PF-Teaching with Current Events: Teaching Media Literacy in a Digital Age: Facing Ferguson

Teaching with Current Events

Series Overview: Facing History and Ourselvesis a nonprofit educational and professional development organization that provides curricula resources and training that empower teachers to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, human rights, and civic participation. This year, the Literacy Assistance Center will work with Facing History and Ourselves to offer a four-part series introducing Facing History’s approach to pedagogy, and to equip teachers with the tools and strategies they need to help students become thoughtful, responsible citizens.

Session 1: Teaching Media Literacy in a Digital Age: Facing Ferguson

Description: On the afternoon of August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot to death in a confrontation with a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Within a week, the shooting and the protests that followed—driven to a large degree by social media—became a flashpoint for a discussion about race, policing, and justice in the United States.

Using the curricular unit, Facing Ferguson, co-created by Facing History and Ourselves and the News Literacy Project, this workshop will model how to create a safe and reflective space for dealing with difficult topics; examine how confirmation and other implicit biases can shape our understanding of the world; share how to use news literacy skills and concepts as a set of critical thinking tools to help students find reliable information to make decisions, take action, and responsibly share news and information through social media; and explore what it means to become effective and informed civic participants in today’s complex information landscape.

In this session, participants will:

• Discover new interdisciplinary teaching strategies that reinforce historical and literacy skills.

• Explore themes such as historical memory, justice, and civic participation in a democracy.