When I was in high school, lots of creative and committed students joined the newspaper to physically publish a newspaper bi-weekly (every school I've been at since struggles to put out a paper each quarter). These students, from editors to writers to photographers to layout editors depended on the school's resources to print the paper. This group physically distributed the paper to the entire community. It built a positive community culture; it inspired students to write, to ask for an interview, to submit a photo, etc.
Nowadays, in the age of social media, photographers and writers alike have found authentic audiences outside of school. Photographers create VSCO or Flickr accounts and share their work online. Writers find communities of like-minded individuals to write for, whether that's a Reddit page or a Harry Potter fan fiction blog. At my school, we had three talented school newspaper writers who decided to start their own blog to write their own articles for their own audience outside of school. It proved to be an amazing resource, one that could have benefitted our school community, but enriched only those who knew where to look.
When I was in high school, I remember looking forward to the pep rally pump up video. Video production used to be really challenging and projects couldn't be posted online easily for all to see. Students had to be at Town Meeting for the screening to see it. I remember these videos to this day. They built school spirit and common culture giving us all something to root for throughout rivalry weekend.
Nowadays, every varsity athletic team records every game. And film platforms have editing options for athletes to cut their own highlights. As a result, we don't have any highlight videos to play in front of the whole community. But students have countless chances to see all the big plays in every game because their peers post them online. Some of these film sites provide unique editing tools too. I'm genuinely impressed with what my students make (free or charge), and what they share with a gigantic audience from friends to college coaches, to players around the league. At the same time, I wish it resulted in some kind of school spirit building production for the whole community.
When I was in high school, I worked to procure time during Town Meetings to engage in creative shenanigans for a laugh, for an increase in student morale, and for shared experiences for the student body. For example, I planned a spoof to a popular music video, I organized a game of musical chairs, and I participated in our SNL spoof called "Tuesday Morning Live." As a teacher, I have seen some of this--it alternates between being amazing and cringe-worthy--but it's not nearly as frequent, unique or as bold. It's often an add-on to something that already exists online, and it often suffers from the fear of being recorded, posted, and excoriated after the fact--a natural deterrent to creative, outside-the-box ideas.
Nowadays, with things like Wordpress, Weebly, YouTube, SoundCloud, and even Twitch, students have opportunities to share their passions and creativity to specialized, yet massive, audiences. I had a student that started a political blog via Wordpress, I had a student who started vlogging about local events via YouTube, I had a student who started a rap career on Soundcloud, and most recently, I had a student begin streaming his video game sessions. I'm super impressed with their initiative and effort, but I'm sad that these endeavors exist outside of our school culture.
In all of the scenarios above, students today easily create, brand, and publish content for free. And they are able to share their work with a much wider audience than just their peers at school.
This shift has occurred in the last five years; it coincides with the moment when our students started accumulating more online "friends" or "followers" on their favorite social media platforms than we have students in the school. Social media provides the opportunity for something to go viral. My students know the major events and controversies at surrounding schools thanks to social media. So if a student wanted to show off a creative work or talent, it makes sense that he or she would rather publish it through social media than through school.
To prove my point, I'd like to incorporate a case study from a summer school at which I taught a class called Mass Media. The school brings students from all across the state of NH together onto a boarding school campus for six-weeks. In Mass Media, we kept the campus news via Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Blogger. Since students didn't follow or interact with each other online before this program, they relied on our platform to move their messages and ideas. Students genuinely wanted to show off the amazing work they were doing and they wanted to see what other students and classes are up to. In addition, the program hosted "coffee houses" where students shared prose, poetry, and music, and two talent shows. These were incredibly well attended and loved by the entire campus, students, teachers, interns, house supervisors, and administrators. This case study proves that when students aren't connected via social media, they are so much more likely to engage in community events and distribute content through community channels. And initiative, creativity, excitement, and positive engagement pervades this community in only six week!
So what has happened to our school culture in an age of free production and consumption of media thanks to big technology companies and a specialized, larger audience thanks to social media?
I don't think it's far-fetched to say that there are two cultures at our schools, what happens in a school setting, and what happens online. Many schools and administrators like to keep it that way. That's because when information comes from social media culture to the school culture, it often results in disciplinary action. And that's too bad, because there's also unique, humorous, skillful multimedia work being shared online by our students that is lost on us adults and removed from the school zeitgeist.
As a result of this shift in creation and consumption among our students, schools are losing the eclectic, fun experiences that bond campuses together. Every school needs morale, spirit, and creativity in order to carry out a mission or curriculum. After all, we get more out of our students when they're in a positive social-emotional state when they enter our schools and our classes.
Unfortunately, our extracurricular that depend on extracurricular interest and initiative are declining. This is coming at a time when schools are talking incessantly about 21st century skills, two of those being creativity and multimedia creation.
How are we going to empower (and critique!) our talented, hard-working students who are trying new things online? How are we going to encourage them to bring their work back into the school community? How are we going to revive our declining institutions and breathe into them energy, creativity, interest? And how do we do this when students purposely keep adults out of their social media spaces?
I have some ideas that I'll include in a follow-up post, but all of them start with talking to students. So let's all agree to start there.
