Time for Change in How Teacher's Use Popular Media in the Classroom

At first glance, I was surprised by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s finding in their newly published report, “Generation M2 : Media in the Lives of 8-to-18 Year Olds,” that our children are spending over seven hours a day in front of media. However, after further reviewing the study and understanding their definition of media to include not only television, video games and computers, but also music, cell phone and print, the 7.38 daily hours is not as shocking of a number. This study, however, will spark more questions about today’s youth.

For instance, I wonder what our children are missing out on because they are spending 1/3 of their day engrossed in media? When is their time to play outside? What about extracurricular activities? Sports? Family time and sit down meals? Is there a direct correlation between childhood obescity and media because our children are not active?

As parents and educators, our challenge is to find way to encourage our children to be active, to play outside and to try new things. Teachers have this responsibility because they spend so much time with children. Many parents are in need of society’s help in guiding their kids in the right direction and providing kids with encouragement and stimulating their minds with new ideas. And teachers by definition, even though it is not part of their formal job description, should understand that they have this important and challenging role once they step into the classroom.

As teachers, we face the challenge of wanting to connect with our students and thus we often use their language and mention popular tv programs or video games in our lesson plans. Math books used by Chicago Public Schools often use video game characters to teach new concepts and increase student’s interest in the subject. I wonder what message these materials are sending and how can we create lesson plans that are not encouraging media usage, but also are engaging and stimulate student’s interest in the subject matter.
Our challenge is to limit these media driven references and to develop lesson plans so they reflect the values that we desire to install in future generations. It is essential to find new ways to connect with our students to encourage them to reconnect with nature and their friends and family. This is no easy task, but the stakes are too high for failure. As teachers, we need to confront this topic in our teaching and work together to develop strategies and creative methods to demonstrate that there are other things in the world outside of media. If not, the number of hours per day our children spend with media will only increase.