HOME Inc. One Year In

Much has happened since I started with HOME. It's my second year working with Brighton High School and we're hard at work on the first episode of a show similar in form to English High School's ETV. We recently had a screening of the TV show produced during our summer intensive program called Teen TV over at EHS. The three episodes from this summer can be viewed at http://teentvboston.blip.tv. Teen TV mostly highlights local organization doing positive work in the community and with teens.

We've added Somerville High School to the list of school we work with, so I'm doing whatever I can to support our new lab coordinator. Craig has been teaching a video production class as well as collaborating on video projects with other classes, including a Spanish class and a music composition class. He's also been using a Drupal website I developed for the school which allows him and his class to post assignments and projects and interact with one another. Over the coming months I will be continuing to develop our Drupal websites, organize our resources online and put in place an infrastructure that will support our expanding programs.

This is my second year, and I don't believe I've posted a field report before, so here's a rundown of what went down last year with some clips for anyone who's interested. Last school year I split my time between Brighton High School and Social Justice Academy, mostly keeping our program afloat but also expanding it at the schools to cover multiple disciplines. Some notable projects at Brighton High School included a series of videos with a history class based on some landmark Supreme Court decisions and a weekly program with a group of students with behavior problems where we held discussions about making choices, which were videotaped by the students. The after school media program also taped and edited school events with multiple cameras such as the Senior fashion show and the school musical Little Shop of Horrors.

At Social Justice Academy my associate and I did a documentary project with a group of students exploring the presidential primary race and what it means to have two minority candidates with a legitimate shot at the highest office in the land. The project was not entirely successful, as I expected both the students and their teachers to take more initiative and have some student involvement in the editing process, but it did get them doing some research, thinking and talking about the subject.

We also got involved with a project called The Peer Justice System, an alternative disciplinary system being pioneered at the school based on principals of restorative justice. A group of students from the law and justice class met weekly with a group of Northeastern University law students to learn about legal issues and restorative justice, and eventually hold a series of Youth Courts where the responsible party(s) would be given a remedy by a jury of their peers, with students advocating for the responsible parties, the school community and presiding over the court. We documented several of their meeting from which a video was produced, as well as helped students record the two Youth Courts that were held.