Carl Casinghino
Annually, The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) awards the Media Literacy Award to an individual, team of educators, or department that has implemented and refined exemplary media literacy practices in their school environment. The award is given at the annual conference being held this year in Atlanta.
In August, Carl Casinghino was informed by the NCTE Executive Director and the NCTE Media Literacy Award Selection Committee of his selection for the Eleventh Annual NCTE Media Literacy Award. According to Carl’s letter, he has “shown persistent, innovative and imaginative application of media analysis and media composition in the English studies. The National Council of Teachers of English commends you for your dedication to media literacy.”
For the award, the recipient must demonstrate evidence of sustained implementation of media literacy principles over time; collaboration inside and outside the classroom to develop skills in accessing, analyzing, evaluating, and creating media messages; and exemplary work through lesson and unit development as well as student compositions and production.
In 2015, Carl published “The Role of Collaboration and Feedback in Advancing Student Learning in Media Literacy and Video Production” in the Journal of Media Literacy Education (JMLE.org) and in 2011 Cengage Learning published his textbook Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Media. Carl regularly posts to the blog, mediateacher.net in conjunction with his textbook. He was also was a panelist at the 2013 NCTE Nation Convention in Boston and a presenter at the 2011 and 2012 Northeast Media Literacy Conferences at UConn.
Carl begins his 20th year of teaching at Suffield High School. During his third year at the high school he began teaching media literacy courses in which he has synthesized learning about how to understand and evaluate moving image media along with producing movies of a wide variety of types.
Last June, Carl celebrated the 15th annual running of the Suffield Film and Video festival, and a number of alumni of this program have gone on to highly successful careers in filmmaking, animation, advertising, and other media outlets.
He also teaches French at the high school and has served as World Languages curriculum chairperson for a number of years. His wife, Alexandra, also teaches French in the district, currently at Suffield Middle School. They have three children: their oldest, Matteo, 17, is at the high school, and Lucie, 13, and Vincent, 11, are at the middle school.
Carl grew up in Suffield, graduated from Princeton University and went to NYU Tisch School of the Arts for graduate work in film and television. He also received a Masters in Education from Union Institute with a thesis on collaborative learning and media literacy in the secondary classroom.
He has lived in Paris, New York, and Northampton, and he and his family moved back to Suffield six years ago.
Since moving to Suffield, Carl has been involved as a coach of various youth sports, and has served on the Suffield Library Foundation Board for several years as well as being on the Friends of the Library Board.