A Youth-Inspired School Project
State of the Re:Union would like to call attention to some commendable youths and their exemplary actions. These Detroit students were not satisfied with the way their community was being portrayed in both national and local media. It was not necessarily a bad reflection upon their city, however, they didn’t feel that it was entirely accurate. So, with the help and encouragement of their teachers, they decided to do something about it.
According to the excerpt found on The National Writing Project – Digital Is Website, “We Want Our City Back” is a photojournalism project that grew out of students’ chagrin prompted by the media’s “biased” coverage. They felt that the heroes chosen by a highly-recognized magazine to represent Detroit was not enough. (You can read the original excerpt by clicking here.) So, taking this into consideration, these youths were asked to create a catalog of what they thought their community needed. After the list was compiled, focus groups were assigned photojournalism projects in the following topics, representing students’ concerns:
- Raise Your Voice - Group attempted to combat negative “images” of the city via the media in print, photographs, discussions.
- Crime Fighters – Group looked at violence and other issues that students viewed as a crime, such as having a lack of health care, not having access to grocery stores within their neighborhood, or when faced with an emergency – having no emergency responders or a delayed response.
- Power in the City – Students presented both scandal and abuses of power, authority and trust, as well as ways that they thought power in the city could be redistributed.
- Building Bridges - Students looked at segregation in the city based upon race, class, gender, religion, age, socioeconomic status.
After the assigned photojournalism task was finished, they created project boards displaying the photos they took depicting their thoughts and ideas. Resource binders created by these students further expounding upon their concern with the intent of educating others about the issue targeted by the project. With display boards and resource binders in hand, the student participants then went to a summit “where they interacted with invited speakers around the issues at hand.”
This project might not have yielded earth-shattering results, stopping the country in its tracks with all eyes on the Detroit community, but change rarely works that quickly. The most important thing that could have come from this project, did: Helping students develop critical thinking necessary to make a change within their own community. It also cultivated in them some solid reasoning skills, helped them learn what they want their city to represent, and made them aware that they can find solutions to issues. They now know – through experience – that inaction solves nothing, but critical thinking can help others understand what concerns are important to them. These photojournalism projects are an effectual way to disseminate concerns to others in their community and getting their voices heard.
There are so many ways for people to get their message out, but how is it done effectively? What are some other tactics used in your community to get people to actually listen and learn about important concerns? Use the comment section below – we would be indubitably delighted to know.