As her students stood in a circle, Betsy Gallun handed out pictures, shots of images familiar from television screens.
She went around the circle, asking each student about the picture. It is a typical class for Gallun, a health teacher in Maryland, but her students last Wednesday were older than normal – school librarians, English teachers and media specialists from Arlington, Fairfax, and around the Washington region.
They gathered at WETA, the public radio and television station based in south Arlington, to learn how better to teach media literacy to their own students, from elementary to high school age. Nearly 80 teachers came to the daylong March 20 workshop, one from as far away as Richmond, to find out how to teach their students how to be more media literate.
In the age of the Internet, 24-hour news channels and constant commercials, media literacy "serves as a bridge between the classroom and the culture," Gallun said. "I do a lot of trainings. Of all the ones I do, this is my favorite," she said.
That’s partly because the subject matter is so readily accessible. In Gallun’s lesson, elementary and middle school teachers stood in a circle, looking at pictures of Dan Rather or animated cartoons, stills from Range Rover commercials and movie ads, and discussing the purpose of each image – did it inform, entertain or persuade.
In another room, high school teachers watched a few minutes of Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor," and talked about how well the film could be used to lead teenagers to discuss emotions, addiction, or obesity.
<b>MEDIA LITERACY SERVES</b> double duty, Gallun said: it gives teachers a way to illustrate lessons, show students how English, history, math or science shows up in the real world; and it should also train students to look at media more critically.
That was what led to her interest in media literacy, she said. "This started because of the way media portrayed school violence," Gallun said. She saw the same thing on television, over and over, on news and entertainment – and when real incidents occurred, like the murders at Columbine, the stories just played into preconceived notions.
Gallun brought a Maryland state curriculum to the workshop, tied into the state standards, but the basics of the lessons worked well anywhere.
"The kids work with newspapers, ads, television, music, words on tape and CD," she said. "Then we ask them basic questions: who wrote it? What’s the purpose of it? What’s the point of view? What’s the target audience? What did they use to grab your attention?"
As students answer those questions, she said, they learn not to accept everything on television and in print at face value. They also learn how they use their own experiences in interpreting images in the media.
"If I show you a picture of Dan Rather, and you know who he is, you’ll know it’s the news," she said. "Otherwise, he’s just an old man in a suit."
<b>IN ARLINGTON SCHOOLS,</b> media literacy goes beyond looking at the messages in the media. For students at some county schools, it means manipulating the media themselves, on in-school televised newscasts.
Rhonda Clevenson and Harry Costner both serve as media specialists, or "exemplary project coordinators," in school lingo, at Gunston Middle School. As they ate lunch at the workshop last week, they said they needed students to be especially media savvy.
At Gunston, Clevenson and Costner produce a weekly television show for various classes. Students develop scripts, then shoot an episode – coming shows will give Gunston seventh graders a look at reasons different countries committed to World War II.
Media literacy for Gunston students means being able to understand how different forms of media are structured, and being able to imitate them.
"I don’t say, it’s media literacy time now," Clevenson said. "I say, it’s time to do persuasive writing. You’re going to write an ad, so let’s look advertisements and see how they’re written."
Middle school is a crucial time to teach that, Costner said. "Sixth, seventh and eighth graders are the most susceptible, too," he said. "They’re learning to be who they are, and we’re teaching them how it’s marketed to them."
Allisyn Levy, the media teacher at Hoffman-Boston Elementary, sees herself sowing the seeds for Clevenson and Costner. She leads students at the school as they produce a daily news program.
"At the elementary school level, they’re learning how to use [the equipment] earlier, so when they get to [Gunston], they’ll already know," she said. "I try to teach them what the point is, whether someone’s trying to sell something, whether it’s entertainment."
Sometimes media literacy can get a little out of hand, Clevenson said. Last year, she and her students produced a 30-second spot for media literacy that ran on WETA’s Web site, called "You’re the Target."
In the video, a seventh grade student looked at the media outlets in his room – posters, a television, magazines – and intruding from outside – billboards and bus ads. The students showed a canny understanding of how pervasive, and persuasive, media can be. But they also got a little overzealous, on occasion. "They tend to overanalyze," she said.
<b>WETA GETS FUNDING</b> and support for its media literacy program from the local chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the same organization that awards Emmys.
The program goes on year-round. But Kathie Felix, a representative of the local NATAS chapter, and Karen Zill, outreach coordinator for WETA, said the media literacy workshop is the central event, taking place on Media Literacy Day in tandem with events in 17 other cities around the country.
With NATAS on board, local schools also have media participation in annual career days, and students get a chance to visit most of the studios for Washington-area television stations.
The presence of the television organization could raise the specter of early indoctrination for some, making it seem as though the schools were simply being used to teach watching television.
Not so, Felix said. The program looks at all forms of media, radio, newspaper and television, and it teaches an awareness that’s not synonymous with breeding consumers.
"We know kids are going to watch a certain amount of TV each day," she said. "We want them to be active participants. We want them to know the decisions that go into making TV, not just passively accept what they see."