An Eagle Hill Middle School teacher is the first graduate of a new regional academy focused on media literacy skills.
Social studies teacher Mary Kate Lonergan earned her Media Literacy Educator certification from PBS. WSKG, the PBS/NPR affiliate station serving New York state’s Southern Tier region, provided supporting resources and workshops designed to guide teachers through the accreditation process. To earn the certification, participants must demonstrate competency in eight micro-credentials that address key competencies associated with reading, creating, sharing and teaching with media.
Earning the Media Literacy Educator certification signifies that the earner possesses the competencies themselves and demonstrates their ability to effectively support their students in achieving them, according to the program website.
“It is so exciting to become a PBS Media Literacy Certified Educator. The accreditation process helped me to reflect and refine on what I already do to teach media literacy, but it also pushed me to innovate and challenged me to develop lessons in which students do more media creation,” Lonergan said.
Some of Lonergan’s submitted work toward the media literacy program is being used nationally as exemplary models, according to WSKG.
A PBS Media Literacy Educator can read (access, analyze, evaluate), write (create) and share (act) media effectively to support their own learning, as well as design and implement instruction and assess student learning in ways that support learners developing these same skills, according to the program website.
“Media literacy is fundamental to literacy in our current information landscape. Media literate students can access, analyze, evaluate, create and evaluate media in all its forms. And as a social studies teacher, I see it as a civic imperative,” Lonergan said. “I am looking forward to continuing to incorporate media literacy education into the social studies setting.”