If we are being honest, most students interact more with modern media than with literature. I try to bring their interest in media into a discussion about literature by reading stories about media. People experience reality through television – wars, the moon landing, protests, They love to talk about the things they see on television and on social media and how it affects their behavior and worldview.
I teach the novel Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro whose narrator is an “AF” or artificial friend that uses AI to communicate with a child. I also teach Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. In one scene, two characters have a relationship over their phone because a war makes it too dangerous to meet outside. The magical realism of the novel is very similar to how people use modern technology.
I also teach four short texts, “Bad Girls” by Joyce Carol Oates, “Videotape” by Don DeLillo, “The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever, and the first two sections of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. “Bad Girls” tells the story behind a provocative headline involving an alleged sexual assault, “The Enormous Radio” describes a magic radio that broadcasts the private conversations of neighbors, “Videotape” depicts a local news story where a young girl in a car suddenly captures a murder as she films out the window, and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison starts with a bunch of white professionals who pay to have a group of blindfolded Black young men fight each other in a boxing ring for entertainment.
Each story says something different about how people consume information. They focus on how media is both real and imaginary at the same time. Media contains real facts and images but they may be presented in a way that distorts the big picture. The stories challenge the reader to think about how they react to the news and violence: are we moved to action by what we see or do we dismiss it as just another sad story? Do we watch and then think we might be the next victim of a random act of violence? Do we lose some of our humanity when we spend time on social media and socialize online? A few of the stories also get kids to think about how the media creates stereotypes and how they can prevent people from seeing an individual person.
Instead of merely hoping my students become a little more media literate, I ask them to make a connection between a quote from one of the stories and something in the news, a television show, social media, or movie. Sometimes they will post a link to a trailer or a short scene. I can then choose appropriate responses to open up the discussion and make it about the real and virtual worlds they live in.
Teacher's Workshop, professional development for secondary ELA teachers
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