From Immigrant Student to Assimilated Teacher

Don't let my age fool you. As a kid, I kept a handwritten address book and snail-mailed letters in doodle-covered envelopes. When I was finally old enough to walk around the mall without my friend's parents, we carried walkie-talkies in our sparkly purses. Only my dad had a cell phone, and it was strictly for work purposes.

All of this makes me a digital immigrant.

I would say that I had a slower entrance to the digital world than most people around my age. I used my computer to play a floppy disk version of Jeopardy and my dial-up Internet to write a paper about Sandra Day O'Connor - not to send rapid-fire instant messages to my friends. I never personalized a MySpace and my Facebook profile picture has been the same for five years.

My aversion to certain social media platforms originated from my parents' rules against them. (My mom works for lawyers and has seen the worst.) But through college, I've definitely explored more. I kept a blog to capture my student teaching journey, I try to tweet updates from my classroom (follow me @BrittanyRicher), and my team teachers come to me when their Google Drive is wonky. This year, I even learned how to make a screencast!



Nevertheless, as I've assimilated more and more into the digital world and grown into my beliefs as a teacher, I worry about the harmfulness of certain messages that are sent via social media, pop culture, and through other digital texts. I recognize the way that straightness, Christianity, whiteness, able-bodiedness, Americanness, maleness, and property ownership are privileged. I recognize the way that these cultural norms are reproduced. I recognize that my digital native students' brains are changing because of these things.

As a result, I take a critical pedagogical stance in my teaching. I had the opportunity to teach a "Language Arts Extra" course this year, so I designed a unit I called "Media Busters." One day, my students and I analyzed these commercials to see what their message was about what it means to be a man in America.

In addition to analyzing media texts like these, I also believe that it is important for students to be producers of their own texts. One way we did this was by conducting a Photovoice research project. Instead of just reading articles to gather information, we used the participatory action research method of Photovoice where students took their own pictures of the issue at hand in order to come to their own understanding of the topic and advocate for change. One of my classes chose Digital Citizenship as their topic and here is Susan's* final presentation. Another student, Laura* made a video using the song "Stolen Dance" in the background, drawing a parallel to the way that spending too much time on social media steals us away from the humans in front of us. Unfortunately, because it contains images of many of my students' faces I cannot post it publicly here.

At different points in the school year, my digital immigrant accent was audible. When planning a project for students to create an advertisement for a play we read, I figured they would make posters or a DVD case cover. However, they all requested to make video commercials. Because of my limited experience with making videos, I was tempted to just tell them all no. Luckily, I took a risk, gave up some control, and allowed them to pursue their interest. And I am proud to say that it led to some of the greatest levels of engagement all year. They were eager to figure out the technology on their own.  They were eager to make revisions because they knew it would be shared with their peers. Like Sir Ken Robinson said, "their curiosity was the engine of their achievement."

All in all, I love what Dr. Bogad said about learning being the point. It is important to acknowledge my status as an assimilated digital immigrant not for the sake of being able to name myself as such, but to make changes in my teaching accordingly. Similarly, it is important to acknowledge my students' status as digital natives not just to name it, but rather to make changes that will improve their learning. It is important to continue to recognize where my life and my students' lives both stray and intersect. There should not be a value judgment on either status - immigrant or native. Rather, the labels can be a way to help frame conversation and questions about the way we approach education.