Mary Kate Leidal is a School Librarian at Forest Avenue Elementary School in Hudson, MA
What do you do?
I am the librarian in a PreK-4 school with about 300 students. I see all the students in the school every week for lessons and book circulation.
Tell us about your latest work or project in media literacy.
I took a course on decoding media provided by Project Look Sharp last spring, which helped me better understand how to teach this topic to our younger students. I am currently part of the Foundations of Media Literacy cohort, which will be working through April on how to incorporate media literacy into our curricula. With my K-1 students, I’m currently using read-alouds to talk about an author’s message. I plan on transitioning to talking about other forms of media and how they have messages too. With the upper elementary students, we’ve been doing a lot with facts versus opinions as well as how to read a Google results page. I plan on moving into the definition of disinformation using Elise Gravel’s book “Killer Underwear Invasion: How to Spot Fake News, Disinformation, and Conspiracy Theories.” We’ll also touch on how videos and photographs can be altered and how algorithms are being used in social media.
Why is media literacy important to you?
I think the way people interact with and are influenced by media is having major impacts on the well-being of individuals as well as the beliefs and choices being made by society as a whole. I think we generally start to think about teaching some type of media literacy when students are middle-school aged because they might be on screens more, using social media, and owning their own cell phones. I think our teaching has to start with much younger students. Our littlest learners are consuming media and we’re not teaching them about it. We try to limit screen time for our elementary students and tell them to come to an adult if anything inappropriate comes up. This is great but definitely not enough. We’re missing out on the chance to teach elementary how to think critically when they are online so they can try to make smart choices independently.
What are you most excited about in the media literacy field?
I am excited that more states are requiring media literacy instruction be taught in schools. I want this to expand so that media literacy becomes a regular component of teaching a variety of subjects in all schools.
Why did you become a NAMLE member, what benefits do you see to membership, and how will it support your work?
I became a NAMLE member to get more ideas on how to include media literacy into my lessons. I am always looking for good resources and NAMLE is one of them!
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