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On HBO's Insecure, black features pop - and this is why.

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Reflections from a person of color

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Yesterday, I was tagged in a post by an old high school friend, asking me and a few others a very public, direct question about white privilege and racism. I feel compelled to publish not only his query but also my response to it, as it may be a helpful discourse for more than just a handful of folks on Facebook.
Here's his post:

"To all of my black or mixed-race FB friends, I must profess a blissful ignorance of this "white privilege" which I'm apparently guilty of possessing. Not being able to fully put myself in the shoes of someone from a background/race/religion/gender/nationality/body type that differs from my own makes me part of the problem, according to what I'm now hearing. Despite my treating everyone with respect and humor my entire life (as far as I know), I'm somehow complicit in the misfortune of others. I'm not saying I'm color blind, but whatever racism/sexism/other-ism my life experience has instilled in me stays within me, and is not manifested in the way I treat others (which is not the case with far too many, I know).So that I may be enlightened, can you please share with me some examples of institutional racism that have made an indelible mark upon you? If I am to understand this, I need people I know personally to show me how I'm missing what's going on. Personal examples only. I'm not trying to be insensitive; I only want to understand (but not from the media). I apologize if this comes off as crass or offends anyone."

Here's my response:

Hi Jason,
First off, I hope you don't mind that I've quoted your post and made it part of mine. I think the heart of what you've asked of your friends of color is extremely important and I think my response needs much more space than as a reply on your feed. I truly thank you for wanting to understand what you are having a hard time understanding.
Coincidentally, over the last few days, I have been thinking about sharing some of the incidents of prejudice/racism I've experienced in my lifetime (in fact, I just spoke with my sister Lesa about how to best do this yesterday) because I realized many of my friends, especially the white ones, have no idea what I've experienced/dealt with unless they were present (and aware) when it happened.
There are two reasons for this:

1.) Because not only as a human being do I suppress the painful and uncomfortable in an effort to make it go away, but I was also taught within my community (I was raised in the '70s and '80s - it's shifted somewhat now) and by society at large NOT to make a fuss, speak out, or rock the boat. To just "deal with it," lest more trouble follow (which, sadly, it often does).

2.) Fear of being questioned or dismissed with "Are you sure that's what you heard?" or "Are you sure that's what they meant?" and being angered and upset all over again by well-meaning but hurtful and essentially unsupportive responses.

So, again, I'm glad you asked, because I really want to answer. But as I do, please know a few things first:

1.) This is not even close to the whole list. I'm cherry picking because none of us has all day.

2.) I've been really lucky. Most of what I share below is mild compared to what others in my family and community have endured.
3.) I'm going to go in chronological order so you might begin to glimpse the tonnage and why what many white folks might feel is a "Where did all of this come from?" moment in society has been festering individually and collectively for the LIFETIME of pretty much every black or brown person living in America today, regardless of wealth or opportunity.

4.) Some of what I share covers sexism, too. Intersectionality is another term I'm sure you've heard and want to put quotes around, but it's a real thing, too, just like white privilege. But you've requested a focus on personal experiences with racism, so here it goes:

-One-
When I was three, my family moved into an upper-middle-class, all-white neighborhood. We had a big back yard, so my parents built a pool. Not the only pool on the block, but the only one neighborhood boys started throwing rocks into. White boys. One day my mom ID'd one as the boy from across the street, went to his house, told his mother, and, fortunately, his mother believed mine. My mom not only got an apology, but also had that boy jump in our pool and retrieve every single rock. No more rocks after that.

Then Mom even invited him to come over to swim sometime if he asked for permission. Everyone became friends. This one has a happy ending because my mom was and is badass about matters like these, but I hope you can see that the white privilege in this situation is being able to move into a "nice" neighborhood and be accepted not harassed, made to feel unwelcome, or prone to acts of vandalism and hostility.

-Two-
When my older sister was five, a white boy named Mark called her a "nigger" after she beat him in a race at school. She didn't know what it meant, but in her gut, she knew it was bad. This was the first time I'd seen my father the kind of angry that has nowhere to go. I somehow understood it was because not only had some boy verbally assaulted his daughter and had gotten away with it; it had way too early introduced her (and me) to that term and the reality of what it meant - that some white people would be cruel and careless with black people's feelings just because of our skin color. Or our achievement.

If it's unclear in any way, the point here is if you've NEVER had a defining moment in your childhood or your life where you realize your skin color alone makes other people hate you, you have white privilege.

-Three-
Sophomore year of high school. I had Mr. Melrose for Algebra 2. Sometime within the first few weeks of class, he points out that I'm "the only spook" in the class. This was meant to be funny. It wasn't. So I doubt it will surprise you I was relieved when he took medical leave after suffering a heart attack and was replaced by a sub for the rest of the semester.

The point here is if you've never been "the only one" of your race in a class, at a party, on a job, etc. and it's been pointed out in a "playful" fashion by the authority figure in said situation - you have white privilege.

-Four-
When we started getting our college acceptances senior year, I remember some white male classmates were pissed that another black classmate had gotten into UCLA while they didn't. They said that affirmative action had given him "their spot" and it wasn't fair. An actual friend of theirs. Who'd worked his ass off.

The point here is if you've never been on the receiving end of the assumption that when you've achieved something it's only because it was taken away from a white person who "deserved it" - that is white privilege.

-Five-
When I got accepted to Harvard (as a fellow A.P. student you were witness to what an academic beast I was in high school, yes?), three separate times I encountered white strangers as I prepped for my maiden trip to Cambridge that rankle to this day. The first was the white doctor giving me a physical at Kaiser:

Me: "I need to send an immunization report to my college so I can matriculate."
Doctor: "Where are you going?"
Me: "Harvard."
Doctor: "You mean the one in Massachusetts?"

The second was in a store, looking for supplies I needed from Harvard's suggested "what to bring with you" list.

Store employee: "Where are you going?"
Me: "Harvard."
Store employee: "You mean the one in Massachusetts?"

The third was at UPS, shipping off boxes of said "what to bring" to Harvard. I was in line behind a white boy mailing boxes to Princeton, and in front of a white woman sending her child's boxes to wherever.

Woman, to the boy: "What college are you going to?"
Boy: "Princeton."
Woman: "Congratulations!" [ to me] "Where are you sending your boxes?"
Me: "Harvard."
Woman: "You mean the one in Massachusetts?"

I think: "No, b--, the one downtown next to the liquor store." But I say, gesturing to my LABELED boxes, "Yes, the one in Massachusetts." Then she says congratulations, but it's too f-ing late.
The point here isif no one has ever questioned your intellectual capabilities or attendance at an elite institution based solely on your skin color, that is white privilege.

-Six-
In my freshman college tutorial, our small group of 4-5 was assigned to read Thoreau, Emerson, Malcolm X, Joseph Conrad, Dreiser, etc. When it was the week to discuss The Autobiography of Malcolm X, one white boy boldly claimed he couldn't even get through it because he couldn't relate and didn't think he should be forced to read it. I don't remember the words I said, but I still remember the feeling - I think it's what doctors refer to as chandelier pain: as soon as a sensitive area on a patient is touched, they shoot through the roof. That's what I felt.

I know I said something like my whole life I've had to read "things that don't have anything to do with me or that I relate to" but I find a way anyway because that's what learning is about - trying to understand other people's perspectives.
The point here is -the canon of literature studied in the United States, as well as the majority of television and movies, have focused primarily on the works or achievements of white men. So if you have never experienced or considered how damaging it is/was/could be to grow up without myriad role models and images in school that reflect you in your required reading material or in the mainstream media - that is white privilege.

-Seven-
All seniors at Harvard are invited to a fancy, seated group lunch with our respective dorm Masters. (Yes, they were called "Masters" up until this February when they changed it to "Faculty Deans," but that's just a tasty little side dish to the main course of this remembrance.) While we were being served by the Dunster House cafeteria staff - the black ladies from Haiti and Boston that ran the line daily; I still remember Jackie's kindness and warmth to this day - Master Sally mused out loud how proud they must be to be serving the nation's best and brightest.

I don't know if they heard her, but I did and it made me uncomfortable and sick. The point here is, if you've never been blindsided when you are just trying to enjoy a meal by a well-paid faculty member's patronizing and racist assumptions about how grateful black people must feel to be in their presence - you have white privilege.

-Eight-
While writing on a television show in my 30s, my new white male boss - who had only known me for a few days - had unbeknownst to me told another writer on staff he thought I was conceited, didn't know as much I thought I did, and didn't have the talent I thought I had. And what exactly had happened in those few days? I disagreed with a pitch where he suggested our lead female character carelessly leave a pot holder on the stove and burn down her apartment. This character being a professional caterer.

When what he said about me was revealed months later (by then he'd come to respect and rely on me), he apologized for prejudging me because I was a black woman. I told him he was ignorant and clearly had a lot to learn. It was a good talk because he was remorseful and open. But the point here is, if you've never been on the receiving end of a boss's prejudiced, uninformed, "how dare she question my ideas" badmouthing based on solely on his ego and your race, you have white privilege.

-Nine-
On my very first date with my now husband, I climbed into his car and saw baby wipes on the passenger side floor. He said he didn't have kids, and that they were just there to clean up messes in the car. I twisted to secure my seat belt and saw a stuffed animal in the rear window. I gave him a look. He said, "I promise, I don't have kids. That's only there so I don't get stopped by the police." He then told me that when he drove home from work late at night, he was getting stopped by cops constantly because he was a black man in a luxury car and they assumed it was either stolen or he was a drug dealer. When he told a cop friend about this, he told Warren to put a stuffed animal in the rear window because it would change "his profile" to that of a family man, and he was much less likely to be stopped.

The point here is, if you've never had to mask the fruits of your success with a floppy-eared stuffed bunny rabbit so you won't get harassed by the cops on the way home from your gainful employment (or never had a first date start this way), you have white privilege.

-Ten-
Six years ago, I started a Facebook page that has grown into a website called Good Black News because I was shocked to find there were no sites dedicated solely to publishing the positive things black people do. Let me explain here how biased the coverage of mainstream media is, in case you don't already have a clue - as I curate, I can't tell you how often I have to swap out a story's photo to make it as positive as the content. Photos published of black folks in mainstream media are very often sullen or angry-looking. Even when it's a positive story!

I also have to constantly alter headlines to include a person's name and not have it just be "Black Man Wins Settlement" or "Carnegie Hall Gets First Black Board Member," or rephrase it from a subtle subjugator like "ABC Taps Viola Davis as Series Lead" to "Viola Davis Lands Lead on ABC Show" as is done for, say, Jennifer Aniston or Steven Spielberg. I also receive a fair amount of highly offensive racist trolling. I don't even respond. I block and delete ASAP.
The point here is -not having to rewrite stories and headlines or swap photos while being trolled by racists when all you're trying to do on a daily basis is promote positivity and share stories of hope and achievement and justice - that is white privilege.
Okay, Jason, there's more, but I'm exhausted. And my kids need dinner. Remembering and reliving many of these moments has been a strain and a drain (and, again, this ain't even half or the worst of it). But I hope my experiences shed some light for you on how institutional and personal racism have affected the entire life of a friend of yours to whom you've only been respectful and kind. I hope what I've shared makes you realize it's not just strangers but people you know and care for who have suffered and are suffering because we are excluded from the privilege you have to not be judged, questioned, or assaulted in any way because of your race.
As to you "being part of the problem," trust me, nobody is mad at you for being white. Nobody. Just like nobody should be mad at me for being black. Or female. Or whatever.
But what is being asked of you is to acknowledge that white privilege does exist, and to not only to treat people of races that differ from yours "with respect and humor," but also to stand up for fair treatment and justice, to not let "jokes" or "off-color" comments by friends, co-workers, or family slide by without challenge, and to continually make an effort to put yourself in someone else's shoes, so we may all cherish and respect our unique and special contributions to society as much as we do our common ground.
With much love and respect,
Lori
This essay originally appeared on Good Black News and is reprinted with permission of the author.

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What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege

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Yesterday, I was tagged in a post by an old high school friend, asking me and a few others a very public, direct question about white privilege and racism. I feel compelled to publish not only his query but also my response to it, as it may be a helpful discourse for more than just a handful of folks on Facebook.

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Harvard grad school of education

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For almost a decade, teachers and administrators at the Bowman Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts, have been working to increase staff diversity and become a more inclusive, culturally proficient community. But about a year ago, says Principal Mary Anton, they realized that teaching children the language to recognize and understand race and bias is an important part of the work of dismantling racism through education.

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Southern Poverty Law Center

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During the 2016-17 school year, we received an alarming number of reports about negative school climate. In response, we created a package of our most-requested school climate materials. The package contains tools, protocols and practical advice for making your school more open and welcoming to all students.

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Administrators at Fox Chapel Middle School in Spring Hill, Florida recently fired a teacher who gave her sixth graders an assignment asking them to consider how "comfortable" they would be in the company of various people. Some of the 41 scenarios identified these "others" in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

For example:

Your new roommate is a Palestinian and Muslim.

A group of young Black men are walking toward you on the street.

The young man sitting next to you on the airplane is an Arab.

Your new suitemates are Mexican.

Your assigned lab partner is a fundamentalist Christian.

Many Fox Hill students and parents were upset. "They're kids. Let kids be kids. Why are they asking kids these questions?" one mother to a seventh-grade student wondered. "I just don't think it's something that needs to be brought in school."

Another parent said this: "I just think that sometimes kids are just too young to start that at this age, and in school."

Such sentiments are familiar - and deeply misguided. In the United States, a lot of us believe that children, especially White children, are racial innocents - completely naive, curiously fragile with respect to the realities of race, or both. The truth is that well before their teen years, the vast majority of children are well aware of prevailing biases, and most kids, of all racial stripes, have taken on a bunch of their own.

Researchers have been studying the development of racial and ethnic biases in children for a long time, and we know quite a bit. We know that within a few months of birth, babies prefer own-race faces, probably because most are surrounded by people who look like them. Sometime during the preschool years, however, this relatively innocent pull toward the familiar morphs into something else.

By age five, Black and Hispanic children show no preference toward their own group compared to Whites. On the other hand, White kids remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness. By the start of kindergarten, "children begin to show many of the same implicit racial attitudes that adults in our culture hold. Children have already learned to associate some groups with higher status, or more positive value, than others."

So, with reference to the doubtless well-meaning mom quoted earlier, the crucial question isn't "Why bring issues of racial, ethnic, religious and other kinds of bias into our schools?" It's "how do we constructively engage the harmful biases we know pervade our schools and just about everywhere else? And what can we do to shape our children's racial attitudes before and as they emerge?"

In that regard, research and experience offer some promising guidance to parents, guardians, teachers, and to all of us who care for or about children. These guidelines were developed by members of the EmbraceRace team, and we'd love to hear your feedback.

Develop racial cultural literacy by learning about and respecting others.Study and talk about the histories and experiences of groups we call African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Whites, among others. Be sure your child understands that every racial and ethnic group includes people who believe different things and behave in different ways. There is more diversity within racial groups than across them.

Be honest with your child, in age-appropriate ways, about bigotry and oppression.Children are amazing at noticing patterns, including racial patterns (who lives in their neighborhood versus their friends' neighborhoods, for example). Help them make sense of those patterns, and recognize that bigotry and oppression are sometimes a big part of those explanations. Be sure your child knows that the struggle for racial fairness is still happening and that your family can take part in that struggle.

"Lift up the freedom fighters": Tell stories of resistance and resilience. Every big story of racial oppression is also a story about people fighting back and "speaking truth to power." Teach your child those parts of the story too. Include women, children and young adults among the "freedom fighters" in the stories you tell.

Teach your children to be "upstanders" for racial justice.Help your child understand what it means to be, and how to be, a change agent. Whenever possible, connect the conversations you're having to the change you and your child want to see, and to ways to bring about that change.

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Your 5-year-old is already racially biased. Here's what you can do about it.

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Administrators at Fox Chapel Middle School in Spring Hill, Florida recently fired a teacher who gave her sixth graders an assignment asking them to consider how "comfortable" they would be in the company of various people. Some of the 41 scenarios identified these "others" in terms of race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion.

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My article published by the International Literacy Association

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COVER STORY 18 November/December 2016 | LITERACY TODAY y knowledge is only as big as the bus window, but these traditions are ancient." This beautifully poeti...

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Some Mortified fans, Gootee included, have found another medium for these deeply personal stories: the classroom.

Gootee teaches teenagers at the Youth Progress Learning Center in Portland, which provides services for kids who have experienced abandonment, delinquency, and other serious challenges. She began to use podcasts of Mortified shows with students as a way to offer them perspective on their own difficult lives. "These kids really struggle with empathy sometimes, and they think no one could ever understand how they're feeling right now," Gootee said. In her sessions on mindfulness, she invites kids to bring their pillows and blankets into class and to spread out around (and under) the long conference table, while she tunes in to a Mortified podcast. The first story students heard, told by an older woman about her quaint-seeming struggles with a long-ago high school boyfriend, enchanted the students. Gootee selected the podcast-called Why Do I Date A**holes?-because she knew the girls would be able to relate to young love. Not only did they chortle over the woman's familiar mishaps, they also opened up about their own romantic challenges. "It started a casual discussion about what in their lives they could look back at and smile or laugh, despite it hurting originally," Gootee said.

Frank Mathews, a veteran social studies teacher at Wilson High School in Portland, also includes Mortified in the classroom. A part-time producer for Mortified, he has intimate knowledge of the show's content, as well as access to the scripts. Mathews often summarizes the stories he's heard, and shares excerpts from the readings with the juniors and seniors in his psychology class. Students pounced when he began to talk about his part-time work. "They were obsessed with wanting to know more," he said. Mathews recently shared parts of #4 Jimmy: Throw in the Towel about a boy's coming out experience. "The 'coming out' ones always seem very relatable in Psychology because it deals so directly with their identity," Mathews explained. Another podcast that works with kids is #54 Don't F*ck with Emiko, he added, because it grapples with addiction.
The Benefits of Journal Writing
Both Mathews and Gootee also draw on Mortified to encourage journal-writing among their students. Having endured adolescence with the help of her private diary, Gootee teaches her students to write as an emotional outlet. Mathews, who laments his own failure to record his teenage worries, tells his students that keeping a journal will allow them to write their own history and document their life. "This is a unique moment of your life, and you'll appreciate the document," Mathews tells his high school students. Plus, he says, in ten years they can do their own Mortified show.

Sarabeth Leitch, a writing teacher in Portland, says that Mortified has inspired her to assign more personal writing with her freshmen and sophomores. While she hasn't played a Mortified podcast to her students, she talks about the show and reminds them to hold on to their journals so they can observe, at some later date, their personal growth.

https://soundcloud.com/themortifiedpodcast/15-tynan-peace-one-luv

The Mortified podcast 15 Tynan: Peace! One Luv, " is especially powerful, Leitch said. "It has really mixed up the way I think about writing prompts, and it reminds me what sorts of things are most important to youth: their style, their joys, their voice," she said. Once relying just on literature as a writing prompt, she now assigns more personal narratives; for example, she asks students to write about their personal experiences as a way to clear their minds. At the end of the school year, Leitch will return the assignments so students can read their earlier writings and perhaps gain a little perspective.

For college professor Alina Miller-Padilla, Mortified provides a wholly different learning opportunity. Miller-Padilla taught a class at Oregon State University on Writing for the Media Professional, and used the Mortified documentary and podcasts as illustrations of superior storytelling. "We focused on how they were saying what they were saying, and on the connection between the storyteller and the audience," Miller-Padilla said. College students enjoy studying it, she said, because of the human experience it captures. "It's funny, heartbreaking, and light-hearted, it runs the gamut, and we can all relate to it," she said.
Some Words of Caution
Many Mortified narratives dwell on provocative subjects that some schools and parents might consider indelicate for teenagers. Also challenging, and what keeps podcast enthusiast Michael Godsey from teaching with Mortified, is the fear that teenagers might interpret adults laughing at distant adolescent pain as trivializing.

Padilla-Miller believes that even the more salacious Mortified stories can work with high school kids if teachers prepare their students ahead of time. Classes on cultural studies, social studies, media and culture are natural audiences for the stories. "It can be a powerful tool if you lay down the foundation to talk about race, class, sexuality and storytelling," Padilla-Miller said. And screening what students hear, as Mathews does, sidesteps the problem. Though the racy nature of the stories initially attracts students, Mathews said, it's the poignancy of the narratives that keeps kids engaged. As well, the stories reinforce to young adults that revealing vulnerability is a mark of courage, not weakness. "The heart of Mortified is vulnerability, which is also the heart of relating to people," he said.

Mathews believes that exposure to Mortified, even in expurgated form, helps kids develop some perspective on their own outsized worries. Rather than minimize teenage misery, Mortified reveals its universality-and survivability. "Learning that other people go through this difficult phase," he said, "is the biggest gift of the Mortified podcasts."
What Teachers Gain
Teachers who endeavor to use these podcasts in class learn a bit themselves. Just listening to Mortified helps ground teachers in the reality of teenage life. While adults might be ruminating about common core requirements and testing schedules, teenagers fixate on petty slights and fears of social isolation. Hearing Mortified podcasts reminds teachers that "kids aren't thinking about the curriculum," Mathews said. When teachers show some awareness of teenage worries, he added, students engage more in class. For her part, Sarabeth Leitch listens to Mortified to immerse herself in the high school mentality, and trains teachers using Mortified methods. All teachers should listen to an occasional podcast, she said. "Attending Mortified and hearing story after story truly reminded me of that coming-of-age experience," she said. "It's such a call to action to remember the human experience." This summer, she intends to share original, embarrassing memorabilia from her youth with incoming teachers, and invite them to do the same.

When Gootee pored through old journals to prepare for her Mortified show, some of it still felt raw. As a teenager, she considered herself desperately unappealing, a total loser, a girl without confidantes-and bound to fail. But when grown-up Georgia got on stage and shared her ancient worries with the audience, she felt healed by the crowd's bellowing support. "I was gloriously wrong-and I hope to prove myself wrong for decades to come," she said.

How did Gootee's students, who recently watched a video of her performance, react to the show? "While watching they tried very hard to not laugh, but I managed to get a few giggles out of them," she said.
Mortified at Home
Dana Jolivet, a recruiter and mother of two who lives in Portland, listened to Mortified podcasts with her teenage daughter Dora on the drives to and from school. Jolivet thought the stories might ease the strain her family was under. "It was cathartic for both of us," she said. A dutiful diarist when she was a teenager, Jolivet read from her own youthful journals at a Mortified show in May, while her daughter sat in the audience. Jolivet and two others that evening shared their teenage wish to kill themselves.

"I thought I was alone," Jolivet said about her long-ago suicidal thinking. Hearing other adults share the same story from their youth "lit a lightbulb for me," she said. "We were all going through the same thing," she added. Jolivet wanted her daughter to understand that

the agonies of growing up are often fleeting, and that what seems overwhelming and tragic when you're young can be transcended with time. "It was good for her to hear, and for her to hear other people talk about the exact same stuff," Jolivet said. "It hits home that things aren't as serious as you think they are just then," she added.

Dora seemed to agree. "I went through a really hard time when I was 13," she said. Now 15, she understands that she's not freakish or alone with her troubles. It helps "to not have to learn that at 46, but when you're going through it," she added. Dora is close to her mother, and able to talk openly about her worries. But for kids who lack that kind of intimacy with a parent, they might find an outlet in Mortified, she added. "The podcasts are great," she said. "It's not exactly a conversation, but you can definitely find someone going through the exact same thing as you are," she said.

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Reflecting on Adolescence: How Stories Can Inspire Teen Empathy

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Some Mortified fans, Gootee included, have found another medium for these deeply personal stories: the classroom. Gootee teaches teenagers at the Youth Progress Learning Center in Portland, which provides services for kids who have experienced abandonment, delinquency, and other serious challenges.

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Produced by HS students

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Ladue broadcast journalists Phillip Robinson-Morgan and Jelissa Puckett report from the funeral for Michael Brown. Brown was shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer in August 2014.

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Produced by HS students on a trip to Vietnam

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Reflections on our travels in Vietnam from the city of Saigon to the Mekong Delta

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Produced by HS students on a trip to Cuba

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What happens when you question your faith in government and everything you've been told in school? This documentary is a personal essay by three high school students who asked themselves these questions after they visited Cuba. When they returned, nothing would be the same. This documentary was produced in February 2015.

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Produced by HS journalism students

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We take a look inside Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention and uplift program in Los Angeles to aid former gang members in becoming productive members of society.

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Social Justice Projects In the Classroom

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Social Justice Projects In the Classroom

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Edutopia article with project and lesson ideas

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Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, New Orleans: these cities have become synonymous with racial intolerance and symbols of what's wrong with race relations in our country.

As educators, we're charged with preparing our students to be successful in life and productive members of society. But with all the focus on standardized tests and core curriculum, we've forgotten that the concept of literacy should also include culture and tolerance of diverse people and backgrounds.

One of the best ways to develop cultural literacy and help our students understand these goals is through social justice processes and projects, activities that develop a mindset of concern for our society's inequity in wealth, education, and privilege. These projects empower our students to effect change through awareness, advocacy, activism, and aid. They're collaborative activities that help develop critical thinking, writing, and media literacy skills. Social justice projects' interdisciplinary nature helps students make important connections between history, culture, economics, and science.

Awareness

I would argue that many of our social and political problems stem from a lack of empathy, so a fundamental step in social justice projects is developing a mindset of openness and self-reflection. Research, historical facts, and data may be helpful for this, but I find that an emotional connection is the best way to awaken awareness, making the concepts tangible and personal for students.

One of my favorite exercises for this is the Paper Ball Toss. It's a simple activity that illustrates the differences in social class and how position in a hierarchy is perpetuated. Follow the exercise with a class discussion and self-reflection to explore students' preconceived ideas and misperceptions.

Another initial exercise is the I Am From poem (PDF), a sort of social justice Madlib where students reflect on their lives and share their concerns with classmates to develop understanding of other people. Ideally, these poems take us by surprise -- what we think we know about our peers may not always be accurate. It's a great way to explore how surface observations are misleading.

Choice

Students learn best when they're passionate about a subject and care about the result. Facilitate this by allowing them to pick topics that interest them and decide what form that project will take. Teachers might take a topic from existing curriculum and provide several options for projects. Even better, have students use a social justice lens to generate a list of concerns, and develop one of these as the focus of their project.

In St. Louis, journalism teacher Don Goble had a student become motivated to create a project based on events in nearby Ferguson. The student had lacked drive and enthusiasm in the past, but the event struck close to home and ignited a passion for learning that turned into a successful video news story.

Voice

We should make space in our classrooms for students to express their concerns and ask questions about our world in a public forum. Rather than writing essays or journals for the teacher's eyes only, publishing an authentic product for the world to see adds purpose and meaning to student work. On our trip to Cuba, one of my students produced a documentary that sparked an online discussion with a viewer in Cuba, changing how my student perceived the historical facts and her role as a filmmaker. If we really want to empower our students and have an impact outside of the classroom, consider publishing their work online.

Blogs

Students can create online posts that consist of text, images, artwork, weblinks, and video around a given theme. These posts, depending on frequency and length, might take the form of an online essay, a short daily/weekly reflection, or a large-scale research project.

Social media

Engage a global audience with students publishing to social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. This short form allows for fast, free publishing, and students can reach out to politicians, celebrities, and other stakeholders by mentioning and tagging them in posts. Leverage the power of social networks to reach a global audience.

Sample lesson ideas:

Research and follow social justice organizations and individuals on social media. Start a dialogue with them about a topic of your choice.

Share your ideas for solutions to social justice problems using a common hashtag, similar to #blacklivesmatter. Include links to articles or your own blogs.

Video and multimedia storytelling

The power of video and photography is unparalleled. Leverage mobile devices to record and edit video, and craft short films or documentaries. I previously wrote about the importance of teaching video storytelling and outlined how you can do this in your class. My students have explored political and cultural inequity through their international documentary trips and broadcast journalism stories.

For an introductory project, record and assemble interviews and testimony from people in your community, and post the videos to your class YouTube channel or Instagram account. Even young students can use photography and video for social change.

Sample lesson ideas:

Interview people that have made a difference in your community, and archive their responses in a multi-touch book or YouTube channel.

Produce a documentary that explores a problem in your neighborhood and offers solutions to fix it.

Make a documentary about something good in your neighborhood that others don't know about.

Advocacy and Aid

Students also have the power to affect change in the world right now. Activism includes letter-writing campaigns to politicians, lobbying corporations to change policies, and participating in local parades and events. Students may also find a cause they want to support, like volunteering at a homeless shelter or food bank, or raising funds for charitable organizations.

Students at High Tech High in Chula Vista, California created a successful Kickstarter campaign to address gun violence, and my journalism students created documentaries to tackle the struggles of former gang members in Los Angeles and how the lack of affordable housing affects people in large cities.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has many additional ideas for social media projects across all subject areas.

Best Practices

Social justice projects can be challenging because they take students and teachers outside of their comfort zones. To be successful, start by establishing an atmosphere where students feel safe sharing their opinions and developing a classroom culture of respect. Consider some exercises or projects that are private in nature (shared only within the classroom) and others that are public. Factor in student comfort levels and context when deciding where the projects will be shared.

Of all the meaningful experiences that we can provide students, those related to social justice might be the most important. For all of the facts, concepts, and skills that we teach, it's all for nothing if students are unable to use that knowledge in ways that improve the world around us.

Do you have a favorite social justice project? What advice would you give to a teacher for integrating these kinds of projects into the classroom? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Social Justice Projects in the Classroom | Edutopia

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Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, New Orleans: these cities have become synonymous with racial intolerance and symbols of what's wrong with race relations in our country. As educators, we're charged with preparing our students to be successful in life and productive members of society.

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Guide to Producing Student Digital Storytellers

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Guide to Producing Student Digital Storytellers

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How to process

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Everyone tells stories: journalists, politicians, scientists and entrepreneurs. Conveying information in a coherent and compelling way is vital to success in the real world, and it's our job as educators to prepare our students to share their ideas in effective ways.

We used to do this with papers, posters and dioramas, but digital tools at our disposal now allow students to create authentic stories that allow for audience interaction and a wider impact on the world. Here are some tips for transforming storytelling assignments in your classroom, no matter what subject or grade level you teach.

What is Digital Storytelling?

Digital storytelling uses video, audio, social media, blogging and other tools to convey ideas and information effectively. The emphasis is on empowering students to create authentic products that they can share with others beyond the classroom walls, and to allow for audience interaction and feedback. And so, why should we inspire students to be digital storytellers? Here are five key reasons:

Requires critical thinking: Creating an interdisciplinary product from scratch requires high level thinking skills like evaluating evidence, editing and curation, and production timelines. Digital stories often use multiple skills like writing, public speaking, photography, design and collaboration in a single project which makes them ideal for practicing skills learned other units or classes.

Authentic projects have impact: Creating real-world, impactful products that students share with an audience beyond the classroom is one of the best ways to enhance motivation and increase quality. Parents, colleagues and administrators can also see the great work being done in your classroom.

Places focus on writing: A picture is worth a thousand words, and video is 30 photos a second. It has its own grammar and style, but concepts of content, structure, tone and audience impact are just as important in multimedia as they are for an essay. Scripts, voiceovers and interview questions emphasize traditional writing skills and are the backbone of all multimedia projects.

Develops digital citizens: What to post online, when and how are all important questions for our students to learn to answer. Require them to comment on others' work and develop etiquette for online posts and feedback. Rather than being afraid of the internet, embrace it to teach digital citizenship.

Students can add to digital portfolios: All student work can be compiled into a digital portfolio that they can use to promote themselves for jobs/internships, for a self-evaluation tool or for teachers to track student progress.

Is this student-directed learning all it's cracked up to be? Yes--it turns out that many teachers want it and are looking for it.

Out of the top ten favorite edtech tools chosen by educators in 2015,* five of them were chosen because they "allowed student independence" or "captured student engagement."

* TEACHERS KNOW BEST, 2015

How to Educate Digital Storytellers

1. Focus on content, not the tools

It's always about the ideas, not the technology. Apps and hardware change rapidly, so its important to not fixate on gear that might be obsolete in 12 months. It's true that the medium affects the message (video is much different than Twitter, for example), but begin with what students want to convey, then choose the appropriate platform(s) to do that. That being said, some of my favorite apps for digital storytelling include: iMovie for iOS ($4.99, free with new iOS device), Storehouse (free), Creative Book Builder ($3.99), and StoryCorps (free).

2. Take it to the next "SAMR level"

There are many ways teachers use technology, and some are more transformational than others. The SAMR model is a way to gauge how deeply and effectively you use technology, and in this case, how tech can transform how we tell stories.

Take advantage of the unique aspects of digital storytelling and multimedia tools to transform learning, rather than just replace old analogue models. These include collaboration, audience feedback, interactivity, and video and audio. Consider a blog with links, and share posts via social media, or publishing a collaborative ebook that collects student projects around a theme. Require students to leave comments and feedback on online posts.

3. Develop expectations and outcomes

What do you want to accomplish? And what volume/frequency/quality of work do you expect from your students? Push students to their limits by requiring them to utilize multiple media in each project.

For a high school media project that explored Surrealism, I had students create short videos over a period of several weeks, then compile them into a cohesive "story" that added other elements like text, photos and additional video. Rather than focus on technical aspects (which I covered in earlier projects), this one was all about story, interpretation, and demonstrating an understanding of Surrealism. ( See PDF of the project here.)

4. Start small

It can take time for students to master a particular skill or for teachers to develop effective storytelling projects, so don't take on too much with your first assignments. Increase the difficulty of the project by slowly adding complicated media like video or audio to assignments. Like any assignment, scaffold skills and techniques over time so that they build on one another to increase complexity.

5. Evaluate early on and often

Share your rubrics and expectations early in the process, and be realistic about student outcomes for both content and technical achievement. Have separate evaluations for content and technique, and reward originality and audience interaction. It's a good idea to have multiple forms of evaluations, including self-evaluations, class critiques, and teacher oral and written feedback.

Subject-Specific Ideas for Digital Storytelling

English Language Arts: Create a video poem or photo montage as a visual interpretation of an existing poem being studied by the class. Rather than a literal interpretation, consider visual metaphors and interpret what colors, sounds or locations might associate with a particular phrase. Post the work on a public platform (blog, social media site, etc) and encourage students to leave comments.

Next level: Use Storehouse to create an interactive gallery for their work.

Science: Document scientific phenomena in the field and present the data and findings in a coherent and compelling way. This could be published in a class iBook or blog.

Next level: Collaborate with students at another school in a different city, state or country to compare/contrast findings from their respective locations.

Social Studies: A visual anthropology project where students create a visual documentation of changes in your community. Students use photography, video or sound to record older family members' reactions to changes in specific elements of local history.

Next level: Collect all content and publish it as an interactive iBook.

Digital storytelling is a great way for students to share their ideas and demonstrate their knowledge. Rather than a test or an essay that no one really cares about, students now have the ability to creatively engage the world through authentic projects--and that makes everyone more excited to teach and learn.

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A Guide to Producing Student Digital Storytellers - EdSurge News

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Everyone tells stories: journalists, politicians, scientists and entrepreneurs. Conveying information in a coherent and compelling way is vital to ...

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from Southern Poverty Law Center

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From film kits and lesson plans to the building blocks of a customized Learning Plan-texts, student tasks and teaching strategies-our resources will help you bring relevance, rigor and social emotional learning into your classroom-all for FREE.

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A free iTunesU course that walks students and teachers through the process of video storytelling.

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Passion and Purpose: Social Justice Projects

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Passion and Purpose: Social Justice Projects

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resources from my co-presentaiton at ISTE and SXSWEdu

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Passion and Purpose: Social Justice for Change

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Additional resources from Katharine Hale (@KatharinehHale), Michael Hernandez (@CineHead) and Kristin Ziemke (@KristinZiemke). Click to access material links.

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How to analyze visual messages

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Five Key Questions Form Foundation for Media Inquiry

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In the MediaLit Kit ™, the Center for Media Literacy identifies Five Key Questions as the core of our inquiry-based media literacy pedagogy. Where do they come from? Like so many good ideas that evolve slowly over time, they are simply an innovative recasting of the Five Core Concepts which the early media literacy field adapted, in turn, from traditional categories of rhetorical and literary analysis.

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This PDF defines VisLit standards

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Documentary from Toledo Museum of Art

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NPRs blog about race

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So you're at work one day and you're talking to your colleagues in that professional, polite, kind of buttoned-up voice that people use when they're doing professional work stuff.

Your mom or your friend or your partner calls on the phone and you answer. And without thinking, you start talking to them in an entirely different voice - still distinctly your voice, but a certain kind of your voice less suited for the office. You drop the g's at the end of your verbs. Your previously undetectable accent - your easy Southern drawl or your sing-songy Caribbean lilt or your Spanish-inflected vowels or your New Yawker - is suddenly turned way, way up. You rush your mom or whomever off the phone in some less formal syntax ("Yo, I'mma holler at you later,"), hang up and get back to work.

Then you look up and you see your co-workers looking at you and wondering who the hell you'd morphed into for the last few minutes. That right there? That's what it means to code-switch.

You're looking at the launch of a new team covering race, ethnicity and culture at NPR. We decided to call this team Code Switch because much of what we'll be exploring are the different spaces we each inhabit and the tensions of trying to navigate between them. In one sense, code-switching is about dialogue that spans cultures. It evokes the conversation we want to have here.

Linguists would probably quibble with our definition. (The term arose in linguistics specifically to refer to mixing languages and speech patterns in conversation.) But we're looking at code-switching a little more broadly: many of us subtly, reflexively change the way we express ourselves all the time. We're hop-scotching between different cultural and linguistic spaces and different parts of our own identities - sometimes within a single interaction.

When you're attuned to the phenomenon of code-switching, you start to see it everywhere, and you begin to see the way race, ethnicity and culture plays out all over the place.

You see it in the political world. In January 2009, then-President-elect Obama went to Ben's Chili Bowl, a famous eatery in a historically black D.C. neighborhood. When the (black) cashier asks him if he needs change, Obama replies, "nah, we straight."

(You also might have peeped the gif of President Obama offering a conventional handshake to a white assistant coach for USA's Olympic basketball team before immediately dapping up Kevin Durant, one of the team's stars, and greeting him with "My man!" )

You see code-switching in parenting. The blog SpanglishBaby is run by two mothers who are trying to raise their kids to be fluent in both Spanish and English. Among the concerns they address: " Is Your Bilingual Kid Mixing Languages?" When you watch young multilingual kids code-switching between three languages, it looks almost like a superpower:

(A little closer to home: I knew growing up that if my mom answered the phone and used her professional voice that she was probably talking to a stranger, that it was an adult, and that if she were doing this while looking in my direction, I was probably in trouble for something.)

And of course, you see code-switching all over pop culture. In February, the famously opaque Beyoncé released an HBO documentary that promised her fans never-before-seen access to her life, and proceeded to spend most of it talking in pop-star platitudes while remaining her inscrutable self.

But in a candid video that wasn't part of that doc, we see Beyoncé at a pool hall talking trash to one of her friends whom she just whooped in a game. It gives us a quick glimpse at a different Beyoncé - silly, unrehearsed, a little mischievous. She seemed like she could be your cool-ass cousin (albeit your cool-ass cousin with washboard abs and a flawless smile).

Both those personas are the "real Beyoncé," the same way that you're still you when you're sending an e-mail to your boss that's full of jargon and with proper capitalization and when you're texting to your best friend in lowercase acronyms. Talk in one setting in a tone that's best suited for another, and you might play yourself; it would be ridiculous if she were pop-star Beyoncé in the pool hall. (But it would be kind of dope to see Bey strut into a pool hall in six-inch heels, a sequined minidress, and a wind machine like, "I am Beyoncé and I am here to pool.")

The point is, code-switching is apparent in all the myriad ways we interact with one another and try to feel each other out. Check out this Key & Peele sketch, which gets at the nuances and tensions of code-switching more eloquently than we could say:

Welcome to Code Switch.
By the way: All this week we'll be looking for your best and worst stories about code-switching. Have stories about secretly learning Farsi so you can eavesdrop on your in-laws? Or maybe in that first year of college, when you had a crush on that dude from Atlanta, you suddenly picked up a real thick drawl you previously didn't have whenever you were around him. Drop your stories in the comments, or share them with us directly. Thanks!

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So you're at work one day and you're talking to your colleagues in that professional, polite, kind of buttoned-up voice that people use when they're doing professional work stuff. Your mom or your friend or your partner calls on the phone and you answer.