School Year 2025-2026 Workshop Series
2025-2026 Workshop 1: October 31, 2025
Slides from our Halloween workshop on using film activities to develop basic literacy and boost student engagement with the new staff members. Our next workshops will focus on Film and Content Area Departments collaborating on activity plans to activate film and media literacy concepts in the classroom.
2025 TMS Workshops at Motion Picture Tech HS
The Media Spot just wrapped up a series of workshops at Motion Picture Technical High School (MPT), a pioneering Film Career and Technical Education (CTE) institution in New York City. Our unique collaboration is focused on leveraging students’ deep interest in film to authentically engage them across all core academic subjects, effectively bridging CTE and academic curricula using media literacy as the connective tissue.
Working closely with MPT Principal Kevin Lopez and his amazing Film CTE team, The Media Spot’s Rhys Daunic introduced core academic teachers to mindful filmmaking and critical media analysis activities which seamlessly integrate the language of film with traditional reading and writing, reinforcing core literacy skills, and providing pathways to use student engagement and learning in film to support into academic standards and content.
MPT’s Integrated Scope & Sequence
In our final workshop, Rhys shared our emerging MPT Media Literacy Scope and Sequence. This framework, building on The Media Spot’s template, is being utilized to systematically track the growth and integration of these bridge activities and projects across MPT’s curriculum. To streamline planning, we introduced a custom AI tool, the Motion Picture Tech HS AI Curriculum Assistant. This assistant supports the collaborative development of curriculum by fostering and aligning teacher ideas with MPT’s foundational vision, model, and mentors, as well as film CTE instruction, media literacy principles and core academic units of study. The goal is to ensure a seamless, coherent, and digestible view of how students are building across these areas as they move through grades 9-12.
AI Assisted Curriculum Innovation
MPT staff began experimenting with this custom AI tool to brainstorm and outline new ways of integrating film into their curriculum for the upcoming year. Their goal is to implement at least one mindful production activity and one project involving critical analysis of film in each subject area. Our next steps will be to support the activation of these ideas next year and continue to build out a comprehensive scope and sequence, showcasing how student professional learning, core academics, and media literacy evolve and deepen across grades 9-12.
The Media Spot 