Wholesome Memes in Your Classroom
Who doesn’t like a good meme? I sure do (something you probably know if you follow my FB on Mondays) and, what is more, I confess I collect them… which is something lots of people do… and yet rarely admit. To be sure, memes do help me at work when I need to explain my attitude:
There is one key principle when it comes to using memes in the classroom: they need to be relevant and not only relevant in strictly educational sense, but also relevant to the group you teach. You cannot use the same memes with teenagers and with people 50+. On one hand, teenagers are going to expect dope memes, and on the other hand there are many memes hard to understand by older people.
To be sure, using memes with teenagers is like walking on thin ice. They may perceive you as a person who tries to become one of them, become a part of the group, blur the line between a teacher and a partner. And truth be told, most teenagers find such an attitude quite creepy. Of course, you can build a relationship of mutual trust and understanding, where a teacher and students are partners in this amazing adventure that is education… However, you will never achieve it only by using memes in the classroom – you can only try being true, loyal, understanding and extremely patient.
Funnily enough, introducing memes to older people is not as easy as one might think. For them it’s quite difficult to understand the idea of an inconspicuous picture or a photo with a silly text, usually ungrammatical, as a means of communication. For this reason, older people are quite often made fun of on social media, as people who post glittery gifs of fluffy kittens and porcelain tea cups.
For example, in Poland, an expression enjoy your breakfast and have a lovely cup of coffee was first ridiculed as the ultimate sign of a boomer on social media, then it was used ironically, and now is quite popular on the Internet although in postmodern style.
Of course.
So, how are you going to find your place between dank memes that disappear in the blink of an eye and pictures taken from Dolores Umbridge’s room? Well, the answer is quite simple. You have to be yourself. With the teenagers, you will need to explain that they cannot expect the fully dank memes from you, as you are a respectable teacher, and with the older people, you need to explain the idea of a meme, which is something far more complex than a picture plus an ungrammatical text – just check what Wikipedia says.
The memes you can include in your classroom are pejoratively called normie memes, and if you google the expression, you will find a simple definition by the urban dictionary, which is basically a meme that is so un-dank that it is given to the general Facebook community for 40 year old people to laugh at.
Ouch.
However, the funny thing about normie memes is that pretty much everyone understands them. That’s why you can introduce them in the classroom and have fun with your students. After all, anyone can enjoy some memes, normie or not.
I usually use memes when I want to show something extra to the subject matter of a lesson – sometimes a grammar construction, sometimes particular attitude, sometimes just add comic relief:
And yet there is one special category of memes I use not only in the classroom, but also after my lessons, when I can see they are needed. Those are so called wholesome memes, memes that are supposed to make you feel better, smile a bit, appreciate what you’ve got, and so on.
I use them whenever I see my students need them. I remember one lesson with my teen group, when we talked about male/female privileges. I introduced my favourite memes about non-toxic masculinity, and we had a really lovely lesson talking about vulnerability, about the things my male students would do if they were girls, and gradually about the things they don’t do because they believe they are not masculine enough. And at this point they got real support from the female part of the group, and that was a nice breakthrough for all of us. And we wouldn’t have reached that point without memes.
I also share the memes with my students when I see them particularly down, like after a hard day at school, or simply – in November. One group of my students decided to collect and share wholesome memes by themselves, thus learning to focus on the nice things, and even better, to share them.
That’s why I want to share my small collection of wholesome memes I created for you. They’re all taken from the ultimate normie site, which is Icanhascheezburger. Be prepared for your teenage students having a laugh first, but they’re going to like the memes anyway. I hope you will like them, as well: some memes are about men and masculinity, others about humanity, some about coming out, and of course there are pets, as there is nothing as wholesome as animals:
https://padlet.com/embed/ryyxdlf2o0dj
If you find some wholesome memes, you may upload them to the padlet, making it a truly friendly place that you can always check and feel better about life…
…and maybe share it with your students.
