As a part of our education initiative, the Global Lives Project has partnered with the San Francisco Film Society to bring filmmaking into the classrooms of local schools. Currently, we are collaborating with Artnelson Concordia’s ninth grade Ethnic Studies class at Balboa High School in San Francisco.

In this 8 week program, the students are learning about media literacy, the filmmaking process, and producing short films documenting life in their community using the Global Lives curriculum. The students are challenged with thinking critically about the production and consumption of various forms of media and applying their analysis to a real-world project throughout the process.

The Global Lives Curriculum focusing on self-understanding and understanding others, fit hand and hand with the Ethnic Studies curriculum. Throughout the course of this school year, Mr. Concordia has introduced his students to Youth Participatory Action Research, or YPAR, wherein the students reflect upon relevant social justice issues affecting them in their personal environment and various communities. The students have identified issues they feel have impacted them negatively within their school; these include the school’s dress code, tardy policy, “unfair” teachers and “boring” teachers.

Armed with handheld flip-cams for capturing footage and a considerable amount of passionate insight to these injustices, the students have begun to document and analyze their various concerns by interviewing teachers, administrators, fellow students and school staff as well as re-creating scenarios that exemplify their argument. These visual examples will then be edited by the students in iMovie to create their final product: a 2-3 minute short documentary that compellingly depicts the problem they are addressing in their school and their proposed solution to overcoming that problem.

If you are an educator and would like to become involved in our education program, sign up here.