CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
*Deadline: December 10, 2009
The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in partnership with Adobe Youth Voices seeks youth-produced film, video and animated works on human rights issues made by youth ages 19 and under for its third annual YOUTH PRODUCING CHANGE program.
Armed with digital cameras, computers and their own boundless creativity, young people across the globe are bravely exposing human rights issues faced by themselves and their communities. YOUTH PRODUCING CHANGE provides a platform for youth to share their perspectives with audiences worldwide.
Click here for more information and to submit your film.
Selected films will travel to:
* Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, New York : June 10-24, 2010
* Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, London : March 2011 (dates tba)
* Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, San Francisco: March 2011 (dates tba)
* Selected films will be included in the 2010 Traveling Film Festival
* Films will be added to the Adobe Youth Voices and Human Rights Watch websites
* And distributed to teachers throughout the United States
To watch the films from our first year of YOUTH PRODUCING CHANGE please click here.
Thanks! We look forward to seeing your films!
Best Regards,
Jennifer Nedbalsky
Program Manager
Human Rights Watch Intl Film Festival
Miguel Salinas
Senior Program Manager
Adobe Youth Voices
Category: 2009
New Mexico • Volume 3 • Issue 5
Letter from the Editor
Welcome to YMR’s New Mexico Volume 3: Issue 5, where practitioners in New Mexico (specifically in Albuquerque and Santa Fe) investigate youth media practice and share their insights to the field. With support from Open Society Institute, these practitioners and their colleagues met on August 19 at the New Mexico Forum for Youth in Community to discuss the most pressing challenges of their work.
Following this meeting, contributors wrote and revised drafts that were reviewed by a local peer, a member of YMR’s national peer review board, and AED/YMR staff, as a means to engage a youth media rich and yet underrepresented region to the field.
In this issue, you will find that New Mexico has a complex landscape, where practitioners work among different ethnic groups, including immigrant, indigenous, rural and queer youth; multiple different languages; and, a large geographical reach. Most of the contributors in this issue share a media justice approach to their work, and make use of strategic partnerships, successful mediums (such as radio), and media literacy. Included in this cohort is a principal of a public, media and arts education-specific charter school.
A warm thanks to all twelve contributors for their dedication and hard work:
• Deborah Boldt (REEL FATHERS)
• John Braman & Judy Goldberg (Youth Media Project)
• Jessica Collins & Andrea Quijada (New Mexico Media Literacy Project)
• Roberta Rael (KUNM)
• Steve Ranieri (Quote…Unquote)
• Candelario Vasquez (New Mexico Media Literacy Project)
• Glenna Voigt (Media Arts Collaboative Charter School)
• Kamari Uni (KUNM) * Vodcast (forthcoming)
• Amber Chacon (Quote…Unquote) * Vodcast (forthcoming)
A special thanks to Kelly Nuxoll, YMR’s writing coach for her stellar coaching and edits as well as to YMR’s Peer Review board for giving helpful feedback to each writer.
Many thanks to Judy Goldberg, YMR’s peer review board member, the executive director of Youth Media Project in Santa Fe, NM, who was instrumental in organizing and leading the cohort. She explains:
“Joni Mitchell coined the phrase, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’ I’d like to add, ‘you don’t know what you have till there’s a name to call it.’ This is how I felt when I learned about the Youth Media Reporter and became a peer reviewer.
Like many of you, I had been carving my own way into this field (not even calling it a field), forming relationships and contracts with people in schools, museums, radio stations and non-profits; believing in the potential and power of youth media producers, but never sticking my head up long enough to realize there were others doing this work.
Youth Media Reporter helps us rejoice in our commonalities and ponder our struggles; deepen our questions and affirm our actions. Our stories are vital for us to build a profession of credence and recognition.
Recently in New Mexico, practitioners have started to find one another. Though we face the obstacles of crazy schedules, distances and under-funded programs, we recognize the sharing of knowledge will only raise the level of our work. Youth voice, leadership development and having impact on policy-making are significant extensions of youth media productions, now receiving notoriety.
Sharing methodology, documenting our successes, naming our challenges and strategizing how we can support one another will ultimately unify our efforts and bring the best results for young people – whom we know benefit from this work. While educational systems are eroding, the time is ripe for youth media practices to move into the limelight.
Thank you, Youth Media Reporter, for charging our batteries.”
We welcome you to join the conversation for each of these articles using YMR’s “comment” feature. You can also send feedback or comments directly to idahl@aed.org. If you are interested in posting a pod or vodcast response, please contact YMR’s media crew or email idahl@aed.org.
To reserve your copy of YMR’s annual print journal (Volume 3), you can subsrcibe and purchase via credit card or by check.
Warmly,
Ingrid Hu Dahl, Editor, YMR
Youth Media Reporter is managed by the Academy for Educational Development
REEL FATHERS/Real Families : A First-Time Youth Media Production Intensive
It is more and more common for organizations outside the youth media field to incorporate video and media production in their programs, which requires advice and partnership with youth media educators, community youth centers, and professionals.
For example, my organization REEL FATHERS focuses on the relationship between fathers and young children, teens, and incarcerated fathers and their families, using film screenings and facilitated dialogue as reflective tools to promote better father-child relationships. As research from the National Fatherhood Initiative indicates, 24 million children (one in three) live absent from their father. These young people are two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse, and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.
We realized that our efforts were not reaching teens enough, despite the range of community partnerships we had in northern and central New Mexico. We wondered if youth media could be an effective way to help young people explore the highly-charged, sensitive subject of fathers. Yet we were concerned that if we asked young people to create films around the theme of fatherhood, they would see the topic as too traditional or painful and thus, not participate. The outcome was quite the opposite, and transformed our approach to the teens and constituents we serve.
Partnering Organizations
New Mexico has some of the greatest poverty, unemployment, youth crime, teen pregnancy and school dropout rates in the nation. At the same time it has a booming film production industry. REEL FATHERS wanted to empower youth through media production to deepen the examination and healing process of their relationship with their fathers/father figures, while providing production skills that could lead to potential careers.
In order to identify, recruit, and effectively support teens in the community, we needed to form relationships to reach participants from local high schools. We already had partnerships with Head Start and United Way, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and local groups that support incarcerated fathers and their families. However, we needed film and teen-specific support.
We approached the following organizations and individuals to partner with:
• Warehouse 21, Santa Fe’s teen art center, which provided the needed production and post-production equipment as well as expertise in designing educational programs for youth;
• GEAR UP!, a national college readiness program funded by the U.S. Department of Education, which provided access to 9th grade students at Capital and Pecos High Schools; and,
• Ed Radtke of Transparent Films as the filmmaker/educator, who brought passion and years of experience in leading youth media workshops.
Our aim was to create a two-week film intensive, where local high school students could tell their story through narrative, documentary, animation or experimental techniques. Funding for this program came from The Seabury Foundation, a Chicago foundation that wished to support REEL FATHERS’ work with disadvantaged youth around the theme of fatherhood. Once we established the above partnerships over a period of several months, we collectively promoted a father-focused media workshop, which resulted in 16 ninth-graders and two senior interns signing up.
At the first workshop, Don McAvinchey, a LISW therapist and coach with 18 years experience working with adjudicated youth and REEL FATHERS’ Director of Reflective Process, led a simple exercise to get participants to talk about their fathers. The first student to speak told us that she was currently homeless and described her abusive, often absent father. She also said how much she loved him, in spite of everything. Her story encouraged other accounts and observations. For example, in the closing circle a participant said: “I never knew my father. I never talk about him. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my chest.” The focus on fatherhood as a theme and focus for storytelling seemed to bring the teens closer together.
During the two weeks that followed, teen filmmakers met every weekday afternoon with lead artist Ed and Angelo Jaramillo, the regional coordinator for GEAR UP.
At Pecos High, seven students worked as one team on a narrative project telling a story they conceived and wrote about a girl getting ready for prom who confides in her friends that she’s pregnant, then has to share this news with her mother and father before her boyfriend arrives: A Prom Story.
At Capital High, students divided into three production teams. Three girls created Three Fathers, a documentary portrait of their fathers, two of them contrasting their birth fathers with their current, adopted fathers. Four youth took a true-life story one of them knew about a young woman corresponding with her father in prison and created The Letter. The young man who never knew his father teamed up another youth to create The Runner—an imaginative re-creation of his father’s experience on the day he, the filmmaker, was born.
On Saturdays, the two groups—one rural, one urban—would come together, along with staff from each school, the partnering organizations, and a few parents. At the second Saturday session, the youth screened their works-in-progress and received feedback and encouragement from Ed, staff, advisors and their fellow students. At the close of the intensive, the youth filmmakers created four moving and original works. A senior intern created a fifth behind-the-scenes documentary portrait of the workshop.
Outcomes
Following the program, the works were screened at special assemblies at each school—enabling parents, friends and peers to see the youth’s work and honor their accomplishments. The youth were proud to stand before the audience and comment on their work, answering questions about their creative process and how the filmmaking experience had touched them personally.
Two of the works—The Runner and The Letter—were selected to show at the local Santa Fe Get Awesome Youth Film Festival. One challenge we noted was the seriousness of approach and emotional maturity of our youth’s films made them stand out from the other entries. The director of The Letter, for example, exclaimed to me “Our [films] were the only depressing films!” The serious nature of their stories on fatherhood actually embarrassed the students.
This reaction leads us to believe that we must continue to develop partnerships with the youth media field—to learn how to encourage confidence, recognition, and ownership of the stories that teens produce, which comes with the kind of relationships that are created in a youth media approach. Currently, we are exploring a possible partnership with Youth Media Project, a radio-based organization in Santa Fe, NM.
What We Learned
Looking back, our first attempt at a media-production intensive helped us identify several important steps to encourage teens to explore stories of a challenging, personal nature. These might be helpful for other organizations that are not interested in starting a media-production component:
• Find partnering organizations that complement your organization’s strengths as program providers, particularly youth media organizations;
• Set up a long lead time to plan the program and promote it throughout the community and your partners’ networks;
• Work with a skilled facilitator, and if possible, an educator in the youth media field;
• Create a safe space and neutral, supportive environment for young people and allies to talk about the theme or focus;
• Provide teens the freedom to choose their production approach and encourage confidence and recognition;
• Find ways to celebrate the completed projects and provide lots of appreciation for the courage and creativity of the filmmakers.
Through our first media-production intensive, we learned that storytelling through media has an important role to play in the lives of young people. It is an expressive means for students to find their voice and to process emotions tied to personal, difficult relationships and issues.
Despite our initial concern that starting with an assigned topic would impede creativity, we found that an area of focus can act as a catalyst, inspiring young people to draw on their innate wisdom, courage, and creative instincts. As a group, teens worked together to transform shared, difficult experience in their lives. We have much to learn from the many organizations throughout the U.S. that are exploring ways to use media to more effectively engage young people. And, collectively, we can learn from the success of the youth media field, where young producers often depict intimate stories for the sake of expression and community/social change.
Deborah Boldt is the executive director of REEL FATHERS. She is an award-winning filmmaker with a longstanding, passionate interest in film as an educational catalyst. Her films have been shown theatrically, broadcast nationally on PBS, and have served as the basis for corporate and educational seminars. Deborah is an Aspen Institute Scholar, the recipient of an NEA Regional Fellowship, and a former board member of the New York Women in Film and Television.
Traditional and Youth Media Education: Collaborating and Capitalizing on Digital Storytelling
Left: John Braman, Right: Judy Goldberg
From elementary schools to universities, educators are increasingly incorporating digital storytelling into the curriculum. This trend is good news, especially in New Mexico, where traditional approaches often fail due to diverse learning styles, language barriers, and a pedagogy that does not connect theory to its application. The trend of digital storytelling is also good news for local youth media educators; however, we must carefully establish partnerships with local schools to train young people and teachers in the school environment.
Youth Media Project (YMP), an organization that teaches digital storytelling skills (primarily radio) based in Santa Fe, NM, provides a partnership model approach that combines teacher training, student-produced media, required academic courses, community radio and the Internet to serve a myriad of young people and educators.
History and Context for Youth Media Project
YMP is an outgrowth of an educational curriculum called “Drawing from the Well–Connecting School to Community” (Note: where learning stems from choosing essential questions and interviewing community knowledge-bearers). Inter-generational exchanges spark the impetus to investigate history or current-day events. Through digital documentation, students discover the stories they want to create about their own culture and communities. Short radio documentaries, art displays and a final, public and community-based celebration demonstrates student learning.
Over the years, YMP has developed expertise in creating learning environments where non-traditional learners can discover the success that comes with producing work that has both personal and social meaning. Teachers report that student confidence soars in a multi-modality process that involves listening, speaking, inquiry, writing, recording, peer feedback, and a finished product that is aired regionally.
YMP is a small organization with only one full-time staff member, four part-time specialists, and three volunteers, including the professional staff of the community radio stations. Staff are hired on the basis of their expertise in media literacy, language and communication arts, special and gifted education, audio production and broadcasting.
YMP’s small size can be an advantage, as it has the flexibility to seize partnership opportunities with teachers who are zealous advocates of media education. Then YMP works with those teachers to amplify, extend and support their efforts. Funding for this support comes from grants, private foundations and contracts with partner organizations.
Currently, YMP’s partnerships include six teachers whose academic disciplines are in creative writing, theater, English and history, environmental and sustainability issues, conflict resolution, and student health and prevention. Overall, YMP has developed partnerships with eight northern New Mexico schools, colleges, and non-profit youth-serving organizations.
These partnerships include direct service in an educational setting, providing one-on-one teacher coaching, facilitating in-class youth audio productions, and broadcasting student work through affiliations with community radio stations. The student populations include a wide range of cultural and socioeconomic factors—from the young, international undergraduates at the United World College to the urban population of older and mostly Hispanic students at Santa Fe Community College.
YMP’s success has been in nurturing the independence of each collaborating teacher’s approach while instilling core practices, so that the collective group has enough in common for a professional dialogue.
For instance, in a pre-season training in September 2009, all collaborating teachers gathered to flesh out the ingredients of excellence in student work. They identified authentic voice, concise language, varied and appropriate use of the four elements of radio—continuity, actualities, sound effects and music, and compelling issues—as core components to a constructive peer critique process. This kind of dialogue based on shared principles, the respect and appreciation of peers, and a supportive environment is necessary for any group of craftspeople to find satisfaction and excellence.
The two case studies that follow represent the progress of a teacher and student through YMP.
Case Study: Joey Chavez, Teacher
Joey Chavez is a professional actor, playwright and theater director. He is also Santa Fe High School’s director of the Theater Department and a full time teacher.
A very busy and successful educator, Joey saw the advantages of applying his mid-level drama class to radio production. Together with YMP and SFCC support (paying a part-time faculty to teach a dual credit/dual enrollment course on a high school campus), he and YMP director co-designed curricula, resulting in students’ writing and performing radio dramas.
Two years later, YMP became a technical support and an outlet for completed radio pieces in Chavez’ new course “Radio and Film.” However, after one semester when computer problems and a difficult group of students resulted in no final products, Joey and YMP decided to let go of the editing portion of instruction so students would focus more on writing, recording, creating sound effects and music, which led to a final performance of their radio dramas.
This year the students will not only air their final presentation on a live radio show, but, as a requirement for their class, they will perform their pieces in front of a live theater audience. The partnership afforded Chavez and his students radio and internet outlets for student work and students reported that the teaching methods resulted in deeper listening; from room tones to the nuances of meaning in human expression.
Case Study: Carmen/Karmen Gallegos, Student
Carmen Gallegos is a Mexican immigrant who, at age 14, was already working to help supplement her family’s income. Like many immigrant students, Carmen, the eldest of three, was the primary intermediary between her Spanish-speaking parents and the English-speaking world of Santa Fe.
Carmen started with YMP as a freshman in high school, first as a dual credit/dual enrollment student in classes offered at SFCC and later as a participant in YMP’s after-school program. After a YMP presentation in her high school AVID class to recruit students, Carmen signed up for “Radio Production” and “Narrative Radio” through SFCC’s Media Arts Department. Carmen became engaged in radio production and soon with the community radio station based on campus—the result of her dogged interest, dedication and productivity.
Carmen produced three radio pieces: one about her Quincienera (a Mexican coming of age ritual); another exploring identity issues as an immigrant and what it’s like to live in two worlds; and third, a poetic piece about an imagined illegal immigrant field worker. These pieces were seminal, demonstrating the potential of YMP and leading to funding support, which has helped YMP come to where it is today. Carmen’s pieces can be heard on PRX; specifically: How Many Times Do I Have to Say Goodbye?, and A Revolution to Make This Country a Better Place: A Montage of Interviews from Various Participants at the 2007 U.S. Social Forum.
This past summer, as a college sophomore, Carmen was selected to work with YMP as an Americorps VISTA volunteer. She and another college student, Dolna Smithback, who had also participated as a high school student with YMP, spent the summer producing and hosting radio shows with younger students. They traveled to Connecticut (by invitation) to tell the story of the Global Youth Leadership Institute’s program and participated as mentors and team-building leaders for the YMP two-week Summer Intensive, a partnership course in media and service leadership with SFCC.
Today, Carmen is getting a degree as an elementary school teacher and dreams she will be a practitioner in the field of youth media. Carmen has stated, “Now I know what I want to do with my life.”
Lessons Learned about YMP’s Integrated Approach
For those who run an independent youth media program or for those who work within educational systems, successful partnerships create a win-win-win-win-win—for youth, educators, youth media programs, society and funding agencies. Success will come easier if program directors and staff manage those relationships effectively. Consider these points:
Have memoranda of agreements with collaborating teachers carefully delineated, then signed. These memoranda should include the responsibilities of each party, equipment acquisitions and maintenance, an assigned educator who is invested in the program success, and regular planning meetings to meet deadlines and assess progress. It is best to establish these roles and norms before the work starts.
Identify how elements of media education align with teacher’s required standards and benchmarks. Knowing the standards and benchmarks will help you defend the program when needed and claim your interdisciplinary accomplishments to funding agents. Given the range and type of classrooms, YMP relies upon the creativity of teachers for this alignment. YMP is compiling data about this for on-line resources and workbooks that can help orient new teachers.
Coordinate schedules. Ensure that collaborating teachers can commit to meetings and your organization can spread its staff resources across the week and month in an equitable way. A note of caution: at YMP, projects take longer to complete and require more staff time than initially envisioned.
Orient prospective teacher-collaborators. In your initial conversations, make sure collaborators understand that student productivity necessitates:
• openness to changing how work gets done in the academic setting;
• addressing conflicts when they occur, since this is essential to the teamwork involved in production; and,
• commitment to projects that exceeds the norm for most school assignments.
Using these guidelines, YMP has proven that partnerships between youth media and educational institutions effectively serve immigrant, marginalized youth, as well as the gifted and talented. Youth media organizations can draw on best practices in experiential learning and collaborations to train teachers to integrate media curricula and help students of any age to develop oral and digital communication skills. When traditional education falls short, youth media can reach peers, educators, adults and policy makers to activate social change.
A resolute friend of youth peace and justice initiatives, John Braman lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he is president of Dream Year Consulting Group and serves on the city’s Board of Education Strategic Planning Committee. John’s consultations with schools and colleges specialize in organizational development, fundraising, strategic planning, executive coaching, and the design of mission-extending, revenue-enhancing programs.
Judy Goldberg has worked as an independent video and radio producer, as well as a media arts educator, since 1979. She hosts a 1/2 hour radio show, Back Roads Radio; featuring writers, storytellers and community people telling stories centered around a central theme. Her development of “Drawing from the Well,” an interdisciplinary curriculum connecting school to community, is the forerunner to founding and directing the Youth Media Project.
Youth Media Curriculum for Justice
Left: Jessica Collins, Right: Andrea Quijada
Youth media encompasses diverse realities of how communities live, work, play, and communicate. For example, youth media work in New Mexico differs from youth media work in many other regions in the U.S. New Mexico is a very poor, rural, and under-resourced area located in the fifth geographically largest state in the country. This reality impacts our access to everything from healthcare, to food, funding, and technology, such as rural broadband, computers, software, and digital cameras.
Moreover, a range of communities exist even within New Mexico. It is a majority minority state, with large percentages of our communities speaking Native languages, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The frequent use of English in classrooms creates language barriers that impact all educational programs, and youth media work specifically. As a result, few media programs are offered in languages other than English, and access to these important communication tools becomes available only to English-speaking youth.
However, standardized curricula are often created from a perspective not relevant to marginalized young people and their respective communities. It is often developed by someone from outside young people’s lives who is telling their story, speaking for them, and imposing a limiting framework. Moreover, curriculum often assumes uniformity among young people and forces all youth to fit into narrow “youth” demographics and markets created in part by mainstream media.
If all people, including young people, were considered experts on their own communities, curriculum would be by and for the communities they come from. What youth curriculum today needs is a framework by which communities—people of color, LGBTQI, low-income, immigrant and youth—can learn, share, and exchange information to create change and build power. A media justice framework is the only way to ensure that all young people are both seen and heard throughout youth media curriculum.
Media Literacy Project and MAG-Net
Based in Albuquerque, the Media Literacy Project (MLP) has been designing curriculum for youth and adults since 1993. In 2008, MLP strategically and consciously began incorporating a media justice framework into our program areas, a step in a larger process of engaging the community in dialogue, action, and policy creation. For example, last year MLP helped New Mexicans with the digital television transition. This work was critical because, leading up to the transition, New Mexico was the least prepared state due to issues of poverty, language, and lack of funding and other resources.
MLP’s shift toward workshops, curricula, and trainings to expand and prioritize disenfranchised communities coincided with MLP becoming an anchor organization of the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net). The network seeks to bring about media policy for change to advance racial justice, gender and economic equity, and youth and immigrant rights.
Youth Media Summit Curriculum for Justice
Due to our recent community organizing work in New Mexico, we were excited to help represent our state at the Youth Media Summit in Lake Forest, Illinois. As both members of the Youth Media Summit steering committee and MLP staff, we co-facilitated (along with Meghan McDermott from Global Action Project) a working group on curriculum at the Summit.
Also in this group were Malkia Cyril from Center for Media Justice; Amalia Deloney from the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net); Jackie Kook from People’s Production House; Jen Macchiarelli from Global Action Project; and Jasmine White from Public Access Corporation of D.C.
This working group created an asset map and outlined objectives, guiding principles, and strategies for a comprehensive media justice approach. For instance, the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, TN is a current and successful model of a progressive community organizing strategy center—the term “media justice” was coined there in 2002. At the core of Highlander’s work are programs designed to build strong and successful social-change activism and community organizing led by the people who suffer most from the injustices of society.
Such programs might be adapted for other regions of the country; although, our working group recognizes there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to youth media curriculum. For example, curriculum that works with most young people in Albuquerque may not necessarily work in a town 20 miles outside of Albuquerque, let alone in another state or region of the country.
Ultimately, a media justice approach makes room in curriculum development and implementation for rural youth, youth of color, non-English speaking youth, immigrant youth, queer youth, and low-income youth.
At the Summit, our working group agreed that the objectives of youth media curriculum for justice are to develop, connect, change and sustain communities. We believe that curriculum should develop under-represented and misrepresented youth, families, and communities to their highest capacity. It needs to go beyond teaching a skill and demonstrate how these media skills benefit communities.
In addition, curriculum should increase young people’s participation in the life of their community and in civic engagement. Youth should develop awareness, resources, and an ability to reflect on their lives, articulate their analyses, and reach their goals. Curriculum should inspire and help youth define their role in the world around them.
Curriculum should also connect youth, families, and communities culturally, politically, and technologically. Media justice curriculum and the outcomes brought about through its implementation can break down barriers, unify people, and create systemic social change.
Finally, curriculum must sustain leadership development, connections, and changes. Sustaining youth, families, and communities includes everything from job creation to financial sustainability—where organizations are relying not only on foundation support but also community support—and self-determination, in which young people have choices and freedom over their own lives.
Suggestions for the Youth Media Field
Create a popular education-training center. At such a center, educators and trainers could build their skills in and knowledge of popular education with a specific emphasis on strategic communications, youth media, and media justice. Youth media organizations would come together to promote visibility for certain regions of the country and communities such as queer youth, youth of color, and low-income youth.
Establish long-term funding. We need to build relationships with funders to obtain long-term funding to convene grantees, social justice organizers, media producers, and trainers for a knowledge, tool, and curriculum exchange. This type of funding leads to the sustainability of organizations and communities. Multi-year grants allow organizations to learn more, change, and adapt within a longer funding cycle. This type of change can’t be done with a one-year grant. Three-year grants create stronger programs and evaluations and more accurate data.
Highlight and replicate successful models. Both projects and policy advocacy have integrated media literacy and media justice curriculum into public educational systems. For example, the MLP currently works with educational systems in New Mexico and throughout the country. Through grants we have delivered media literacy presentations and trainings in middle and high schools. We have built a strong relationship with the New Mexico Department of Health to bring media literacy to all parts of our state, while at the same time working to build healthy communities.
On the policy end, NMMLP worked to educate state legislators on media literacy during the first 2009 legislative session. Along with our local partners, we proposed a bill to make media literacy a required elective in public middle and high schools. Although the language in this bill was changed from a required elective to a possible elective, the bill went all the way to the governor and was signed off on in its first year. It was a huge win for media literacy and media justice in New Mexico. We need to build on this work both in New Mexico and in other states.
Next Steps
Media justice broadens the field in ways we are only starting to visualize and comprehend. Its objectives are living and breathing and will need frequent evaluation to meet the needs of our shifting cultures, politics, and technologies. We understand that for a variety of reasons many organizations may not be in a place to implement these suggestions in their curriculum now. Your organization may need a strategic plan in place that addresses the steps to get there.
Nevertheless, it is only when the communities’ most disenfranchised are placed at the center of all our work—from education and curriculum development, to media production, to community organizing, to policy—that power shifts can happen. A media justice framework ultimately seeks to unify communities, achieving equity and accountability among people and the communities in which they live, work, play, and pray.
Jessica Collins is the associate program director for the Media Literacy Project. She trains youth, designs curriculum, and produces multimedia resources on the topics of gender, race, and class issues in the media, reality TV, news media, media literacy for financial literacy and health, body image, and media making. Jessica received a B.A. in Media Arts from the University of New Mexico.
Andrea Quijada is the executive director of NMMLP and delivers media literacy presentations and trainings—in New Mexico, across the USA and internationally—at professional and student conferences, at community forums, on college campuses, and in middle schools and high schools. She leads workshops for students, teachers, media activists, community organizers and health professionals. Andrea also presents twice a year at NMMLP’s Catalyst Institute.
Social Justice Radio: A Strategy for Long-term Change
New Mexico is a state rich in diversity with respect to gender, race, ethnicity and social class. Yet, even though young people may share the same classroom, they may never speak to one another, let alone engage in a project or task together.
Youth Media is an important platform to challenge these overt divisions. But the platform is not the solution—the solution is designing youth media programs with an intentional social justice framework and community-building approach. This framework is critical in a society that still stereotypes, underestimates, and discriminates young people, people of color, populations from lower socio-economic status, and youth that live alternative lifestyles.
With intentional project design that is based on a social justice framework, youth media can sow the seeds of equity and facilitate long-term change in our communities.
KUNM Community Radio
New Mexico has one of the highest poverty levels in the country and one of the worst dropout rates along with high rates of teen pregnancy, teen violence and suicide. In addition, bleak statistics indicate inequity and a sense of “powerlessness” among youth. It is in this setting that KUNM launched its Youth Radio Project in 2004. Our social justice principles are rooted in the divisions we continue to see in our communities.
As a youth radio project, we train teens to approach journalism and broadcasting from a social justice framework. This is how it works:
• Teen participants go out into the community and participate in organizing/civic engagement activities—highlighting grassroots community organizing, youth activists, and peace makers.
• They are challenged to expand their understanding of social justice, democracy, inclusion, and equity.
• Then, they create radio segments, using media to give voice to local activism, which often extends nationally and internationally.
The radio station provides a venue for over a million listeners in central and northern New Mexico, raising awareness, dispelling stereotypes, and developing a sense of pride in the capability of New Mexican youth.
Afterwards, the productions are evaluated based on two key questions: “How was community served?” And “What did the youth producers learn about an issue or about the community?”
We attempt to bring young people across difference together, because we realize that they have been impacted by eight years of public educational policies, perpetuating the status quo and limited critical thinking in the classroom. And, they have been subjected to the values of pop-culture (reality TV) and corporate-owned mainstream media, which use fear tactics and survival of the fittest theory to distract from the real issues in our communities, promoting deception and manipulation. A sixteen-year-old in this country has had about half of their life influenced by these two factors, drastically affecting their identities and relationships with their peers.
In addition, the broader society still does not see young people as change agents, despite the many strides that the positive youth development field has made. Youth who are organizing against policies and structures, based in institutional racism and social classism, have very few venues to inform and educate the broader community of their organizing efforts, victories, and lessons learned.
Young people have a good handle on their reality—they are hungry for change and want to be part of creating change. They relish the opportunity to create socially conscious stories, and making an impact through the media.
Adult mentors in youth media programs are role models and allies that make a long-term investment in the efforts of the project and the young people they serve. For many young people, this dynamic is new and breaks the walls of adult vs. teen. This supportive dynamic, along with the opportunity to work with peers in an authentically diverse environment committed to social justice principles, helps teens see their commonalities and stick through the challenge of trusting one another.
In project evaluation and reflection, the youth participants express how they have changed as a result of being in this project. Jonquilyn Hill , an 18-year-old participant explains:
“I never really cared about social causes or issues before this project, I used to think more about going to the mall, hanging out with my friends, but now I see how I can make a real difference in my community and because of KUNM Youth Radio I have decided to pursue a degree in Journalism.”
Social Justice and Power Analyses
So what is social justice and how do you design a youth media project using social justice principles?
Conceptions of social justice can be broad, but in the youth media context at KUNM; we define social justice as living in a just world where every member of society has the basic human rights and equal access to all of the benefits of society.
Youth media organizations seeking to incorporate a strong social justice element into their programs first must commit to giving voice to the voiceless amongst youth themselves and be intentional in recruiting youth that would normally not be included in media projects. Beyond ethnic and cultural diversity, youth from various socio-economic classes, geography and life experiences should be included.
Second, youth media organizations must examine the power analysis of their local community.
Ask questions such as:
• Who holds the financial power in my community?
• What are the statistics, who is fairing well and who is not?
• Who controls the media and the messaging in our community?
• Who represents our community?
Organizations should not stop there. Turn the lens on your own NGO or media arena. Ask questions such as:
• Who holds the power in the organization?
• Who controls the funding?
• How would you rate your level of racial/ethnic diversity, gender equity representation of the community you serve?
Doing a power analysis of your own environment is particularly important for youth radio projects that are operated out of public radio stations, whose regular audience and contributors are often educated, middle-class, dominant culture, privileged members of our society.
After conducting this power analysis look at your weaknesses and what areas need to be strengthened for long-term community change as your NGO/Media outlet is a vehicle for long-term change. Choose four or five social justice principles as areas that programmatically you can make a commitment to and create intentional program design around.
It is also helpful to engage the principles of multi-culturalism and inclusion when designing an equitable, inclusive environment for youth media production.
Suggestions to the Field
Educators interested in designing an intentional youth media project committed to social justice and long-term change has to look at the areas that have not quite “made it” from a social justice framework. Some of these areas to consider are:
Gender Equity: How do you create a gender balance in skill development for the participants? Make sure that your program participants have a gender balance and mix up tasks and roles. For example, the first cohort of Youth Radio Participants included young females of color who were more then willing to be engineers, producers and script writers but did not want to be on air . We created a practice that there had to be gender balance in all areas of our programming. So there is always a female host and a male host for each of our productions.
Race/Ethnicity: Are you representing your community? Is their a mulit-cultural balance in giving voice to under-represented groups in the field? Answer the questions and make sure that your recruitment process is based on multi-culturalism and inclusion. Look at your pool of applicants and fill based on what racial/ethnic gaps exist. For example, if several Latino or Caucasian youth have applied, target recruitment efforts to Native American, African American and Asian youth.
Social Class and Geographic location: In addition to race/ethnicity, consider reviewing and analyzing youth participants based on geographic representation, school demographics and socio-economic class–all key to a social justice recruitment approach. For example, in New Mexico, there is an important correlation between class and geographic location. As you serve your program participants, ensure that the “voice” of communities across social classes are considered.
Inter-generational Connections: Youth and adults who form equal partnerships are better able to bridge social justice issues—together, they can partner for long term investments in change. For any youth programming the issue of Adultism and priviledge has to be on the table. The KUNM project structure provides three tiers of inter-generational connections: the teens and mid-school youth participants, young adults (19-25) with radio experience who work in a mentorship capacity, and professional adults in the broadcasting and/or youth development field. Mentorship is designed in the project so that every participant is involved in the learning process.
Sexual Orientation, Life-style and life experiences: The project is diligent in how the air time is shared and utilized in order to get many different voices and stories out to the audience. Youth who represent all areas of our community are included not only as producers but also on the air.
Civic Engagement/Youth as change agents: How can youth media break the stereotype of young people as unengaged, apathetic and self-centered? Mainstream media has been extremely effective at portraying teens in a negative lens that encourages fear. One way to combat these archetypes is to have youth media producers focus on amplifying their peers that are community activists and organizers, illustrating youth perspective on community issues. This is an excellent strategy to combat these stereotypes and model peer leadership and shared empowerment.
Next Steps
Youth do not generally see themselves as capable of creating social change. We know that if people cannot experience power at a young age, there is more of a chance that they face a lifetime of feeling powerless. But if young people can experience an environment that is just and equitable, encouraging them to be storytellers of social justice, new realities and possibilities will emerge. Youth media programs have an incredible opportunity to re-direct patterns of powerless and power, for young people now, and for future generations to come.
Roberta M. Rael, a 10th generation New Mexican is the Project Manger for the KUNM Youth Radio Project and the President of Inspired Leadership Inc. She has over 20 years experience in Community Building work and is the proud mother to her teen-age daughter, Lucia Martinez.
Segregation Does Not End at the Lunch Counter
In the Southwest, justice has always been front and center. Justice denied for the theft of thousands of square miles of native lands during the process of genocide or for families who were living here when the U.S. border passed over them. Justice denied for immigrant populations by politicians and vigilantes alike. Economic justice denied for the majority of all New Mexicans who live in the state that is 49th in per capita income but contains the weapons labs of Los Alamos County, with the highest per capita income in the United States.
These situations create the context in which my nonprofit community media organization, Quote…Unquote—which is dedicated to the exercise of First Amendment rights and to providing media education to the youth of our community—operates. They also keep our diverse community under pressure.
Not the Target Demographic
In the spring of 2006, the lid blew off. The aspirations and expectations of immigrants for better laws were colliding with the anti-immigrant policies of the Bush administration. The largest street demonstrations ever in New Mexico were overflowing spontaneously throughout downtown and barrios like Barelas, the South Valley, “the war zone,” the West Side and high schools with large populations of Latino students. Students left school, marching through the Latino neighborhoods while moving towards the center of the City.
As the marchers passed, motorists honked their horns in support. Others closed their shops and joined in, headed for the Civic Plaza in the heart of downtown. Flags waved, paleteros sold their popsicles, Norteño music ruled and a sense of euphoria from the swelling recognition of power in unity swept over the crowds.
I looked around for signs of media to document this important event. In attendance were local Spanish language radio stations, the local public access station, a few reporters from print media, and a small representation from Univision; however, network TV affiliates were nowhere to be found.
A couple of us community media veterans decided to call the network stations to check if they had not heard of the event. The answer I received from the News Director of one TV station threw cold water on my optimistic day.
“We are aware of the marches, of course,” he said. “But that isn’t our audience. We are an English language channel. This story needs to be covered by the Spanish language channels. Have you spoken with Univision?”
All of the Latino youth in the streets of Albuquerque being joined by their parents, their siblings and their abuelitas meant nothing to this man or to any other news director. Essentially, we weren’t their advertising demographic. Network leaders didn’t see us as grounds for making any money for the local car dealerships or insurance companies that advertise on their channels. As a result, commercial media dismissed the voices of tens of thousands of New Mexicans.
We didn’t count.
It struck me that when most people think of the practices of segregation they first envision physical segregation. They picture images in black and white film of civil rights workers being dragged out of southern diners. Fewer people recognize the effects of segregation in the content and distribution of textbooks or the marketing of media to our youth.
Understanding Niche Marketing
The modern marketing machine spends vast amounts of time and money to identify every possible market niche. The trend over the last thirty-plus years has been to intensify niche marketing to more specific audiences and create media just for them. A media outlet decides in advance who they want to reach and starts the planning of content from there. On that spring day in Albuquerque, niche marketing wasn’t benefiting immigrants or anyone else who wished to understand the issues at hand.
In the delivery of entertainment or news media, youth are segregated by age, class, gender, sexual preference, ethnicity, and immigration status. Marketing agencies do know that youth learn from the media. But the news media does not value the ways that young people learn or how media negatively affects their self-esteem, socialization and ability to navigate through life in a diversely populated society.
Here are a few suggestions to educators that want to help young people understand the manipulative cycle of marketing to use media to both tell their stories and break the system of segregation.
First, let’s not kid ourselves that marketing agencies will stop these practices just because we tell them that it would be better for the mental health of children. We need to approach the teaching of youth and media as if we are delivering a self-defense class to kids.
Second, educators must emphasize the teaching of critical thinking first and foremost. Their ability to analyze the messages they receive is their best vaccine. Critical thinking rather than memorization to obtain better test scores for No Child Left Behind criteria is a major front in this battle. We must work on the monumental task of overhauling education in this country.
And, we must teach storytelling to youth. The United States is a nation where many people live vicariously off the accomplishments and stories of others. That characteristic is why media is so profitable. Media-arts storytelling, whether done with digital cameras or on the walls of caves, empowers people to find their own voices. The result is usually self-esteem.
We must specifically show youth in our media literacy presentations how the practice of distinct media messages and news for each youth demographic reinforces their separation and division from each other. This directly affects youth in their relationships with people who are “not like them.”
Media Justice
Let’s also confront the reality that media in the United States is a key part of the battleground between justice and injustice in this society. Media is not an isolated topic on its own. The injustice of Albuquerque media not covering the events and issues of the Spanish speaking populations and other people of color shouldn’t really surprise us.
Without media justice, solving these problems in New Mexico and elsewhere will be impossible. The social segregation that niche marketing and commercial media reinforce can be combated. Media justice equals empowerment to organize and educate. We must have control of our own means to create and distribute our messages in New Mexico and anywhere else. The job of those of us who work with youth is to impart this sense of purpose and indignation to the next generations.
Steve Ranieri works for the non-profit media organization Quote…Unquote and is a founder of the Media Arts Collaborative Charter School. Quote…Unquote provides two access stations to the Albuquerque area and has trained, during 28 years, many thousands of people in how to have their own voices heard. Recently more and more of these voices are those of the youth. Quote…Unquote’s programming confronts injustice each day. Its channels are recognized for carrying the voices of protest, often to the displeasure of the local authorities. Quote…Unquote is a member of the Media Action Grassroots Network.
Youth Inclusion & Media Justice
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
Socioeconomic and political inequality are all too common themes in American communities—particularly in working class and immigrant communities along the border with Mexico. In these areas, right-wing paramilitary groups threaten the poor and impoverished. The experiences of the disempowered groups in these communities go largely unreported in the mainstream media.
Rather, news reporting that is informed by race and class analysis is negated or diluted in the media we see everyday. Furthermore, low-income families, workers, and real people living with limited access to media do not know they are the targets of anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Youth living in these rocky, vulnerable landscapes rarely get the chance to speak out against mainstream media, and by and large do not experience creating media—a process that would enable them to highlight and unravel issues through dialogue within their communities. This is a tremendous challenge for educators interested in social transformation and social justice, especially within extremely marginalized groups like immigrant, queer, indigenous youth.
New youth media must put all of its efforts behind eradicating the kind of binary thinking in this country that targets and categorizes people based on race, language, and identity.
Language, Race & Violence
Radio Conciencia (Consciousness Radio), a project of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Immokalee Florida, is one example of a youth media project that works to challenge mainstream media stereotypes. I have drawn on my experience with this station to inform my dialogue with the New Mexico Media Literacy Project.
In Immokalee, you can’t walk 2 blocks without hearing a multitude of languages. Immokalee is a community where several pre-Columbian languages are spoken, including Mayan totzil, kan’jobal, Mam, and Quiche, as well as indigenous Mexican languages, such as Zapotec, Mixtec, Nahautl, Purepecha, Popoluca, and many others. Yet, for communities as far as 30 minutes away, we are only understood as being Latino or regarded as “Mexican.”
Media outlets want to find profits from this community only by speaking to us in Spanish, while blatantly homophobic and heterosexist DJ’s poke fun at the indigenous community, without even considering that much of that listenership is native to Latin America. The consequence of divisive media—media embracing the “hip” heterosexist, and homogenous framework of corporate media—will only perpetuate this intense climate of internalized hate of the “other,” even though that other is a strong connection to their ethnicity.
This dismissal of other languages and subgroups is extremely unhealthy to our communities, where Latinos and native people of the Americas live together. We only hear one language, that often perpetuates stereotypes of those that are darker. These stereotypes—and there are many—include the “foolish Indian” and the “over-sexualized feminine gay.”
As a result, these misrepresentations create power relationships and dynamics that breed internalized hatred amongst these already vulnerable communities.
Consequently, there are extreme cases of violence on immigrants and queer immigrants, not only from vigilante groups but from neighbors who may speak a better Spanish, who maybe know more English or have risen a little higher up an economic ladder but still live in the same squalor their victims live in.
Violence results—especially in the form of what is called “guato-bashing” or “beaner-hopping,” which I saw growing up—where a Latino youth attacks those that are more indigenous looking or who speak with less capacity of the English and Spanish language. If you are an indigenous queer immigrant youth, you are more at risk of being a victim of this violence.
What has helped to empower Immokalee is the option to become a DJ on community low-power radio.
Youth media can be a solution to this violence, by building inclusivity and partnering pro-actively with media justice and immigrant movements and efforts, as well as community radio groups.
Radio and Social/Media Justice
On Radio Consciencia 107.9 FM, we have community members play CD’s and read news in their own language, speaking on issues that affect them and/or their families here or in their respective places of origin. On 107.9 FM we find that Latin American radio is really much bigger than what corporate sponsored media is putting out there.
Through community radio, I get to host local people on my show and talk about issues in the local high school from different perspectives across generational gaps, cultural gaps and sexual identities. Local low-power radio uses a collective approach, which helps make our community aware of the diversity we hold, and how that makes us unique and important.
We find radio less divisive, and when community events are announced on this station, all people feel welcome and eager to participate.
Most of our DJ’s, or “animators” as the radio committee calls them, are in their late teens to early 20’s. Focusing on this age group and community-demographic is a model the youth media field must embrace, if we really want to create a healthier media landscape.
But our radio programs are only part of the solution. Realizing that there is an empty space in our current media landscape, social justice and media justice must defend groups that get undermined inside the immigrant rights movement, inside the farm workers movement, and general workers movement.
That is why the New Mexico Media Literacy Project (NMMLP), as part of a network of media and social justice organizations called MAGNet (Media Action Grassroots Networks) is building a movement with infrastructure that bridges the social, cultural, and media justice groups together, to be at the forefront of media reform and media policy in this country.
As part of the NMMLP in Albuquerque, I am collaborating with groups state-wide to put our issues at the forefront and demand that certain media policies are in place to to benefit our survival inside this hostile Southwest region. As a resource and anchor of the MAGNet network, we can create an inclusive media landscape that acknowledges the most vulnerable groups in our community.
Immigrant rights groups and social justice groups can benefit from a structure of media that allows a multiplicity of cultures and voices to take shape, creating a stronger more grassroots dialogue throughout the youth media field.
Next Steps
The youth media field must join the media justice movement, since we collectively understand the importance of bringing all voices into a dialogue. We must bring out the voices marginalized within the marginalized community, like the indigenous, immigrant, queer youth voice, to make real change in the world for young people and the many under-represented voices throughout our homeland.
Candelario co-coordinates the Media Action Grassroots Network in New Mexico and builds strategic partnerships with social justice and media justice organizations in the state. He is currently a VISTA volunteer through the Digital Arts Service Corps (DASCorps).
Access, Platforms & Partnerships: The Media Arts Collaborative Charter School
The Media Arts Collaborative Charter School (MACCS) in New Mexico provides an interesting case study for some of the perennial issues facing the youth media field today. Our school is built entirely around young people’s access to media and technology—we offer electives only in media arts. New Mexico high school students of diverse means, ethnicities, histories, cultures and perspectives travel to MACCS by choice, as a public school offering a unique educational experience.
At MACCS, students have at their disposal high-tech tools such as high-definition cameras, latest-version software for audio, film, television, web design, photography, and animation. Industry-experienced and highly qualified teachers work with Web 2.0 resources to bring about the accessibility for all students to become active learners, engaged in a rigorous and rich media arts education that wraps around all content curricula.
With a unique curricular focus, students are choosing a small learning environment over the traditional larger populated high school. Educating in the 21st Century with advanced technological resources, MACCS is striving to promote critical thinking and engage students’ voice in an academic, personal, and socially meaningful platform via student presentations and exhibitions of learning within media venues.
However, within this external, technologically gratifying, educational environment lies the challenge of students to become active media change agents for their causes, the community and for society at large, rather than simply invigorating their academics. Despite the good intentions of MACCS in providing media access in rural communities, balancing process and product is challenged with the variables that come with a school—the necessity of grades and the difficulty in cultivating in-school learning for a just cause or project.
MACCS & Challenges
Founded by industry professionals and creative dreamers, MACCS exists to promote authentic and intellectual student creativity within a college readiness environment offering Advance Placement and Dual Credit courses. MACCS’ goal is for graduates to be competitive hires for the film and media industries, or attend a post-secondary school based on the strength of their high school education in youth media.
As students prepare presentations of content knowledge utilizing a media format, such as an audio, televised or film piece, often their motivation of learning lies within the apparatus of technology to finally present their knowledge. They are striving to get a good academic grade, and don’t always take advantage of say, a captive public audience that youth media programs afford.
Although students are fully engaged and motivated in their learning of academic content and media arts classes, their global awareness of the business, monopolization and justice of media might be left to the status quo, with no emphasis or introduction given to media as a platform for access to voice, equity for discrimination, or civic engagement.
Likewise, educators and students alike can fall prey to the machined, automated capacity of the technology our school affords. And so, we developed a partnership with a local youth media and media literacy organization.
Partnering with Youth Media & Media Literacy
These challenges, within a school context, are just cause to promote and mandate media literacy instruction as a pre-requisite toour media-focused students. The New Mexico Media Literacy Project (NMMLP; Albuquerque, NM) provides foundations in learning, specifically related to media awareness and equity, that address many of these issues while staying current with media trends and topics in society at large.
By having access to a foundation in media literacy, students can find their inner strengths and explore the feelings and overall process of an original piece of work, develop critical thinking in order to ask rhetorical questions, and find the self-confidence to be able to talk about their creative processes. Without basic knowledge of media literacy, technology, use of hardware and software, students in rural areas have a disproportionate disadvantage to learning.
MACCS’ partnership with NMMLP will provide curriculum in Media Literacy and Media Arts to promote a higher order of academics, based on critical thinking, media equity and justice, authentic experience, and problem solving.
Through the partnership with NMMLP, students from myriad communities and backgrounds can discuss and analyze media marketing of values. Youth media organizations, such as the NMMLP, are vital advisors and trainers to schools like MACCS, offering key and invaluable insight.
The Local, On-Line Context
In general, teens have few places to go to analyze and critique the media. Social interaction sites such as Facebook and Twitter encourage teens to consume products or gossip rather than engage in critical thinking.
In addition, students in rural areas of NM don’t have access to the internet, much less democratic learning principles that help guide these resources. Their exposure to the internet is often limited and their opportunities for learning are much less than urban cities with technological advancements. Not only are these citizens ill-equipped for learning, they are disenfranchised and marginalized by their lack of access to express and publish their voice in an authentic media format.
In addition, as education is rapidly expanding into cyber-space and virtual worlds, students in rural locations are unfortunately still being left out of the opportunity to attend classes that could advance their awareness and aptitude for learning within cyber platforms, due to lack of broadband in their communities. It is imperative that rural students keep up in the 21st Century learning arena by having access to broadband that will facilitate online learning platforms.
As technology becomes more pervasive, the youth media field finds that many of the barriers they’ve long faced continue to exist—and, in fact, are getting more difficult to overcome, especially in rural areas. Youth media encourages young people to voice social issues, tell stories about overcoming personal experiences, and crafting thoughtful artistic self expression—but the field must toss a much wider net, and schools must join the effort.
Next Steps
As youth media programs have proven, project-based, thematic learning makes instruction authentic and real-world, providing meaningful connections for students. Schools must learn from youth media organizations, so that they steer from disjointed, meaningless instruction, which leads to a lack of motivation for learning overall.
MACCS hopes that students, within the school building or in cyber-space, will ultimately discover and realize the power of their voice, and be able to grow with appreciation of process over product into self-empowered, actualized human beings.
Youth media presents an opportunity to help students find their inner strengths and expose the feelings and overall process of an original piece of work, develop critical thinking in order to ask rhetorical questions, and find the self-confidence to be able to talk about their creative processes. Nurtured in this way, students can truly apply their learning in schools to the greater good, and have the desire to do so, beyond a final grade.
Born in South Korea and raised in New Mexico, Glenna Voigt is committed to activism that promotes intellectual development and global awareness. She is a life-long educator and learner and the principal at the first New Mexico state-chartered school, the Media Arts Collaborative Charter School (since it opened its doors in 2008).
WE LEARN: Call for Writings & Artwork
Women Expanding Literacy Education Action Resource Network
Women’s Perspectives #5:
A Journal of Writing & Artwork by Adult Learners
Women’s Perspectives #5: What Would You Do? Creative Ideas for Difficult Times will showcase original writings & artwork by adult literacy/basic education students across all levels. Student writers and artists are encouraged to reflect and to share your ideas on this theme.
What would a “better world” look like to you? What would you do to make this happen?
How do women leaders change the world?
What are the most pressing issues affecting women today?
And what would you do to address one or many of these issues?
In a position of authority or as a decision-maker,
what would you do to solve the big issues of the day where you live or work?
All submissions must be original writing or artwork by adult literacy/basic education students across all levels attending class or working with a tutor.
For more ideas about this theme,
see Pre-Writing Activities located at www.litwomen.org/perspectives
NEW! Writer’s Checklist
Coming Soon: Teacher’s ToolKit: Using Women’s Perspectives in Many Settings
DEADLINE to send material is DECEMBER 11, 2009.
For more information contact welearn@litwomen.org
Back issues are available.
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