Damiana Gibbons

Sometimes I’m floored by how when given the chance, young people use their voices to tell their own stories, to represent their own lives. I find it even more amazing when young people do so when facing misrepresentations and lies, half-truths told by those outside their lives. This is what children of color or poverty have to do. They have to tell their stories and find a way to make them heard above all the stories out there that often make it seem like there is only one story to tell: the one that’s always been told. These kids counter that story always told.

Yesterday, I saw one such example of a powerful youth counter-story. In response to a Diane Sawyer 20/20 special, “Children of the Plains,” young Lakota teens make their own counternarrative in this powerful video (see full story here).

Rather than overlaying my own rhetoric over this, I just wanted to share it with you as a teachable moment to share in your own classrooms. Spark open and honest dialogue with it. And, listen to the stories your students tell you. I bet you’ll be surprised what you find out. I always am.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been attending the Literacy Research Association 2011 Conference. I have seen many fascinating presentations, many exploring new ways of seeing literacy and social justice. I’m proud to make even a small contribution to this conference. Here is a brief summary of my presentation, in case you find it of interest.
LRA 2011_Gibbons

Thank you, Nate Burgos, for reminding us just how amazing a beautifully designed book can be.

Rare Book Feast #1: Herbert Bayer’s Book of Maps from Nate Burgos on Vimeo.

The Johnny Cash Project: What It Is
For all those of us who are looking for new ideas for our students to collaborate in digital art-making, why not join a project that has thousands of collaborators from all over the world? The Johnny Cash Project is just such an idea, and I think that it could be a way to engage our students. It might even blow their minds a bit, too.

Chris Milk and others provide the basic tools: Johnny Cash’s last recording, images taken from frames of Johnny Cash videos, films, photographs, and a website on which you draw your own image. On the site, you can explore what other people have already created along with a documentary about the project. And, you can participate by drawing a portrait of Johnny Cash yourself based on an image that they give you.

Here’s their vision: “The Johnny Cash Project is a global collective art project, and we would love for you to participate. Through this website, we invite you to share your vision of Johnny Cash, as he lives on in your mind’s eye. Working with a single image as a template, and using a custom drawing tool, you’ll create a unique and personal portrait of Johnny. Your work will then be combined with art from participants around the world, and integrated into a collective whole: a music video for “Ain’t No Grave”, rising from a sea of one-of-a-kind portraits.” (http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/#/about)

The video shown here can only capture a glimpse of what the collection of everyone’s images is. I suggest playing the video with the timeline showing the thousands of images already created. Then, you can start making your own image, adding to the video.

Ideas for How to Teach Using this Website

For film classes
The Johnny Cash Project is based on a collection of frames, so it is a great way to teach the basics of filmmaking, which is essentially a series of images strung together through time and space. This is a way for students to begin wrapping their mind around this concept. I would have them go through the website on their own, as an assignment, and create their own image. Then, have them watch the video to see how it all comes together as a “film.” A written reflection on what they learned could be added as could a brief video response.

A key feature of this site that is especially applicable to film (or art) students is the Explore tab in the menu bar on the top right. Sub-channels under this tab include: Highest rated frames, Director Curated Frames, Abstract Frames, and so on. Having students explore the different sub-channels in this tab would be a good way to help them to see the different possibilities in images that could be used in films.

I would link this assignment to a larger assignment in which they use their own images in a film. Alternatively, you could analyze the documentary film created about this Project, if the class is focusing on documentaries, as a way to link to future lessons or assignments.

For Media, Technology, and Learning classes
For these classes, I would begin with the same assignment as the film class, but I would add a component addressing how they could use this site or this type of site in their own future classrooms. For instance, you could discuss how they could do a lesson with their students in which they chose an artist and set of images that the students then used as a foundation. Then, the preservice teachers could scan those images and put them together into a short film. They could then have a screening of their students’ film and have them respond. After talking through this idea or others, you could have your students brainstorm different ways that they could use projects such as these in their classrooms.

As a link to future lessons and assignments, you could have your students write a lesson plan for one of the ideas brainstormed during class to try out in their student teaching sites or to include in their teaching portfolios, especially if those portfolios are digital. Alternatively, you could have the students return to a lesson they have already created and/or taught to have them integrate digital media into it, if possible, to see how a “traditional” lesson could have a media component.

These are just a few teaching ideas for this project. What would you do with this site in your classes?

Today, the Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah was fined $50,000 for saying an anti-gay slur to a fan. And, a month ago, Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 for an anti-gay slur he hurled at a referee (the higher fine was partly due to the fact that he’d said it to an official).

It’s about time that the NBA cracked down on these kinds of slurs.

During this Mavs/Thunder game tonight, this prompted a long discussion about the responsibility of the fans, the players, and even the networks to set a good example. One commentator even suggested that rather than sensationalizing bad behavior that it is a better idea to give air time to players behaving well. A novel idea.

This is also very helpful for teachers as well. Many years ago, I remember teaching lessons on tolerance to my students, in particular, focusing on how language, such as using “gay” to mean “stupid” can have a real impact. I remember one day overhearing one of my students complaining to his girlfriend about how he couldn’t say anything anymore and how he had to “talk nice.” I’m not saying he reformed completely, but it was a step in the right direction.

In a more impactful way, this NBA Cares PSA, though not perfect, could be a real step in the right direction in a big way. It is certainly a good example for young people watching their favorite players. Add to this, a general intolerance of this type of bad behavior, and we just might be on to something.

I made this quick documentary for my Aunt Bea who has been calling me every day that we make national news. She’s worried because she sees the one person who got arrested but not the thousands who didn’t. I know that even mainstream press (not just Fox News) is running with spectacle-and-only-spectacle, which might be why yesterday’s peaceful rally, our largest yet at about 200,000, didn’t even make national news beyond the passing of the bill. /sigh. But, I thought people should get a taste of what the rallies are actually like. Plus, yesterday there were tractors. I must be in Wisconsin.

Note: Apologies for the length. I wanted everyone to hear the farmer speaking at the end.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to make a documentary. What is a documentary? I’m not even talking about what makes a good documentary. I mean what is it? What’s happening with all this?

Reading this fascinating take in the New York Times: Documentaries (In Name Only) Of Every Stripe is helping my thinking along a bit. Scott writes: “So the salient question might not be, “What is a documentary?” — an abstract, theoretical approach to a form that is grounded in the concrete facts of life. Instead it might make sense to ask what (or whom) a given documentary is for? Is it a goad to awareness, an incitement to action, a spur to further thought? A window? A mirror? The more you think about it, the less obvious the truth appears to be.” The focus on the purpose of the documentary is getting us somewhere for sure……

Also, today in Madison, I attended a panel in which Errol Morris spoke about what documentaries mean to him. (for a review of Morris’ talks over the past couple of days, check out this piece in the Cap Times). What I found intriguing from his talk and what is beautifully illustrated in his new documentary Tabloid is that truth is not necessarily what documentaries ought to be about. He wants to feel inspired by documentaries. In particular, he wants them to be about the “caprice in life,” meaning they have to have something new in them to give us a reason to watch them.

Erica Halverson calls this the reportability and credibility with youth media. Something is either unique and worth telling (reportable) or it is familiar and believable (credibility). In recent work, Michelle Bass has expanded this idea to see if reportability and credibility in youth films is really more about continuums not dichotomies. This all makes a lot of sense, actually, but I’m still wondering how much of this with youth media, however, is predetermined, especially if the media is made by kids of color or poverty. I’m wondering this.

So, what does it mean when youth make documentaries? They are not simply mimicking what the adults do. Yet, how is it similar? What makes their work different? What happens when youth are meant to represent their identities in their films? What does truth mean when it meets youth identity? These are some of the questions that I’m wrestling with right now.  I’ve spoken a bit about this film at a talk last fall, but I’m interested in what you have to say.  If you like, have a look at the film above and give me any of your thoughts about these issues…..