Maya McFadden Photo
HSC students with English teacher Amy Brazauski.
A TikTok-focused English project for High School in the Community (HSC) sophomore Diana Robles brought her to the realization that “when I read a news article, I sort of just believe what it says.”
Now she thinks twice — about where the story was published, and about its credibility and potential bias.
Robles and fellow HSC students gathered in a first-floor classroom on Wednesday to debrief about a recent project they worked on in their English 2 class taught by Amy Brazauski.
The project was focused on news literacy, lateral reading, and identifying credibility and bias in local news articles. The students were each tasked with selecting a written news article of interest, researching the author and news outlet, and deciding whether or not the piece included bias. Then they took their work to TikTok to make a mock video about the articles.
One discussion group included sophomores Sarina, Jonaily Colon, Nene Murphy, Jonah Rosenberg, Diana Robles, Justin Welch, and Japhet Gonzalez.
Students like Welch said the project was interesting because it wasn’t your typical English class assignment on Google Classroom and instead it was more creative, allowing him to learn how to make a mock TikTok video for the first time and learn about editing.
“Once we leave high school, we’re going to have to look into credibility on our own instead of it being given to us,” said Sarina, who declined to share her last name.
Rosenberg added that looking into credibility and bias is common in his HSC classes, though being allowed to use TikTok in class is not.
Click here and here to view some of the students creations.
Some students created mock TikTok’s while others used other online platforms for their projects.
Students projects included looking into articles published by such news outlets as The Arts Paper, The New Haven Independent, The New Haven Register, and The CT Mirror. They selected the pieces to dive deep into based on their personal interests and experiences.
Students used TikTok, Cap Cut, and Canva to create their projects.
In their research the students found there has been a rise in TikTok usage for news focused content.
Colon focused her project on youth homelessness in New Haven by looking closely at a November Independent article that discussed the rejection of a homeless youth shelter on Hazel Street.
“Homeless rates in New Haven are getting worse,” she said. “It was empowering because this is a real thing.”
Rosenberg did his project on a WTNH article about a car crash that happened in front of a Hamden restaurant. He pointed out that the article mentions being a developing story, “Check back for updates,” but it was never updated despite him waiting weeks for more information.
Rosenberg picked the story because it reminded him of an experience he had at 11 years old when he witnessed a large crash in the Spring Glen neighborhood of Hamden, involving several teenagers as drivers and passengers of the vehicles. He later learned that as a result of a similar incident in 2008, a teen driving law was passed by the state limiting the number of people who can be in the car with young drivers.
Robles used a New Haven Register article about a visiting nurse in Connecticut killed in a halfway house while visiting a patient. Robles picked the article because her mom was a visiting nurse who quit her job because of the unsafe environment she had to be in for work.
Sarina used an Arts Paper story about an Afghan refugee woman named Roya who reported domestic violence from a family member to the West Haven police before she died. Advocates accused police of not following up on those reports during a protest in November.
Other projects focused on coverage of Black business celebrations like Black Wall Street, local mural projects raising mental health awareness, and gun violence in New Haven.
Putting TikTok In A Positive Light
Students learned several lessons from the project.
Robles said before the project she would typically believe anything she’d read in a news article without questioning who was telling the story and how. “I wasn’t thinking about it constantly until now,” she said.
Colon said she learned to not just look at one source when it comes to learning as much news as possible.
The students added that the mock TikTok project brought a refreshingly new perspective of the app to the classroom, which typically isn’t the case.
Welch said the “experience of high school is about distancing from social media.” However, for the first time, Brazauski’s class encouraged a use of TikTok to support creating.
The project was nice to work on, he said, because the learning experience was relevant to growing mediums like TikTok, it helped him learn how to make videos, and it allowed for creativity.
“Usually a teacher talks about [TikTok] in a bad sense,” Robles said. “Amy brought it in a positive sense.”
Robles described TikTok as a way to express their opinions and gain knowledge in an interesting way. She said the project made class work a lot more interesting.
“A lot of teachers don’t like to talk about it,” she continued. But “the reality of it is we’re going to be using it a lot.”
Sarina noted that when teens are strongly told “no” they’re prone to rebel, and so shedding a positive light on a “tool that is very much prominent in our lives” is necessary to avoid this.
Rosenberg added that he appreciated that, despite Brazauski not having much experience with TikTok, she “connected with us.”
“Work is usually just reading and writing and repetitive, but this was a really unique project,” Robles added.
The students agreed the project allowed them to talk about their opinions when they’re typically told “you can’t put yourself into your work.”
In some of the students’ mock TikToks, they not only reported on the details of the article but also included their opinions on the larger topics of youth homelessness and refugee advocacy. Many included their own ideas for solutions to such issues.
The project also raised questions for the students and Brazauski around whether news stories should be coupled with trends or whether that would take away from an outlet’s credibility or professionalism.
Brazauski came up with the mock TikTok project this year while working with a colleague who is a history teacher. The two have focused their class lessons for 10th graders on research skills and credibility. This includes teaching students to develop lateral reading skills.
The project also connects to the school’s Social Justice Symposium project, which Brazauski spearheads and tasks students with focusing in on a social issue, researching that issue, and then making an impact on that issue.
Should News Outlets Use TikTok?
When asked if more news outlets should use TikTok as a way of relaying news, students said it could help to broaden an outlet’s audience and allows for more creativity.
Brazauski agreed though hesitantly, with the addition that TikTok should introduce a validation system for news reports and a way to provide additional links with videos to prove the information presented is factual.
In Robles’ mock TikTok, she used a Minecraft background with her video as a voiceover reported the news about the visiting nurse and she pulled photos from the news article.
Students like Gonzalez said this made the video more interesting while avoiding taking away from the news. Sarina agreed, and Brazauski compared it to growing up doing homework in front of the TV.
Robles said the incorporation of TikTok trends came about because of her own interest in watching TikToks that do this.
These trends where “TikTokers” share true crime stories while applying their makeup or baking cookies often provide the audience with a calming backdrop when discussing heavy issues, some students mentioned.
Brazauski emphasized the importance of English classes being balanced with novels and literature and projects like this because “we’re in a media rich world.”
“We need youth to engage in rich literature, but what’s to say other media can’t be rich or richer?” HSC Magnet Resource Teacher Dianna Carter said.
Brazauski has taught at HSC for the past four years and spent the previous four years teaching in New Milford.
The creativity with instruction allowed to teachers has helped HSC have a lack in staff turnover, Carter, who has been teaching for 16 years, said.
HSC is a school that educates its students to be social justice advocates through instruction that is scientifically backed and reflective of what our world currently is, she added.
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Chinese propagandists are submitting this article to their supervisors and requesting a bonus. TikTok does not allow anyone to form their own opinion about current events, it leads them to a set of opinions carefully curated by our largest geo-political foe.
I can be a dinosaur and think its inappropriate that the students call teachers by their first name, but the fact that a public school is promoting requiring a Chinese spyware app is a problem that goes beyond my boomer rantings.