As much as Cam Macpherson's workshop on May 5 had a specific focus, it also provided a forum for the teachers present to share and compare notes. It's always helpful to hear that the difficulties one is encountering, or the strategies one is employing, are mirrored elsewhere.
The workshop began with a discussion of the types of challenges that face the media teacher who has a class of students whose abilities and skills are extremely varied. For example, how does one meet the needs of a highly motivated and academically-minded student, as well as those of a student who is struggling to understand even simple concepts when the two students are in the same classroom?
Or, how do we cope with students who aren't remotely interested in media, but either have chosen it as a "bird" course, or have been slotted into it to meet timetabling demands? There were no tidy solutions offered to these and various other problems that were raised. But still, there is great value in bouncing ideas off others and clarifying what is a school-based issue and what is a systemic one. The discussion sparked by Cam's examples demonstrated why it's important for teachers to come together in workshops such as these.
Cam then raised the issue of teaching media in a regular English course. In particular, the new curriculum has placed a burden on teachers who have to struggle to teach "too many expectations in too little time." Given that, teachers may be tempted to prioritize, placing media expectations near the bottom -- or off -- the "to do" list. While that's perhaps understandable, it assumes that the study of media and literature are somehow mutually exclusive, or that media is an add-on. In today's classroom, the fallacy of that assumption is apparent -- our students' "literature" is the media. Their English is the language, both written and oral, of mass popular culture, from sitcoms to web sites, Tom Green to Jennifer Lopez, Harry Potter to Wu Tan.
The trick, then, to meeting curriculum expectations, reflecting our students' experiences and teaching literature, is to "reinforce speaking, writing and presentation skills by doing more media work as part of regular English activities."
The second half of Cam's workshop showed how, through a comparative analysis of the written text of Romeo and Juliet, and two film versions, one could enrich the students' understanding and appreciation of the play in large part by helping them to discover that, in fact, each version has merit as a "media product" of its time. In particular, we examined the market scene in each of Franco Zeffirelli's and Baz Luhrmann's adaptations, with a view to how the scene was interpreted, its dramatic potential realized and its meaning constructed.
The exercise was both engaging and educational. In the classroom, the approach would allow students to discuss, debate, write and present their observations to their peers. It could easily be adapted to other works of literature, or to the study of other media texts. Clearly, we can teach about English through media, and vice versa.
I enjoyed this workshop. It was relevant and practical. And of course, there were handouts.
Ian Esquivel
bscan@interlog.com