Multimedia Artifacts

 

My name is:  Beth Ericson

My content area/discipline is:  English Teaching

The grade level I plan to teach is:  9-12

The typical educational purpose I will address is:  Advertise some alternate English classes that students can take as either elective or English credit to help them graduate.

My reason for choosing this purpose is:  There are a lot of students who either really dislike English, or really struggle with it for one reason or another. I wanted to create a flyer to advertise some alternate classes that a student could take to still get exposure to English without struggling through a typical English course. Helping students have positive interactions with English, no matter their skill level or interest level, is something that is very important to me as a teacher.

The tool(s) I will use: copyright-free images from Unsplash.com, and Microsoft Word.

What have you done to try to evaluate sources for bias and avoid biased portrayals of diverse identities?  Why is this important? : I intentionally picked images that didn’t include people, because I wanted to make sure that any student could feel like they could see themself in the course. As I typed up imaginary synopses for each course, I was aware that they would be biased towards encouraging students to take the course, but I feel like that bias comes from a desire to see those students succeed and be happy with the classes they take. I also did try to match each image with the class it was representing. It’s important to evaluate sources for bias, because we want everyone to succeed equally. We aren’t catering to one type of person or one culture or one race, we’re catering to all students as individuals that we are tasked to help learn and develop in positive ways.