Teaching Media and English means that I can slowly brainwash children and teach them stuff I like. I have, over the years, slowly introduced lots of my favourite things into my courses.
1. The Catcher in the Rye - this was fairly easy as it's one of our Year 12 texts, but also one of my favourites.
2. Education For Leisure (a dark poem by Carol Ann Duffy) - I started a trend there and many other teachers have since taught this little gem at my school. I forced it in there after accidentally coming across it while looking up ways to torture budgies. I used it in a Year 11 poetry unit on sociopathic narrators.
3. Amelie - I have used this for scene analysis in Media and as a film study in English. One of my favourite films which I waited a few years to legitimately squeeze in there - I saw in last year's moderator's report that it was working really well as a Year 12 film study and jumped in there.
4. Heart of the Game - A basketball doco that I showed my Media class as an alternative to the shallow representation of teenage girls we'd been studying. Love forcing kids to watch girls' basketball!
5. Pan's Labyrinth - I used this as my close reading text for Year 12 Media. Love forcing them to watch movies with subtitles! It's actually good for the ESOL kids in that they often can pick out words visually better than they can understand them when spoken with a strong accent.
6. Emoticon Poem - I have shown the Rives visual poem to my Year 12 class when we did love poetry as a unit - they loved it too. Nice example of a really modern take on a genre.
7. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - We just bought copies of this as an extension book to go with a text we teach at Year 9. I am pushing it onto my kids - such a sweet, accessible book.
8. No Country for Old Men - I got to show this to my Media class as an example of a recent film with noir tones to it.
9. The Music Videos of Michel Gondry - Examples of a director's sense of personal style for a unit with my 13 Media class.
10. Wrestling - And now, I get an excuse to take my Media class to the filming of a wrestling show for TV. I have long had a fascination with live wrestling - the kids just like having an afternoon off and wearing mufti (and I have told a couple of them that this is the one time where they can use their obnoxiousness in an appropriate way).
4 comments:
What wrestling are you watching being filmed?
If you own them, I wouldn't mind borrowing No Country for Old Men and Amelie. Just at some point when I've run out of stuff to watch (which is likely not for ages).
I own Amelie, not the other one.
I think the school trip is KPW - they're going to start having a show on Prime in December.
On Sept 18th there's a gig out in the Hutt if you wanna come. Nobody else has shown any interest...
I had a momentary vivid image of you in a classroom with a bunch of rocks...
Sometimes it feels like that :)
Like today, when they were asking me how to do something I'd taught them heaps of times, given them a test on and make them handouts for..... Rocks would be easier (and they don't talk back).
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