Denise Grandits, winner of NCTE’s 2014 Media Literacy Award, is a former OB-GYN medical assistant who’s just seven years new to teaching!
A 7th- and 8th-grade language arts teacher in Tonawanda, New York, Denise describes the work in her classroom:
“Every day we explore the world in multiple worlds.”
As a guest on Education Talk Radio, Denise commented on a common fear–that students who are involved in digital learning will lack the skills that reading books and writing on paper engender:
“No new literacies person would say stop reading books or writing essays, but students are involved in other literacies…and if we’re really preparing out students to be college and career ready, we have to explore many literacies with them…There are things you can do in a movie that you can’t do on a piece of paper and things you can do on a piece of paper that you can’t do in a movie.”
Because she was snow-bound in Buffalo, Denise Grandits was unable to pick her award up in Washington, DC. But, as anyone deserving of the Media Literacy Award, she accepted her award via YouTube.