Cultural Snapshot- African Americans

How are

African Americans

Represented in the media?

African Americans…

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa.[2] In the United States, the terms are generally used for Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry.

Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are—or are descended from—immigrants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations.

Artifact #1

http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewshortstory.asp?id=25552 

As an African American female with Spanish Nigerian and Black Foot Native  American ancestry, I do not see my likeness portrayed.

I have twins, I have my own TV show, I also design websites and I produce music.  I manage a recording artist and a small fashion design line by the same artist respectively.  I also write grants for non profits and I have raised money for a hospital's residency program.

This type of multitasked individual does not exist according to network TV, but I am living proof that we do exist  

Artifact #2

Artifact #3

http://www.helium.com/items/720534-african-american-representation-in-the-media

Mediums like film and music have helped to create more positive and widespread representations of African Americans, but television has broken the most ground. Television, which in the 1960s represented African American women through the image of Aunt Jemima, is now featuring Oprah as the most widely known and influential African American woman of all time.

Take for instance the change in McDonald's television ads over the past couple of years. Rather than directing their marketing to all-white individuals and families, McDonald's has now begun to open their campaign to all demographics, specifically highlighting African Americans. 

Artifact #4

Artifact #5

Discussion:

How African Americans are Represented

in the United States

A)   What messages are being sent about this cultural group through these artifacts?

There are different messages portrait by these artifacts.  One message that is portrait by artifact #1 is that the media does not take into account the variety of places that the African Americans come from, their ethnicity.  It also sends a message that not all of the African Americans are being represented equally.  They are all represented as if they were all the same, even though they are not.  This type of generalization is offensive to their culture and even their own individual race. 

Artifacts #2 and #3 on the other hand send a message of inclusion of the African American cultural group in their different areas.  The media is including this minority culture in their daily showing on TV as well as in movies and such.  It sends a message that this cultural group is important in this era, and that they have much cultural capital that can be used in daily advertisement.  The successes of different African American people are recognized and publicized.  These artifacts are sending out messages of acculturation and even biculturalism. 

 Other messages are however not as positively portrait as the ones with artifact #2.  If you see at artifact #4 you can see that most African American actors/actresses are working on roles related to either sports, poverty (even generational poverty), disadvantaged people, struggle, etc.  It sends a message of stereotype ideals.  It only gives a glimpse as to how some of these people live.  In a way it sends a message of passive racism because it portraits messages that do have negative effects on this cultural group.  Messages of outlaws orassimilation are sent out with artifact #5.

A   B) How might these messages impact how a child from this cultural group is viewed and treated in the classroom? 

An impact on a child from this cultural group would be that of rejection of its own culture.  A child could have a positive resistance to the culture of power, but at the same time it would try to use assimilation and lose the traits of their own culture.  By looking at the way that most African Americans are portrait in the media, and how their situation has not changed much in a long time, they could come to the conclusion that being like their own cultural group is not what is best for them, and that it is not what is approved by the culture of power.

Another way that these messages could impact a child from the African American cultural group would be that of wanting to succeed in school and in life because they want to follow in the steps of those few successful people from their cultural group that have been acknowledged in the media.  They might want to break that deficit theory and show their teacher, classmates, families, etc., that they are too able to perform well in all areas of their lives.  It could bring about great enthusiasm and inspiration for a child from this cultural group.

A)   C) Why is it important or not for teachers to examine how cultural groups are represented in the media, curriculum, and policy?

One way that a teacher mitigate the messages created by the media about this cultural group would be to set high expectations for all the children in the class, but to reinforce these high expectations for the African American children.   They must be provided with tools that will help them to achieve these expectations so that they will see that they can succeed and that success is made up of a number of microfactors in school.  

Another way to mitigate these messages is to have all the children in the class be involved in the same way.  This might include jobs in the classroom that require the same type of responsibility. Rotation of these jobs between the students is a good way to ensure equal involvement from all students.  Lessons in the classroom can involve the interests of all children equally.  Each ethnicity and culture must be equally shared and if possible included in the lessons taught.  Children form this cultural group must see that their cultural group is as important as any other, and that they are represented the same as everyone else in the classroom.  The classroom must be a safe space for these children.  It must be a space where they can feel free to express themselves and be themselves.  

Both of these ways of mitigating messages created by the media about this cultural group will hopefully eliminate that deficit theory.  

Internet Safety- Doing

* Who did you talk with? (I don't need names - just a brief description of age so I understand the context.)
I talked to my sister who is 20 years old. She is at BYU as well and is a very smart girl. She is also very cautious and a little bit conservative. So, her answers were a little bit different from what I think.
* Describe what you shared and how it went (was it positive? negative? hard? easy? valuable or not?).
The conversation went really well. It was a very positive experience. She shared with me what she knew about internet safety. She mostly talked about how pornography is such a big issue and really a problem when surfing the internet. Even when you are not looking for it, it just sort of pops up. She also gave me her incite about you tube, but I think she meant my space because she said that everyone had access to your personal info. So she is not really in favor of my space. Even with facebook, it took forever for her to get a profile. So she is pretty worried about her personal information safety, which is understandable, there are people out there who do use your info to damage your image and such.
I asked her if she thought that teenagers, or middle school kids should have blogs and my space, facebook pages. She shared with me that it would be ok if they were in 9th grade and up. But that smaller kids are not responsible enough to know what things are out there in the internet.
I shared with her what I learned about syberbullying, and how now days most kids in middle school have their own my space or facebook page. I shared with her that I think it's ok for them to have it b/c as a parent I wouldn't want my children to feel left out of some group. But, I told her that the important thing is for children to know the dangers as well as the benefits of the internet and of course of places like facebook and my space.

Final PLE posting

* What was the most valuable aspect to you of creating a Personal Learning Environment?
First of all, I didn't know how to make one and well now I do. I even made one for my husband and I. So, just the fact that I know how to make one now is very valuable to me. Also being able to share different projects and other things with other people was really good. I really liked being able to see what other people were working on and how they did their projects and such.
* What did you like least about the Personal Learning Environment?
You know what, I don't think I disliked anything. Like I said I am so happy that I know how to make on now.
* Comment on the likelihood of your using a blog or wiki for personal or educational purposes in the future.
Well, I touched on this a little bit, but for my personal use I am already using a blog. I thin that this is a great way to keep in touch with people all over. I don't know if I will use it for educational purposes. Maybe I will, to post announcements that the parents can look at. I think that this could be a good way to use a blog. But, who knows if that's ok with the school I'll teach at.

Internet safety- Watching

I watched the following videos
"Cyberbullying: Feathers in the Wind"
Internet Safety News
Tips to Help When Your Child is Bullied Online
Cyberbullying: Broken Friendship"
Julie's Journey"
Adventures in the internet Faux Paws
Ikeepsafe.com
Cyberbullying

1 What were the most important things you learned?
Some of the things that I have learned is that parents are trying to control their children's internet life so that they can make sure that their children are safe. I also learned that teenagers know what things are on the internet. They know what type of people to stay away from. I think that if a parent wants to protect their children, they have to trust that their children will make the right decisions when dangerous request come along. Also, teach them that people will try to take advantage of them, and that they need to be responsible when they are online, otherwise, they are going to get in trouble.
2 How might you use the resources you discovered in your future classroom or home?
I think that most importantly, I will teach my own children that the internet can be a great resource for a lot of things, but that it can be dangerous in different ways. I have a facebook, and myspace account, I think that when my kids are old enough to understand the benefits and dangers that can come from having social accounts like these, they should get one. I don't want my children to be isolated from the social life that their friends have. I think that as long as them and I know what to expect from their activity in the internet, they will be safe. In the schools, I think that the internet will be used more and more as the years go by. I think that it will be a good idea to teach students from the first grade how to use the internet, and what a wonderful tool it is. As they move along in grade levels, they will learn about all the different tools used to socialize online, with that will come my responsibility to teach them how to be safe when surfing the internet.

Internet safety- Reading

1 What article did you choose to read for your fourth article?
I chose to read the "It's only violence" article by Brad J. Bushman.
2 What were the most important things you learned from the readings?
From reading the articles, I learned that we are in charge of what we watch. We need to choose what to watch on TV, what to hear on the radio, what to look up on the Internet. We are so caught up in a society where things are so easily accessible that sometimes it is almost impossible to prevent watching and hearing things we don't want to hear. But we do have a choice of what things we let into our lives and what things we want to treasure up as good and beneficial for us.
3 How will what you have read influence your actions as a parent and/or teacher of children and youth?
I think technology, media, etc. are wonderful resources; it really does make our lives easier. But as a parent I think I have the right to prevent bad, harmful things to enter my home. I can suggest watching good, productive, informative TV shows. I can control the time that my children watch TV; it can be entertaining, but it can be damaging if watching too long.
4 How can you use what you have learned from the reading to have a positive influence on family and friends?
I want my children to feel comfortable with what I watch. I also want them to talk to me about what they hear and see outside of home, so in a way I do want to teach my children that there are things in the world that they will not see at home, but they will see outside of our home, and if they do see those, they can talk to me about it.
I think that by providing my children with good TV watching, movie watching strategies, can really help their friends. They can set an example to what really is beneficial for children to watch.

Reflection 11/22/08

What technology use and attitudes did I see modeled?
This whole week the computers at our school were down, so we were really struggling in using technology to teach or to do anything really. So I didn't see a lot of technology being used. Of course because the computers were down, everything seemed chaotic. SO that tells me that teachers now days depend so much on technology and I am very impressed as to how much we rely on technology to do just about everything.

What was my own experience trying to use technology in this setting?
This week I presented my technology lesson. I did a read aloud. I scanned the pages of the book "Thanksgiving at the Tappletons'" and then I made a power point slide with the images of every page. I was really excited to teach it. I was planning on projecting the slides on a big white screen with a projector. Unfortunately, all computers were down and I was not able to project the slide show on a big white screen. Instead I was able to get a hold of another teacher and use her computer. The computers at the school are conected to the TV, and so I was able to project the slides on the TV. I was planning on reading off the TV, but it turns out that it is really hard to read from it. SO I read from the computer (I had to talk really loud). I was able to get my lesson going, and it was going great. Then I realized that the slides skimped two of the pages from the book. When I went to see what had happened I noticed that the two missing pages were not on the slide show. I was really embarrassed but was able to come back and just tell the students what the two pages were about. I then went back to reading from the slide show and then two more slides were missing. I don't know what happened. It turned out to be ok, I read the missing pages from the book itself later on.
But, I thought that the idea of projecting the book on a bigger screen was an excellent idea and I am so glad that I did a read aloud using technology.

Share 1 idea that you have for using technology for a lesson or content area that you observed being taught this week.
I thought this week of using technology to teach math. Either by making a power point presentation to display all parts of a lesson, or to use computers and have students practice math with a math program. I know there are a lot of games on the web that can be used to practice math with children. I think that using computers can make math a lot more fun to learn for the kids and for me to teach.

Reflection for 11/15

What technology use and attitudes did I see modeled?
This week there were a lot of technology use. One of the things that I saw in which technology was used was a power point presentation for the grandparents day program that the 3rd graders were practicing for. They had pictures from all of the 3rd graders that they scanned or pulled from CDs and put them on a power point presentation. It was really neat to see how they were using technology to show all of the pictures which made the program very interesting. In the classroom again not much technology was used.
What was my own experience trying to use technology in this setting?
This week I did not use technology to teach. I am still working on my project for the lesson that I will teach with technology. I thing that it is hard to incorporate a lot of technology to the lessons because it requires more preparation and time to set up and such. But I will use technology next week and I hope it goes well.
Share 1 idea that you have for using technology for a lesson or content area that you observed being taught this week.
I thought about the slide presentation they used for the grandparents day program and I thought that it would have been nice to record messages that the children share with their grandparents and present them as part of the presentation. This would have required the use of a camera and of course the computer programs to upload the videos. It would have looked so nice. It would have also been neat to have the students share special thoughts about their grandparents.