Teaching Youth Media

This book explores the power of using media education to help urban teenagers develop their critical thinking and literacy skills. Drawing on his 20 years of experience working with inner-city youth at the acclaimed Educational Video Center (EVC) in New York City, Steven Goodman looks closely at both the problems and possibilities of this model of media education.

Responding to our national concern about adolescents, literacy, media, and violence, Teaching Youth Media:

• Describes the changes schools and after-school programs need to make in order to create a media education that empowers students to change their world.
• Explores the intersection of literacy and culture as youth learn to analyze information from a variety of sources, including television, newspapers, books, films, school, church, and their lives outside of school.
• Features case studies of students and teachers engaged in making video documentaries at EVC and in an alternative high school.
• Illuminates the practical day-to-day challenges faced by professional developers and teachers working to change the way education is practiced in their classes and schools.
• Looks at the profound “disconnect” that results when teachers and curriculum fail to recognize the social and cultural contexts in which urban students live.
• Explores the critical thinking and technical video arts skills students develop as they learn collaboratively to conduct interviews, research, shoot, log, and edit their documentaries.