A Zillion Words

If a picture is equal to a thousand words, then a video is worth a zillion.

There are a number of powerful films circulating that can be very helpful in understanding the dynamics behind our graduation and youth unemployment crisis.  They are available on the web so they can be easily used in community conversations, presentations or even in your advocacy strategies.

Our Time is Now: Students from five high schools participated in filmmaking and storytelling workshops during their junior year to help shape Our Time is Now, a film that explores how students think about high school and graduation in rural New Mexico. (Disclaimer: My brother-in-law is a co-founder of Turn the Lens that produced the film and my sister is a co-founder of the umbrella organization Little Globe).

The Graduates/ Los Graduados: A new two-part special from filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz, explores the many roots of the Latino dropout crisis through the eyes of six inspiring young students from across the United States who are part of an on-going effort to increase graduation rates for a growing Latino population.

180 Days: A Year Inside an American High School: Produced by the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), the film chronicles the lives of teachers, students, administrators and parents struggling to keep their students on track to graduation at DC Met, a public school in Washington, D.C, where only seven percent of students are deemed “proficient” in math and only 19 percent in reading. The inner-city school embodies the complex challenges of adapting to the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” school reform initiative, in which school funding and personnel decisions are based in large part on the results of high-stakes standardized tests.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate initiative has been catalytic in helping these films get attention. Check out the American Graduate video library – there’s probably something there that can be helpful to you in your advocacy or even as prompts for discussion and writing in your school.