Social Media and Wikipedia

Up until a few weeks ago when I started teaching, I thought I was quite young. I can now admit that I was mistaken. I reached this conclusion shortly after being told how to wear a scrunchie by a group of people who weren’t even alive the first time they were popular. Another strong hint was the hearty laughter that erupted when I mistakenly assumed Tik Tok was still best known as a Ke$ha song (if you have to Wikipedia that one, know you are not alone). Not to mention the utter shock that greeted me when I finished off a Friends quote. 

When I was a pupil, I thought that those at the board in front of me knew everything. Yet from the other side of the school desk, I get the impression that the youth of today know more than I ever will. Especially about makeup. Most of my students seem to have skipped the ‘one block colour’ eyeshadow phase and went straight to professional MUA levels of blending.

It is a curious thing to be a teacher. I am constantly surrounded by brilliant souls whose minds and imaginations have not yet been bent out of shape by practicality. 

To them, the world is not at all big or scary. It fits nicely into little filtered squares. 

My generation (I fear I can indeed now say that, as some people my age have children on purpose) grew up with social media floating on the horizon. We used it, but I wouldn’t say it dominated our lives. We didn’t have phones that were worth more than small cars. We didn’t know what a ‘preset’ was. Some of us still carried chunky digital cameras around to take date-stamped pictures of us and our friends hitting up Foyleside and wearing plastic jewellery. 

A lot has been said about how damaging social media can be, and I will agree in many ways it is incredibly harmful. It allows for non-stop bullying, causes young people to attach a lot of value to their aesthetic and is a dangerous trap in terms of peer and celebrity comparison.

However, amongst all of the doom and gloom, as a teacher I have noticed just a few things that I regard as positive side effects of the current candid craze.  

1. It improves creativity – A lot of young people have not had the chance to travel the world or experience much outside of their own community. Many pupils produce creative writing pieces based on things they have seen in pictures and videos online and I think in some ways it helps them to understand that there is a lot more to life than what they see around them. 

2. It can improve empathy – Related to the above, a lot of teenagers may not have ever realised or been able to imagine the ways in which many people in our world struggle had they not witnessed it on social media. Most are now aware of issues related to poverty, politics, mental health and the environment due to them being presented in a visual medium that they can access and understand. Short media clips on Facebook and Instagram bring world news into their sphere whether or not they have ever switched on BBC1. What’s more, they can articulate opinions on these subjects in a manner far beyond their years, often as a result of perusing the comments sections and chasing up information through Google searches.

3. It helps them to deduce meaning – I recently did a lesson on PEE. My class were overjoyed, as you can imagine, so to start things off I asked them to list the ingredients that go into the perfect Instagram photo. We then linked all of these things to literary techniques and it was the quickest I have ever been able to communicate to a group of adolescents that authors do not just write books in one sitting, nor accidentally include alliteration. 

4. It helps them create meaning – Okay, it might not call for the use of as many words as an English teacher would like, but hearing my pupils tell me about a photo they took that they are proud of, or a funny caption they concocted, does warm my heart a little. It shows them that they can use images and language to make people laugh and to be honest that is all I need to segue into a poetry lesson.

I won’t pretend that I understand everything the kids these days are at (again, in my mid-twenties, and having been informed by my students that I am officially old, I can and will use this phrase). But I do think that amongst all of the horror stories there should maybe be one positive piece regarding this social media platform that those young minds love so much. 

Brigid Jones’s Homework Diary

They say it takes a village to raise a child. As the end of the first placement approaches, I can confirm it also takes a village to create a teacher.

The end of ‘School Experience One’ as they call it, signals the halfway mark of the PGCE course. Walking through the front door on the first day, I could not imagine making it this far without crying in a store room. As chance would have it, the only tears I have shed are at the prospect of leaving. *audible cringe*

When I began this course, I was fairly sure I wanted to be a teacher. A few weeks in I was convinced I’d be absolutely awful at it as a career and should be removed from the course. I couldn’t even pronounce Vygotsky let alone remember any of his theories. Fast forward a couple more weeks, a nice long Christmas break and a new Netflix PB and I think I may have finally found my feet. (I’ve just jinxed it haven’t I?).

Don’t get me wrong. There are days where nothing goes right. The computer won’t work when you do have a PowerPoint. The projector screen won’t go up when you don’t. Ten out of thirty kids have forgotten their entire school bag. Once, in a surprising turn of events, my dog almost ate someone else’s homework. Like any job it has its challenges.

But something that I didn’t expect to love just as much as I do, is the joy that standing in front of a room full of wee faces learning for the first time what a “yob” is, would bring. It wasn’t what they were supposed to take away from the class. It wasn’t something I had planned to talk about at all. But their delight at learning a new word and excitedly shouting “Don’t be a yob!” at each other as they left the room made me belly laugh in a way I definitely haven’t at a desk job. 

I’ve had the chance to observe a lot of different styles of teaching. I don’t know if I will ever be chill enough to walk into a room and decide on the spot what we’re doing that day. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually manage to reprimand a student without over-empathising as to the reason why they might have decided to slide down the banister and almost crack their head open on the stairs. But I’ve been told it comes with time!

Speaking of time, it is the one part of lesson planning I do have an issue with. Why should it be up to me to decide how many minutes the students spend on a discussion about how important it is to be able to analyse the agenda of the media? Or how finding a poem you relate to can be a source of comfort and make you feel less alone in tough times? If they’re getting something from it, I am not inclined to stop them to make sure I get through my entire plan. “Linger longer” is the mantra I will take away from this experience and I think it applies to much more than just plenaries.