One thing I’ve always been concerned about is teaching truth.
In today’s world, all of our news media feels politicized and/or biased. Everyone claims that they have the correct version of the story; everyone claims that their perspective is the truth. I, for one, refuse to digest news from most outlets because I don’t believe that these outlets have people’s best interest in mind. I think they have money in mind. 🤑🤑
With this as a personal philosophy, I have reached a pre-teaching career crisis. In ELA, most of what we engage with are texts created by people with opinions – people with biases. I have a lot to figure out: How am I going to leave bias at the door? Not just the bias of popular media outlets, but also my own subjective opinions and my own biases? How am I going have my students question the truth, while also avoiding directing my students down the path of full nihilism? I do believe there are truthful people out there sharing present truths, but where do I find that? How do I share that with my students?
It's confusing. Believe me, I know.
Like I said: crisis.
The beautiful thing is that I feel less in crisis now (yay!! 👏 ) understanding the accessibility of three tools:
1. Site codes! (Bookmarked: https://www.worldstandards.eu/other/tlds/)
2. Google's archive of Newspapers from over time!
3. “Half-life” of truths (Check out this Ted Talk! - https://youtu.be/GaxYnvd7YAM)
I am genuinely overwhelmed with relief and excitement thinking about how I can use these tools with my future ELA students.
With site codes, I can teach that stories have a multitude of perspectives, and often, we only see one.
We can look at the primary sources of these stories through Google’s archive of newspapers. We can look at what people saw as truth from various times and different states. How fun will that be to discuss! I can even teach the idea of “Half-life” and have a class discussion about truth.
I am blown away with how many of these things I can use in my classroom, and I am so excited for the day that I get to facilitate these kinds of rich discussions. Crisis: averted! 😎
I'm curious... How do y'all plan to teach "the truth" in your classrooms?
Paige
Paige! This is such a fun and engaging post! The "Penguins of Madagascar" meme is iconic, and it depicts how I feel in this cohort at times. Not in a bad way, but in a deep-thinking way because we are always retaining helpful information. The confusion sneaks in sometimes, though, for there come times where I feel stumped about how the heck I am going to remember to utilize and/or remember in general how I can be inclusive, supportive, and well-rounded in my teaching, based on the resources we have been given. I definitely cannot confidently answer your last question with definitive thoughts. However, I can say that I plan to teach "the truth" in my classrooms by always being readily prepared to cover a multitude of perspectives when learning about any given topic. People view, learn, experience, and interpret stories very differently, so having that space where every student feels they can voice or research more about their opinions is crucial. I hope that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteHey Courtney! Thanks for the comment. This program is definitely a deep-thinking one. What you are saying about teaching the truth does make sense. We have the tools to give our students, they just need to have their own autonomy over what they research and what they voice! They are allowed to have their own truth, in a way. Super interesting perspective!
ReplyDelete