students entered and left during the school year) we met in the 4th, 5th,
and 6th grades of the Garber School. Over the school year we engaged in
media exercises with as many of the students as possible (including brief
camera and editing training sessions) resulting in four different types of
projects.
Why Video?
It is important to explain why this research project is framed around
student-produced media—specifically video stories. We could have sim-
ply asked the students to tell us what they thought of education and
transcribed it. This comes down to three factors:
• Public visibility of visual media—easily shared
• Familiarity and comparative relevance of visual media with stu-
dents
• The opportunity for the university to strengthen student media
skills
• Past success with visual media in inspiring student discussion and
expression
• The eye of visual media in seeing in the shadows of everyday life
Scholars have found additional merits of video in student settings. Visual
media like digital video are an important part of urban high school stu-
dents’ lives outside of school. However, “. . . [S]chools are arguably out of touch with the everyday literacies that many youth find relevant and into
which they, in part, are socialized” (Alverman and Eakle, 2007).
Miller and Borowicz (2005) found that digital video functioned to
“awaken something in students that traditional academic tools of books
and paper do not.” Approaches such as photovoice emphasize that giving people cameras to represent their lives promotes “critical group discussion about personal and community issues and assets” (Wang, Morrel-
Samuels, Hutchison, Bell, and Pestronk, 2004).
Talia’s Visual Story
Talia was one of six Garber students we followed to the Corrigan
School. Corrigan was seen as a better school than Garber because it was
in a comparatively more upscale neighborhood, closer to the university
and—unlike Garber where nearly all students were bussed in from outly-
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cxlix
ing neighborhoods—it was a community school where a large number of
students were within easy walking distance.
When it was Talia’s turn to respond to the question of what she
wanted to tell a visual story about, she had no doubts.
“Racism in the classroom,” she announced confidently. “My second
period teacher is a racist and I want to do a story about it.”
Messy Engagement: Collision of Communities
Talia’s declaration was an example of one of the many flashpoints in
the project that illuminated the rich complexities surrounding a seeming-
ly simple process of collecting stories from young people.
In an ecological sense, a community is a group of interdependent
organisms of different species growing or living together in a specified
habitat. By bringing the intellectually driven digital storytelling project from the university community into the pedagogically driven process of
public education delivery, we were setting up, not only an intersection of
community interests, but also possible collisions of interests, and ulti-
mately changes in these communities. The question is, who and what
principles govern such intersections, inevitable collisions, and ultimate
transformations?
Not only that, but also, where are the lines of communities and what
rights do these communities possess when it comes to securing their
boundaries? Certainly in a very broad sense, we were bringing commu-
nities of higher education and public education together, but “zooming
in” a little closer, we were also bringing together sub-communities with-
in, including: teachers, administrators, grade levels, cultural groups
(international and racial), two very different schools of a university with different practices, values, and politics, and the broad array of unique
principles, actions, and needs within these communities. And as we
moved closer to the creation of stories, we also unearthed storytelling
communities (fiction, nonfiction, artistic)—each with their own set of
principles, values, and techniques, not to mention the differences be-
tween audiences of these stories—their expectations and needs. The fact
is, all of these communities were touched in the process of making Smart
Kids Visual Stories.
The Story within Talia’s Story
Talia was smiling when she arrived at the main office to pick up her
camera and tripod. She would be recording her “Day in My Life”—her
entire school day—on the next day by herself. It was an exciting prospect
to think of what she would find in the wide open world of school-based
verité. Talia was a strong personality, and she really believed in her story,
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Chapter 25
so we weren’t worried about her. It was easier to imagine all the things
she might discover with her camera in real school life.
Two days later when she arrived at the school office to return the
equipment, Talia was not smiling; in fact she was completely avoiding
eye contact. When asked if everything was ok, she replied, “No,” handed
us the camera and tripod and started walking back to her class.
Talia was obviously hurt, and we considered letting her leave and
following up on the matter later, but given the fact that we were respon-
sible for setting her up on this now venture-gone-wrong, we felt respon-
sible for her and her well-being.
Following her down the hall on her way back to class, we discovered
that the teacher Talia had been trying to tell a story about suspended her
for bringing a camera into the class. The teacher told her that she had no
right to bring a camera into her class even if the principal said it was OK.
We assured Talia that based on what she had told us she had done
nothing wrong and apologized for the hurt this experience had caused
her. We let her know that we would be talking to the principal about
what happened.
“Can I leave now?” she asked, obviously still hurting from the experi-
ence.
Teacher’s Rights
Enter the dialectic between teaching community and the student com-
munity. Who were we as university outsiders to support the idea of a
student going into a teacher’s classroom with a camera looking for inci-
dents of racism?
Granted, the student was not proclaiming such an objective to the
teacher. She was simply documenting her entire school day, part of
which was her second period class with this teacher.
Regardless, was it right for us to encourage this activity knowing that
the student’s objective was to portray racism on the teacher’s part in
conducting the class? This is another instance of messy engagement that
warrants careful consideration. In our minds, we were staying close to
the objectives of our research project—to support students in the process
of creating their visual stories. The other side of this messy equation: Is it right for us to question the student’s story topic and motives behind it,
and conceivably judge it as appropriate or inappropriate as a v
isual sto-
ry? The simple answer was, “No.” But this was not by any means a
simple issue.
What if a student wanted to do a story about a “bad teacher?” We
certainly would not want to put ourselves in the position of saying to a
student who has been invited to tell the stories that must be told, “No,
we’re sorry you can’t do that.” But at the same time, we cannot ignore the
fact that such a story objective may hurt both the teacher and the school it
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cli
is about, placing us squarely between the interests of teachers and stu-
dents.
The Teacher-Student Dimension
Early in the project, we established an environment of listening where
students came to accept the idea that we would listen first. Our belief was that difficult topics could come out of an environment of trust and openness. Many times when we would be talking to the students about their
lives and perspectives, we could sense the growing ease of their expres-
sion. Oftentimes, students would warn one another that they shouldn’t
be talking about what they were talking about because it was a danger-
ous topic, particularly when it came to discussions of teacher attitudes,
bad behavior, and racial issues.
When Talia first mentioned doing a story on racism in the classroom,
we were both proud—that she trusted us to bring up a topic that stu-
dents, and teachers generally found difficult to talk about—and worried.
The worry came from the cultural and political power of the word ra-
cism, considering that this African-American girl was surrounded by
mostly white and privileged researchers, teachers, and administrators.
We also considered what little ground we had to stand on in this
issue. Who were we to negotiate a public conversation on racism? If we
stayed close to the project, assisting students in their efforts to “articulate a public voice and share insights on urban education reform in ways that
are meaningful to them,” then we had a great deal more ground. But
within the converging communities of university, public school, and stu-
dent, we faced limits. With this in mind, we talked extensively about the
subject of racism and how she would like to tell the story.
Talia’s Story: Concept and Genre
We began by discussing what she meant by racism and how she felt it
materialized in the class. Talia explained that all the black students were in one corner of the class and all the white students in the other, and the teacher treated the two groups very differently, favoring the white kids.
She also said the teacher was “very mean.”
It didn’t take long for Talia to decide on the vérité style for her story.
She would employ the “day-in-my-life” technique some of the students
had used in the previous year in documenting a typical day for them
outside of school to help others in their class learn more about them. In
Talia’s case, the day in her life would be a typical school day. In order for Talia to do this, we felt it best to get permission from the principal.
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Chapter 25
The Administrative Culture
Though we knew Lori Pettine and her school very well, the air of
messy engagement was coming on strong as we approached her office.
Being at Corrigan was truly personal. Our own children had attended
this very school. Plus, the school was no stranger to the impact of being
on the periphery of a major university. Principal Pettine had been very
close to the project from the beginning, holding the initial meetings be-
tween the kids and our research team in her office to make sure she
understood the project and also to insure that we, as researchers, felt
welcome in her school. She wanted to make sure we had the necessary
resources to conduct our research.
The messiness of our engagement at Corrigan was in the fact that our
work was built upon an academic protocol. Because of that, we had no
intention of telling Lori that a student in our IRB-approved research
study was interested in telling a visual story about the incidence of ra-
cism in one of her classrooms. Our priority was in allowing students the
opportunity to express their perspectives on school experience. Revealing
this story topic could conceivably put the principal in the position of
blocking it. The spirit of our research project was to encourage expres-
sion, not to block it.
But that wasn’t all. At the same time, we had no intention of letting a
student’s pursuit of a story harm the school. There would be several
layers of oversight in our research process that would provide the oppor-
tunity, if necessary, to consider the harm a student-produced visual story
might do to the school and/or other students. But we did not think the
beginning of the project was the point to intervene.
Ironically, years ago we had witnessed an event in this very school
where some very young students and the school were harmed because of
a nationally broadcast new magazine exposé involving children’s (out of
context) views on the subject of sex. Though the major motive of our
research study may have been to help students express their perspectives
on education, it was not without concern for simultaneous and complex
interests of teachers, administrators, and parents surrounding them.
In the meeting with Principal Pettine, we informed her that one of the
six students involved in the Smart Kids Visual Stories Project wanted to
bring a video camera with her to document a day in her life at school. It
was important that she approved of the idea in principle and had the
chance to notify the seventh grade teachers who would be affected. She
not only approved the request, but also thought it was a very good idea.
Talia’s Suspension
Despite her cooperation, we were not sure how Principal Pettine
would react to the problem surrounding Talia’s in-school suspension by
Confabulation
cliii
her second period teacher. As soon as we saw her she shook her head and
apologized, saying the teacher had overreacted. She had spoken to the
teacher about the experience in a special meeting involving Talia’s par-
ents, and assured us that Talia was perfectly welcome to return to the
class with the camera, and finish her project.
But when Talia was informed of the good news the next day, she
explained that she was no longer interested in doing a Smart Kids story.
The experience had been completely humiliating for her and she didn’t
want it to happen again. When she asked if she could go back to class, we
seized on the opportunity to ask her if she could at least help Leia, the
other 7th grader, with her project as opposed to leaving the project all
together. She agreed.
Walking the Line
Talia had attempted to tell a story about racism in school and had
been silenced before she could finish making it. In battling with the idea
of pushing her to stay with the project, or letting her return to normal
student life, we pondered whether we were doing this for our interests or
hers. We were clearly walking the line of possibly harming this child
if
our gut feeling that she would be better telling the story somehow, some
way, rather than walking away with the scar of having failed. So we
decided to be patient and slowly try to work Talia back into her story
once she had a little recovery time.
In the free moments around planning and shooting Leia’s story, we
continued talking to Talia about her unfortunate experience in shooting
her day-in-the-life story, and little by little she warmed up, eventually
agreeing to try her hand at a story. But she really did not want to face her second period teacher with a camera again, as that had hurt her too
much.
Given the passion she had shown for her original story idea, we asked
her if she would consider telling the story of what had happened to her in
the class when she was suspended. She was curious about how she
would do this. A good start would be for her to write down in her own
words what had happened and then read it into the camera microphone
as a voiceover. After that, we could talk about what kinds of pictures—
moving or still—might complement the reading of the story. We decided
to have Leia record Talia’s voiceover in our video editing complex during
one of the regularly scheduled field trips to the university. The field trips brought Smart Kids from four area schools together to talk about their
stories and help each other with the creative and technological processes.
Acting like long term veterans of the editing suites, Leia and Talia
went straight to their favorite room to begin their work. A few minutes
later, Leia called us back into the room to look at something.
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Chapter 25
They had discovered a short recording of the actual 2nd period class
where Talia had been suspended. It appeared to be an unintentional
recording because the camera view was oddly tilted, with off-screen
sound—apparently an adult woman shouting at someone—as if it was
recorded by accident. We sat down in the editing suite and watched and
listened to the inadvertent clip over and over. It was about ten seconds in total—not a lot to work with.
VIDEO:
“You need to put that camera away!”
Unlocking the Moviemaking Mind Page 18