Rethinking Popular Culture and Media: "May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor"

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My relationship to The Hunger Games

Growing up in the 2000's meant that, as a vicarious reader, I consumed MANY dystopian YA books. For a period of time in my life, I exclusively read YA dystopian books. My all time favorite is The Hunger Games. As soon as I begun working with TFA, I imagined being able to teach The Hunger Games. It would be a dream come true to teach this at BVP. 

Rethinking Popular Culture and Media: "May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor"

"May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor" is a chapter written by Elizabeth Marshall and Matthew Rosati where they plan on "teaching class and collective action" through an analysis of The Hunger Games (book and movie). Marshall and Rosati posit that Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, "presents a powerful critique of economic injustice and capitalist ideals, and offers a vision of collective action largely led by youth" (234).  

While some of the chapter explains some themes of the books, most of the chapter describes how to teach this in classroom. If you wanted to base your lesson off of this chapter, you should aim to reach the following two goals. 

1. Challenge students' stereotypes about social class.
2. Encourage students to see class struggle as part of their own histories. 

Marshall and Rosati do this in a few interesting ways. The first is to have students try and define class  (Marshall and Rosati define class economic, social, and cultural). Marshall and Rosati mention that while many students had no problem identifying markers of different classes (upper class, middle class, working class, etc), they had problems identifying which class they belonged to. 

After having students explore what class they belong to, Marshall and Rosati split students into five groups based off of five different characters: Effie, Madge, Peeta, Rue, and Cato. Katniss should not be a category because she is the main character - having students explore other characters help students delve deeper into the text. Each group will have to decide whether or not the character will support a labor strike. Students also had to explore how the character would show their support. Would it be secretive? Obvious? 

Additional conversations are later had about the relation between power and class. Questions are asked about whether or not Madge can interact with a strike in the same way that a character like Rue could. Importantly, this chapter also mentions the other ways this book could be taught. Gender and race are two other popular ways to discuss this book. 

Takeaways

When students are given a chance to engage critically with media that they love, they are excited and eager to complete assignments. For many students, this lesson was considered fun. Finally, depending on the complexity you are hoping to achieve in your class discussion and learning, this lesson should be lengthened over the course of a few days, instead of one. While this book describes a lesson taught to university aged students, it is easily adapted to younger students. 

Wix Tutorial

 

Hi everyone! For my final project, I used Wix to create my classroom website. Wix is a fairly easy to use website builder that gives users large amounts of creativity. While Wix does have free to use options, there are also paid for premiums that some users may find helpful. However, in my opinion, you definitely do not need one to create a classroom website. Another important thing to know about Wix is that they do offer generative AI for those who want to use it. It is very easy to opt out (which I did for the assignment), but it is just as easy to opt in. While I can see the benefits of generative AI, if someone is unfamiliar with how AI works, it may be more of a hinderance than a help. 

Step 1: Go to Wix's website and click "get started" on the main page. 

Step 2: Create an account or sign up through Google. 

In my opinion, it is easier to sign up through Google - it makes the process really quick and easy. 

Step 3: Answer Wix's pre-generated questions. They will help direct you to pre-made templates that you can customize and change. 

I recommend choosing "for myself, my business, or a friend." 

Step 4: Choose whether or not you want to use generative AI. 

I chose, "set up without chat." If you wish to use generative AI, simply select "start chat."

Step 5: Pick what type of business you want to create or skip. 

I chose blog for both this tutorial and for my final project website. 

Step 6: Name your website. 

Step 7: Choose your site goals. 

Step 8: Choose the apps you want to add. There are MANY different apps and they are easy to add later, so don't stress if you're not sure what apps you need right now. 

Step 9: Finish designing your site. The rest of the experience is highly dependent on what you need. I recommend playing around with different settings to get familiar or visiting one of their tutorials which are easy to find on Wix, Google, or YouTube. 

Let me know if you have any questions or want to know more about my experience using Wix!

Final Project Checklist

 

The following checklist contains all the goals I think I need to accomplish to build my website. 

• Choose a website builder 
• Options: Google Sites, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace 
• Currently leaning towards Wix due to its helpful programming, but Google has its pros (easy to connect to other gmails, etc)
• Create different web tabs for my different objectives:
• About page
• Meet the teacher page
• ELA 101 page (syllabus, assignment expectations, books we will read, etc)
• Classroom library page
• Student work page
• Blog page
• Resource page 
• Create an engagement plan
• How can I get students engaged
• How can I get families engaged?
• Create a posting plan
• How frequently will I update each tab (some may not need frequent to any updates)
• Blog page - weekly
• Student work page - biweekly 
• Classroom library page - once a month 

After I will:

• Write my narrative
• Create my podcast 
• Write a script
• create an intro
• Create background music 

Final Project: Thoughts, Ideas, and Considerations

 Problem(s) that Needs Solving

At BVP JHS, we have a theme for each school year. This most recent school year, it was: Root Down to Rise Up. It was often represented by a tree that looks very similar to the one attached below. 

Most of my first year felt like setting down roots - trying to make decisions about who I wanted to be as a teacher, how to manage the classroom, and how to stand strong. Oftentimes, I felt overcome with ideas that I wanted to implement, but never had the chance due to factors outside of my control. With those factors not being a problem next year, I have attempted to boil down my three biggest wants for the next school year:

1. A way for students to collaborate both inside and outside of the classroom. Which connects to my desire of building a  community, not only for students, but for their families. 
2. Improve independent reading time. 
3. Better encourage students to write for pleasure, not just for school. 

I believe that these problems are not entirely different issues, but are actually interconnected. With the right piece of tech and proper guidelines, I believe I can build stronger foundations for community, independent reading, and independent writing both inside and outside of school. 

Potential Solutions

1. Classroom/Community Website

One solution is to build a website. While I would love to launch it alongside the rest of my team, I think I will have more support and buy-in with first soft-launching it in my classroom and studying it's affects by utilizing action research. 

First, I need to actually build the website. I've already started exploring different options - everything from Blogger to Wix. As of right now, Wix seems like a more suitable choice. With Wix, organization and user interface for students/families will be more manageable. I can split different categories into different tabs of the website. Some of the tabs and features will include:

• Reminders for important events like product grades or CTA's
• Ability to schedule for predetermined office hours where students can receive help after school or families can request a meeting
• A place where students can submit creative work to be published on the website
• A place for book reviews and teacher recommendations 

2. Class Magazine 

My second solution is to craft a class magazine. Families and students can opt in or out of this magazine - and my idea is that they will be sent home as printed copies. Essentially, this class magazine would be a way for students to build a portfolio of creative and academic work. However, students would not be the only ones able to submit to the magazine, families would be able to as well. 

I want families to feel involved in their students' school work. Perhaps families have their own way to help students connect with the text and want to share. Or! Perhaps creative writing is a family affair. My magazine idea currently has a lot of missing pieces and would require a lot of moving parts. I would love to explore this idea more. 

Inspirations

While I had come into the class with these ideas in mind, the projects that I viewed inspired me to work hard and achieve my goal. Seeing what other people had accomplished moved me and made me feel like my ideas were attainable in a way they weren't before. 

Disney, Barbie, and "Children's" Media

 

Disney and Me

Growing up, my sister and I watched Disney movies religiously - they were our happy place. Stressed? Put on The Lion King. Sick? Let's watch Tangled. In fact, Disney movies were made into a family event - going to the theater with Mom and Dad was exclusively reserved for new Disney releases. 

I would be lying if I said that I no longer consumed any media released by Disney - my sister and I still get excited about new releases. We still talk about taking trips to Disney together - a dream of ours for a long time now. However, I would also be lying if I said my relationship with Disney had not turned complicated once I started attending my undergraduate university where I started to more seriously challenge my beliefs and analyze media. 

Christiansen

The information and ideas that Christiansen introduces in "Unearthing the Myths that Bind Us" are not unfamiliar to me. They are ideas that I have been grappling with. Representation in media is hugely important. As Christiansen says, children's media is where initial thoughts, ideas, and biases form. For much of my youth, I tried to deny my queerness - deny myself. Media taught me (and yes, Disney included) that I was supposed to be straight - I was supposed to want to find a prince charming. Being queer was not "normal." I think Christiansen would agree with me when I say if children's media is made more intentionally (i.e focus groups like what they did for Inside Out 2) and with more diversity in creative spaces - media could be powerful in a new more positive way. 

Touching more precisely on specific Disney movies, there were plenty of examples I could think of that Christiansen did not even mention. Disney has created an advisory council and provides advisory warnings on some of their films after public pushback. 

• The Aristocats : depicts a racist stereotype of East Asian people
• Peter Pan : racist depiction of Indigenous peoples
• Dumbo : the crows and musical number pay homage to minstrel shows

The above are just three movies that have racist deceptions of people - I did not even touch on additional dominant ideology that is included in their films. 

Even in more recent films - ones that have been largely applauded as Disney taking a step in the right direction - there are still problems people have noticed. The Princess and the Frog, Brother Bear, and Soul are three films whose main characters are people of color. In all films, the leads are turned into animals or other beings of some sort - they are not allowed to be simply people of color. The Los Angles Review of Books put out an interesting article about this linked here. 

The title of my post puts children in quotations because Disney movies or Barbie appeal to a wide audience - adult media does not suddenly lose its subtext, political, or ideological meaning. 

Prensky and Boyd

Prensky, Boyd, and Divergent Viewpoints

While in class there were aspects of Prensky that I found valuable and interesting, I must confess that Boyd's viewpoint more closely aligned with my beliefs and experiences. I appreciate that Prensky attempts to capture how differently youth today may process or receive information. However, my appreciation for this does not override my issues with the assumption that because a certain generation was born with technology, they are proficient or masters of it. The circumstances of the generation you were born into may immediately thrust someone into specific situations, but it does not teach someone how to navigate those situations. 

Youth, Spectrum, and Dominant Ideologies 

At times, generations (or age groups) are grouped together as one whole. All Millennials must love "Live, Laugh, Love" signs, while all of Gen Z are TikTok obssessed, baggy jean wearing humans. In Prensky, youth are similarly grouped together as one whole. All youth have adapted to parallel thinking and look for graphics first. All youth are masters of the digital world, simply because they grew up with it. 

Boyd finds fault in this grouping, spending a significant amount of time showing how differently people of the same age experience technology. Not only are their experiences different, their proficiencies differ greatly. As a teacher who spent most of last school year arguing and advocating for lessons that explored technology as a learnable skill that students needed to be taught, this section resonated with me greatly. To assume that youth are stagnant is a mistake. Not only do youth exist on a spectrum, technological abilities and knowledge vary widely - their identities make interacting with tech different as well. In almost all (if not all) of Boyd's examples, she highlights a white teenager. While Boyd lightly touches upon this in her example of a student who struggles with her phone's web browser speed, she does not delve deeply into the realities that socio-economic status, race, gender, etc affect a person's relationship to technology. As Boyd mentions, technology is still political - you cannot separate technology from our country's dominant ideologies as tech exists within the systems these ideologies create. As a result, I cannot help but wonder if the youth in both Boyd and Prensky's examples are assumed to be straight, white, affluent, males. 

The Fraught Terminology : Digital Natives 

During class today, hearing the phrase digital native made me pause. While I understood Prensky's point of view, the term felt fraught - not only in it's connotations, but in it's limitations. After reading Boyd, I have continued to evaluate the term. When Boyd describes a discussion hosted and moderated by Genevieve Bell, I am reminded that "powerful immigrants have betrayed native populations while destroying their spiritual spaces and asserting power over them." In fact, powerful immigrants and/or colonizers have tried to destroy difference - whether due to a lack of understanding, fear, or need for control. Some schools all or nothing policies around technology - strict to complete bans on some tech like cell phones or my schools refusal to let students use citation generators. 

While I agree with Boyd that the term digital native does not work, I disagree with her when she posits that we should essentially scrap it. It is not salvageable. I think there are some aspects of Prensky that need to be revisited and revised. 

Get to Know Me!

 

Hi everyone! My name is Liz Pelletier (she/they) and I am a teacher for Blackstone Valley Prep Junior High School where I teach 8th grade ELA. In addition to teaching at BVP, I am also a member of Teach for America and coach volleyball. 

Outside of work, I enjoy and participate in a variety of hobbies - mainly reading, photography, writing, playing video games, and consuming media like television. Attached above are two photos that I've taken. I'm hoping to discover more spots in RI to observe wildlife as I continue to build my portfolio. Please comment below if you have any spots in mind!

My summer has just recently started. As of right now, it has been both fast paced and fun! In addition to taking three graduate courses to finish my masters, I am the school operations manager for TFA's summer practicum. My goal is to find time between my studies and work to still pursue my aforementioned hobbies.