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I was surprised by how much the answers varied from expectations. I had expected the students to favor film much more than they did. In fact, I believed heavily that most students would feel quite literally the same as I did about the usefulness of film in classrooms. Similarly, I expected students to consume much more media (especially film and television) than they actually did. Instead, students predominantly favored social media forms of media. To be honest, I had not really accounted for these in a way that is both significant and indicative of a gap in both familiarity and knowledge that I will have to work to overcome. While I do not intend to shy away from researching my theory that films serve as "immediate" literature in a way that text sources do not (I find myself more motivated than ever to combat the assumptions, apparent even in my own interviews, applied to visual media), I do feel humbled to acknowledge the bias I carry.

This was helpful because it not only informed me of a gap in my own understanding of literacy, but it also provided me with a list of sources that I can utilize moving forward to actively engage students in a way that they may not be otherwise. Specifically, this included: YouTube, Instagram Reels, Tik Tok, etc. While I had considered these, I had downplayed both their significance and their merit as literary sources. However, these are the dominant ways in which students communicate with each other.

This is especially noticeable in the use of Tik Tok dance challenges that students complete daily between classes. When asked about these, students provided tons of insight that I had previously been ignorant to. For instance, many of the dance challenges are created daily and spread throughout Tik Tok via imitations and reenactments that are posted and shared endlessly. Even further, many of these dance challenges are inspired by, pulled directly from, or speaking to other pieces of media. This may include, but is not limited to, recreating dances, scenes, movements from specific films, plays, online videos, etc. They may also appear in the form of dances that interpret old songs (especially country and 80s songs, two recent trends) through new dance forms created and propagated by users.

These dances, then, have become a new form of literacy exclusive to the Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter universes. In turn, they have become their own kind of language that users adopt and adapt to "speak" to other users. Knowing the dances, their origin, the acceptable modifications, and the audience are the price of entry into this new world of literacy. While the products and processes may seem quite different, the skills utilized for understanding and communicating remain the same. The students have created a new literacy with its own forms of communication, knowledge, and language, all of which are non-verbal. Even further, they reference film and television in ways that I had not previously considered.

While there are traditional video essays (Tik Tok rants, memes, political posts, etc.) these are ultimately traditional by comparison. In fact, many of the students have moved away from the social media sources that were once popular when I was in school. I believe that Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are still used, but Facebook has been all but abandoned by the students at my placement. While this may not seem interesting at the outset, it shows that students have moved away from the predominantly text-heavy mediums and instead have moved toward more multimodal platforms. This may simply be presumption on my part, but it stood out as significant during my data analysis.

Not only has this changed my understanding of literacy, but it has also changed the forms of literacy that I will forever include in my classroom. In fact, while I had initially designed this project as a foundation for my dissertation moving forward (should I decide to pursue it), I have now learned a new avenue of research to consider: the non-verbal literacy aspects of visual media. Even further, this provides a new insight for the films I wish to include my curriculum as well as how I ask the class to look at them. I find myself constantly reminded of Golden and his statements on the "unfilmable" moments in literature (2007). Moving forward, I would like to examine the distinctly "unwritable" moments of visual media and how these create a new, immediate form of literacy with its own non-verbal language and rules that dominate its use.

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i.                     What do you think of when you think of literacy? What does it mean to you?

ii.                   What do you think society thinks of as literacy?

iii.                 Do you like novels?

iv.                  Do you like movies? Tv?

v.                   What is your most common mode of consuming media? (Film, tv, books, etc.)

vi.                  Do you think you learn from novels?

vii.                What is your general opinion on movies/tv? Are they just for fun? What do you use this medium for? Escape? Knowledge? Relief? Mindlessness?

a.       Do you talk about these with anyone? What form do you talk about most? What kinds of things do you discuss? Character development? Arcs? Plot twists? Meanings?

b.       Do you think you learn from movies? How is this “learning” different from or similar to learning from novels/text?

viii.              How were films used in school? As companions to books? Were films ever used alone?

ix.                  Would you have changed this? What would you have changed? (More or less movie days? Different movies?)

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Sarris, A. (1971). Literature and Film. The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 4(1), 10–15. https://doi.org/10.2307/1314967

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I wanted to use this final project as a space to explore the idea of film and television as immediate literature. In other words, I wanted to probe the reality of my own bias that film and television carry an urgency in society that traditional text does not. Even further, I wanted to explore the realities and pitfalls of using a predominantly film-based literature class. Do the skills associated with successfully reading text-based literature transition to other forms? Is that same approach reciprocal? Thus, could I create better readers by creating better film viewers?

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1. What do you think of when you think of literacy?
having the ability to read and write

2. What does literacy mean to you?
being able to communicate effectively with other people

3. What do you think society thinks of as literacy?
i feel like society (especially american society) seriously takes literacy for granted, since there are other countries in the world where half of the citizens cant read or write

4. Do you like novels?
i like the idea of them, but im not particularly into reading them

5. Do you like movies? Tv?
i like certain genres of movies, but i dont really like watching movies very often

6. What is your most common mode of consuming media? (Film, tv, books, etc.)
my phone and my laptop

7. Do you think you learn from novels?
depends in the genre. if its fiction, then no. if its nonfiction, then yes

8. What is your general opinion on movies/tv? Are they just for fun? what do you use this medium for? Escape? Knowledge? Relief?
i feel like movies are a fun way to gather people together and have a good time while also paying the actors' large salaries. i dont typically watch much tv in general unless theres a nba game on, so i pretty much watch tv because i love analyzing and studying the game of basketball

9. Do you talk about these with anyone? What form do you talk about most? What kinds of things do you discuss? Character development? Arcs? Plot twists? Meanings?
i mostly just talk about nba team standings, player statistics, and awards races with a couple of my friends from high school

10. Do you think you learn from movies? How is this "learning" different from or similar to learning from novels/text?
i feel like it would be easier to lesrn from a movie than it would be to learn from a novel. i feel like movies can provide so much more detail and context into a past or current event through the sense of sight as well as the sense of hearing, while novels can only do so through the sense of sight

11. How were films used in school? As companions to books? Were films ever used alone?
for me movies were either used as a homework material or a reward. they were used alone if they were meant to be awards

12. Would you have changed this? What would you have changed? (More or less movie days? Different movies?)
i definitely wouldve wanted more movie days in order to have less homework before i graduated from high school

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1. What do you think of when you think of literacy?

I think of reading and writing and all the various media that includes those things like poetry and speeches.

2. What does literacy mean to you?

literacy to me is just reading and writing as well as boredom.

3. What do you think society thinks of as literacy?

I think it depends on who you are. some people definitely think very similar to me whereas others probably think very highly of literacy.

4. Do you like novels?

no I despise them.

5. Do you like movies? Tv?

yes I love anything visual.

6. What is your most common mode of consuming media? (Film, tv, books, etc.)

definitely streaming shows but movies are a close second.

7. Do you think you learn from novels?

i would have to try extremely hard. I could probably learn from school books if I reread them like 10 times but most of the time my eyes just kind of follow the words and nothing stays.

8. What is your general opinion on movies/tv? Are they just for fun? what do you use this medium for? Escape? Knowledge? Relief?

I love movies and tv because they’re so colorful and entertaining. mostly I use them to fill time for entertainment but sometimes they can be used as an emotional release. like u can watch a sad show to cry or an old favorite for nostalgia.

9. Do you talk about these with anyone? What form do you talk about most? What kinds of things do you discuss? Character development? Arcs? Plot twists? Meanings?

I always talk about shows and movies with friends. we mostly talk about favorite characters and arcs and try to convince eachother to watch eachothers favorites.

10. Do you think you learn from movies? How is this "learning" different from or similar to learning from novels/text?

I learn much easier from any form of visual media. I also feel like the visual component for me leads to more of an understanding kind of learning versus just the cold memorization that text leads to.

11. How were films used in school? As companions to books? Were films ever used alone?

I feel like it depends on the class and definitely the teacher. i’ve had some classes that rely heavily on films alone and sometimes a mix.

12. Would you have changed this? What would you have changed? (More or less movie days? Different movies?)

I would love more movie days.

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1. What do you think of when you think of literacy?  I think of reading books

2. What does literacy mean to you? Lots of reading

3. What do you think society thinks of as literacy? I think that society thinks of literacy of reading and understanding books

4. Do you like novels? No

5. Do you like movies? Tv? Yes

6. What is your most common mode of consuming media? (Film, tv, books, etc.) I look at tv and my phone with social media

7. Do you think you learn from novels? No

8. What is your general opinion on movies/tv? Are they just for fun? what do you use this medium for? Escape? Knowledge? Relief? I like watch tv to relax and just to have time to sit down

9. Do you talk about these with anyone? What form do you talk about most? What kinds of things do you discuss? Character development? Arcs? Plot twists? Meanings? Yes, I see if they have watched the movie or show that I have watched and try to see you they know any of the characters or what is happening in the show

10. Do you think you learn from movies? How is this "learning" different from or similar to learning from novels/text? I can’t just sit and read a book and remember what I read. I learn from watching something rather than reading

11. How were films used in school? As companions to books? Were films ever used alone? We would read a book and then watch the movie at the end as a reward

12. Would you have changed this? What would you have changed? (More or less movie days? Different movies?) I loved movies because it was a way to just relax and have fun

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The first part of the research began with finding out how pedagogical scholars valued film in the classroom. The literary merit associated with the medium seemed to grow as the medium itself did. Early publications considered the idea with plentiful skepticism while contemporary pieces urged teachers toward multimodality in classrooms.

In a 1971 piece titled "Literature and Film*", author Andrew Sarris states, "Books and movies are thus very often viewed as competitive versions of the same basic anecdotal material. Until very recently, the flow of novels into films, and of plays into movies, was all one-way, from the older forms to the newest" (pg. 10).  Books are often the precedent set for a classroom. The general formula consists of traversing (alongside students) through a traditional textual narrative while intermittently completing formative assessments to gauge student understanding of a predetermined lens leading toward predetermined essential questions. This ultimately leads to a summative assessment that acts as the final measurement of literary understanding (whether that is a focus on theme, character development, plot structure, etc.). Once these have been completed, the students are seemingly, given the ubiquity of this structure, "rewarded" with in-class-viewing days devoted to an adaptation of the previously read text. The students come to associate film with the reward for slogging through the text. Thus, when the film is over and the students are then proposed another text, they instantly begin to count down to the next time they will be allowed to watch films in class.

What if these were instead reversed? What if students were first exposed to a film and then shown the text from which it's based? What if films were taught back-to-back? What if, instead of using the familiar structure, films could be taught intermittently with text? Could the mediums remain congruous in this structure? Most importantly, what is the relationship between these two mediums? In the same essay, Andrew Sarris hypothesizes that, "Literature is what you read from a printed page, and film is what you see, hear and even read on the screen. Thus the collected screenplays of Ingmar Bergman are literature, and Charles Laughton's resounding recitation of Kipling's If in St. Martin's Lane is cinema" (pg. 13). Sarris goes further to understand this difference by considering that film attempts to sensuously imitate nature, though it is not nature and instead, "a restructured entity full of light and shadow" (pg. 14). Film attempts to recreate nature (reality) through sensuous imitation, though it cannot ever hope to actually achieve it. Meanwhile, text attempts to recreate film, though it is similarly bound by sensuous limitations inherent to the medium (Sarris). Ultimately, this means that when film and literature are compared against each other, the question that is underlying the discussion is merely one of aesthetic and sensuous nature rather than of the literary skills used to consume, analyze, and explain the media. What if, then, we could redirect the way in which we talk about films in literature class? What if there was less emphasis placed on the aesthetic components of a film because they are aesthetic and instead because they may act as assistive tools for literacy development? How does one begin this process? Does it begin with a definition of literacy skills? Or perhaps of literature itself?

In a powerful article titled, “Literature into Film (and Back Again): Another Look at an Old Dog”, high school teacher John Golden explains that he teaches film and text simultaneously by dividing student focus between cinematic, theatrical, and literary elements. Golden states, “The kids who will never think about characterization in a novel have no trouble listing all of the defining traits of James Bond or Batman. Looking for the literary elements in film helps students understand these terms and improves their analytical abilities with print texts” (2007, pg. 25). Once the students feel comfortable identifying literary aspects within selected films, Golden will ask the students to consider, “How does the director use cinematic and theatrical elements to illustrate literary elements?” (2007, pg. 25). By creating this reciprocal relationship between the two mediums, Golden is able to create a class-wide language that enables students to grasp and discuss the three elements by comprehending and referencing aspects of the other elements as entry-points of understanding and comparison. Even further, Golden asks his students to consider the pieces of literature that are indeed unfilmable. These moments are focused on when the class watches an adaptation and Golden asks his students to consider how the director and cast attempt to embody or represent these unseen moments. This reciprocal insight allows for greater understanding of both mediums.

In an article titled, “Focus on the Film : Movies in the Literature Class”, author Robert C. Reimer states, “If one views the source of a film as nothing more than the source of inspiration, films could be studied without prejudice even by scholars with a literary bias. But this would lessen the value of the film. […] In other words, we should not ignore the literary source when reflecting on a film” (1979, pp. 4-5). Reimer goes even further to consider that by examining
literature alongside film one can learn more about both pieces of work, as suggested previously, especially in the case of adaptations. The author goes further to create a list of rules for showing films in literature class. The first of which is to always read the text before watching the movie. Reimer argues that it is nearly impossible for one to remove cinematic associations from the brain when reading a text after seeing its adaptation (Reimer, 2007). But what if students could efficiently alternate between the mediums with an alternate focal point?

Instead of the historically descriptive discussions around the relationship between cinema and literature, specifically in the frame of faithfulness to the original source material, discussions may benefit from shifting to the skills utilized to consume the narratives. What if, instead of discussing the ways in which a film attempts to adapt its source material, we instead discussed the elements of cinema alongside the elements of literature within a film? Would this create a better opportunity for students to engage with the medium? If the focal point of discussion is shifted from the source material to the analytical skills that the student is employing to consume the source material, the teacher stands a much better opportunity to refine those skills through the use of those same multiple mediums. Why? The discussion will be refined from discussing the specific qualities of a piece to considering how these are, at the very core, critically analyzed by a student. According to Golden, “just as I learned more about English grammar by studying Spanish, the students in this ‘film’ class have learned more about literature than they do in my traditional English classes” (2007, pg. 30).

Would this create an opportunity to create better readers by creating better film watchers then? Would shifting the prioritization from textual mediums benefit the students because of the accessibility of visual media? Could they attain a status of full literacy through this transition, or will something be lost in the shift? Do students see films as accessible, and do they believe in the possibility of films as literature? In other words, do they believe that they could become more literate through watching movies?

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Reimer, R. C. (1979). Movies in the Literature Class. Die Unterrichtspraxis / Teaching German, 12(2), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.2307/3528964

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Film as Film: Using Movies to Help Students Visualize Literary Theory

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Film as Film: Using Movies to Help Students Visualize Literary Theory

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Muller, V. (2006). Film as Film: Using Movies to Help Students Visualize Literary Theory. The English Journal, 95(3), 32–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/30047041

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Film as Film - Using Movies to Help Students Visualize Literary Theory

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Gillette. (2019, Jan. 13.) We Believe: The Best Men Can Be [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/koPmuEyP3a0

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We Believe: The Best Men Can Be | Gillette (Short Film)

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Literature into Film (and Back Again): Another Look at an Old Dog

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Literature into Film (and Back Again): Another Look at an Old Dog

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Golden, J. (2007). Literature into Film (and Back Again): Another Look at an Old Dog. The English Journal, 97(1), 24–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/30047204

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Literature into Film (and Back Again) - Another Look at an Old Dog

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Documentary Video as Composing (Pair with TedTalk)

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Documentary Video as Composing (Pair with TedTalk)

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Doerr-Stevens, C. (2017). Embracing the Messiness of Research: Documentary Video Composing as Embodied, Critical Media Literacy. The English Journal, 106(3), 56–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26359288

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Tales of a Taeenage Filmmaker | Zachary Maxwell | TedxSpokane

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Tales of a Taeenage Filmmaker | Zachary Maxwell | TedxSpokane

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Tedx Talks. (2016, Dec. 5). TEDxSpokane - Zachary Maxwell - Tales of a Teenage Filmmaker [Video]. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pp9ONyxBr8

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Tales of a Teenage Filmmaker | Zachary Maxwell | TEDxSpokane

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"Standing at the Crossroads": Content Creation in the 21st-Century English Classroom

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"Standing at the Crossroads": Content Creation in the 21st-Century English Classroom

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Cercone, J. (2017). “Standing at the Crossroads”: Content Creation in the 21st-Century English Classroom. The English Journal, 106(3), 25–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26359282

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Booktubing: Reader Response Meets 21st Century Literacies

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Booktubing: Reader Response Meets 21st Century Literacies

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Mora, R. A., & Gomez, T. C. (2017). Booktubing: Reader Response Meets 21st Century Literacies. The ALAN Review, 44(3), 61–66.

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The students' responses were much different than I had expected them to be. I thought that films were going to not only be favored more but would also be heavily preferred over traditional literature forms. Similarly, I did not expect students to place (and retain) so much merit on traditional literary forms. Many of the answers I received echoed the very claims that I was, whether initially consciously or not, trying to refute.

That is, I thought their answers would support my belief or claim that traditional text is a somewhat outdated media to prioritize in attempting to engage the students. Instead, students offered a new perspective on the authorial and directorial aspects of reading. More precisely, students often prefer the imaginative aspects that come along with reading. What I had initially seen as a barrier (the form of the text itself), the students saw as an opportunity for their own interpretation. Similarly, the very format of film, something I had thought would make connections easier, is seen as restrictive by the students. The answers from the interviews consistently mentioned that films only showed the viewpoint of the director. Students, along with the parent and personal interviewees, all mentioned that film often left little-to-no interpretative space for the viewer.

Perhaps connected then is the interviewees' general consensus that text sources stimulate more meaningful discussion and cognitive analysis than visual media pieces. While I cannot directly prove it, I believe that students associate and amalgamate the imaginative space they believe to be inherent to literature with literary merit and opportunity. Similarly, the responses indicate a surprising divergence from the social media depictions of youth as obsessed with streaming services. In fact, long-form media, such as television and film, are less favored than other, shorter media such as short videos online. The data seems to indicate that this is in fact the primary form of media consumed. Even further, this is the primary form of narrative that is consumed by the students. This is important to consider when asking students to sit down for multiple hours at a time to consume films, something I had not previously considered.

When it came to the reactions to film, student answers varied more than I had originally prepared for. I thought that students would generally give any answer that would justify showing more films in class. Instead, they were wholly honest about how much effort they would place and how seriously they would take the film viewing. While this was extremely helpful, it did result in some contradictory results. Some students stated that they found films entirely more accessible than text and felt that they could learn more from them. Meanwhile, other students all but discredited film when compared against literature. What some saw as a new opportunity for growth in learning others saw as something they could easily blow off.

One thing was consistent through all interviews: people want more movies in class.