Last week, Irene Villaseñor and I presented a workshop at Radical Math’s Creating Balance in an Unjust World conference. Radical Math is the brainchild of educator Jonathan Osler, who, in 2006, started the website as a way to encourage and support math teachers who wanted to incorporate issues of economic and social justice into their curriculum. The conference was attended by nearly 400 people from 26 states and 37% of its workshops were facilitated by youth.
Since math isn’t exactly the most obvious subject to be showcased in a social issue documentary series, it was very heartening that the conference organizers accepted our workshop proposal. Their decision reflects a positive trend: more and more educators are looking to engage their students by using media in their classrooms — and they look to programs like POV to help them make that transition.
It’s easy to assume that social issue media might be better matched to subjects like Language Arts and Social Studies, but the enthusiasm that we saw at the Radical Math conference proves that there is a diverse group of educators out there willing to further develop their teaching techniques and expand their repertoire. It’s a natural fit for our films, too — in a sense, it’s a pretty logical idea. Documentary filmmakers are educators, illuminating information deemed relevant and necessary, and they want audiences to learn something new each time they tune in. And it’s fun for us to be part of process, too!
Towards the end of the session, Irene and I walked around and introduced ourselves individually to teachers. One woman told me she was a curriculum developer, and that she thought using Waging a Living would be especially helpful for teaching mathematical concepts to some of her adult special ed classes. And then she mentioned that her husband was one of the co-directors that made American Tongues — POV’s inaugural film in 1988! Her comment made me realize that the idea of community engagement and education around films didn’t really exist as a fleshed out idea when POV first aired 21 years ago. In a sense, it’s almost too logical an idea. Documentary filmmakers are educators, illuminating information deemed relevant and necessary; they want audiences to learn something new each time they tune in.–>