USA
A five-week summer course at the University of North Texas paired
college students with local foster youths to produce stories through
media — stories that otherwise might go untold.
“Kids get talked
about, but they don’t often have a voice,” said Jacqueline Vickery, a
media arts professor at UNT.
When Vickery first taught her “Community Media Education” course in 2016, she wanted to find a way to put her years of researching media “into action,” she said. A partnership with Cumberland Presbyterian Children’s Home must have been what she needed to put her expertise into another form of practice. This year, Vickery’s course ran for its second semester.
“We really frame it as ‘What do you want people to know about you?’” Vickery said.Eight UNT media arts students and more than a dozen Cumberland teens were mixed into four groups and tasked with creating video projects. Some groups used “green screens” and stop-motion animation, while others narrated over footage of themselves. The aim is to open foster teens into the world of radio, television and film.
“It just opens up a new world of expression,” Vickery said.
Last week, groups were in their final week of production, wrapping up filming and editing on their videos.
“We’re going to win,” one teen said during his group’s production process. “We’re going to get that Golden Globe for this.”
His group’s project was titled “Life’s Bad Decisions,” based one group member’s true story of running away from home.
Another student, who played a role as one of the girls who ran away in their video, said the moral of her story is that “you can’t always run away from your problem.”
Teens’ identities in this story are hidden, just as they were in their projects, to protect the confidentiality of Cumberland’s foster youths. Many foster kids are victims of trauma, which can affect their learning abilities and experiences.
Administrators with Cumberland say exposing their residents to the camp and allowing them the opportunity to experience a possible career path is a way to help the marginalized foster kid demographic bloom.
“[At camp] they see that there’s so much more than their limited perspective understands,” said Jennifer Livings, interim president at Cumberland. “Any time we can expose youth and foster care [kids] to a different career path, that’s what we’re about.”
Livings said although kids in foster care are provided college tuition assistance — through state-mandatedtuition exemptions and fee waiversat Texas public colleges — less than 4 percent take advantage of the aid.
State research from 2017shows between 2 percent and 9 percent of foster youths who go to college complete a degree.
By bringing her teenage residents to UNT for camp, Livings said she hopes they will be able to gain experience that will help them strive to attend college.
“They get to be on campus,” Livings said. “They get to be here.”
The Rev. Katie Klein, a chaplain and mentor to Cumberland kids, said the camp helps open an emotional side of her residents she often doesn’t see. She said while one of her Cumberland teens might wall herself off from others, at camp she changed face.
“I look at what’s going on in their group — she’s engaged,” Klein
said. “It’s amazing to see her put that wall up, and then when she’s in
it [at camp], her wall comes down.”
Other barriers are broken at camp too.
Vickery said the camp allows for her college students, many of whom she said have dreams of Hollywood, to learn that film is “not just for profit.”
“It’s really for my students to switch roles from being the student to being the instructor,” Vickery said.
Britt Couch, a UNT student majoring in media arts who is in Vickery’s
course, said the time he spent with foster youths showed him a different
perspective of the foster care program.
“It changed my perspective on
what foster kids are actually like,” Couch said. “[They’re] just like
how I was when I was a kid.”
The culmination of many weeks of film and audio production for the different films was showcased Friday afternoon in a recreation center at the Cumberland residential campus. It was a “red carpet” event, with hors d’oeuvres and “mocktails.”
Titles of the projects were revealed: “Life’s Bad Decisions,” “Stressed Out,” “Positive Power” and “Our Future.” Awards were given out for best script writing, best creative collaboration, best visual effects and best audio editing. And celebrations were had.
The camp instilled a newfound idea in at least with one Cumberland teen.
“Being here has made me want to go to college here after I graduate high school,” the teen said.
13 August 2018
