How It Is: High School Girls Use Drama to Address Gossip

Twenty New York City public school students at the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women (SBYW) are working with Media Impact in an effort to improve their school community.  The young woemn are part of Media Impact’s My School – My Community program to engage students in creating critical conservations about issues in their schools -- in this case gossip and school spirit.
 
My School – My Community is an innovative approach to learning that directly and actively engages students. Through hands-on exploration, students learn to effectively use creative storytelling and media -- dramas, talk shows and campaigns -- to catalyze change and mobilize action about critical issues affecting their schools.  Now in its second year, My School - My Community uses communication tools to enable and empower students to take ownership of their school, provides a platform for student voices in the decision making process and strengthens the capacity of youth to engage peers, administrators, teachers and parents in building a strong, collaborative school community.

The reflection below was submitted by Tiana Perez, an 11th grade student at SBYW who joined the initiative in September.

 

Since I’ve started My School – My Community I’ve liked it a lot.  We have come a long way since we started in September.  We are trying to change our school’s spirit and bring all the grades together.  It is February now and so far we have written a video drama called “How It Is,” which was a fun and difficult experience.  It was difficult because we had to get used to working with each other and coming up with new and interesting ideas that make sense.    We have written six episodes, and we will eventually have eight all together.  Writing the episodes was hard because we had to come up with characters, scenarios, etc., but all of us came together and did a great job.      Now we are filming and it’s a really fun experience.  We get to become these characters with different personalities.  I think this will benefit our school spirit because all the girls will see the problems happening in our school and hopefully bring us together.  I have learned a lot so far.  I enjoy My School-My Community.

 

PCI-Media Impact empowers communities worldwide to inspire enduring change through creative storytelling. 
For 25 years, we have worked with local partners to produce programs that address the most pressing social and environmental issues. Using our unique My Community methodology, we engage and empower audiences around the world to improve their own lives. Working with local partners, we change the world one story at a time. For more information, please visit: www.mediaimpact.org

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