Project Construction

Chris Sperry *******@******.***

Awards: **** National Council for the Social Studies Award for Global Understanding

**** ******** *** *** ***** Leaders in Learning Award for Media Literacy

Education: Harvard University School of Education, EdM., Human Development, June 1986

Experiment in International Living: Urban Change, London, England, 1977-1978

Ithaca College, Planned Studies: Media Literacy, B.A., June 1979

Current

Employment: Director of Curriculum and Staff Development, Project Look Sharp, Ithaca College,

Ithaca NY, 1999 present

Social Studies/English/Media Teacher, Grades 6-12, Lehman Alternative Community

School, Ithaca City School District, Ithaca NY, 1980-present

Staff

Development: Chris has given hundreds of workshops and keynote addresses for educators in

New York State and across the country since 1980 in the following areas:

media literacy integration across the K-12 curriculum

integrating critical thinking and media decoding into social studies/Science/ELA

21st century literacy - information, technology and learning in a digital age

listening to student voices constructivist education

moral and democratic education - citizenship education

Holocaust education - teaching about war and peace

identity and education - teaching about race and gender

authentic and alternative assessment for K-12 educators

Chris has co-led Project Look Sharp s week-long Summer Institute for Media Literacy

Integration at Ithaca College since 1999.

Chris delivers yearlong staff development trainings throughout NY State such as the

Library Science Teacher Initiative to integrate 21st century literacies into the STEM

curriculum, 2010-11 (secondary), 2011-12 (elementary).

Chris co-teachers courses at Ithaca College including: Media Construction of...

Sustainability 11, The Environment 10, Peace & War 09, Presidential Campaigns 08

Chris was trained as a Critical Friends Group (CFG) facilitator in 1996 through the

Annenberg Institute/Brown University National School Reform Faculty Initiative and

coached an ACS and Belle Sherman CFG from 1996 through 1998.

Curriculum

Development: Chris has over 25 years experience developing and presenting curriculum materials. He

(partial): has collaborated with educators in the Ithaca City School District to produce hundreds of

lessons and kits that integrate media literacy and critical thinking into core New York

State/Ithaca City School District social studies, ELA and science curricula.

Examples include:

Kindergarten All Our Families Project a dozen 18-24 inch color photographs of

local families that teach the core Kindergarten social studies curriculum using

interactive lessons and resources for educators on the back of each photograph.

2nd Grade Communities Project - lessons for interactive teaching about urban, rural

and suburban communities in the Ithaca area through historic and contemporary

photographs (produced in collaboration with the Tompkins County History Center).

4th grade Iroquois Imaging Project five lessons integrated into the core 4th grade

curriculum: stereotyping of Native Peoples, Understanding Cultural and Historical

Perspective, Using Images in the Research Process, and Image Production.

Seeing Africa for 9th grade global studies a series of lessons for integrating critical

thinking, confronting racism and understanding the diversity of Africa through

interactive decoding of a variety of media sources including film clips, web sites,

paintings, maps and photographs.

Media Construction of the Environment for integration into high school and college

science and social studies curricula, including interactive analysis of the role of

various media in constructing public understanding of global warming, chemicals in

the environment, resource depletion and endangered species.

Published

Curriculum Chris has overseen the production, publication and promotion of more than a dozen

Kits (Partial): Project Look Sharp curriculum kits. These kits, kits and lessons from the kits, all free

online at www.projectlooksharp.org, have been downloaded over a million times.

Chris has authored or co-authored the following:

Media Construction of Global Warming, 2010

Economics in American History, 2009

Soviet History through Posters, 2007

Media Construction of the Middle East, 2005

Media Construction of Presidential Campaigns, 2004

Media Construction of War, 2003.

Selected

Publications: Integrating Media Literacy into Secondary Science, Journal of Media Literacy

Education, to be published April 2012

The Epistemological Equation,, Journal of Media Literacy Education, V 1, no 2, 2010,

Key Note Speech to the National Media Education Conference July 2009

Seeking Truth in the Social Studies Classroom: Media Literacy, Critical Thinking and

Teaching about the Middle East, Social Education, v. 70, no. 1, January/February 2006.

The Search for Truth: Teaching Media Literacy, Core Content, and Essential Skills for

a Healthy Democracy, Threshold, Winter 2006.

Teaching Civic Literacy Educational Change. Key Note Speech to the New York

State Foundations of Education conference, 1998.

Democratic School Governance: The Tenth Principle, Democracy & Education,

Spring, 1997.

Simulated Middle East Peace Conference, New York Assessment Collection, by

NYSED and Brown Univ., 1995

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