Journal 4-Teaching What We Just Learned

Our next visit to Loyola Academy would entail my group and I acting as teachers to share what we recently learned within the class this semester. In fact, the students, collectively, completed a project we freshly compiled individual for Film 150. As a group, our task was to explain connotative and denotative analysis when examining images. Afterward, we asked the students to evaluate the “codes” within the images we selected. After moderating a class discussion, and guiding the high school students into the right mode of thinking, we found that their analysis of the images were strikingly similar to the evaluations conducted by ourselves, and our service learning group collectively. It seemed like the students as a group built up their analysis, almost in a sequential snow-balling fashion, facilitated by the commentary of Mr. Gonzales. Each student seemed to expand off of what the previous student would suggest. Although I wouldn’t go as far to say that my overall perception and social constructions built around the images we viewed has changed because of the students, I can say my personal process for investigating the “codes” within an image are a little bit improved. By following the students’ step-by-step approach to decode an image, I can be more cautious and perhaps avoid missing something critical in the image.