Interview with John Minkler, director of The California Youth Democracy Alliance and also is the Digital Art Studio Partnership coordinator in Fresno/Central Valley.

(PM) I have with me John Minkler formerly with the Fresno County Office of Education who left that position this year to move full-time in running a unique video project with students in Fresno. John thanks for stopping by via the phone.

(JM) Your welcome

(PM) You run a project that called the Youth Democracy Project or something like that. Can you tell me about it?

(JM) The California Youth Democracy Alliance (CYDA) is beginning with a regional initiative to promote youth development, cultural competence and informed civic participation among students, ages 13-21. The project focuses on finding and developing leadership among diverse youth leaders in the San Joaquin Valley, especially from low-income communities. They will be engaged in leadership training, cultural awareness projects and deliberation on issues affecting them. Through this project the students will produce videos of their cultural heritage and current issues. After they identify the most critical issues, they will conduct research, consult with legislative advisors, deliberate with hundreds of their peers and explore policy alternatives, in local and regional meetings, including a Regional Youth Summit on January 24, 2006, and a CYDA Web Dialogue on their issues in February. They will communicate their views and present recommendations to government agencies and the public, encouraging youth voice, civic responsibility and democratic participation.

(PM) This project runs as an after-school and Saturday project, correct?

(JM) Yes, but it is connected to school.

(PM) How is the program tied in the school?

(JM) The Youth Democracy project is related to schools through leadership and government. We get students from high schools and soon middle and then elementary schools to participate with us on a number of levels from beginning students to experts. They are drawn from two main places, one is from students who are enrolled in career tech digital media classes and want to use the media to make statements or communicate ideas. Second we use the leadership classes taught in social studies classes along with leaders chosen from school government. Some students are recruited from civics classes as well.

(PM) How does a school find out about the democracy project?

(JM) Curriculum developers in social studies get the word out. I worked in the Fresno County Office and we used the administrators' leadership activities to engage superintendents and principals in finding students.

(PM) Do you recruit? How?

(JM) Yes through e-mail, flyers, I present at meetings. We have a relationship work within a six county region. There is an organization called the Civic Education Network. The regions send reps and I use the representatives as a recruiting network. They love the project. Basically the hook is through service learning.

I wanted to mention an event January 24th 2007, which is a youth summit. I also have an advisory network that meets monthly and I have a representative from leadership teachers at the meetings.

Then we appeal to students directly through word of mouth. We have an advanced leadership team who have taken the service learning class and done videos and now serve as our representatives in schools and in the community.

(PM) How did you get started in this area?

(JM) I used to teach government. Then I worked at the Fresno County Office of Education in the Leadership Academy program and worked on a bunch of projects related to cultural understanding and awareness. I know that these classes (government) may have little or no relevance to life of student. What does interest students is getting expert at using the technology to highlight issues and concerns. In the process they learn about good story telling. We create an opportunity to find and raise issues, governmental, personal, or political that the students find and are concerned with and then through the service learning class they learn about research and deliberation and what kind of ideas and formats might influence policy makers. They pick up right away that video works.

The whole purpose of the class is to increase direct civic engagement. The students have to know how to find an issue that is important to them and the community, research it, debate it, gather video evidence from leaders or people in the community, do a kind of short documentary video and then and maybe most importantly use the video to advocate for their position with legislators local and state, as well as appear in the community events.

We also have a after-school program called Dare to Dream that uses after school service learning and we use that program to find kids.

(PM) Tell me about Service Learning.

(JM) Service learning has to be connected to classroom curriculum. Instruction uses state standards in the content area of the class, be it government, civic, science (like ecology or environmental science) and the digital media classes. If they come from the social studies class then they learn video to amplify that curriculum, or if they are in a video class they use the service learning as a way to say something meaningful using video.

(PM) Service learning takes place after-school?

(JM) Yes.

(PM) So you have to work with classroom teachers. Is it a hard sell to teachers?

(JM) Yes in some ways. First you have to convince the school to offer service learning and then recruit students into the group to go through service learning. It varies. It varies with the student and the teacher. Sometimes they could care less. Teachers are having a hard time. Teachers are swamped. They can't do stuff that they perceive is "extra." This fits into that arena for some. Also the current emphasis on the test tends to iron out any desire to do projects that won't yield benefit to scores on a test. We try and meet the teachers halfway by giving them support and really run the program after-school.

(PM) Do students receive credit?

(JM) They get service learning credit. Of course they are already enrolled in a class. So if they have let's say a "Video" class they use the Video Storytelling in studio classes and get credit for the project. (PM) How prevalent is the Vocational Ed class? (JM) We have three classrooms of video. One thing you have to remember is that most of the students I deal with are low-income students or students who may be on the verge of dropping out. The administration wants to prevent that and to some degree so does the student. They tend not to see school as having anything for them. They don't relate to college prep classes and are bored. The video project grabs them and gives them hope and discipline. (PM) How many kids come from digital media?

(JM) I have maybe 50 students in project from video. Most are attracted to idea. They like special effects. I even have kids who have friends in video classes but they are not in the class and they want to learn about video so the service learning leadership class is a way for them to get skills that they like and can use.

(PM) What kind of skills?

(JM) Various skills from shooting to editing. They all have to use story telling so they have to write a script. But you also have to factor in the basic skills of being on time, working in a group, delivering products, taking pride in your work, and most of all communication skills, in making power-point and other type of presentations to community groups. The kids can't just shoot a video and leave it at that. They must find ways for it to be seen. They introduce it to community groups and answer questions, often to groups of 100 or so. These kids would never dream of doing that in school. But ere they have confidence. One thing you know for sure about video is by the time they are done, they know the subject well, they have lived through every shot, every question, they know why they made various choices, so they have supreme confidence in telling the story as long as they have a video.

(PM) What kind of projects do they do?

(JM) well we work with them. The older mentor students who have already gone through the class help students find a topic. Often it is a heritage related project. I also run a Latino Heritage program and many of those kids are enrolled here. They do oral history. They find and interview veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam wars. They get help doing a set of interview questions. Often one kid will be cameraman for another student. Then they bring back the raw footage and do a cut and edit. Then they bring that to the mentor and the rest of the class, who discuss the strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes they re-shoot interviews or add additional people to the mix. They do what any documentary videographer would do.

In the process they learn about society, what values and conflicts are there. They learn how to articulate those in a meaningful way. If we have one central objective for all this it is to support students, particularly low-income students in forming a point of view, gaining an interest in sharing that knowledge and telling the community hey here is what I thinks. That really reduces the democratic participation gap.

(PM) What's that?

(JM) Well we used to speak about the digital divide, rich kids could afford equipment and computers etc, but now even poor kids have phones with digital capacity and everyone has a Myspace page. But our fear is that poor kids do not have the confidence or the support to send messages. All they do is receive messages, from friends or from advertisements. Yes they are connected but the conversation is one-sided. They need to break that cycle. The way to do that is to put the onus on them to be a sender of messages and ideas. They need to build knowledge but gathering data and information and passing all that through a values lens. Once they do that and they see the community response they say, hey I have a point of view. I have a stake in democracy. I count; in fact I can be the leader. I can convince legislators to pass bills or to vote against items that I think are harmful. They even begin the dream of running for office themselves. They get involved in student government. So they are active in the digital world not passive. The nature of their Myspace changes radically. It is better stuff, and they now have something to say. So, they say hey that was fun, that was great, what else do I want to say.

(PM) You really get excited.

(JM) Yes, because I have seen it work hundreds of times. We have had over 200 videos produced over the last five years. Now we want to go into middle schools and elementary school.

(PM) Elementary school? Can they do videos?

(JM) Sort of, but our main focus there is more about organizing your presentation so we would use PowerPoint and maybe digital cameras.

(PM) PowerPoint?

(JM) Yes, you would be surprised. 5th and 6th grade students have a great visual aptitude. PowerPoint is great because you have to be concise. You have to learn how to chose language carefully. In a way Power Point is to video what poetry is to novels. I also think it is vital that young students get used to being involved with intergenerational projects. They really need to connect to the community. I find that when they are responsible for telling a story that involves an older person they are much more careful with what they saw. They learn a kind of respect that they would never gain in their normal lives, because there is this youth culture that envelops them. We can use digital media to expand their horizon rather than just numb them.

(PM) Like now.

(JM) Yes. It goes back to the democracy divide. We find successful students have a common trait of being involved. Connecting. So we use service learning and the video work to get them connected to each other, certainly to school and other classes and to the community. Yes they are on Myspace or they watch Youtube, but we get them to be the active party. It is very different. They almost never regress. They may not go to college, although we have plenty of "dropout to college student" stories, but generally the pay-dirt is civic engagement. If you are part of the community you don't vandalize, you don't commit crimes. You learn that if you don't like things the way they are, you can change them. In fact there is an imperative to change them. That's success.

(PM) The community connection seems very important to you.

(JM) Well to me and to the program. They need to use the community to get information and knowledge and they use the community to bounce back their version of things. It is vital. That's why they have to have a community tie to present the video to. Like in the Latino Legacy project we get them to present at a number of Latino community groups. We were even part of Hmong New Year this year. That's important in that culture, because the culture does not have a written language so visual communication and presentation is crucial to survival. If you can stand up and communicate to the elders a point of view the student gains a status and respect. They are no longer looked at as a young malcontent, which is common for Hmongs to think. There is a disconnect in America. The Hmongs value community tremendously. You have to give back.

Then there is news media coverage. Community presentations to clubs, Public presentations to city council, school board. The students always have presentations on Veterans Day and we have a presentation ready for Memorial Day coming up in May. The Latino legacy project as well.

Every class has two aspects. One is as a school based program. We also have community-based programs, leadership programs for all the projects. For example for students who have taken the class and done a video that was successful they can come back and work as mentors and we call advance leaders. They have special privileges, like they can check out a laptop of cameras for their use. They attend a Saturday clubhouse program at parks and recreation center. They have advanced technology training assignments. These are projects they organize themselves. At the same time we often have business leaders and funders attend the Saturday program.

Then they also have presentations and showcases like the one you guys run; The North American Film Festival. This year I have a student who is presenting at the National Service Learning Convention in Albuquerque. Veronica is part of the Latino Legacy project as well. She is an interesting case, in that she was a student who had a rough family life, had no intention of going to college. She didn't see that she was college material or so she thought. Once she did her video project she blossomed. Turns out there was a lot going on underneath. Now she is a real leader, recognized in the Latino Community. She took the class, got involved and before long we had her taking college prep classes and now she will be enrolled in the fall at CSU Fresno. Then we have a group of students who are going to Washington, meeting their Congressman, and attending other events as part of the advanced leadership training.

(PM) I want to ask you about college and the world of work as well as how you connect to the business community but I want to go back to the class itself for a moment. What curriculum standard do you use?

(JM) As I said the service learning must be connected to a class. Mostly, it is social studies, but it can be VAPA, or science usually environmental science and of course the main interaction is with the language arts curriculum. The new standards and frameworks are great because they are now including video and digital media. They have to write scripts, they have to edit scripts. They have to use verbal communications skills in giving the presentations. The student has to work out with the classroom teacher what standards they will use. Then they pick up standards from whatever else they need to do the video.

(PM) I have a kind of tough question; why do they do it?

(JM) They get leadership opportunities. They gain self-confidence. We can guide them into careers. Some get into college. I go back to Veronica who is undocumented. We used her video as a special presentation to admissions at CSUF. The Advisory Board got her a scholarship. She is now enrolled.

Then we have summer retreats at Shaver Lake and we have a group of students who will attend a 5-day retreat at UC Santa Cruz this summer. They will stay in the dorms and get a taste of campus life. Many of these kids have never been out of Fresno. It opens up everything.

The other thing is that the program is tangible. They make a product. So it isn't some class that they have no way to connect with. Once they get hooked then they attend class, their grades go up, they stay in school, they stay away from trouble. The sheriff has endorsed our program as an outstanding prevention program. Project oriented. Outcome.

(PM) How many kids go onto work in the industry directly?

(JM) A few. Mostly they get on a college track. I had another kid who would have dropped out. He studied video and he is now taking digital media at UC Santa Cruz.

(PM) Do you have a connection with colleges?

(JM) Not as great as we would like. The relation to Fresno CC is weak, mostly because the guy running the media arts there doesn't see the reason for the community connection. They have weak program in my opinion. We have a stronger relationship with CSU, particularly tech education. We have a summer program at CSU as well. Unfortunately it is about personalities. One of the weaknesses of digital media is that it is not rooted anywhere, certainly not in high school. So as a result it is always a tenuous connection. The beauty of the service learning model is that it can work everywhere. You can over-ride a natural weakness, because you don't have to have a strong digital media program per se.

(PM) Well if college is a big part of your thinking do you need to find students early enough so they have time to change course and do college prep coursework?

(JM) we think that all the time. That is why our recruitment targets freshman and sophomores. College prep goals are clearly one outcome. Keep in schools. The more basic objective is; keep them in schools. Tell them they have to have goals.

(PM) What advice do you have for educators who might be reading this?

(JM) A couple of things. We emphasis that schools can't meet all the needs of kids. Partnerships with community based support services are necessary. We are beginning to see that is something to increase. Once a student is connected to a community partner, they can get mentoring, advice, services, they can find scholarships. It gives them hope and then a direction.

So that's number one, try and use the digital media to get connect students to the community.

Secondly, I think schools should adopt civic engagement as a learning and behavioral objective.

Third I think that service learning is a great model. I think the county office is well suited to be a catalyst services. I know that the county can offer teacher training, they can coordinate regional plans, and speak to the community. They can certainly offer a way for students to get involved in this program without having schools have a full blown program. Many county offices have cable television stations and that is a nice way to showcase student work while providing educational programming. The county could develop model curricula for schools to adopt. The county office is also a good place to work with community colleges. They could be a kind of intermediary. They already run programs like migrant education and in many case regional occupational programs. All of those assets certainly can be exploited to build a digital media presence at any comprehensive school. If there are charter or career academies in a county the county office can help develop a digital media program there. I know that County Superintendent Larry Powell loves the program and I am hoping to complete a formal connection with the county office sometime this year.

The Fresno Office also runs a Leadership Academy. Leadership training education students should be involved in doing digital media. The County can find trainers capable of inspiring kids to be leaders. The kids need to be inspired. They are literally bored. They see no light at the end of the tunnel. The other thing is we do have a requirement that the student must maintain a 2.5 grade point average in order to work in the program.

Finally, I would urge you to emphasize what a powerful dropout prevention intervention digital media arts can be. I know that without the leadership classes through service learning and especially absent a digital media emphasis, we would be losing many many kids to dropping out. Whatever program can work on a consistent basis to keep students involved in school and working toward graduation is a tremendous asset and should be highly valued by any school system. I certainly hope so. This program works. We have a great track record and have proven impacts. I would hope a school or district could take advantage of dropout prevention money to start up a program and work with the county to help make it flourish.

(PM) Well thank you John for taking part in this project.

(JM) Thanks. I hope you will keep plugging away at the Digital Arts Studio Partnership. What a tremendous addition to education in California it would be to have that program funded.

(PM) Thank you for the kind words.