In education, we often open difficult or critical communication with something positive, focusing on strengths and opportunities. With that in mind, let me begin by offering my heartfelt thanks to each of you for having the wherewithal to digitally record so many incredible pictures and videos of the November 7, 2015 phenomenon of light in the twilight skies of California. As I stood in the middle of my street last night just after sundown, watching through a screen of autumn maple trees as the brilliant cloud of white, green, and cerulean blue caught the sun's rays in the upper atmosphere, I felt a palpable, benevolent connection to other skywatchers across the West. I knew that in a city like Los Angeles (I later learned that the reportedly unarmed Trident missle launch test was visible from as far north as Santa Rosa, CA, and as far east as Nevada and Arizona), there must be thousands, if not millions, who were also standing along highways and byways, perched at the tops of parking structures, or trying to watch the road while bearing witness to something incredible in the night skies. I also had a bad case of the FOMS--the Fear Of Missing Something--as my new iPhone was not in my hand recording, but alas and alack, on my nightstand, charging.
As anyone knows, YouTube and Twitter are much faster than local news when it comes to posting real time information online, so after watching the last of the cobalt cloud in the heavens dissipate, I went back in the house and grabbed my phone.
Visually, you all did not disappoint.
Incredible images streamed across my screen, with all sorts of landmarks and perspective given in the foreground: the Santa Monica Pier, the silhouette of downtown L.A.'s buildings and the 110 freeway, the ubiquitous palm trees that line so many of our streets. Simply, gorgeous... maybe a little frightening, a bit mysterious, but gorgeous.
As a middle school principal and former 6th grade science and math teacher, my "educator brain" was already tingling with the possibilities. You see, that same inquiry that each of us experienced last night with our eyes pointed towards the heavens, that same wonder and fear and questioning and doubt and anger and conspiracy and judgement and science fiction and connection to previous experiences... those things are the foundations of learning. These common experiences are anything but common, and they serve educators as conversation starters, points of references to engage learners in any number of areas and disciplines. Was it a UFO? Were we getting nuked? Was it a comet about to hit the planet, making my wish to have Morgan Freeman narrate my untimely end about to go unfulfilled? All learning begins with questioning; the better the question, the better the potential learning.
As something of an interdisciplinarian, I looked at your images on Twitter, YouTube, Vine, and Facebook (for those of you over 40 like me.) I started thinking of the conversations I might have with teachers tomorrow... this light show in the skies above Los Angeles held the potential to be a great topic for a Socratic seminar in an English class. The illuminated exhaust from the rocket in the upper atmosphere was ready to elucidate young minds studying 8th grade astronomy standards, angles via lines-of-sight in Math 7, a rousing debate in a U.S. History class regarding the military's and U.S. government's responsibility to inform the public, and balance that with national security. Heck, our art classes could have used this as a starting point for watercolors.
...And then, I turned the sound up on the phone.
My hopes of using most of your online videos were dashed to bits like a birthday balloon dragged through a bouganvillea. Nearly every video contained narration that was so perplexingly filled with the F-word and other colorful language, that using them in just about any educational setting (including encouraging students to "research" the phenomenon online for homework or as part of a flipped-instructional activity) would be impossible. One video in particular managed to use derivatives of the F-word as five different parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and interjection). Impressive, sure, but hardly fodder for a grammar lesson.
Now, before you write me off as puritanical or judgmental, please know that I am well-aware most of you did not put these videos up to be used in middle school classrooms. I also know that each day, we educator folk turn our students loose upon the Internet searching for valuable content, and cognizant of the language, images, themes, and content intermingled therein that are not appropriate for adolescent educational applications. Moreover, I'll even acknowledge that when I'm in the school office around 9:15 on a Tuesday morning, I just might be inclined to access different parts of my working vocabulary than I do standing on a fishing boat with my brothers at 9:15 on a Saturday morning.
It comes down to something profoundly simple: know your audience. Sure, there are many of you who don't care, and in some autonomous developmental sense, will likely use my thoughts as motivation to make a resoundingly more F-bombed production. That's cool... there is a time in my life when I might have had the same "challenge accepted" mentality.
But for the rest of you, maybe take this opportunity to realize that you stand to gain a lot more followers on YouTube and Twitter--teachers... lots and lots of teachers--if you dub in some music over your colorful language, or simply "keep it clean" for the kids. Maybe take the extra five minutes to crank that raw video through iMovie, and voice-over your best Captain Kirk, ehh, Darth Vader... um, Kylo Ren impression. Yeah, that's timely. Remember, YouTube star hopefuls: followers and likes equal ad revenue. If you need incentive, that is.
Thank you for your thoughtful consideration. Candidly, I would have liked to use your primary sources instead of the local news' watered-down version of events. But suffice to say, we also need to "know our audience," and deliver content that balances age-appropriateness, online safety, engaging content, and educational community expectations.
Yours Very Truly,
Ben
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