Artist/Teacher statement:
On Thursday, I was feeling bombarded by the negativity, pain, and turmoil that was going on in the world. I talked to my husband about it, and he simply said, "Just remember that Heavenly Father loves his children and he takes care of them." As I thought about that, I realized that the best way to combat the turmoil and negativity that I felt surrounded by was to create goodness around me--show love to those around me and do my best to be understanding of those that I disagreed with and assume that they were doing what they thought was right rather than assuming that they did what they did for negative reasons.
As I contemplated this assignment, I was trying to decide the best way to communicate what I felt and the conclusion that I had come to. I play the piano, so I considered writing a song, but I didn't feel like I could communicate what I wanted to clearly enough. I considered taking a photo or making a collage, but I didn't feel like that would adequately reflect the bombardment that I felt in listening to and watching the news. So I decided to do an iMovie so that I could include as much text, as many photos, and as many articles as I wanted to in order to provide the scope of turmoil that I felt. I juxtaposed screenshots of articles and photos that reflected political turmoil next to pictures of historical pioneers and screenshots of articles that focused on kindness to express the importance of doing your best and making sure that the people within your sphere of influence are positively affected by what you do and say. I chose the song "What a Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke as both ironic and assertive that the world IS a wonderful place even though terrible things happen in it. I end the movie with the encouragement, "Believe there is GOOD in the world," with "Be," "the," "GOOD," highlighted to emphasize the point that we must be contributors in this world rather than worry about the negativity that we find.
If I were to do something like this as an assignment in my classroom, I would want to pair it with reading argument-based writing or social reform-based writing. Examples would be Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech or Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." Students could choose a topic or an issue that is important to them and then create a movie to raise awareness for the issue or take a stance on the issue.
It was great to see your personal concerns come out in your work. I do wonder if you are critiquing social media or celebrating the message you can make with imovie or something else?
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