I have been surrounded by children’s media and entertainment for far too long. Being a parent kind of means spending a lot of time reading picture books and then elementary chapter books. As I write, I’m listening to the Wow in the World podcast with Annika, which is telling a bunch of really cheesy robot jokes in the introduction to a show about artificial intelligence. Earlier, we watched Hercules because I’ve been telling Annika about the things I’ve been reading and talking about with my Legends class, and she asked if I’ve ever watched it. I feel like I may have at some point, but she was pretty insistent that we watch it. It actually references a lot of the stories and ideas we’ve talked about in class, so that was really fun.

Still, immersion in kid texts and media means no time for adult texts. I’m okay with that for the most part, but I do feel left out of a lot of conversations. I don’t know most of the shows on TV today because I never turn on the TV and we just have the digital version of bunny ears so we don’t actually get very many channels worth our time. Our TV is mostly for Dak to watch Netflix after the kids and I go to bed. Sometimes we watch movies, but not too often. I don’t know what’s on HGTV, which seems to be a fav of a lot of people I know. I don’t think I could identify most of the newer television shows, even on the networks. Unless it’s made the internet media or print media, I may not have heard of it.

The only adult media I consume tends to be online blogs, magazines, and newspaper articles, which leaves me with a pretty different frame of reference from a lot of others, it seems. I know a lot of stuff that is going on, but I miss a lot of cultural references, I guess.

Still, I watch Phineas and Ferb with Annika and listen to Anders’s music remixes that he shows me. Wow In the World is really great too – I actually learn a lot from listening to it, even though I wish sometimes I could just listen to an adult- level podcast. Sometimes we do, as long as it’s not too heavy. I think I get enough information about new tv shows and movies through exposure to people who talk about different things, and when I don’t know something my students are asking/talking about, it seems to make them feel pretty good to educate me. Win-win.