Ernest Morrell "Aha Moments" Pgs 57-114

Chapter 4

1. There is no doubt that music plays a preeminent role in the livers of America's youth.
- The Notorious B.I.G said it best, "Either you slang crack-rock or you got a wicked jump-shot."
2. Baker (1993) and George (1999) all argue that the creative people who are talking about youth culture in a way that makes sense are rappers, and the youth are responding in many ways.
3. I further argue that hip-hop texts are literary texts and can be used to scaffold literary terms and concepts and ultimately foster literary interpretations.
4. Certainly, teachers should consult with their students early and often abouth the artists, songs, and genres that have had and are having a big impact on their lives.
-Does this mean I can't use Jimmy Buffet's Cheese Burger in Paradise?
5. Teachers should feel confident using popular music in conjunction with poetry, by itself, as a part of theme-based, multi-genre units or as part of a larger research on youth and popular culture.
6. The possibilities are virtually endless for the teacher who wants to bring popular music into her or hid English classroom.

Chapter 5

7. There is noo doubt that adolescents watch a great deal of television and film.

8. Many of the elite English programs now offer critical film studies courses.

9. ...students already possess many of the skills that we, as educators want to impart to them. However, by not allowing them to tap into their huge reservoirs of knowledge, we also prevent many from incorporating these skills into engagements of traditional texts.

10. I encourage creative appraoches to instruction that emenate from the worlds and perceptions of the students and are based upon a sound theoretical framework.

11. Teaching popular television and film in secondary English classrooms is a vital and valuable enterprise for many reasons. (Improve academic reading and writing / Facilitate critical engagement with popular media)

Chapter 6

12. Most people spend as much as 1/3 of their lives engaged with mass media.

13. A person of 60 years of age has seen, read, or heard as many as 50 million advertisements.

14. A recent report by the National Reading Conference on literacy development among adolescents calls for literacy educators to help students learn to more critically interrogate the mass media that play such a central role in their identity development and world view.

15. The British Broadcasting Standards commission has recommended that media studies be taught at primary school, given its' importance to students' lives.

-So not only is the rest of the world better at teaching math and science, but in areas of communication as well. Is there anything we are the best at, other than building war planes and nuclear bombs? It turns out that most of the rest of the modern world also requires more of their teachers and pays them better. In Australia, first-year teachers make more than first-year doctors!

16. I would go further in encouraging literacy educators to not only enable students to become critical consumers of media texts, but to provide the oppurtunities for students to become critical producers of counter-media texts.