Blog Post #2

Hi! So, you're back for more. I'm not one to judge, but why? No matter if you are being forced, you get the chance to learn who I am. As I step away from the office, I am going to be starting as a writing coach for 6th graders. Crazy, right? As I venture into the unknown, here is my actual introduction I use when I step into a classroom.

I am studying English Education (4th-12th grade), and I want to teach in a middle school. I will graduate from school in the spring of 2027. Though this is not my first degree, I graduated in the spring of 2024 with a degree in Women's and Gender Studies. This degree carries a lot of weight in political activism, feminist thought, and on-the-groundwork with different communities. I minored in criminal justice and got a certificate in LGBT Studies. I earned many certificates during my schooling because I love learning, and I hope to share some of that love with you all. I coach Girls on the Run at my old middle school in Milwaukee. We are long-distance runners training for a marathon at the end of the year. It is a lot of fun, and I never knew I would find so much joy in running. Sometimes you just have to try new things; you might end up loving it.

Literacy Collage:

I love a collage, so I went a little crazy with this one. I will try to tell you everything that I have put in this.

Books: I have a lot of favorite books; I kept it at a minimum. We have My Husband, Bunny, The Handmaid's Tale, and my favorite book growing up The Name of This Book is Secret. Technically you can throw Gone Girl and Twilight in that list as well. They are in the list of my favorite movies. I read The Handmaid's Tale in high school, right when season 2 came out. I felt seen with the main character. I never went through what she went through. Though I did fight in court and I stood up and gave my statement in a room ten feet away from the guy I never wanted to see again. I didn't run away, I fought and I am still fighting. I saw her bravery and connected it with mine. If someone else could have their body ripped away and still fight, I thought I could too. I also did not find it appropriate to put the banned books that I enjoy reading, so I put a little sticker, because it is a big part of who I am.

Media: Gone Girl, Twilight, Stranger Things (I have a bat inspired tattoo from the demo bats in season four), Tangled, and Coraline (another fun fact, I have the button key tattooed as a dragonfly on my arm).

While You Were Sleeping is by far my favorite movie. My mother used to make me watch it all of the time growing up. Now whenever I am sad or happy or confused or on a date, I will watch Bill Pullman and Sandra Bullock in the 90's fall in love with each other. I connect to this movie in a sad way, that I won't get into.

I put Mamma Mia! up there because it is a fantastic movie and let me state this now. Colin Firth can sing, and he is amazing in all of his projects. This is the first musical I saw as a kid; this made me fall in love with theatre. I did it for a decade, and I miss the stage almost every day of my life.

People you should listen to:

Sabrina Carpenter of course, sometimes you need a good pop song to get through the day.

Ricky Montgomery they are an indie artist, and if you watched my introduction video, I have two posters from the concerts I went to of theirs. I also have two tattoos of my favorite songs from them. Please listen to this one to understand me more: Sorry For Me

Flight of the Concords is a weird indie comedy band from New Zealand. They had an HBO show for a while. It all feels like a fever dream. I have also seen them in concert. Now you make think you have not heard of them. You have. Jermaine one of the singers, is the crab in Moana and also made the original What We Do in The Shadows movie. Bret (my favorite) composed the song Am I Man or a Muppet? He won an award for that. If you want to listen to them, here is one of my favorites: Carol Brown

Until next time: <3

Blog Post #1

 Online Literacy Engagement

When discussing experience with digital composition, it feels like a world where everyone is making content. If you aren't making content, you are the odd one out. I don't use social media anymore; it doesn't make me smile; does it really make anybody fill up with glee? 

"Pretty soon, everyone will embrace sadness. And there’ll be no such thing as SMILING!" 

The content that I "experience" the most outside of the Great British Bake Off, House MD (for the 12th time), and other media on a screen. Would be Instagram to get information on news and updates on protests. I take part in social activism on social media, learning about what is happening, events near me, and the occasional Yungblud or Sabrina Carpentar edit. (I'm not perfect) Though I only have 30 minutes of social networks site until it locks me out. If I spend my time on reels, instead of sharing posts from the ACLU, Voces de la Frontera, and many more amazing activist groups with my friends. I have a sense of guilt because I used my time to watch edits of rich people or clips from shows I have already seen too many times. I am tired of losing my time to blue light and not touching more grass. 

When I state that I don't use social media for my mental health, everyone is shocked that I have the willpower to not go on it. Though this was not always the case, my experience creating content in the digital world is vast. I used to post a lot on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, sharing photos of experiences and updates about my life. I always have to document my life. "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Well, I used to think, "If I don't post a photo of it, did it really happen?" I don't think like that anymore and like to keep my life to myself, mainly. One of the experiences of creating content that I don't often mention is that I used to make edits and videos on TikTok about Stranger Things season four (who could resist Eddie Munson?). 

Capturing my online activity is difficult now that I no longer use social media. However, I used to doomscroll on TikTok for hours. I loved BookTok and have a whole list of books I found there on my To Be Read list. I found that there are an immense number of books from people who love the same things I do, and I can find books that capture my interest more there than the books my friends recommend to me, since we have different genre interests. I jump around a lot with genres based on my moods, and there are books I have found that have helped me learn and normalize my disabilities. BookTok helped me grow my library with books that improved my mental health, and I found a lot of feminist activism that deepened my understanding of political and cultural activism. "The social, cultural, and political components of digital literacies emphasize the significance of content and the meaning that is conveyed and generated... Book content is created with purposeful decisions" (Boffene and Jerasa, p. 222). BookTok is more than just finding Young Adult books or the most popular book of the year. Numerous books help shape people's understanding of what is happening in society today. Books have power, and having a resource that recommends a myriad of books in different genres has helped me with my activism and changed my life. 

                       

When students have the chance to choose their own projects and learn what they want, it creates more engagement in classrooms. As for myself, getting the right to choose what I write about helped me engage more in the classroom. I was able to write a textual analysis on the movie Pretty Baby and the blatant pedophilia in the movie and how it is still relevant thirty years later, "a feel for how Hollywood tends to portray women of color... full range of human experience and depth rather than the stereotypes, objectification, and fetishization of women of color. That they often see on their screens" (Dejaynes and Curmi-Hall, p. 4). We all see stereotypes daily, and I have always wanted to write about the hypersexualization of women in media, especially women of color and queer women. Not only is there an immense amount of sexualization of women in media. The deaths of women in marginalized communities are brutal and happen often in media. Audiences see these deaths happen in their favorite media that inaccurately reflect the real lives of these women. The depths you can find on the internet on what happens to marginalized women is extensive. There is a form online that shows the depictions of the brutal deaths that happen to lesbian characters in films. It has since stopped posting and has not included every media, though it reached over 200 deaths. Looking at this list, it shows how queer women's lives do not matter, and they are killed in a more brutal way than heterosexual characters. This is relevant to our society because queer women are killed in brutal ways, and their lives are lost in media to cis-hetero women. It is important to recognize that hypersexualization happens in media, but other stereotypes, and harmful tropes happen on screen as well. I was able to write about them in one of the feminist writing classes that helped me grow my activism and figure out what I am passionate about fighting for.

With digital media, students can choose what they want to read and research. They can grow their voice in the classroom, which is important for their development. Instead of giving students books we picked out and a topic we chose, this decreases their engagement and can suck the joy out of the classroom. Letting students choose and use digital media like TikTok can increase engagement by giving them something they enjoy, teaching them how to use social media safely, and helping them use it within the context of school. However, there are pitfalls to this that we must recognize: not everyone may have access to Wi-Fi or devices that allow them to run apps on their phone. In addition, parents may not want their students to have a social media presence or be able to participate in these classroom activities. For students in an Urban ELA classroom, they may be exhausted from looking at screens all day. Everything is on Chromebook, even though studies show that students learn better by taking notes by hand. When it comes to reading, they may not want to look at an eBook or have the attention to listen to an audiobook. It is tiring to look at a screen all day and not want to scream. 

You'll soon learn I am extremely pessimistic.