The commodification of Autumn: are Millennials passive consumers?

"Seasons are not a trend, they’re a part of a fragile eco system that we need to focus on preserving, not Instagramming” - Sirena Bergman (2018) on the impact of Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte.

If you follow me on Instagram, you will see that on the first day of Autumn, I created my bullet journal set up for the season. Doodling and writing in “autumnal” colours made me reflect upon the commodification of the season. Commodities are things that are seen as useful or hold a particular value. Autumn can be seen as a production of commodities, conceptualised by Marx as commodification. For instance, Bergman (2018) writes that just like any other millennial, Bergman finds satisfaction in “stomping around in a pile of leaves”, wearing woolly scarves, eating a variety of pumpkin based foods and partaking in Halloween. Indeed, when I reflect upon my own Autumn bucket list, I too have found satisfaction in autumnal activities such as pumpkin picking, watching Harry Potter, wearing plum toned lipsticks and mustard coloured clothing items. However, Marx’s conceptualisation of commodification refers to a process in which the capitalist companies such as Starbucks, MAC makeup and clothing brands deceive their customers into buying these products for their financial gain. The issue I have with this is that it disregards the reflexivity that consumers have to think about their role in the commodification of Autumn.

Although Bergman writes about their favourite autumnal activities, Bergman is still aware of their involvement in the commodification of Autumn. Focusing upon the Pumpkin Spice Latte, Bergman discusses the impact that this capitalist product is having upon the environment and how, ironically, it could affect the Autumn season the most. My own reflection via this blog post, without getting too meta, as well as Bergman’s article highlights the reflexivity consumers can hold upon their involvement within the season. 

Therefore, although it can be theorised that Autumn has undergone commodification, it is important not to view these consumers as “cultural dopes”. Just like my previous blog post surrounding #doitforthegram, interaction with capitalist consumer culture is more than passive consumption.

Reference: Bergman (2018) Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/starbucks-pumpkin-spiced-latte-environment-autumn-millennials-instagram-a8515706.html

#doitforthegram: social media and consumption

Last night I watched Snatched, a comedy starring Amy Schumer who plays Emily who is a “self-obsessed 30 something year old”. Throughout the film, Emily is going through negative life experiences, such as a breakup, but this does not affect her ability to pose in selfies as if she is “leading her best life”. In fact, even in one selfie, she employs a ring light, something which was once confined to professional photographers and gradually filtered down to YouTube and social media influencers and then to generic selfie takers in the form of smartphone attachments. Throughout the movie she engages in two conversations with two characters who question her use of social media. The first is James who is wining and dining Emily in order to trap her into being kidnapped by a South American gang. James is talking about all the places he has been around the world which impresses Emily; Emily replies with something along the lines of “wow, your Instagram must be amazing” to which James replies, “I’m not on anything like that”. It could be seen that the writers’ juxtaposition of Emily and James worked in a way to highlight Emily’s social media consumption which could be seen as a microcosm for today’s social media users. The second conversation is with her mother: Emily states that she has to show people “how much of a good time she is having” so that people can compliment her on her life in the comments section. Emily’s mum says that she needs to just live her life.

Watching this film, for me, has come at a time where I am more sceptical about my consumption of social media. Especially during this sun and heat that England is currently experiencing in which more of my Instagram feed is people I follow swimming in Spanish looking [yet English] seas, swimming pools, beer garden drinks and bikini selfies. It’s not that I feel jealous looking at these, it’s that I feel I should also be posting about how great my life is in the sun. There are sociological discussions surrounding individuals on social media being both consumers and producers of media. I can see this in my thoughts, through consuming other posts, I want to produce similar posts to show how great my life is. Snatched shows how the pressure to show one’s best life on social media even during something as life threatening as being kidnapped in South America.  Indeed, there has been transparency surrounding this on Instagram with the hashtag #doitforthegram being used over the past few years. Posters transparently detail that what they posted was not candid but, rather, to show their Instagram feed within a certain light. Often, these are referred to as #plandids. I recently took a month-long break from social media to decide how I would deal with this pressure, but as of yet, I am still unsure.

"Dont kid yourself lass, it's ICT": Generational attitudes towards Computing

I was recently talking to a family friend, a 7-year-old girl, the conversation turned to my occupation and she had to guess what I taught. It took her a while, guessing English, Science, Maths before me giving her a hint by acting out typing on a keyboard and using a mouse. Straight away she shouted “Computing!” When this happened, I paused to think about the difference between generations and what they label my subject.

We know that changes to the national curriculum have resulted in ICT changing to Computing. Computing is the study of the science behind computers, how they work, how to program and the components that constitute a computer. This is a change from ICT: a subject where one studies how to use a computer and the different software on a computer. Both are important, this is not a post about why one is better than the other, they both have their benefits and drawbacks. What I want to focus upon is how, as a teacher of Computer Science (as on my job description) I feel like a snob. I have had experiences where I have been talking to people from older generations and when they talk or discuss my subject they always refer to it as “ICT”. I have even had an experience where a cover teacher asked what I taught, when I stated Computing, they replied with something along the lines of “don’t kid yourself lass, it’s ICT”. As a socially polite young “lass” I just laughed this off, but it made me think about how the title teacher of Computing sounds to different generations. To the cover teacher, it was snobby and perhaps trying to be something that it is not. To the 7-year-old girl it was the subject she was studying in primary school. Either way both of these can be linked to socialisation. The cover teacher must have been socialised in the 2000s era where ICT and OCR Nationals were rife: ICT was screenshotting how you created that bar chart in Excel and creating PowerPoints with far too many animations and transitions. On the other hand, The 7-year-old girl is part of the current generation at the receiving end of the changes to the national curriculum: the focus on coding, Scratch being the favourite at primary school [and sometimes secondary school] level. Myself on the other hand, I am caught between the two, having experienced ICT within my own education, but being trained and teaching Computing.

Coventry as the City of Culture: experiences of place at university

A big part of going to university during my undergraduate degree was the sense of belonging to a place. To me, the socially correct thing to do was to live in student halls for the first year and then move in with newfound university friends during the second and third year. Therefore, studying and living in York were intertwined: my degree reminded me of the city and the city reminded me of my degree. I became involved in local politics, knowing what local constituencies were likely to vote for particular parties; I knew local attractions and no longer felt like a tourist but rather a citizen. Since graduating and moving away from the city, whenever someone mentions the place I get a sense of pride in telling anyone who will listen that I lived there and a sense of protectiveness over their views of the city.

However, this was not the same experience of my subsequent times at university. During my PGCE I studied from a distance, completing full time teaching responsibilities whilst going to university 5 days out of the year. I lived an hour away from the city the university is located within and rarely visited it. Despite studying there, I feel no affiliations to the city. Indeed, my graduation in this city felt different to my undergraduate, my family and I did not “need” to visit a particular spot in the city which I had spent a lot of my time. I did not feel an emotional connection when we passed the university library, in fact, I had never set foot in there. It wasn’t the same pride ridden day as my undergraduate graduation.

I started thinking about university and place about a month ago. As a current student at the University of Warwick, again through distance learning, when logging onto the website I noticed that Warwick were advertising the triumph of Coventry winning the title of City of Culture. At this point I even forgot that the University of Warwick is located in Coventry and not, in fact, Warwick! I am guessing, as I have nobody to ask, that those students who live and study at the University of Warwick may be happy and proud that their city has been given this prestigious title. However, although I study at Warwick, I am far from thrilled. As a full-time teacher in Stoke-on-Trent, another candidate for the City of Culture title, I feel much more attached to Stoke. Having lived in the city for two years now, my sense of belonging is around the same as the city I studied in during my undergraduate studies. As such, when I saw this advert on the Warwick website I felt conflicted, on one hand I felt I should have joined the University of Warwick in celebrating the success of the city in which it is located, but on the other hand, I had no ties to this city and my current residing city had lost the title to Coventry. I have written before about place and the emotional connections one feels, indeed this has involved places one has not even visited. In my experience of university and place, living in the host city conjures up a different sense of belonging to the university. What is your experience of living [or not living] within the city you studied within? Has it changed your perceptions?   

Why is leadership favoured over management in education?

Managing and leading are two actions that can often be used to describe the same thing. As a result, it is often difficult to draw boundaries between the two. When I started my Masters in Educational Leadership I did not know the difference between the terms. Even now, I have to think about what actions pertain to each label. My reading and discussions with colleagues have led me to the following summaries:

Leaders: the ones with the ideas to drive change

Vision, mission statement, ethos, etc. Leaders are the ones that create the underlying ‘feeling’ of the educational institution. Leaders are the ones with the imagination in where they want to take the institution.

Managers: the ones who have to make sure that change happens

Managers are those who are employed to ensure that this vision, mission statement and ethos is achieved. Those who design and implement whole school policies; delegating work to other line managers such as heads of years and heads of departments.

Reflecting back upon my teaching career I have a sense that leaders are favoured over managers. I trained to teach through the Teach First Leadership Development Programme. What is interesting to reflect upon is why Teach First use “leadership” and not “management”. If one is training to teach, and therefore a potential head of department/head of year/senior leader, isn’t management something this teacher should be proficient in? Similarly, lecturers on my masters have stated that many masters courses which were called Educational Management have swapped the management out for leadership. Why was this change made? Although we do not know the true reason for this, it can be inferred that this change was a result of marketing: teachers want to be “Leaders” rather than “Managers”, but why? Is it the connotations that leadership has? I will continue to reflect upon this distinction, hopefully I can come back to the questions I have posed in this post. If you have any ideas, let me know!

Training teachers with 'pop Science': are humans as simplistic as Science suggests?

I have written before about the pedagogy attached to training sessions for teachers (see link here). My thoughts have been brought back to this topic after a recent training session in attachment theory. In particular, the use of popular science when training teachers.

Since I started teaching I have been involved in numerous training programmes, which upon reflection, has incorporated scientific findings about the brain to training sessions. The most recurring example is the synaptic connections within the brain which strengthen knowledge through practice. Similarly, I have become familiar with the amygdala, which according to session facilitators is actively involved with the flight, fight or freeze reactions that humans find themselves within when their “chimp” is out.

Sociology of scientific knowledge has been concerned with researching the effect of scientific knowledge upon social life and this is an example of this. During these training sessions I have often been skeptic of the use of scientific understanding of these social characteristics, which has led me to reflect, why? I think it may be due to my social science training. During A-level Sociology, I learned about the sociology of science and read works by Kuhn, Popper and Potter. Is it really true that social conduct is all down to functions within the brain? Perhaps my skepticism is a weakness and my lack of scientific knowledge is causing me to be ignorant but from my point of view this type of “popular science” is too simplistic and reduces humans to cause and effect models. 

Miss Bowling’s Shining Stars: Has something as simple as gold star stickers ignited my form?

My form, is comprised of those pupils who are punctual, do their homework and often get overlooked within a class due to dominant characters who get into trouble. Obviously, there are a couple of slips where some pupils, perhaps some more than others, forget their basic equipment or cause low level disruption. However, I found myself thinking that these are the “grey” kids who often do not get the attention or recognition they deserve on an individual basis. They may not be the pupil with the most level 1s, an attitude to learning score given to a pupil who has worked exceptionally in a lesson, but they are continuing to work well. Therefore, I decided to create a spreadsheet with all their names on, print it off and physically hand the pupils gold stars for every 1 they achieve within a day. I thought this may be a bit childish, but the reaction I have got has proved that I was wrong.

Since the implementation of the table, pupils are more than ever getting 1s in lesson; they relish in me calling out their name in form to come and collect a star to attach next to their name on the wall. Often, pupils will have achieved 2 or more 1s in one day. In fact, this week two pupils have achieved all level 1s in a day (that’s five 1s!). This may have something to do with actually handing the pupils a shiny sticker which symbolises that they have done well; psychologically putting a gold star next to their name could make them feel responsible for their attitude to learning within lesson. Having the chart visibly accessible for all my classes has made individual rewards for behaviour public. I have noticed that pupils will count how many gold stars other pupils have, then compare this number against their own. This has even proved well when I have been teaching other classes; surprisingly even with year 10. These pupils would count and see how well pupils have been doing even if they do not know them. It could be motivational for them to see that I, as a classroom teacher, am actively involved in other pupils’ education, which may translate into how they behave and act within my lessons.

Furthermore, the chart has created a tool that I can use for monitoring those pupils who do not get 1s and just “get by”: those with two or less gold stars to their name. I could then probe, why are these pupils not stretching themselves within lesson? How could I ensure they do? I’ve also found it is good for those pupils who would not usually aim for a 1 as it has given them something to aspire to within a lesson. 

What I now need to think about is how I will reward pupils once they have reached certain mile stones, any advice on this is much appreciated!