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• Teaching students how to guard themselves from harmful and oppressive media messages and how to “talk back” to negative and stereotypical media images.
• Preparing students for democratic participation with robust knowledge of the civic process.
• Sharing a particular vision for civic engagement based on views or media with which students may be unfamiliar.

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• Helping students to feel comfortable voicing their own opinions and ideas in political action.
• Providing opportunities for students to create media that expresses their original ideas within an existing political or social landscape.
• Encouraging students to question and challenge assumed beliefs and opinions about the world to foster civic engagement.

Strenghts

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Activists are often natural leaders who raise students’ consciousness about their role in a healthy democratic environment. They often have extensive knowledge of global and local issues around which students can become passionate and engaged directly in a political process, whether they advocate for a new recycling program in their school or write letters to local news stations.

Challenges

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Activists sometimes over- or underestimate the extent to which students have truly developed their own sets concrete values and beliefs—in some cases, students’ “home” beliefs are contrary to the vision of the instructor, while in others students simply do not know yet what they believe. This makes the Activist teacher vulnerable to imposing a specific set of beliefs on students who are either opposed to or unsure of their instructor’s opinions or values.

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• Teaching students to question the authority of professional, mainstream, and mass media points of view on the world.
• Sharing alternative cultural touchstones with students that have been transformative in your own life or in other cultures.
• Helping students to better understand alternative histories and points of view that they may not learn in textbooks or other authoritative classroom media.

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• Encouraging students to imagine multiple ways of communicating a message or idea.
• Giving students an “inside look” at, and the skills to make, work that is less “glossy” and difficult to produce than most professionally-produced media.
• Providing students opportunities to make media that engages with formats, modes of construction, and points of view with which they are unfamiliar.

Strenghts

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Alts are, as their name implies, adept at creating a classroom environment that is curious, creative, and engaging in the way that it breaks from students’ expectations. Alts are often students’ first points of entry to worlds of art, current events, popular culture, and literature that offers more diverse points of view than traditional classroom media.

Challenges

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Alts can sometimes, in teaching alternatives to the traditional canon of the classroom canons, create new sacred cows that are not subject to the scrutiny and critical questioning of mainstream or traditional media. Alts sometimes alienate students who identify with popular culture in strong and complex ways; they present alternatives without equally respecting what their students love the most.

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• Helping students identify how manipulation of images distorts our perceptions of reality.
• Defending students from negative messages from mass media and popular culture that have an impact on their self-esteem or self-image.
• Questioning students uncritical pleasure in the problematic media they use.

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• Using demystification of media production processes to encourage students to make their own work.
• Asking students to make connections between the processes of media production and the media they use in their everyday lives.
• Encouraging students to ask their own questions about how and why media is constructed.

Strenghts

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Demystifiers are good at identifying teachable moments when students struggle to understand how and why media is constructed. Their students make meaningful connections to their home uses of media; often leave their classes saying that they will “never watch a movie,” “never read a book,” or “never use a website” the same way again.

Challenges

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Demystifiers need to be on the lookout for confusion as they pull back the various curtains that conceal the constructedness of media—it is better for curtains to be opened (so to speak) in the service of a particular, meaningful lesson, and not simply to foster student engagement. Demystifiers also need to combat students’ cynicism as they learn about media’s constructedness; when students make their own work using their knowledge of constructedness, they understand that whether constructedness is “good” or “bad” depends on point of view and also the context in which it was produced.

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• Teaching students how to guarding themselves media that may be harmful to their self-esteem or sense of self-worth.
• Requiring students to provide positive feedback to their peers that affirms the strongest qualities of student participation and classroom work.
• Carefully selecting classroom materials that will not challenge students’ sense of power in their own creative expression.

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• Fostering an environment in which students feel comfortable sharing their ideas, opinions, and unique creative talents to express themselves.
• Encouraging students to pursue subjects that they find interesting or engaging as the basis for classroom activities and projects.
• Providing opportunities for students to spark and sustain their own dialogue in the classroom, with only occasional scaffolding and direction from the teacher.

Strenghts

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Motivators are the teachers students remember fondly for their commitment to collaboration and student voice—students feel that their own ideas and creative spirit are respected and developed. Motivators are also sensitive to bringing every student along for the creative journey; their charisma make it difficult for students to opt out.

Challenges

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Motivators can sometimes err on the side of too little structure or too much chaos in the classroom, which can impede student clarity and direction—though students’ voices are powerful, they are also in a state of development, which means that students may not know yet exactly what they have to say. Motivators also need to ensure that students feel comfortable not only expressing themselves, but questioning each other’s work respectfully and challenging each other to do better and more thoughtful work.

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• Protect students from technical failure in their media productions and projects.
• Equip students to recognize how professional production carries specific messages that may be negative or harmful.
• Prevent organizational chaos with a hierarchal production model (with explicit roles) that limit students’ tendency to go off-task or be unproductive.

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• Instill a sense of professionalism and promote concentrated effort on media production projects.
• Help students think of themselves as “real” authors speaking to real audiences in a professional language that users of mass media understand.
• Provide an academic or career path for students through media production and media industries by modeling professional skills, behaviors, and standards.

Strenghts

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Professionalism looks good. Professionals are usually good at holding students to a higher set of aesthetic standards than typical youth media projects. Professionals are often in charge of professional technology and equipment available at school. They also inspire students to look into continuing opportunities to create media in after-school and academic programs.

Challenges

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Professionalism in and of itself can suffer from the “style over substance” problem. Students emulate professional models in news, film production, or graphic design, but do not necessarily bring the same rigor to academic or content aspects of the work. When professional values are only aesthetic, they may discourage students from thinking about the processes of research, analysis, and evaluation crucial to high-quality media projects.

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• Keep students on-task with current assignments and less prone to diversions or chaotic, unstructured media activities.
• Heavily scaffold and structure classroom conversations to help students master content and better understand lesson goals.
• Use educational technologies as “safe spaces” where students can explore within well-defined content boundaries.

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• Help students understand how engaging media connects to the content lessons that are crucial to their academic development.
• Expand students’ conception of what kinds of composition practices are acceptable in academic environments by encouraging them to make presentations, videos, and other media products.
• Provide a vision of educational success that includes mastery of media materials relevant to their academic success, including word processing, multimedia presentation creation, video production, and other skills.

Strenghts

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Professors have a keen understanding of their goals in teaching, and so do their students. Professors are less likely to experience the kind of messiness that can be inherent in large, collaborative media projects. Their students always have a clear sense of the relevance of integrating technology and media to immediate needs of a lesson and subject.

Challenges

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By hewing to curriculum needs, sometimes Professors miss opportunities to go “off-script” to exciting and important teachable moments. Using technology and media in the classroom provides lots of opportunities for creativity, improvisation, and exploration that may or may not be easily integrated into a strict lesson template. These kinds of spontaneous and semi-structured explorations can help deepen students’ understanding of some of the issues that are most important to them in their everyday lives—issues that involve their families, communities, current events, and important but unpredictable life lessons.

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• Help students understand and guard themselves against media representations that hurt their self-esteem.
• Counteract stereotypes and misrepresentations that students identify with or recognize.
• Create a safe, private space in the classroom for students to feel honored, respected, and listened to when they talk about their personal relationships.

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• Encourage students to express their feelings and emotions through media production.
• Spark conversations about students’ personal experiences with digital media and popular culture and the way it affects their lives.
• Integrate reflective practice into students’ writing and media production activities.

Strenghts

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Spirit Guides tend to be highly trustworthy. Students confide in Spirit Guides, telling them things about their lives, thoughts, and feelings that they may not share with other teachers. Spirit Guides are receptive to students’ emotional well-being and sense of self-esteem.

Challenges

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Many students have private media lives that they may feel ambivalent about sharing in classroom environments. Spirit Guides need to be particularly careful when it is OK for students not to share, especially when students have concerns about appropriateness, privacy, or peer judgment of their media lives.

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• Challenging students’ limited perceptions of culture with widely-recognized cultural touchstones.
• Asking students to distinguish between superficial and complex media messages.
• Developing inventive strategies to steer student engagement toward the “classics” in art, literature, and other media.

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• Helping students to use reasoning and discrimination to distinguish between positive and negative messages.
• Making connections between the popular culture that students love and its cultural heritage.
• Encouraging students to ask critical questions about the aesthetics and historical context of all media used in the classroom.

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Taste-makers often bring a wealth of knowledge of the arts to bear on the choices they make in the classroom, helping their students to understand and care more deeply about classic literature, art, and other media. Taste-makers also tend to take a “long view” of culture, making important historical and aesthetic connections between contemporary culture and its forbears.

Challenges

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Taste-makers sometimes inflect their own taste in “classic” media in their approach to popular media, which can be disengaging for students who identify themselves by so-called “shallow” media. Taste-makers can also be reluctant to use the same level of critical questioning and skepticism when dealing with the “classics” that they use to deconstruct contemporary culture.

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• Help students understand respectful interpersonal relationships on- and off-line through structured activities.
• Create a safe classroom space for students to try new forms of analysis and communication without exposing them to some of the harsher realities of public and online life.
• Find ways to make traditional subject matter engaging, helping students focus on multiple forms of core content.

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• Spark classroom conversations about a variety of media and students’ relationships to it, creating text-to-text and text-to-self connections.
• Give students confidence to evaluate, analyze, and create media in multiple forms even if they have challenges with their print literacy skills.
• Honor students’ participation in fan culture and engagement in media as a key component of their in-class learning.

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Teacher 2.0’s are endlessly inventive and find lots of new ways to engage students in a variety of subjects. They explore opportunities for students to interact with one another online and in class through new media and technology, and connect to students emotionally by taking their pleasure in both engaging digital media and classroom learning seriously.

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Because of the divergent nature of the Teacher 2.0 teaching style, lessons are often vulnerable to hiccups, unforeseen challenges, and remaining unfinished, as when students don’t have time to watch a whole film, don’t adequately engage with one another on online platforms, or don’t complete a media production. Teacher 2.0’s also occasionally miss the ways in which students choose not to participate with one another, or their desire to sometimes leave their enthusiasm for media “at home.”

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• Teaching students to use technology tools safely and responsibly.
• Gatekeeping or providing `quality control` to students` access of websites and other digital resources.
• Using educational technology tools in the classroom yourself to both streamline and spice up your lesson plans.

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• Giving students the power of using new technologies firsthand to make their own work.
• Engaging in students` interests of new technologies like smart phones and mobile devices.
• Acting as an advocate in your school for the use of educational technology in other classrooms and for other students.

Strenghts

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Techies have a 'finger on the pulse' of rapid technological change. They engage student interests around new and emerging platforms, programs, and technologies that they also love to use in their own teaching of classroom content.

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Techies sometimes find it difficult to engage teachers and students who do not share their enthusiasm for or confidence in using new technology. Techies need to make sure that they think beyond simple engagement in flashy technology and ask key questions about why and how technology functions, for better and for worse, in our everyday lives.

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• Nurturing a safe environment for appropriate popular culture in the classroom.
• Using a variety of popular culture texts to have students ask questions about its authors, target audiences, messages, meanings, and representations of reality.
• Asking students to reflect on their use of popular culture, particularly when its effects may be harmful to their well-being or self-image.

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• Opening inquiry about popular culture as an important component of classroom discussion.
• Engaging in students" interests of new technologies like smart phones and mobile devices.
• Encouraging students to make connections between popular culture and more traditional curriculum material.

Strenghts

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Trendsetters acknowledge the wide variety of popular culture texts that students often feel passionately about as a way to engage them in formal learning. They also make strong connections between students’ areas of expertise and specialized knowledge (popular culture) and new knowledge (curriculum content).

Challenges

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Trendsetters can have difficulty addressing students who feel culturally “disconnected” or actively define themselves against the popular culture that the majority of their peers love. Trendsetters also need to carefully ensure that conversations about popular culture don’t begin and end merely with “love it or hate it,” but instead explore how and why popular culture does what it does.

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• Debunking myths and “tricks” in advertisements, popular culture, and mass media.
• Fostering students’ skepticism about the motivations of media institutions.
• Helping students guard against pervasive messages that glorify consumerism.

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• Helping students to ask critical questions about the systems through which media is created, distributed, and used.
• Developing students’ concrete understanding about media’s relationship to economics and politics.
• Encouraging students to create their own work that challenges the dominance of consumerist messages, such as public service announcements or parodies of mass media and popular culture.

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Watchdog teachers are often the first, and sometimes only, catalysts for students’ major “aha moments” as they start to make connections between institutions and systems of power and the media they use. Watchdogs capitalize on children’s sense of power in debunking “trickery” or identifying manipulation in order to help students understand complicated political systems and other issues in democracy and civics.

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Watchdogs’ focus on systems of power can sometimes lead students to adopt a cynical view of media ownership—and fostering students’ cynicism at a young age can be “fuel for the fire” for students who are already skeptical of the systems of power (in their schools and communities) in their everyday lives. The Watchdog approach to media ownership can also lead to parroting of teacher values, as savvy students who regularly take pleasure in mass media and popular culture figure out the “correct” answers in lessons without taking them to heart.