At La Jolla Country Day School (LJCDS), a PK-12 private school located in Southern California, they’re taking a comprehensive approach to incorporating media literacy and digital wellness concepts into their health and wellness curriculum.
For years, the school has adopted media literacy education as not just a necessary skill set for students, but also a mindset; a way of looking at media and messages that is adaptable, flexible, and can be applied across the board.
Luke Jacob, Director of Writing, Communication, and Media Literacy explains that the school treats media literacy education “as a whole community endeavor” where teachers, faculty, students, and parents are all working in the same direction. Additionally, they have learned that media literacy cannot sit alone but rather needs to be integrated into all subjects at all grade levels.
“We want all our kids to have an understanding of AI, misinformation, and social media — the question becomes where do you do what?” he said.
To answer that question, LJCDS formed a team to revamp part of the school’s health and wellness curriculum—starting with 5th grade—to better integrate digital and social media in the traditional topics that are typically covered in health and wellness classes, and create a standards crosswalk that would identify which competencies or skills students should learn at each grade level. The team is composed of teachers, counselors, the social media manager, and other faculty members.
A LJCDS student enjoys a viewing of Inside Out 2 at a Wellness Family Movie Night.
“We asked ourselves ‘What skills do we want 12th graders to graduate with?’ and walked it back from there,” said Michelle Hirschy, Director of Wellness, who has been leading the curriculum revamp. She adds that a lot of their work has been informed by data they’ve been collecting, tracking what they hear from kids anecdotally and distributing surveys to get a sense of when kids are getting smartphones, social media platforms they’re using, and their digital habits.
The data they collect allows them to find ways to connect what students are learning in health and wellness classes and apply to the digital world in which they spend so much of their time consuming and engaging with various forms of media. It also helps them take a preventative approach and have conversations earlier and more often. If they are seeing certain issues pop up in 8th grade, they can start laying the groundwork in 5th, 6th, and 7th grades.
One example Michelle gave is the emergence of anonymous social media accounts that kids can contribute to. This often peaks in 8th and 9th grades, so knowing that, in 6th and 7th grade they can start conversations about what is anonymous, how anonymous accounts or posts can be attributed to others, and the impact these accounts and their posts can have on peers’ well-being.
The goal of the updated wellness curriculum is to be preventative, to discuss topics before students are engaging with social and digital media, which is why they started with 5th grade. More than 55% of LJCDS students report having a smartphone by the end of grade 6, and a majority of 6th graders report at least some social media usage.
Luke and Michelle are in the final stages of the crosswalk’s first draft. Once completed, their next step is to share with colleagues and peers for feedback and to hopefully be a resource for other schools and districts. They acknowledge that their school is in the unique position to have the bandwidth and resources to create this curriculum and that not all schools can take on such a comprehensive project. However, they also note that there are some easy, low-hanging fruit where schools and districts can get started.
“I would start with their health curriculum,” said Michelle. “A lot of these curriculums have been around for a really long time and they’re fixed in the topics that get discussed, my thought is — spend some time looking and seeing ‘does that lesson have an angle in digital and media literacy that needs to be addressed?’”
For example, there’s likely conversations about healthy relationships and the importance of consent. Michelle notes “how can you have those conversations and not talk about the implications of the digital world in which kids and teens are living in? A healthy relationship still has the same tenants it’s always had and the way it looks now is very different.”
Luke adds that “you can always find the early adopters already doing this work. There’s someone on every campus who is deep into digital education and what I would advise to them is to reach out to organizations like Media Literacy Now, the Media Education Lab, NAMLE, your local colleges and universities – there is a community of people who think this is desperately important and who get how big the stakes are.”
Engaging & Supporting Parents
LJCDS has had a robust parent education series for a number of years, covering a specific topic each month. The school polls their families every year on topics that are of interest or concern and speakers at these monthly sessions range from LJCDS staff to regional and national experts, like those from Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, which has a partnership with LJCDS. Michelle shares that technology is always a top concern for parents and this last year, they hosted a forum of experts covering topics like technology education for parents, how to set healthy boundaries at home, and identifying potential mental health issues and what to do. These parent education series are wildly popular and Luke has plans to hold additional events that feature student voices where students can speak about digital wellness topics through their own experiences. “Next year, we’ll be shifting our parent education series to an easily accessible podcast,” said Michelle. “I will be joined by Dr. Chan, a psychiatrist from University of California San Diego, and we’ll be interviewing experts on pertinent topics throughout the year.”
