This interview with 起点传媒member Nicole Mirra was developed by writer Trisha Collopy as a companion piece to the article 鈥淢edia Literacy in the ELA Classroom: Urgent Work for Our Democracy鈥� (The Council Chronicle, March 2021).听
Imagine a classroom where students aren鈥檛 tuned out from the news of the day. Where they can have authentic conversations across the political spectrum. Where they can ask bold questions about the challenges facing their communities鈥攁nd see themselves as writers and thinkers who have a voice in shaping the solutions.
That鈥檚 the environment that greeted teachers and students who participated in the yearlong
The project was the brainchild of Nicole Mirra, a former high school English teacher who now works as a researcher and teacher educator at the intersection of literacy and civic engagement.
鈥淲hen I became a teacher, like many, I found that the field of civic engagement was often siloed into social studies as a discipline,鈥� she says. 鈥淢y work has been around trying to dismantle that idea, because it leads to a faulty assumptions that civics is only a series of facts and figures about democracy.鈥�
Mirra launched the 3D Project during the 2018鈥�2019 school year with six high school English teachers from the National Writing Project network. Students in schools ranging from Anchorage, Alaska, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, found themselves engaged in conversations around three units:
- Who am I? How do I see myself? What are stereotypes others have about me and my community?
- What are the issues I care about? How do these issues affect me and my community? How does the news media talk about these issues? Is it helping or hurting the dialogue?
- What are your dreams about what the future of civic community could and should look like? What kind of future do you see?
By starting with questions around identity and community and then engaging with an authentic audience鈥攅ach other鈥攕tudents were able to begin the conversation from a place of 鈥渃uriosity and trust,鈥� Mirra says.
The 3D Project model also flipped some traditional ways of teaching news literacy by first encouraging students to engage in storytelling about larger questions facing their community and then analyze the sources they trust to help them find answers and explore the whys.
鈥淭he goal isn鈥檛 just: 鈥業s this objective or biased?鈥欌�� Mirra says. Instead, students ask questions such as: 鈥淲hy does this speak to me in my world? Why does that not speak to you? What do we have in common and where are we diverging? That鈥檚 such a different conversation from, 鈥楲et鈥檚 just look at the facts.鈥欌��
Mirra says media literacy lessons can pack a double wallop in English classrooms, allowing students to engage issues they find relevant while building reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills that are 鈥渇oundational to our democracy.鈥�
鈥淲e鈥檙e very lucky as English teachers because our discipline is based around skills rather than particular content,鈥� she says.
By shaping units around skills or themes rather than texts鈥攁 race and racism unit, for example, rather than a To Kill a Mockingbird unit鈥攖eachers can open the door to a rich set of texts and more urgent conversations with their students.
鈥淎ll public education has a purpose of preparing young people for the future,鈥� Mirra says. 鈥淚f we embrace that, it changes our units, changes our assignments and makes education more relevant to the world that students are navigating every day.鈥�
Nicole Mirra is an assistant professor of urban teacher education in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and the author of听Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement听(2018).听
听
.听
It is the policy of 起点传媒in all publications, including the Literacy & 起点传媒blog, to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerning the content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicity accorded to any particular point of view does not imply endorsement by the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, the staff, or the membership at large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified.