Cultural Bias in Media: Day Two Reflection

 
Day 2 was so informative! My favorite international issue was about the Rohingya people of Myanmar. This is an issue that I was not informed about before this experience and I am loving how much I am learning along side the students!


What went well:

-The engagement and conversations about each of the videos and what cultural biases they showed and how the narrative could be changed went very well! I think that a lot of the students have a lot to say and all of the comments are very intellectual and relevant to the topic.

- The students were super engaged with beginning their T-shirt ideas! You can tell that they are truly thinking hard about their designs to create their own identity and break down any cultural biases they have seen in their communities.


What needs work:
- the students seemed very tired and a lot of the day required a lot of sitting and talking. More activities will be included to engage the students and get them up and moving!

Cultural Bias Day one!!!

Wow! I have to say I was very organized but very nervous going into day 1, typical right? I was pleasantly surprised with how the class went today. The students were super engaged and seemed interested in the content and art projects Daniel and I will be engaging in this week! Our our projects will be to create a PSA video as well as a t-shirt that showcases all that we have learned from the week. Located below, as promised, is my PSA video that I made about Colorism.


What went well:
- After providing examples of the negative effects media can have on cultural and implicit bias, our students engaged in conversations that respected opposite view points and mentioned some of the key issues of each video. I think as the week goes on we will have no issue getting them to engage in conversation about our topic.
- Our silent icebreaker also gave the students a chance to loosen up and get to know each other even though it was slightly different than a typical icebreaker. I think this activity also gave them a visual representation of what implicit bias looks like.

What to consider for tomorrow:
- I thought the students did well answering questions when you asked them something very specific rather than a more broad question. This is a good observation for me because I know how to tailor my questions to help them engage in conversation/.
- We had a few key talkers in class today so taking the idea of making it a rule that someone different from each table has to talk may be a great idea going into the next few days of class.

Great job today everyone! I'm looking forward to the rest of the week :))

Weekly Schedule and Lesson Plans (still needs a few tweaks)

Monday (Jasmine): The first day will serve as an introduction to cultural biases by introducing facilitator videos that can serve as examples of the videos the students will create for the end of the week. Following facilitator introductions, students will be given a mini-lesson on the definition of cultural bias, and how Media can be misused to disrupt our communities and  promote messages of hate. Students will be encouraged to provide commentary on why the different examples in Media show cultural bias. The main activity of the day includes having each student write down their own personal biases, or biases they have seen in their community. These biases will be used to engage the students in discussion of each bias over a game of four corners. The final discussion/ activity will be an introduction to  Level 1 of “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World” (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/takeaction/). This will be an activity that will end each day; the students will be encouraged to think of and share ideas they can implement into their daily lives to decrease the presence of cultural bias.  

20 minutes- intro and video

Touch on some global topics (Myanmar/Rohingya conflict & Syrian refugees in Lebanon) (brief intro to the week) and define cultural bias and other important things 

“Tag game”- 25-30 minutes

4- Corners- 25- 30 minutes 

Butcher paper for the four corners 

Lazy Person’s Guide introduction with example - 10 minutes 

https://cultureplusconsulting.com/2018/08/16/a-ha-activities-for-unconscious-bias-training/

Scroll down to “The Tag Game”

Tuesday (Daniel): The second day will be a full day of global cultural bias discussion. We will open the day with a mini-lesson on the current immigration issues affecting our world, and how cultural bias plays a roll in how immigrants are treated. To do this, we will discuss issues with The Rohingya People of Myanmar and Syrian Refugees in Lebanon.

• 4- Corners (begin light and go into depth) with global topic (30 minutes)
• “Recognize and Change the Story”→ Find a news article/ video explain its bias, explain how you could change it.  Extension: plan a small presentation (you can be as creative as you want) to act it out  
• “Who Am, I”:  Each student take 5 minutes to brainstorm a list of words that have to deal with them and their culture, out of that list, turn some of those words into symbols (15 minutes) and have the students share the list and compare (roam around the room and share some items (anything you can take/give from another person))→ collect them
• Introduction to the videos by showing different examples/ commercials (break them into groups and have them think of general ideas of videos) (15 minutes)
• Lazy Person’s Guide- 10 minute

 The final discussion/ activity will be an introduction to  Level 2 of “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World”. Students will be encouraged to think of and share ideas they can implement into their daily lives to decrease the presence of cultural bias.  

Wednesday (Jasmine): The third day will wrap up the discussion of global immigration cultural bias by talking about the current state of immigration in our own country. This will open up the floor to change into the conversation of our own biases and the ones we may see in our community. Students will be prompted to discuss these biases with one another. The facilitators will introduce the idea of “Fake Logos” to introduce and how they can be used as a positive way to advertise the change we wish to see. Students will be encouraged to think of and turn in their own logos for their shirts that will be distributed at the end of the week. The final discussion/ activity will be an introduction to  Level 3 of “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World” , Students will be encouraged to think of and share ideas they can implement into their daily lives to decrease the presence of cultural bias.  

• Global/ National Immigration (southern boarder) (show an example of media as it pertains to the the topic and ask how they could change it) (30 minutes)
• Bring It Home: Local things they deal with 
• Take 15 minutes to choose 3-4 of their top symbols, Refine them and make them a final draft
• 10 minutes- Lazy Person’s Guide 
• 35 minutes to begin the PSA video

Thursday (Daniel):  The First part of the day will continue to focus on personal biases and how we can go about changing how we think about the world around us. We will do this by (Video Hook:  scene from Spiderman: into the Spiderverse that gives an example of a personal bias https://youtu.be/S6N5QcNXdKU between time mark :20 and .30 on the video) [INSERT GREAT IDEA HERE :) ] The second half of the day will be dedicated to allowing the students to finishing their media video clips for the presentations.

The final discussion/ activity will be an introduction to  Level 4 of “The Lazy Person’s Guide to Saving the World”. Students will be encouraged to think of and share ideas they can implement into their daily lives to decrease the presence of cultural bias.  

• Government, School/ Education, Policing (Providing examples for different things in the area) (20 minutes)
• Think about what personal biases you have
• Tell them the purpose of the design, Take the symbols to create one “logo” that you feel defines you (15-20 minutes) → Single Colors 
• Show some fake logo designs as well as our own personal design  
• 10 Minutes- Lazy Person’s Guide
• Continue video-making (40 minutes)

Friday:  The last day will be used to put the final touches on each group video and to pass our shirts of the students designs that can be worn to the presentation.

• Finishing up videos (1 Hour)
• Short lesson on editing

**We can ask about using a mac lab for this day if we need.

Help! I can't access your lesson plans

Hey Loves,

I attempted to check out the Daily Lesson Plans for Groups 2 and 3 but I could not access them. There seems to be an issue with permissions to access the documents. After speaking with Shareef and Amy, I wanted to see if you all could change your access settings to allow everyone in the facilitators group to comment?

I tagged all of our groups on here so we can all be aware of this issue, so we can all have access. I know you guys all love me and didn't intentionally leave me out of the lesson plan fun!

Thankkksss

Lesson Plan

Hi Friends!! Check out the link below you can see our loose lesson plan that we created for the week. We will uploads logistics of each day very soon :)

Group 1 Loose Lesson Plans

Another Reworking of the title and class description

Hi Friends!! Here is another reworking of our title and description, What do you think??

Title: Exploring Cultural Biases in Media: Changing the narrative through Graphic Design and Visual Media

Description: This week each student will be challenged to think about the effects media can have on the current cultural biases polluting our world. Cultural bias can be defined as the act of passing judgment on others based on your own cultural preferences and beliefs.

Throughout the week we will explore how cultural biases impact us on a global and local scale. The week will begin globally by looking into the current immigration crisis world-wide. While learning about the different effects of cultural biases on a global scale, students will be encouraged to explore their own personal biases as well as the biases they see in their own communities. Through this process, students will create PSA style videos that will be viewed at the final banquet.  Videos will use humor, drama, and straight talk to blast a message of diversity and unity instead of conflict and mistrust. Students will also create a one-of-a-kind t-shirt that can serve as an advertisement of diversity in their own communities.

Issue with Commenting

Hey Loves,

I'm not sure if you all ran into this issue but I was having a problem submitting comments on here. Below is the response to my issue from Shareef:

"After poking around for a while, it looks like blogger has problems with the embedded comment forms. In the blog settings, the default for posting comments is to make a comment box appear while you're viewing the page (embedded). This is apparently known to have issues. In fact, I was not able to make comments either. Fortunately, however, it appears that switching to a different commenting method fixes the issue. 

So now when you go to add a comment, it will take you to a new page where you can submit your comment. It's a bit less convenient, but it works."

I hope this helps!

The Propaganda of Culture: Changing Perspectives

Group One Title:

The Propaganda of Culture: Changing Perspectives


Class Description (we are still making changing to our description and are open to ideas :) )

In our course we will explore how media has caused conflicts and biases throughout the world and within our own communities.Throughout the week we will identify global and local cases of cultural biases and the resulting conflicts. We will help students define and understand what culture is for them as individuals by exploring symbolism, iconography, and graphic art.  Students will use ideas from their own drawings and paintings to create and design a one of a kind t-shirt. Students will also confront their own cultural biases and begin to learn ways to reframe their thinking. Through this process, students will create PSA style videos that will be viewed at the final banquet. Videos will utilize humor, drama, and straight talk to blast a message of diversity and unity, challenging the propaganda about culture we see in media today.

Discussion on Culture and Cultural Biases

I know that there are many definitions of "Culture" mainly because when I googled "definition of Culture," there were thousands of results.  Years ago, I arrived at my own definition (narrowed down and way over simplified) that I use in my classroom when I teach about the connections between students, their artwork and "their culture."

"Culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices of groups of people."

When I ask my students to think about culture they will often think of cultural traits or stereotypes that they do not possess.  I find it annoying when at the fairly rural high school that I teach, students will make sure to tell me that, "they aren't country"...whatever that means.  Just joking.  I know what that means.

Did you notice what I did there?  In the last paragraph.  When attempting to discuss "Culture" I exposed my own cultural bias.  (Here's a recap:I find it annoying when at the fairly rural high school that I teach, students will make sure to tell me that, "they aren't country"...whatever that means.)  The only thing this sentence is missing is an Eye Roll emoji!  The fact is, I grew up in a rural area and would go out of my way to act .....get this...."not country"  The cultural bias is that country people are not smart or drive tractors or....anyway, Neither of those things are true about most people I know that  grew up in rural areas.  (Most people.  There I go again...okay, now insert the eye roll emoji....)

Conversation?...
Fellow Facilitators:
I'm interested in your ideas:
1.)   What is your definition(s) of culture?  (All answers general and specific welcome)
2.)   Do you have any specific examples of cultural biases other than the obvious such as racism, agism, religionism and classism, etc..
3.)  Any specific Cultural biases that you may have overcome and how?

4 the Love of Balfour

Group 4 came in here and made the world a better place.

https://giphy.com/gifs/iAYupOdWXQy5a4nVGk/html5