoyable for an adult audience as well!) that aim to convey historical fact, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton's participation in the suffragist movement, through the use of narrative techniques like drama, dialogue, characterization, and even more recently: the graphic novel! Very interesting and this trend perhaps even reveals our culture's awakening to the power of story-telling. Furthermore, this approach engenders a cross-disciplinary approach in that social studies enters the language arts classroom.
1a) As the best educators do, Renee used this conversation as a learning activity. She pointed out that what sets Maggie apart as a Media Specialist is that she has worked hard to make sure that library materials are reflective of and incorporated into the curriculum. The Roberts library is not just a mass repository of books, but a resource center to supplement what the students are learning in the classroom. It is very much a symbiotic system at Roberts.
2) We discussed Jason Ohler's Green Screen Project and how we might be able to incorporate that into our pen pal exchange program. I really hope we can make something like this happen.
3) The students! I LOVE interacting with these students! They are not at all camera shy, which is really helpful for us, and they are so smart that nearly everything they say is a perfect sound byte. There is something so magical about being behind a camera and interacting with a young mind through that medium. I can't put my finger on why the experience is so powerful, but I relish it...Children are less self-conscious than many adults in front of the camera, so that whatever they say is genuine, pristine. And it feels like a service to humanity to capture these pure expressions, these unadulterated expressions, to share with hundreds if not thousands of people for years to come through the magic of movie making.
4) Out of metaphysical mode: I am learning a great deal about pedagogical practice through this independent study. Today, Jiwon and Renee and I discussed ways in which we as educators can introduce inquiry-based learning into the classroom. I discovered, in talking to them, that my teaching philosophy, up to now, has been: introduce the students to as much as possible in the classroom, touch upon as much as possible, open their minds to as much of the world as you can in the classroom so that upon leaving, they are so intrigued by all that they saw (in little depth: depth of information is sacrificed for quanity of information) that they go out and excavate the depth for themselves. But Renee suggested there could be another approach, which is to use the classroom to model for them what inquiry is: rather than trusting that they will go out and ask questions and explore in great depth every idea that we simply touched upon in class, focus on one idea in class and explore it in depth, modeling for the students how to ask questions, what kinds of questions to ask, how to critically engage with a text.
So, I am teaching "representation of Iranian identity in the media" on Monday February 23 and am going to attempt this new approach. Rather than bring in 10 clips of 10 different films to give an overview of Iranian representation, I am going to bring in one telling clip perhaps, or one telling media item of sorts, and burrow through it in depth by asking questions of the students and leading the students to ask questions of it....I am very nervous as I've never tried this before, but I need to try something new because I am seeing that while my approach in the classroom may be very generous and affable and may be attempting at inclusion and engagement, I may also be overwhelming students with the amount of information I provide. And I always feel more teacher-centered than I care to, so hopefully Monday will present me an opportunity to be student-centered, focused,and inquiry based so that we are setting up a situation conducive to investigation in the moment rather than hoping I've set up enough incentive to investigate later on their own (because let's face it: even if they wanted to investigate further, will they have or make the time to do so? And will they do so if they don't have to write a paper?)
Learning about Learning
So last week, while at Roberts, I was mesmerized from watching Renee walk through a media literacy exercise, modeling for the fantastic teachers at Roberts how they can begin to teach a "reading" of films as texts. Throughout much of the stimulating discussion, I wanted to jump in and give away the answer, draw people's attention to what they might have missed, start asking: Whose interest is being served here? Why would producers and production companies, distributors and news outlets, be interested in a particular definition of the "reality" of different cultures and countries? Can't we see here that in this film, Iraq is being treated again through the same prism of primitivism or victimization!?!?
BUT I realized as we were talking, that media literacy takes a long, long time to build, that it cannot be an understanding forced upon a person but as Renee pointed out, it must come through independent learning. And we are there to facilitate the learning process. Not impose it or control it. That is, as educators, we must all be open to the learning processes of the people with whom we work. We must not be tied to our own definitions of what the "right answer" is and must be open to witnessing all the ways that students and teachers alike come to view the texts around them in new ways.
Come to think of it, documentary filmmaking in itself is a perfect model for practicing this more peaceful, this more open form of media education because in making doc films, you can't impose outcomes on your subjects or on the environment you are filming. You can't have too many expectations - you can have hopes, but you also have to be as open as possible as much as possible to the process of following a subject and an event and hoping that you will make the wisest decisions about what to capture. As would a teacher, a doc filmmaker must have a framework for understanding, a framework for perceiving the environment, a framework for moving forward, but beyond that, he or she must be willing to go with the flow. Though as Renee points out, having a few learning outcomes in any situation can help a great deal.
And something really fascinating I learned today: after years of having heard the word "Shia" around my family, and after having stood in the Hagia Sophia three years ago and listened to my Iranian cousin teach me and his young son the sucession of Imams in Shiite Islam, I finally read today that "Shiite" stands for "Shiat Ali," which means "followers of Ali"!!!
I also learned recently that the symbol in the center of the Iranian flag (the flag of my country!) reads "Allah" and the calligraphic, rectangular etchings along the rectangular borders read, "Allah Akbar." "God is great." I can't believe I didn't know this before!!!!