Values
We are looking at the school's Mission, Vision and Values here at Istanbul International Community School and I have been going into classes and collecting thoughts and ideas from students about who we are as a school.
By far, the one word students come up with is "kindness" as a value. The school list we have thus far does not include kindness - yet. Part of the discussion revolved around where do we get our values. The normal list appears: family, friends and school. One other source pops in there at number two when I asked students to rank them, social media/influencers.
Couple of things jump out at me. What do we do in school to address social media? - this is a general comment. Specifically, what do we do at school to raise the issues associated with social media and influencers like Mr. Beast, Khaby Lame or Zach King. This is a male list of influencers who focus on fun and bringing humor. A female list of influencers include Kylie Jenner,
Addison Rae and Huda Kattan. Female topics include personal beauty, exercise, motivation and socialite status.
As a school, how much do we address these topics in class where it matters? Like in Social Studies and English. Is there a better way to embed these issues into current world happenings? Often folks just go to CNN or the BBC, but not Al-Jezeera or RT. For world events, you can just go to Twitter and see what people are posting. How do we know what is real, doctored or just lies? The influence of media has always been there going back to the days of Walter Cronkite, now we are on our own and have to navigate the field that is full of cow patties. Unknowingly, cow patties just came out when thinking of Social Media.
