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Education

G IS FOR GUN: THE ARMING OF TEACHERS IN AMERICA

Directed by Kate Way, Julie Akeret

Explores both sides of the highly controversial trend of arming teachers and staff in America's K-12 schools.

G IS FOR GUN explores the highly controversial trend of armed faculty and staff in K-12 schools. Only five years ago this practice was practically unheard of, but since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, it has spread to as many as a dozen states. Often without public knowledge, there are teachers, administrators, custodians, nurses, and bus drivers carrying guns in America's schools.

G IS FOR GUN documents a growing program in Ohio that is training school staff to respond to active shooter situations with guns, and follows the story of one Ohio community divided over arming its teachers.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 27 minutes

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STILL WATERS

Directed by Peter Gordon

In his tiny, one-room, after hours, free school in Brooklyn, Stephen Haff teaches forty Hispanic kids reading, creative writing and Latin.

A remarkable one-room school in Brooklyn is facing a tough year. It's the run up to the US presidential election and anti-Latino rhetoric is ramped up--an extra source of tension for a hard-pressed Hispanic community already threatened by gentrification and eviction.

The school, Still Waters in a Storm, is the creation of Yale grad Stephen Haff. A passionate critic of mainstream education, he believes in the joy of learning without tests and the innate creativity of children and insists that the school is free. It survives precariously on the thinnest of shoestrings.

When regular school finishes, Still Waters starts working. Stephen and his group of children explore, with the help of illustrious guest writers like twice Booker Prizewinner Peter Carey, the power of storytelling, creativity and community. And along the way they discuss Donald Trump and gentrification with humor and passion.

Filmed over a year STILL WATERS follows this compelling man, his philosophy, the spirit of the children who attend, and the dreams and fears of their immigrant Hispanic community.

DVD / 2017 / (Grade Level: 7 - 12, College, Adults) / 79 minutes

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CELLING YOUR SOUL

Directed by Joni Siani

An examination of our love/hate relationships with our digital devices from the first digitally socialized generation, and what we can do about it.

In one short decade, we have totally changed the way we interact with one another. The millennial generation, the first to be socialized in a digital world, is now feeling the unintended consequences.

CELLING YOUR SOUL is a powerful and informative examination of how our young people actually feel about connecting in the digital world and their love/hate relationship with technology. It provides empowering strategies for more fulfilling, balanced, and authentic human interaction within the digital landscape.

The film reveals the effects of "digital socialization" by taking viewers on a personal journey with a group of high school and college students who through a digital cleanse discover the power of authentic human connectivity, and that there is "No App" or piece of technology that can ever replace the benefits of human connection.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adult) / 48 minutes

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EARTH SEASONED, GAPYEAR

Directed by Molly Kreuzman

Diagnosed with learning difficulties, Tori finds her greatest teacher in nature, spending a "gap year" living semi-primitively with four other young women in Oregon's Cascade Mountains.

Earth Seasoned...#GapYear is the inspiring story of five young urban women who spend a gap year between high school and college living semi-primitively in a remote mountainside wilderness in Oregon. Told mainly through the story of Tori Davis, a teenager with learning difficulties, the film chronicles the group's four seasons in the woods as part of the Caretaker nature program. As the seasons succeed, the group has to adapt to what the wilderness provides and to what it withholds.

Through lyrical live action footage and smartly paced animation, the film reveals how separately and together the girls learn ancient skills of craftsmanship and teamwork and forge deep powers of resilience and self-reliance. Earth Seasoned has essential messages about talent, compassion and community and about the real conditions for human flourishing.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 75 minutes

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CULTIVATING KIDS

Directed by Melissa Young, Mark Dworkin

On South Whidbey Island, WA, a school farm shows that a garden can be a valuable addition to the curriculum while encouraging a healthy diet.

On South Whidbey Island in the state of Washington, a school farm involves children from kindergarten through high school in every phase of raising organic vegetables as part of their school experience. Supported by local non-profits, community volunteers, and the school district, it shows that a garden can be a valuable addition to a school curriculum, while encouraging children to eat healthy food. The school farm sells local, organic produce to the school cafeterias and also supplies the local food bank and community nutrition programs with fresh organic produce throughout the growing season.

DVD / 2016 / (Grades 4-12, College, Adults) / 23 minutes

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DAUGHTERS OF THE FOREST

Directed by Samantha Grant

A group of girls in a remote forest in Paraguay are transformed at an experimental high school where they learn to protect the threatened forest and build a future for themselves.

DAUGHTERS of the FOREST tells the powerful, uplifting story of a small group of girls in one of the most remote forests left on earth who attend a radical high school where they learn to protect the threatened forest and forge a better future for themselves.

Set in the untamed wilds of the Mbaracayu Reserve in rural Paraguay, this intimate verite documentary offers a rare glimpse of a disappearing world where timid girls grow into brave young women even as they are transformed by their unlikely friendships with one another. Filmed over the course of five years, we follow the girls from their humble homes in indigenous villages through the year after their graduation to see exactly how their revolutionary education has and will continue to impact their future lives.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2016 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 56 minutes

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EAST OF SALINAS

Directed by Laura Pacheco, Jackie Mow

Jose Anzaldo is an excellent student with a bright future except that he is undocumented, the child of migrant farm laborers in California's Salinas Valley.

EAST OF SALINAS begins with 3rd grader Jose Anzaldo telling us what he wants to be when he grows up. His parents work from sun up to sun down in the heart of California's "Steinbeck Country," the Salinas Valley. With little support available at home, Jose often turns to his teacher, Oscar Ramos, once a migrant farm kid himself. In fourth grade his teacher told him if he worked hard he could have a different life. Oscar won a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley. The day he earned his degree, he bought a car and drove home to the fields. He's been teaching ever since.

Jose is Oscar's most gifted student. But how do you teach students like Jose who have no place to do their homework? How do you teach a kid who moves every few months? This is what Oscar is up against every day. Oscar not only teaches his students reading, math and science, he gives them access to a world beyond their reach.

But Jose was born in Mexico--and he's on the cusp of understanding the implications of that. As we watch this play out over three years, we begin to understand the cruelty of circumstance--for Jose and the many millions of undocumented kids like him.

EAST OF SALINAS asks, What is lost when kids like Jose are denied opportunities?

DVD / 2015 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 53 minutes

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LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY

Directed by Helen De Michiel

Passion, creative energy and persistence come together when Berkeley advocates and educators tackle food reform and food justice in the schools and in the neighborhoods.

How are citizens transforming local food systems? How are innovators changing the way children eat in schools? How do we talk about culture, identity and responsibility through the lens of food and health?

LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY is a beautiful and engaging story of how a diverse group of pioneering parents and food advocates came together to tackle food reform and food justice in the schools and neighborhoods of Berkeley, CA.

Through a mosaic of twelve interconnecting short documentaries, the film explores food and education, children and health, and citizens making democratic change. This is a rich and multi-dimensional story of passion, creative energy, and idealism -- a project linking the ways we teach our children to eat and understand food to the traditional passing of powerful values from one generation to the next.

LUNCH LOVE COMMUNITY is divided into three thematic programs - Heart, Body, Mind - each containing four short films.

DVD ( Closed Captioned) / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 78 minutes

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EXTREME BY DESIGN

Directed by Ralph King Jr. and Michael Schwarz

In a Stanford multidisciplinary, project-based course, student design teams are building a better world...one product at a time.

EXTREME BY DESIGN follows Stanford business, engineering and medical students as they work in teams, using design thinking methods, to develop products and services that serve the needs of the world's poor. One student team works on a breathing device to keep babies alive in Bangladesh. Another seeks a way to store drinking water in Indonesia. The third team project is to design an IV medicine infusion pump.

It's all part of the Design for Extreme Affordability course inspired and launched by the Stanford d.school. The film begins on the first day of the course and ends eight months later as one group of students returns to Asia to test their device amid plans to launch a startup.

At a time of unprecedented global challenges EXTREME BY DESIGN shows the power of human-centered design in creating innovative, effective and sustainable solutions to the complex problems facing us.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adult) / 57 minutes

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SCHOOL'S OUT: LESSONS FROM A FOREST KINDERGARTEN

Directed by Lisa Molomot

A year in the life of a forest kindergarten in Switzerland where being outdoors and unstructured play are the main components.

No classroom for these kindergarteners. In Switzerland's Langnau am Albis, a suburb of Zurich, children 4 to 7 years of age, go to kindergarten in the woods every day, no matter what the weatherman says. This eye-opening film follows the forest kindergarten through the seasons of one school year and looks into the important question of what it is that children need at that age. There is laughter, beauty and amazement in the process of finding out.

The documentary is a combination of pure observational footage of the children at kindergarten in the forest, paired with interviews with parents, teachers, child development experts, and alumni, offering the viewers a genuine look into the forest kindergarten. There are also scenes of a traditional kindergarten in the United States to show the contrast between the different approaches.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades K-12, College, Adult) / 36 minutes

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VALENTINE ROAD

Directed by Marta Cunningham

In 2008, eighth-grader Brandon McInerney shot classmate Larry King at point blank range. Unraveling this tragedy, the film reveals the heartbreaking circumstances that led to the shocking crime as well as the aftermath.

On February 12, 2008, in an Oxnard, California, classroom, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot classmate Larry King twice; Larry died of the wounds two days later. Larry (Leticia), a gender-variant youth of color, had liked to wear makeup and heels to school, and had publicly announced a crush on McInerney. For this reason, some of McInerney's defenders say the victim had "embarrassed" the shooter--and was therefore at least partly to blame for his own murder.

VALENTINE ROAD is about an outrageous crime and an even more outrageous defense of it, but the film goes much deeper than mere outrage. In the end, it's the story of two victims of homophobia. Larry was killed because of it, but Brandon's life was horribly twisted by it as well. And it's the story of a community's response--sometimes inspirational and sometimes cruel--to a terrible tragedy.

Filmmaker Marta Cunningham deftly looks beyond the sensational aspects of the murder, introducing us to Larry's friends, teachers and guardians, as well as Brandon's loved ones--both children had led difficult lives. In examining Brandon's prosecution and defense, the documentary poses difficult questions about punishing juveniles for serious crimes, while exposing society's pervasive and deadly intolerance of young people who don't conform to its gender "norms."

VALENTINE ROAD brilliantly focuses on how bigotry and prejudice are community-wide problems, rather than only the acts of individuals. It asks how schools can respond to the the full complexity of students' lives, and support students in crisis before tragedy strikes.

DVD / 2013 / (Grades 8-12, College, Adult) / 88 minutes

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ORIGINAL MINDS

Directed by Tom Weidlinger

Inspirational film that shows a way to bring out the individual talents of five teenagers normally classified as learning disabled.

Wounded by the stigma of being in "special ed" the five teenage protagonists of ORIGINAL MINDS struggle to articulate how their brains work.

Kerrigan is a deep thinker, often seeing connections between disparate ideas and concepts, but when it comes to telling you what you've just said he hasn't a clue.

When Nee Nee writes her fingers have a hard time keeping up with her thoughts.

People often get annoyed with Nattie because she doesn't know when to stop teasing and kidding around.

Marshall spends a lot of time in the bathroom, where his parents can't bug him about homework. He says he wants to "turn over a new leaf" but he's lost nine of his last fifteen math assignments.

Members of Deandre's family tell him he is not college material. He's determined to prove them wrong.

Parents, teachers, friends, therapists, and coaches all weigh in, sometimes with conflicting views, but it's the kids who become the experts in this film, as they work intensively with the filmmaker to tell their stories and discover that they are smarter than they thought. Their narratives reveal the unique approach to learning that each must discern and claim as his or her own if they are to succeed in the world. ORIGINAL MINDS eschews the confusing thicket of labels for learning disorders and reveals universal truths about how we all acquire and process information.

DVD (Closed Captioned) / 2011 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 57 minutes

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LIFE 8: SORIE K AND THE MDGS

Blind musician, Sorie Kondi, from Sierra Leone looks at what's happening with girls' education in his country 10 years after civil war.

Musician Sorie Kondi, blind from birth, has been called Sierra Leone's Stevie Wonder, but he's still trying to make it as a world musician. Sorie worries about the future of his 14-year-old daughter, Zeinab. He manages to make enough as a busker to pay for her education, but keeping Zeinab out of trouble is more difficult. She lives with her cousins, who have all had to leave school early because of pregnancy. Life asked Sorie to help us make a road movie looking at what's happening with girls' education around the country 10 years after civil war.

DVD / 2010 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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PLAY AGAIN (NEW EDITION)

Directed by Tonje Hessen Schei

What are the consequences of a childhood removed from nature? Six screen-addicted teens take their first wilderness adventure.

One generation from now most people in the U.S. will have spent more time in the virtual world than in nature. New media technologies have improved our lives in countless ways. Information now appears with a click. Overseas friends are part of our daily lives. And even grandma loves Wii.

But what are we missing when we are behind screens? And how will this impact our children, our society, and eventually, our planet?

At a time when children play more behind screens than outside, PLAY AGAIN explores the changing balance between the virtual and natural worlds. Is our connection to nature disappearing down the digital rabbit hole?

This emotionally moving and humorous documentary follows six teenagers who, like the "average American child," spend five to fifteen hours a day behind screens. PLAY AGAIN unplugs these teens and takes them on their first wilderness adventure - no electricity, no cell phone coverage, no virtual reality.

Through the voices of children and leading experts including journalist Richard Louv, sociologist Juliet Schor, environmental writer Bill McKibben, educators Diane Levin and Nancy Carlsson-Paige, neuroscientist Gary Small, parks advocate Charles Jordan, and geneticist David Suzuki, PLAY AGAIN investigates the consequences of a childhood removed from nature and encourages action for a sustainable future.

DVD / 2010 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adult) / 80 minutes

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EARLY LIFE: KIBERA KIDS

The adults of Kibera are working hard to offer kids a safe and stimulating haven in pre-schools.

Slumdog Millionaire, City of God...you could make a box office hit from the lives of kids in Kibera, the biggest slum in sub Saharan Africa. Even before they go to school here, children must run the gauntlet of Kibera's crazy and even violent street life.

Scientists warn that stress can raise levels of the hormone cortisol, permanently altering the architecture of young brains. But while stress can be a problem, so can too little stimulation - as scientists discover how important interaction is for childhood development. Experts disagree how critical the first five years are and whether more funding should be diverted to early childhood development. But many of those who set the agenda for global development now regard early childhood as a key priority.

The adults of Kibera are working hard to offer kids a safe and stimulating haven in pre-schools. Pre-school is a safe space for the kids, somewhere they can develop peacefully and-in theory-become less violent adults. But many parents can't afford the ten dollars a month in fees.

For parents and teachers of children like Nasuru, Brian and Patience in this episode of Early Life, pre-school also brings dilemmas. Should it reflect traditional African social values, or the West's more individualistic outlook?

DVD / 2009 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 25 minutes

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EARLY LIFE: MY FIRST DAY AT SCHOOL

Three children prepare to enter primary school in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Thailand's Festival of Water: Songkran. A chance for adults to behave like kids. And for some kids a last chance to misbehave before the first day of school. The third program in the Early Life series follows three children preparing to enter primary school in Chiang Mai, Thailand. But are their lives already set on different courses? Scientists suggest that how the brain develops in the first years of life may affect a child's ability to prosper at school.

Sita is looking forward to her first day, Best is wary, and Tha Na Korn doesn't even have a school to go to yet. Their dilemmas reflect those of Thailand as a whole: how should a country with its own traditions of childhood prepare their kids for a new, globalized society? Thailand is now developing an education policy to meet the needs of a globalized economy.

Child rights might have guaranteed Tha Na Korn local schooling. But many experts who say culture should guide early child development don't like talk of "child rights". They say it could lead to the West imposing its own views of childhood on the world.

Can Thailand achieve child rights without sacrificing its culture? Child rights will mean more kids like Tha Na Korn go to school. But Tha's school has a different language and culture. He could become "unrecognizable to his parents." Child rights and respect for culture need to be combined.

DVD / 2009 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 25 minutes

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STORYTELLING CLASS, THE

Directed by John Paskievich and John Whiteway

An after-school storytelling project in a diverse, but divided, city school breaks cultural boundaries and creates community.

Located in Winnipeg's downtown core, Gordon Bell High School is probably the most culturally varied school in the city, with 58 different languages spoken by the student body. Many students are children who have arrived as refugees from various war torn areas of the world.

In an effort to build bridges of friendship and belonging across cultures and histories, teacher Marc Kuly initiated an after-school storytelling project whereby the immigrant students would share stories with their Canadian peers.

The catalyst for this cross-cultural interaction was the students' reading of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, a memoir of Beah's horrific time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone's civil war.

These voluntary after-school meetings take dramatic turns and reach their climax when Ishmael Beah and professional storyteller Laura Simms travel from New York to work with them. With their help the students learn to listen to each other and find the commonality that so long eluded them.

DVD / 2009 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 59 minutes

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LIFE 5: SCHOOL'S OUT!

Directed by Dick Bower

The private school option in a Lagos shantytown.

Makoko is a shantytown on the edge of Lagos, the largest city in West Africa. Space is precious, so Makoko stretches out into the lagoon, where many of the houses are built on stilts. Average income in Makoko is about fifty dollars a month. In Nigeria ninety per cent of people live on less than two dollars a day. According to UNICEF, less than half the children of primary school age get an education, with school fees as high as ten dollars. However, new research reveals that parents here are prepared to pay to get their children educated.

The people of Makoko appear to have a choice: Children can go to the free state school, or they can pay at one of a growing number of small, private schools that have opened there. Research into how and why these private schools have emerged in such unlikely circumstances has been organized by a team from the University of Newcastle-upon- Tyne. Their research reveals that in communities like Makoko, parents are voting with their feet. They think the state system has failed, and a new and interesting grass roots movement in education seems to be the result.

DVD (Color) / 2005 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 23 minutes

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LIFE 4: EDUCATING YAPRAK

Turkey's ambitious campaign to reduce poverty includes convincing reluctant parents to send their daughters to school.

At the crossroads of Asia and Europe, Turkey is a country with a large, young population. But literacy rates have traditionally lagged behind neighboring Greece and Bulgaria. With its sights firmly set on future EU membership, Turkey has identified education as key to reducing poverty. So Turkey has embarked on an ambitious campaign, targeting those most deprived of education-young teenage girls-especially from the poor rural areas. Life visits Turkey's eastern Province of Van and meets 13-year-old Yaprak, just one of the many targeted by this massive education drive. She, for one, is sure of the benefits. "I want to study until the end. I want to finish university. I want to have a job."

DVD (Color) / 2004 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 26 minutes

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LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, THE

A story of 12 ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary things in the Civil Rights movement.

From the award-winning producer of A DREAM IN HANOI and BOYS WILL BE MEN comes this 30-minute documentary about how 12 ordinary people, from very different backgrounds, came to accomplish extraordinary deeds: deeds which changed the face of the nation. Together with tens of thousands of other Americans, they joined the Civil Rights movement to protest racial inequality, segregation, and discrimination in the 1960s.

THE LONG WALK TO FREEDOM demonstrates to today's young people that the struggle for civil rights, justice, and equality is indeed a "long walk" -an ongoing challenge requiring the participation of successive generations. And it illustrates how ordinary individuals can become involved in social change.

DVD (Color) / 2003 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 29 minutes

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CITY LIFE: LINES IN THE DUST

In revolutionary programs in Northern Ghana and India, gender roles are challenged, and illiterate adults educated.

In a small village in Northern Ghana, a group of men and women sit around in a semi-circle, discussing the chart that they have drawn in the dust. The chart has three columns, showing the hours in the day and the different tasks men and women undertake during those hours. It soon becomes clear that women undertake the most labor intensive work -- fetching water and firewood, cleaning and preparing food -- and the discovery sparks a lively debate about why the men can not take on more 'women's' work. In this Muslim village, it is a radical move for men and women to sit down and debate together.

But the project aims to go beyond discussion of men's and women's separate workloads, reaching out to the nine hundred million illiterate adults across the world--from Ghana to the Eastern Ghats of India--who have been failed by conventional education. Known as 'Reflect', it is part of a radical approach to learning for adults that does not rely on importing textbooks from the outside world, but where, instead, everything is created by the participants themselves.

As well as changing ideas about whose job it is to carry all the water and fuel, charts and other home-made tools act as a stepping-stone towards reading, writing and number-work--and introduce learners to the concept that the symbols they copy onto paper can represent not just words, but ideas--and their plans for change.

DVD (Color) / 2001 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 27 minutes

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LIFE: EDUCATING LUCIA

The odds are against girls getting an education in Zimbabwe and throughout much of Africa.

Twelve-year old Lucia's dream is to be able to graduate to secondary school, and stay there-to finish the 12th grade and go on to train as a pilot. Her older sister Barita wants to do computer studies. And Portia, the youngest in the family, wants to be a dressmaker.

But tragically for these three sisters from one of Zimbabwe's large scale commercial farms, in tobacco country 50 miles outside Harare, they're more likely to end up -- as their mothers before them -- with no formal education, working as seasonal laborers on the farm. The three sisters are AIDS orphans being brought up by their grandmother. She can only afford school fees for one girl, Lucia, to attend primary school.

Across Africa, the odds are dramatically against girls getting an education. And even if they do attend primary school, they're often withdrawn before they finish -- to work as unpaid laborers for their extended family, to be married off or to have children. Only one in four school age girls in Burkina Faso ever attends school.

Across the continent only 24 percent of girls actually complete primary school, compared to 65-70% for boys. As Harry Sawyer, Minister for Education in Ghana, wrote in a recent UNICEF report, the obstacles to girls' education are the same as those that undermine economic and social development everywhere "but in the end, all the reasons add up to one: insufficient will."

DVD (Color) / 2000 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adult) / 24 minutes

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