Chapter 3
8. According to your textbook, what is the relationship between young adults and popular culture/media? Why is helpful for teachers to know about “popular culture and media” when planning lessons? Do you know teachers who use “popular culture and media” when planning their lessons? Explain.
Young adults are what make up most of the popular culture audience. Popular culture is targeted towards the younger crowd. I think it’s important for teachers to know what’s currently considered popular culture, because this is what kids are engaging in the majority of their life. It’s what they are interested in and if teachers don’t become familiar with it, they may not be able to make connections with their students or their students may not find their teachers as relatable or find them uninteresting. Media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine are what kids are spending their time on for hours and hours on end. Media has become the primary source of communication. If teachers can find ways to implement things such as popular culture and media in their lessons, they will likely be able to hook students into the lesson with higher level of interest. Considering young adults already devote so much of their time to it, might as well make that time for learning rather than forcing them to always look into a book for work which will likely discourage them from doing it all together or they may not give it their 100%.
I actually had a college professor who had a Facebook and Twitter account she used to keep in touch with her students. I thought it was pretty cool because it was a very non-traditional approach to reaching her students and it worked. She would post pics of her cats mostly, but it helped us see her as a human being rather than just a professor online.
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