Category: 2005

The Newspaper Association of America Foundation’s Youth Editorial Alliance announced the winners of the competition recognizing the best of newspapers’ youth-written content. “Newspapers have always been a medium closely connected to the communities they serve, so it’s not surprising that young people would have a keen interest in reading stories and content created by their peers,” said the NAA senior vice president. Winners included Your Mom (General Excellence Rookie of the Year) and FlipSide (Best Website).

A growing number of teachers and professors are experimenting with blogs as a learning tool. Writing for an audience motivates students, and as one teacher told CNET News, students who blog are “learning the technical skills, but they’re also learning they have a voice online.” Meanwhile, teachers find themselves grappling with new terrain, like negotiating when and when not to censor.

The following article originally appeared on Youth Today.
Throughout the year, First Lady Laura Bush has traveled the country touting programs that the White House says do everything from steering kids away from drugs and violence to increasing reading skills and building character. The visits are part of Mrs. Bush’s Helping America’s Youth initiative, which seeks to promote programs that have been demonstrated to be effective.
But as the First Lady prepares to convene a national Helping America’s Youth summit in Washington next month, a look at some of the programs she has visited shows that, by and large, they are based on promising ideas, but have little scientific evidence of effectiveness.
The adviser who helped find model programs for the First Lady describes facing the same challenge that confronts the operators, advocates, and funders of youth development programs: “When you look out there, the number of programs that meet strong standards [for evaluations] are just not there,” says G. Reid Lyon, a well-known education researcher.
Mrs. Bush has said in speeches and interviews that the programs she’s visiting are “very effective,” “successful,” and “have some track record.” But while some of the programs have been examined by independent evaluators, most of their evidence consists of self-evaluations, incomplete preliminary data, anecdotes, or a belief that certain activities help kids – the kinds of evidence that youth development advocates have been citing for decades, but are now often told is not good enough.
There is no doubt that the programs do wonderful things for youth and that the First Lady’s campaign has brought valuable attention to youth work. But her visits illustrate a continuing struggle for the youth work field at a time when government and foundation funders are demanding better evaluations.
Many if not most of the programs spotlighted by Mrs. Bush might not meet the evaluation standards increasingly demanded by her husband’s administration, which has cited a lack of evidence of effectiveness in proposing to eliminate or trim youth programs. They almost certainly don’t meet the standards for scientific evidence called for two years ago in a report by the White House Task Force on Disadvantaged Youth.
Yet for anyone looking for insight into what kinds of youth programs the White House prefers, the programs that Mrs. Bush chose to visit are a good place to start.

The First Lady’s Agenda

Much of the news media have described the First Lady’s initiative as “anti-gang,” but it is not. The label comes from the president’s State of the Union speech in February, when he proposed “a three-year initiative to help organizations keep young people out of gangs, and show young men an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence. Taking on gang life will be one part of a broader outreach to at-risk youth.”
The communications-savvy Bush administration might have figured that describing the initiative as anti-gang would make more of an impact on Congress, the media and the public than pitching, say, a “youth development” effort. Congress is considering several pieces of tough anti-gang legislation.
However, Helping America’s Youth is actually a broad umbrella for youth development programs involving responsible fatherhood, healthy marriages, reading skills, character education, mentoring children of prisoners, and teen sexual abstinence, as well as gang prevention.
Although those are mostly non-school issues, the initiative’s roots lie in the First Lady’s interest in education, especially literacy. During her travels around the country last year, Lyon says, Mrs. Bush, a former teacher and librarian, grew more concerned that “even with the best reading program … a lot of the kids were having difficulties focusing on academics, for a wide variety of reasons,” such as living in poverty or having dysfunctional families. “When they get to school, they’re just not ready for learning.”
Mrs. Bush wanted “to take a look at programs that developed good academic skills through better behavior,” he says.
She was especially concerned about at-risk boys. Mrs. Bush has said that concern was inspired by a New York Times Magazine article last year about Ken Thigpen, a troubled young man in Milwaukee who turned his life around and became a responsible father.
Lyon says Mrs. Bush asked him to find programs that helped youth both academically and behaviorally. The idea was that “we would visit sites across the country that … combined good reading instruction – evidence-based reading instruction – with good behavioral support programs that had data with them.”
Lyon, a sometimes controversial advocate of scientifically based reading instruction methods, was then a top official at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and had advised the administration before. He is now overseeing the launch of a worldwide chain of for-profit teachers’ colleges for a Texas company, Best Associates.
Officials in federal agencies such as the Justice, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments sent suggestions for programs to highlight, Lyon says. But he ran into the reality that claims about the effectiveness of many youth development programs “are based on anecdotes, philosophical beliefs and untested assumptions.” Lyon saw that few programs aimed at changing youth behavior had been scientifically tested, and almost none could meet the “gold standard” for evaluations, which would include random samples and control groups tracked over a significant period.
Mrs. Bush “was very aware that the evidence was not the same as in other fields where we had been working,” such as education, Lyon says.
It is a continuing dilemma: Except for programs focused primarily on academics, youth-serving programs have not traditionally been geared toward showing the kinds of outcomes that can be measured, say, over the course of a school year or a summer break.
The Final Report of the White House Task Force on Disadvantaged Youth, released in late 2003, said there was little scientific evidence that most federally funded youth programs work. It said programs should be measured by more strict scientific standards or lose federal funding.
“We need to firmly hold programs accountable for results showing that they actually achieve what they were designed to achieve,” the report said.
The Bush administration cited poor evaluations when it proposed cutting the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program by 40 percent in 2004 (which failed). It cited a lack of proven effectiveness to justify cutting TRIO (an educational outreach program for disadvantaged youth) by more than half in its 2006 budget proposal and to justify eliminating such programs as Even Start and GEAR UP (college prep) in the Education Department, and Juvenile Mentoring, Safe Schools and the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant in the Justice Department.
There are, however, scientific studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of certain elements of youth work, like providing close relationships with caring adults (such as mentors) over a long period of time. These findings were analyzed in a 2001 study by the National Academies, Community Programs to Promote Youth Development.
The First Lady’s office chose to highlight programs that “were based upon behavior principles and social development principles and family interaction principles that were known to be effective,” Lyon says.
In talking about her initiative with the PBS NewsHour early this year, Mrs. Bush said she is “visiting these programs around the country that are already successful, that we know they’re successful, that they have some track record.” Her role on each visit, she said, is “to highlight a very effective program.”

Continue reading Laura Bush’s Youth Work Tour

Jim Randels, co-director of Students at the Center, a New Orleans writing project for teens, blogs from his temporary home in South Carolina on “what it means to live as part of a diaspora and to learn to teach from that place.” His blog, which appears on Education Week, will “share some of my students’ writings…exploring the shadows of what we used to do in class each day. We’ll think about writing as healing and community building. We’ll look into when and why these goals should be central rather than peripheral to the classroom. And we’ll think long and hard about what my colleague, SAC co-director Kalamu ya Salaam, wrote last week about New Orleans now being more the people who carry our city’s spirit, not the place itself.”

In an Orion Magazine essay, a former high school computer teacher argues that school computer labs can cause more harm than good. Recent research indicates that students who frequently use computers perform worse academically than those who use them rarely or not at all, he writes. And allowing kids access to virtual worlds filled with vicarious thrills they can control “can lead children into deadened, alienated, and manipulated relationships” with the real world. “The more external power children have at their disposal, the more difficult it will be for them to develop the inner capacities to use that power wisely.”

“In the U.S. alone, there are over three dozen youth radio groups who are picking up mics and asking questions of their communities, their families and themselves,” writes Johanna Franzel on MediaRights.org. Generation PRX, a project of the Public Radio Exchange, supports this movement by providing an online space for youth radio producers to share their work, review other youth-made radio spots, and get licensed (and broadcast) by stations across the country. “There is a growing demand for youth radio producers; as their voices reach the airwaves, they are changing the face of conventional media,” writes Franzel.

A political cartoon that used the “n-word” in a Florida student newspaper sparked rallies against the paper and demands for an apology. The editor countered that good cartoons get people talking and thinking. “I would run it again tomorrow,” he told Inside Higher Ed.

The relaunched Youth Media Reporter is six months old, and we’d like to hear your thoughts on how it’s working so far. How have you used it? What articles have you found most helpful or relevant? Have you referred anyone to the site?
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The following is part of a series of articles exploring the new phase of introspection in the youth media field, in which educators have begun placing a premium on reflecting on their work and thinking and planning on a macro level.
As those in the field know, youth media programs can often engage students unable to learn well in traditional school settings. Just how youth media does this was one of the many topics considered at the Scholarship in the Digital Age conference, hosted by the Institute for Multimedia Literacy last year. At the conference, educators and researchers from around the world spent a day discussing their work and what makes learning engaging to teens who struggle in school. (Details about this and other topics discussed at the conference appear on the institute’s website.)
How does youth media pedagogy differ from that of more traditional education? What makes it effective? Educators at the Digital Age conference, as well as those interviewed last year by Youth Media Reporter, pointed to the following factors:

The Audience

Writing and producing for a specific audience is one of the most obvious qualities separating youth media from traditional schoolwork. Knowing their work will be received by actual people lets teens know that what they say is not only valuable, but has the potential to affect the wider community. It motivates teens to learn, to gather knowledge and present it clearly, and to work through multiple revisions before their message feels satisfying.

(Nearly) Immediate Gratification

Getting young people working on media fast is one practice commonly used to engage students, motivate them, and maintain their interest in learning. Participants at Youth Radio in the San Francisco Bay Area are on the air during their first week at the organization. At Appalshop, a community arts center in Whitesburg, Kentucky, educator Laura Doggett’s students use media equipment on their first day. Represent magazine’s summer workshop for foster youth lets teens brainstorm story ideas on day one.

Positive Peer Pressure

Research has proven that peer learning among young people works, and youth media programs regularly incorporate it. At Manhattan Neighborhood Network, veteran teen filmmakers train newcomers. Youth Communication, where I work, aims to get its stories widely distributed in schools, since hard-to-reach readers often respond enthusiastically to writing by their peers.

A Personal Touch

Much youth media involves young people telling their own stories in their own words, and that personal connection acts as a motivating force. By helping “hard-to-reach” teens address the pressing situations with which they live, it motivates them to learn the skills needed to tell their stories clearly. It may also eventually free them emotionally to focus on issues that seem less urgent to them, like school, math, or science.

Connecting with the Wide World

Ultimately, many youth media educators aim for students to gradually understand how their personal story connects to a larger issue—such as race, class, gender, or politics. As students become comfortable working in a particular mode of media, they are often encouraged to use their personal connection with a subject to explore its larger context. A young woman whose mother is in an abusive relationship might move from considering a personal story about living with domestic violence to a reported piece profiling women at a battered women’s shelter. Moving from a personal angle to a broader one can help young media makers in difficult situations feel less alone, become aware of their unique place in the world, and see how others who have grappled with similar situations managed. Sometimes it empowers them to become activists.

Authority Issues

At Youth Communication, editors have long noted that teens’ best learning often happens during meetings when the teacher becomes nearly invisible and the teens’ own enthusiasm and curiosity take a leading role in shaping discussion. This style of learning, which departs significantly from traditional classroom methods, is typical of the field.

Keeping It Real

A young person will likely learn a lot through the process of creating a piece of media. But unlike most school projects, learning is not the only objective in making youth media. Other intents might be to entertain, persuade, or inform an audience, or to motivate young or low-skilled students.
Usually youth media organizations themselves have specific goals, which, to varying degrees, affect the content of the media created by young participants. Their mission might be to encourage youth to view themselves as artists or agents of change, or to discover the power of their own voices.
Participants at the Scholarship in a Digital Age conference observed that many youth media groups in the United States have an objective of promoting social change.

Challenging the System

One common objective of youth media is to democratize and “challenge the dominant media,” observed British researcher David Buckingham, at Scholarship in a Digital Age. To that end, and with varying degrees of consciousness about it, many educators weave media literacy—the ability to read, analyze, critique, and produce communication in a variety of media forms—into their curriculum.
At Appalshop, Doggett has her students critique media representations of people from their rural community, the Appalachian mountains. Doggett found this creates a reaction among her students, motivating them to tell the story of where they’re from in their own words.
Teaching this type of critical thinking is “vastly powerful,” said founder of Street-Level Youth Media and current director of the YouthLearn Initiative at Education Development Center Tony Streit. “In my mind, no young person can fully participate in society today unless they are media literate. It’s not only a question of whether they have access to media-making equipment, but if they have the skills to be consumers of literacy. Most people don’t.”

Adding It Up

These common youth media practices add up to an immeasurably effective whole, said Streit, who is researching how youth media programs evaluate their impact. Unlike other after-school programs where teens might learn to trust and collaborate with adults, such as sports, said Streit, youth media adds to the repertoire “the blending of broader learning objectives with art-making and the creative process, and the building of critical thinking and analytical skills and the importance of teamwork and finding your voice.” A critical side benefit, he adds, “is the sometimes intentional and sometimes accidental addressing of the social and emotional needs of young people in a very powerful way that allows them to achieve in other aspects of their life.”
Above left: While making media, teens at Radio Rookies often learn on the sly.

Continue reading Too Cool for School

“Wherever a pint-size comedian riffs for his peers, there is usually a long-suffering teacher attempting to keep him (or her) from disrupting the class,” reports Edutopia, in reference to You Can Handle Them All, an online resource for dealing with classroom “misbehaviors.” What to do about the class clown? “Go with your gut: laugh.”