Check out what Sarah Shear at NCSS had to say about POV & Independent Lens in the video above, taken by Annelise Wunderlich.
November was a great month of education conferences for our Community Engagement and Education team. Our team traveled to Boston and Washington, D.C. to attend conferences for social studies and english teachers. We received a warm welcome and were excited to share our educational resources, including standards-aligned lesson plans, streaming clips, and a DVD lending library.
Eliza Licht and Aubrey Gallegos were in Boston for the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference. We love going to NCSS, because of teachers like Sarah Shear who have been using POV & Independent Lens films and lesson plans in their classrooms for years, and others of whom were hearing about our resources for the first time. On Saturday we presented a poster session about addressing school culture, race and achievement with our films American Promise (POV 2014) and Brooklyn Castle (POV 2014). Both films are part of American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen, a public media initiative made possible by CPB to help communities identify and implement solutions to improve high school graduation rates. Thanks to support from CPB and American Graduate, and in collaboration with the American Promise film team, Active Voice and Teaching Tolerance, we produced specially-designed workshops and toolkits for teachers, students and parents to discuss issues of race and achievement in the classroom, community, and at home. Check out the toolkits for American Promise here, and the toolkits for Brooklyn Castle here.
We also had a lot of fun sharing a booth with our sister series, Independent Lens (IL). IL has timely and impactful content to share with teachers (and always brings the best candy!). You can find their free lesson plans, video modules and other resources here.
Check out what one teacher at NCSS had to say about POV & Independent Lens in the video above, taken by IL’s Annelise Wunderlich. Thanks, Annelise!
Community Engagement and Education department assistant, Alice Quinlan, attended the National Council of Teachers of English in DC, where she also had the opportunity to share American Promise and Brooklyn Castle resources directly with teachers in a poster session. Teachers were particularly excited about the American Promise Lesson Plan, which asks students to share their own experiences with code-switching. It was great to see the innovative ways english teachers are bringing media into the classroom and into the hands of students.
If you’re interested in bringing hard-hitting social-issues documentaries into your classroom and/or community, there are easy ways to get started.
For free lesson plans and streaming clips, visit our Educators page and search more than 150 lesson plans by Grade and Subject.
You can also browse more than 80 films available in our free DVD Lending Library. There are just a few quick steps to borrow DVDs:
- REGISTER: Join the POV Community Network.
- ACTIVATE: Check your inbox for an activation link and temporary password.
- REQUEST: Log in to your POV account and click “Create an Event” to request your film(s).
- SCREEN: We’ll send the DVD to you about one month prior to your screening date, then you send it back to us after you screen the film.
A big thanks to the educators we met for all the work you do in the classroom! We look forward to seeing you again next year.
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