Reflection+3

Chawnqua Reid Reflection 3: Youth & Media Literacy

After viewing the video with instructor Dave Moore interviewing kids on nutrition, I was curious as to what the lesson was. A couple of students were walking with Dave to the store in order to buy their snacks for the day. The lesson plan had obviously involved nutrition as the students were talking about how they discovered the ingredients for various energy drinks that were horrible to your health. Upon buying their snacks, they were asked to reveal the nutrition facts and if the snack contained something they had no knowledge of, they were to go home and look up the ingredient name and report to Dave on Monday.  It was amusing for me to see the snacks that the children chose when they came out of the Wawa convenient store. Since the lesson was about nutrition, you would think healthier snacks would have been chosen, however it was not their first choice. They came out with snacks like hotdogs, jolly ranchers, and Cheetos puffs, etc. Then I realized that you can’t really regulate what the children are consuming, but can only hope that they would like to choose a healthier snack. In terms of the five essential dimensions of digital media, the children had access to the Wawa convenient store where they were able to apply their lesson into a real life situation. Not only did they recognize the ingredients from their lessons, they knew the serving sizes and the effects of each of them. If the student did not know what the ingredient meant, they were asked to look it up and see what it was. Having access to the internet and the store played a major part in this lesson. An important dimension of the literacy universe is the capacity to analyze messages, considering the author, purpose, and point of view to understand how they are constructed and the assumptions that under-pin them. By the children using the information they learned from their lessons and applying it to their favorite snacks, it gave them a choice to choose healthier or just to understand what they were putting into their bodies. Although the children could have come out of the store with healthier snacks, they did in fact understand the extent of how healthy their snacks weren’t. The one thing I did notice was the emphasis put on energy drinks and how bad they are for your health along with the pointing out of the false advertisement of what the drinks really do for the human body. None of the children came out of the Wawa with an energy drink. By allowing the students to teach us, it gives them an outlet to be expressive and show us what they have learned. I noticed that the instructor did not tell the students anything. They were sharing knowledge with him. By the students having a chance to share knowledge with the professor, their self-expression and self-confidence will rise. They could have easily been camera shy, or not really wanting to talk about their choices in snacks or share what they have learned, but when the environment is a field trip and not a classroom setting, the atmosphere is a bit more relaxed and the students will not feel the pressure of a classroom. They are ultimately more open and communicate better. By teaching the kids to read labels and to learn about the substances they are eating can really have an impact on their lives; it is a lesson they can take with them for the rest of their lives and teach others. Reading labels are the beginning steps to ensure healthier eating habits. The instructor repeatedly makes sure that they understand what they are eating, sometimes even by making it sound unappealing, so that they could understand that it was not the healthiest choice. One of the students purchased a sausage that did not come with any labels. The instructor told her the equivalent and asked her to go research the equivalent so that she would know what she was eating. He added that along with the sausage came a “starchy bread/bun”. The emphasis on the type of bread was enough to let the student know what it wasn’t the healthiest choice. However the students chose to use this lesson in life will be up to them, but I think it is amazing that the students are no longer ignorant to what they are putting into their bodies and now they have the necessary knowledge to make healthier choices!