Tilt and Tacos

Tilt: Teaching Intermedia Literacy Tools. TILT’s media literacy programs combine technical training and hands-on experience to teach underprivileged youth how to critically understand and create media messages. By offering affordable workshops to schools, after-school programs, and community organizations, TILT helps students find the voices to tell their own stories.
I visited Tilt's headquarters at Ninth St Studios, a filmmaker-run nonprofit space available for community based film making efforts. Tilt works in schools and runs after school programmes for kids who gain practical skills in film and video work. The facility has a teaching room with 10 imacs that were donated by Pixar. Students can use the facility's cameras and lighting equipment and there's a screening space for showing the kids work at the end of the process.
There's a cool programme that's running at the moment through Frameline- San Francisco's huge LGBT film festival- Tilt sets young queer filmmakers up with 'elders' from the LGBT filmmaking community. The products of these partnerships will be screened as part of this year's festival- COOL!
I didn't manage to get to Baycat as my contact was away on the days that I could make it over there, but I'm in email contact with them.
I found both of these organisations really really inspiring- they are doing amazing things for kids in a place where these sorts of resources are not available to the vast majority of high school students.

After we visited Tilt at Ninth St, we took a bus down into the bowels of the mission district and had a lifechangingly amazing mexican meal at La Taqueria. I'm serious. You should all go there. I will dream about my soft tacos from now til eternity. Lola enjoyed her refried beans enormously. Too, too good.

Home

So now we're home, and time etc is upside down. Too much washing to do and rain forecast for the weekend. Cheered up by my gorgeous sister in London who sent me the following link. Unbelievably cool. Good to be back in Aotearoa, land of the playful octopus.

So, finally home after epic 3 leg return journey. All that time suspended at great height above the curvature of the earth was great for ruminating on the amazing experiences I had in San Francisco and the possibilities for turning these into action.
Jennifer's class at Mission High School was inspirational because of the extent to which they work against the odds of timetable, expectation and resourcing. California's public education system is in dire straits according to everyone that I have talked to, from our taxi driver to the airport through to a woman I chatted to at the laundromat. Schools are hemorrhaging teachers because of crazy budget cuts- and these tend to be awesome young practitioners because of the way that the system is structured. The precariousness of teaching jobs seemed even more dire when the lack of social structures that I take for granted like public healthcare etc is factored in. This is another reason that Jennifer's class was so inspirational- it's fundamentally harder to take risks in an educational environment like the one generated by the political climate in California. It seems ironic too that California, which must be one of America's wealthiest states, has slashed and burned its education budgets.
This is an educational landscape ravaged by cuts and prescriptive assessment regimes (this ringing any bells people?). My next visit with Jonathon, Lori and Kelli at The Urban School resonated in different ways- in my conversations with these teachers I heard echoes of conversations and discussions that we regularly have at Wellington High.
I've lifted the following straight outa the description of Urban School from www.urbandictionary.com
The Urban School is a small, fiercely independent high school in San Francisco, founded in the late 60's and located in the Haight Ashbury neigborhood of San Francisco. Its students are notoriously intelligent, friendly, street wise, and respected. Intense discussion based classes prompt the earnest students to think deeply and act wisely.
I think that Wellington High is on a journey marked by the same mission as Urban- igniting a passion for learning. What sets Urban apart (and I would suggest, way way ahead) is their emphasis on learning within a community- students are actively taught to be part of their community. This is from the urban school's website: "The most enduring aspect of an Urban education is that students learn to take responsibility for their education and become active citizens in their own communities."
This emphasis was evident in the way that all of the teachers and students that I talked to spoke about the service learning programme. It's offered in conjunction with a challenging academic programme which aims for more depth, less breadth. Three 12 week semesters: 4 classes per semester. One of these classes will be service learning. Over the course of 12 weeks students "get engaged in the community" building partnerships with a community organisation in a field that they are interested in. There's flexibility in terms of how the timetable works here, and students are encouraged to reflect on what they're doing and what they're learning. It's a 4 year programme- very structured in the first two years and much more flexible in the senior years. I loved hearing about this programme from Lori and was inspired by two of her students, Tali Missirlian and Hannah Gorman. Tali worked with an advocacy group for people who are HIV positive and Hannah did a peer reading programme with an NGO in her community. Both girls were very smart, very articulate and totally passionate about what they'd come away with from the experience. Tali and Hannah's image appears earlier in this post.
Some other very cool things about Urban: the entire last 6 weeks of the spring term is spent on an extended field trip built around an inquiry- this year they are following SF's water supply- and exploring some of the social, political, economic, environmental implications of the current arrangement. 6 weeks away, on an investigation, for senior students! There's a teacher whose job it is to manage and coordinate all this... How cool!
So I guess I visited two sides of the spectrum of education in SF- public school where passionate teachers and amazing kids put together something superhuman against the odds of resourcing and a prescriptive assessment system that they are required to adhere to, and a private school who have cut themselves loose of said constraints of assessment, focusing instead on enabling incredible learning in a variety of different meaningful contexts. I was inspired by each, and saw lots of parallels in terms of the challenges and opportunities that exist ahead for us at Wellington High.
Kelli is setting up a new Media Literacy block course for later in the year- I'm excited about hearing about what this will look and feel like.
I feel so lucky to have been granted access to these schools and classrooms to see some of the cool stuff that's going on- and I'd like to thank Jennifer, Jonathan, Lori and Kelli for being so generous with their time!
I will write up some more on Tilt, 9th St Studios and Baycat in the next couple of days, as well as add some cool photos/video. You haven't seen enough of the incomparable Lola yet.

I'm profoundly regretting leaving my laptop behind to fit in some more of lola's toys! Finding internet access is easy- but places which provide a terminal as well are few and far between. I'm currently sandwiched into the Apple shop, which is full of ipad buzz and hustle.
My visit to Urban School in the Haight on Friday was as amazing and inspiring as my visit to Mission High on Wednesday. The two schools sit at opposite ends of the spectrum- public/private etc etc, but both have an emphasis on service learning and are using media stuff to make real contributions to the community. The Urban School (www.urbanschool.org) has an unprepossessing frontage, but there is totally amazing stuff happening inside. Jonathan Howland, deputy principal made time for me to talk about the school's ethos and pedagogical philosophy. He showed me round the small but perfectly formed campus- all students have a ibook, and all teaching spaces have an interactive whiteboard. I then spent some time with Lori Hebert, one of the driving forces in the Urban School's service learning programme. I've been thinking lots over the last two days about the amazing stuff she's doing with her classes- and the amazing resources she has been generating. I also had a brief but exciting talk with Kelli Yon, who is the media/photography teacher.
This is a very abbreviated start to a longer discussion of what the Urban School and Mission High have been doing- a queue has developed behind me and I need to rescue hot and bothered lola. On MOnday i visit Baycat- www.baycat.org/education/index.php and hope to visit Tilt www.tiltmedia.org/ on Tuesday.

Mission High School

Another gorgeous morning here in sunny SF. Set off for Mission HS to meet with Jennifer Colker, the teacher in charge of MYTV- Mission Youth Television. The show is a magazine style show which is part of the 'peer development programme'- a kind of community responsibility programme that Mission High School run. Ms Colker sees her kids for under 3 hours a week, but manages to put together a student led television production every week which communicates important information about and for the school community. This morning her students were storyboarding a music video which aimed to inspire higher achievement in the California Standardised Test. 3 students had written and performed a rap about this in front of a greenscreen that Ms Colker has set up in her room. She has one imac and her powerbook, two studio lights, and uses 6 flip videos in the production of MYTV. She had about 15 students of about 15 and 16 in the classroom who clearly enjoy her class and what they do there. I loved the way that the classroom was entirely focussed on MAKING STUFF- there was no theory to get bogged down on, and an authentic audience, clear purpose and looming deadline which produced a tangible energy in the room.
Video production in this context is all about community- creating a sense of it, reflecting it back to itself, and serving the school community. There was a clear public service ethos that the students responded to in a really positive way. Media literacy here means involvement- making stuff= engagement with the process of meaning making.
Because this is part of the curriculum located away from traditional forms of assessment (like the CST) teachers and learners seemed free to engage with the public service ideals of community service. The Flannel manages to weave these ideals into its pages- authentic audience, real purpose- working with the imperatives of assessment. A weekly television programme would provide immediacy of audience and a community purpose for Film and TV students- but would have to operate outside of NCEA.
Jennifer also pointed me in the direction of baycat- an non-profit organisation involved in youth media education.
Lots to think about!

Spent the day soaking in SF's gorgeous springtime buzz and checking out the incredible collection at SFMOMA- some wicked video/film stuff esp. Inspired by 'the mission school' of art-making: DIY, low budget, no pretension art. Which is cool because tomorrow I'm off to Mission High School to check out their weekly television shoot and talk to the media teacher + the person in charge of service learning. Still no photos, because SF's not quite caught onto the whole 'internet cafe' buzz (I"m in the hotel lobby, paying $5US for 20 minutes!). Ka kite; further update to come.

The Night Before...

Phew. In Auckland, having packed and repacked 3 times.
We set sail tomorrow morning. Hoping the flight is okay, and that me and Lola are not taken for terrorists at LAX.
Will post some cute photos of Lola en route.