Come join AN AMERICAN PROMISE short experimental film contributor William Caballero for the world premiere screening of his new film AMERICAN DREAMS DEFERRED at the New York International Latino Film Festival.
2 Screenings:
THURSDAY, JULY 29th …• SVA screen 2
• 2pm
• $9
and
SATURDAY, JULY 31st:
• Chelsea Clearview Cinemas
• 1:30pm
• $11
AMERICAN DREAMS DEFERRED received the 1st Annual HBO/NALIP Documentary Grant, and was chosen for the 2008 Latino Producers Academy.
A young Latino man, William Caballero, juggles unconditional family love with the challenges of breaking the cycle that has kept so many relatives from reaching their dreams. Set against a backdrop of Coney Island and Fayetteville, North Carolina, an NYU graduate student turns the camera on his Puerto Rican-American family plagued by social, medical and public health issues. U.S. health care and culture is examined through this young man’s lens, which also explores both his and family’s dreams. Many immigrants in the U.S. aspire to achieve the American dream and this Latino family comprised of immigrants to second-generation Americans is no different. As subjective as the barometer of reaching this goal is, the film begs the ultimate question: who attains their American dream?
Greetings from the Rada Film Group!
School’s out for summer but (as we all know) the learning never stops. Here are some updates:
The Achievement Gap in the News SAT Study Reveals Long-Suspected Racial Biases
On the Tuesday July 6th episode of the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, Washington Post blogger Jay Matthews discussed a study by a “rogue researcher” that showed that in the vocabulary section, African American test takers were doing better than their European American counterparts on defining the more complex Latin-based words and doing worse on the simpler Anglo Saxon definitions - that often had different connotations in communities of color. Examples included “bad” “slick” and “tight.”
New book Whistling Vivaldi by Dr. Claude Steele examines “Stereotype Threat”
Stanford and Columbia University social psychologist Claude Steele’s new book Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us further explores his groundbreaking work on “stereotype threat”: the idea that the awareness of commonly held notions about a group can affect members of that group’s performance and behavior. Listen to Dr. Steele talk about how to reshape expectations on NPR.
Anderson Cooper 360 revisits “the Doll Test”
In May, CNN host (and Dalton School alum) Anderson Cooper and Soledad O’Brien presented “Black or White: Kids on Race” The program featured a re-staging of the famous “Doll test” created by Margaret Beale Spencer, wherein kids are surveyed on their positive or negative associations with skin color. The mixed results are both discouraging and uplifting, and moved some parents to tears.
Andre Robert Lee’s Prep School Negro Explores Culture Clash, African American Families and Independent Schools
In the 1980s, Andre Robert Lee attended high school at a prestigious prep school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Twenty years later, he returns to his mother’s home to re-examine the journey that led him away from his mother and sister culturally, and meets teenagers today, at his high school and others, who are facing the same tensions. Learn more about the film.
Inconvenient Truth Director Tackles the Charter School Situation in Waiting for Superman Davis Guggenheim’s new film Waiting for Superman explores the lottery system in which some students win entry to charter schools with high success rates, and the rest are left to an uncertain future. In theaters this fall. (Pledge to see the film here).
An American Promise Production Updates
The Rada Film Group hears beautiful music at Sundance An American Promise co-producers/co-directors Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster just returned from the 2010 Sundance Composers and Documentary Lab where they met talented composers and made fantastic connections with fellow filmmakers in an idyllic natural setting. Thanks to the Sundance Documentary Fund for making this wonderful experience possible!
Ford Foundation Awards Production Grant to An American Promise In June, the Rada Film Group was awarded a Freedom of Expression grant from the Ford Foundation. “When we got involved five years ago, we were taken with the filmmakers’ sense of boldness” said Orlando Bagwell, Director of Freedom of Expression Work at Ford, at the Britdocs GoodPitch Forum at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. An American Promise “connects to our public education and students of color initiatives… This film can help teachers think through successful strategies to change their own classroom.“
Join the campaign by making a donation through our fiscal sponsor, Third World Newsreel. (Scroll to the bottom and specify your donation for “An American Promise”)
Yesterday, the George Jackson Academy, the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, sponsored by the Clark Foundation, the Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color (COSEBOC) and the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS) convened a promising practices symposium at NYU entitled “What Works for Boys.” At the symposium, sociologist Pedro Noguera of the Metropolitan Center for Education at NYU presented the findings of a recent study funded by the Gates Foundation on several single-sex and co-educational public, private, charter and independent schools.
The George Jackson Academy, an all boys 4th – 8th grade school founded in 2003 by Brother Brian Carty, was modeled after the De La Salle method – a pedagogy that created all boys middle schools founded by the Archdiocese of New York to combat de facto segregation and to prepare boys for successful high school experiences.
The day began with a panel moderated by David Arnold, George Jackson Academy head of school, and featuring Brother Brian Carty, founder of the school and Antwan Allen, assistant head of school for curriculum and faculty development. The panel also featured David Banks, President of the Eagle Academy Foundation which created the first all boys public high school in New York City, Kate Sciorba, lead researcher in the Gates Foundation study, as well as Lynne Algrant, Assistant Principal at De La Salle Academy who served as Director of Diversity and Director of Admissions at the independent Ethical Culture Fieldston School and has conducted longitudinal research into students of color at majority white independent schools.
The members of the panel all stressed the importance of teachers actively building a supportive community for students and being available to students in mentoring relationships. Lynne Algrant related an anecdote where a teacher expressed frustration and just wished that her male students of color would “meet her halfway.” Algrant’s response was simple, “From where are you measuring the halfway point?” For some students, she said, their halfway point might be walking out of their apartment in the morning to come to school. “Find their halfway point,” Algrant encouraged teachers, “not yours.”
Antwan Allen of the George Jackson Academy emphasized the importance of a curriculum that prizes critical thinking and challenges students to ask why – the skills they will use in life outside the classroom. He also mentioned the George Jackson Academy’s integration of English and History lessons in order to inform the literature the boys study with context, as well as encouraging the boys to think of themselves as scientists – defined simply as people asking questions and experimenting to find out answers. He also mentioned the importance of avoiding labeling students, but rather finding out the background of why they might be exhibiting certain behavior.
David Banks, of the Eagle Academy Foundation, observed that African American and Latino males were probably the most studied people on the planet for the past few years, but that they need what all students need: leadership at their school, supportive parents and committed teachers. But for African American and Latino boys, Banks said, the difference is that because they’re under attack from a variety of directions, they need more of it. The Eagle Academy places an emphasis on mentoring and parent involvement, and Banks explained, has shown a great deal of success in engaging parents.
Many of the same ideas were reiterated by the findings of Dr. Noguera’s study, which set out to explore the practices and impact of single-sex schools serving Black and Latino males to find out if these practices are more effective than co-educational environments.
Dr. Noguera began by summarizing what research has shown to be characteristics of schools effectively serving boys of color. These include:
Transforming the culture of the schools by focusing on student needs including clear expectations and structure (as many boys come from unstructured homes)
Demystifying school success – teaching study skills, organization and giving examples of what “excellent” work looks like – creating a culture of high expectations.
Constructive use of discipline to build responsibility and character
Creation of a school culture that challenges stereotypes and teaches kids the code of success, as well as the code of the streets, and when to use each – effectively teaching “code-switching”
Working with parents and community – especially to make parents feel welcome at school through engaging workshops that serve their existing needs
Commitment to hiring Black and Latino males in professional roles.
Cultivating leadership through opportunities for community service and activism
Channeling of boys’ natural energy – not trying to suppress it. This can be through sports, music and the arts.
Teaching of emotional intelligence.
He then set out to find out whether single-sex and co-ed schools were doing this. His findings:
1)It is inconclusive whether single-sex schools serving African American and Latino boys do this better than co-ed schools.
2)While single-sex education for girls was clearly focused on expanding the perception of gender roles among girls – making professional careers open to them, e.g. – there is “no shared understanding of what boys need to be ‘saved’”
3)Positive identity, engagement and safety are very important – students with higher levels of engagement reported higher grades. There was also a strong relationship between racial/ethnic pride and academic achievement. And positive “relational engagement [with teachers and school staff] was the strongest predictor of success.”
4)Not all boys are the same. Middle school students performed better than high school students across the board, but were also more likely to report not feeling safe in school – and lack of safety correlated with lack of achievement. Immigrant students and students of immigrants were less likely to feel safe.
5)Not all schools had a coherent educational vision.
Dr. Noguera reiterated that this issue should be approached with “a lot of skepticism” and that these are ideas that need to be interrogated, tested. “These issues are too important to treat with a simple, single solution,” he said.
This Thursday, April 22nd, AN AMERICAN PROMISE co-producers / co-directors Michele Stephenson and Joe Brewster will present scenes from the film at a special reception kicking off the Fourth Annual Gathering of Leaders convened by the Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color (COSEBOC) at Howard University. The theme of the conference is Re-imagining Schooling for Boys and Young Men of Color.
The Gathering will also feature a discussion and briefing with education leaders and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and a variety of compelling professional learning seminars focused on strategies for improving the educational experiences of African American and Latino boys.
